We got to Orlando on Nov 30th and left on March 14th. We were there a total of 104 days. We bought a Disney pass. We visited a Disney park or property on 35 of those days. This was by far the only time we have ever spent this much time in one area since going on the road and Kevin was not a fan but we don’t want to use this blog to dwell on any negativity in the ‘happiest place on earth.’ 🙂
Disney stats: Eloise’s favorite ride: Avatar Flight of Passage/tied with Everest, Eliza’s favorite ride: Tea Cups (but really her favorite was any and all character meet and greets). Kevin’s favorite ride: Driving home–bahaha seriously. Emma’s favorite ride: Everest. Favorite snacks? None, we brought our own food with us 95% of the time. Favorite parks: Animal Kingdom and Epcot. [Magic Kingdom was ‘magical’ but as the iconic park it was packed most of the days we were there which is annoying and not magical at all.]
Since many of the other families we were with also had Disney passes we visited the parks with numerous friends too which made it fun. (Thanks again to our friends Bill and Porter for introducing Eloise to Disney Pin trading!) Having a Disney pass was nice: kids melting down–time to leave; kid misbehaving–lets go home, sick kid throwing up in the line of Pirates of the Caribbean (true story)–lets go home; too many freakin people today?–lets leave. Not having the pressure of making the ‘most’ of each visit was very nice. By the time we left the park each day we were all tired and usually only went for the afternoon. Let me tell you tho–we can pack a stroller with 2 kids and enough gear for 8 hours like pros now haha. Also for Christmas we enjoyed the day at Epcot and Christmas Chinese dinner at Nine Dragons inside the park and actually it wasn’t “that” busy. Rumor was that Magic Kingdom was close to capacity that day (so full they turned people away.) The line of cars at 9am on Christmas day making the turn to towards Magic Kingdom was impressive…no thanks.
Believe it or not there are other things to do in Florida besides visiting Mickey and Minnie. We also enjoyed plenty of pool time in the nice Florida weather. Kevin and I took a long weekend to go to an Xscapers (RV travel club) convergence in Savannah Georgia and had a nice time. Unfortunately the kids and grandparents were all sick with some stomach bug that weekend which was no fun.
In January we took a family trip over to the huge Tampa RV show where we met up with Kevin’s grandparents and my parents and toured more RVs than we cared to. The weather that weekend was a little rainy and as we went to leave our big truck got stuck in the muck (again!). Fortunately though we weren’t the only ones and the event arena had hired a giant wrecker to pull RVs out of the muck all day. Fun times. In February we went up to Jacksonville, FL to attend another Xscapers Convergence at a Hanna Park. It was a very lush state park with mountain biking trails and a huge playground. Oh and don’t forget its right on the Atlantic Ocean/beach which was nice too. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t the greatest but we still had a nice time visiting with friends and making sand castles.
In between Mickey, other events, and friends we also visited family (my grandmother, Aunt, parents, Kevin’s grandparents) around Florida and it was nice to see everyone! It was a busy time for sure and when we left we were glad for the break.