Adventure In The Great Wide Somewhere

The sun rose cool and clear on our first day of the Disney Youth Education Series  Program. Day six in the parks with an 8:15 meeting time? Good morning! Good morning! It's great to stay up late! No problem. We were even early enough to use the wash rooms and plop on the ground to invent our very own version of Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom.  Do Dalmatians beat fairies? The world may never know. We met our group leader who lead us in to the park and straight for a restroom break (just in case!) and then introduced our merry band of six kids and their adults to Main Street U.S.A as you've never seen her before...  Waving hello to the cast members as they ride down Main Street in the morning quiet. Main Street, U.S.A. slowly wakes up as the cast members call merry greetings in a way that makes the whole "transported to 1900" even more real. The kids searched high and low to fulfill their first mission: to count how many kinds of moving machin...

After what passes for alone time on a two kid, one parent trip to Walt Disney World... Ahem. We headed off toward Frontierland for our "afternoon break." Rather than heading straight for Space Mountain like the kids suggested for their rest time, we headed toward the Liberty Belle Riverboat for a lazy afternoon cruise around the Rivers of America. Very relaxing. Between a brief nap on the bench and a long time staring at the paddle wheel, we soon found ourselves on another form of river going vessel, the Becky Thatcher raft to Tom Sawyer island. Fort Langhorn was a big hit. Running in and out of caverns, over barrel bridges and under escape passages and firing rifles at Fort Langhorn and generally whooping it up? Yeah. That's how my kids rest. Watching the Liberty Belle paddle by. Chris and Kylee needed a nice cool snack to cool off from all of the spelunking. That will do quite nicely! Feeling refreshed after their first Dole Whips, off we...

After circling around the back side of Cinderella Castle, Chris broke out the map and off we went to hunt down our first portal on our Sorcerer's of the Magic Kingdom adventure.  Impressively beautiful, any day of the year. After several portals, they really began to get the hang of the game. Sorcerer's of the Magic Kingdom is a cute, multilevel and very addictive card game where you quest around one of the lands at the titular Magic Kingdom park helping defeat various Disney villains and eventually Hades. It can be played near endlessly as you collect different cards each day you enter the park. Did I mention it's addictive? My kiddos happily forgot about all of the rest of the most magical place on earth in hopes of rescuing Aurora's good fairies.  Busy fighting the Mistress of All Evil Until I remembered our Seven Dwarfs Mine Train FastPass+ window. Trotting through the FastPass queue, we went straight to the front of the line. Being a party of thr...

At long last, we were going to get to go to Magic Kingdom!!! SQUEEEEE! We layered on the hoodies and hit the food court for a quick breakfast. Hopping on the bus, we made it to the Magic Kingdom early enough to hang around for a bit before the Welcome Show. The cold brought out my kids snuggly #DisneySide Kylee asked for an "I'm Celebrating" button while I picked up the map and an entertainment schedule for the day. After being wished a very pleasant good morning by the people of Main Street, Cinderella, Elsa, Anna, and Mickey, we walked under the railroad station, around the flag pole and caught our first view of the castle. Walt and Mickey are hiding in a crate while a crane and two workers take down the Christmas decorations. It was kind of awe inspiring and weird and wonderful all at the same time to see such an enormous crane hanging over Cinderella Castle. We were swept up and along in the excitement as half of the guests sped off to meet Elsa and Anna...

On arriving to All Star Movies, the three Mousekateers made a beeline toward the online check-in desk. It was too early for our room to probably be available, but checking couldn't hurt, right? After a little technical mumbo-jumbo we were told our room would be ready anytime after one. Therefore off to World Premiere Food Court for some lunch in the intervening half hour. Chris ate all of one of these items. Smart money is on the pizza. Chris glowed when he was permitted to walk over to the pizza counter and order his lunch by himself while Kylee and I waited for a veggie burger to be prepared separately. I did the math on a "length of stay" refillable mug for this particular trip (ten days, nine nights) and despite the rarity of our soda drinking, came out on the side of pro-mug. Kylee's first really goofy pic of the trip. I'm not sure I would buy the mugs again, as most of our meals at the resort were breakfast and the kids' meals came with milk...

So after popping last minute odds and ends into our luggage and checking my list a time or two, I tried to go to sleep early. A 7:20 am flight (meaning the possibility of arriving at our Walt Disney World Resort before lunch) seemed like a great idea! Until about four the afternoon before when I realized that we would want to be leaving our house shortly before five am. Thankfully, pre-trip pixie dust levels in myself and the children meant we were awake, enthusiastic and dressed in advance of when we needed to be. When Chris is tired he gets quiet, but Kylee talks a blue streak. While Kylee told the United agents about every detail of our upcoming vacation, I printed off our boarding passes and checked our bags. We practically flew through security, with a minor hang up when Chris didn't want to talk to the security guard or respond to his name. (Frankly we all needed our coffee.) The security guard thought it was funny once Chris woke up enough to respond to his name a...