Disney World - Day One

Jason, Zachary and I went to Disney World last week. Addison stayed with Martin and Linda so we could really enjoy the time with Zachary. He loves Mickey and friends so I knew he was going to have a blast. And he did. Thank you so much Linda and Martin for watching Addie for us! We drove down on Saturday a little anxious because at that point we weren't sure what Hurricane Ike was going to do. One of the computer models had it heading straight for Florida. Most hotels will let you cancel within 24 hours of your arrival with no penalties but not Disney World. If there was an actual Hurricane warning issued then we could have gotten out of it but they won't issue one until maybe 48 hours before the hurricane is supposed to hit. So we went, crossing our fingers that Ike would head into the Gulf. Which normally, when we are home, we hope the hurricane will hit Florida! Here is Z on the way there.....

We get there Saturday early evening. We stayed at a random hotel that was near Disney World for the first night. I felt bad because poor Zachary thought we were going on the rides as soon as we got there. We let him swim that night so he got over his disappointment. On Sunday we got up and headed over to the hotel to see if we could possibly check in early. Normally check in is around 3 or 4 and this was 8:30 in the morning. We were lucky and they had a room available. One of the pluses of going in the off season. We stayed at the Polynesian. My dad told me that that is where we stayed when my family went when I was in grade school. Once we got there I remembered it. It is such a great place to stay with kids. Awesome pool and beach (where you can watch the fireworks from the Magic Kingdom), it is centrally located so very easy to get to the monorail which will take you to the Magic Kingdom and Epcot. Here we are by the small beach that is at our resort (you can see the M.K. castle in the back ground to the right of me).

After we checked in we headed over to the Magic Kingdom. Zachary was so excited at the possibility of seeing Mickey. When we walked into the park they were doing at show at the castle. It was a neat way to start off Zachary's first experience of Disney World.

After the show we headed over to Thunder Mountain. This was one of the few bigger roller coasters that Z was tall enough to ride. He's barely 40 inches (which is the limit) so they pretty much made us measure him every time we went on a big ride. About a month ago Zachary had a nightmare about bats. I think maybe it came from watching Scooby Doo where there are bats in the opening sequence. Anyways, the first thing that happens on Thunder Mountain is you go in a cave and there are bats flying around. My eyes just about popped out of my head. He didn't seem to be scared by them though. He loved the ride so we ended up going on it a number of times throughout the week. Here are Jason and Z in front of Thunder Mountain.

After Thunder Mountain we went on Splash Mountain. This is the water ride that has a big drop at the end of it. Zachary LOVED it. We had to ride it again right away. Even though September is still kind of hot and humid it is a great time to go because there are hardly any lines. We never really had to wait in a line for the rides (at least not very long if at all). It was awesome. Here we are in front of Splash Mountain.

Zachary wanted to ride the Aladdin ride. It was a little hard to get a good picture because it moved up and down. Z lucked out because Aladdin actually rode in his "flying carpet." Which meant that he got to go to the front of the line to get his picture taken with him and the chick (can't remember the princesses name in that movie). The only thing we really had to wait in line for was to get a picture taken with the characters (which happened to be one of Z's favorite things to do).

You will see in most of the pictures Zachary is either making a funny face or looking away from the camera. He's in his 'not liking pictures' phase again. Those of you who know me well will not be surprised by my excitement when I discovered that the parks had frozen cokes. I was very happy that I didn't have to go through withdrawal from my coke icees. Here is Z enjoying one. He loves them as much as I do.

Zachary wanted to go in a race car and this is the closest thing they had. Jason said it was pretty lame because the car barely moved. Like I said, one of Zach's favorite things to do was meet the characters. Goofy was the first character Z got to meet (well besides Aladdin but he doesn't know who Al is).

You can request to ride up front with the driver of the monorail. We lucked out and got to do it on the way home that first day. Zachary thought this was pretty neat and called the driver a "Station Master" which is from Thomas the Train.

That night while I was engrossed in my book Jason and Zach went down to the beach to watch the fireworks. The Magic Kingdom shoots them off every night at 9pm. The beach was a great place to watch them. They also had water "floats" with lights on them that went around the lake.This is going to take me a while to go through all the days so bare with me. It may take me a while to get them all posted. In the mean time, have a nice day!