Missy's blog: Disney Trip 2017

These are the books that I put out onto the bookshelf that nearly took out my eye. My friends and I took our lunch break at a great used book store in Frederick called Wonder Books. We stocked one of the shelves with fun to read books and books we wanted the others to read. Its a big bookshelf (that’s why we needed the dolly in the first place) so we have about 4 more shelves to go but it was a very satisfying start and it makes out break-room/lunch room so much nicer.

Just before it was time for us to leave on vacation the weather turned.

Originally when we planned to go in October it seemed like we would be going from cold into warm. I am happy to say that it paned out that way at least to a small extent.

On Sunday morning at 6 o'clock we got into our already packed up car and hit the road for vacation.

We have been planning this vacation to some degree ever since our last Florida trip a few years ago.

I decided on that trip that I really wanted to do it again. I therefore changed my credit card to a Disney rewards card and started earning Disney points as soon as we got home from that trip.

Last year as we were all sitting in the hot tub (and just before Megans birthday) Megan told us that she wanted to take a trip for her birthday either to Kansas or to Florida. These are her two favourite places. I thought I might have enough Disney points by this year to swing it and agreed.

We did a lot of looking things up. Things like when is Disney least crowded and when is the weather good and how can i get good deal for accommodations. We wanted to stay on a Disney property as we had never tried that before and originally we planned to fly down and not get a rental car.

I like planning vacations very much and have a special fondness for how Disney manages people.

All the hurricanes plus my fear of flying kicked in and we drove.

First we drove to South of the Boarder.

Then we drove to Georgia. We stayed free thanks to my travel card rewards that I have been saving up to go see my dad and Mary when they move to Hawaii.

There were palm trees and lizards and I was very happy about stopping for free.

The next morning it was a short 1 hour drive to the Florida welcome center for free orange juice and the chance to take over the pokemon gym there.

Then on to my favourite stop, St. Augustine and the fort.

Last time the kids were too small to appreciate it properly so we didn’t do the tour. This time we were so happy to go inside.

It was a little bit like our summer history trips but older and more pirate ridden.

Megan particularly loved the gun powder room because the door to get into it was so low even Kiernan had to crawl to get through.

After that it was on to Disney and the many complimentary activities to be had there.

We stayed at the Caribbean Beach Resort, they were having some construction so we got a good deal.

The next day we did Magic Kingdom.

Megan loved all the things and was the perfect age for this trip.

He current favourite princesses are Moana and Elena so she was jazzed to meet one of them.

Kiernan had a rough time. He was afraid of the rides and struggled a lot with nearly every attraction. He loved the music though and he saw Philharmonic Mickey which really cracked him up.

We took the kids to Disney Springs for dinner. Disney springs is a big shopping and eating area by a like. It has lots of live music and themed dining. We ate at the Rainforest cafe, It was inside of a volcano. It had a thunderstorm roll through ever 20 minutes. We got Megan a volcano dessert with servers singing happy birthday to her. She was so happy that she stood on her chair with her arm in the air before they even got to her.

We went to Blizzard Beach the next day. When I scheduled out the week there was going to be a bigger break between those two (I only had enough points for 2 park days) the weather was weird though and it made the most sense to go Wednesday. I took no pictures because water parks and camera phones are a bad combination. Imagine Megan never getting out of the wave pool for 6 hours and you will pretty much have it.

We did a few other things (lazy river especially). Of note was the fact that Blizzard Beach (done up like a melting ski facility) had more vegetarian food than anywhere else in the entire resort.

That night I took the kids over for a not so scary Halloween movie under the start (they have these pretty much every night) . They even provided free bags of popcorn (kettle or cheader or regular).

Kiernan's tooth came out that night and hopefully the roots did too and we have saved 600 bucks.

Behind him here you can sort of see his murphy bed. All the newly renovated rooms (remember the construction?) have murphy beds. It was great because the kids did not want to share a bed and this way Megan got the 'birthday bed' and Kiernan got the secret hidden bed and everyone was happy.

The next day was rainy so we chased lizards and went resort hopping. One place I had been looking at a ton over the last year was the Polynesian Village Resort. This one is one of the top tier places and I wanted to try out their food and especially their Tiki Bar.

This is a hippomoto-mai tai.

This is what happens when someone orders an Uh-Oha. Most of the drink orders cause some sort of animation or animatronic reaction. Its a very small hard to get into place and we magically scored a (maybe the only?) corner table.

Megan said that she wants to eat dinner at a Tiki bar every night.

There was nothing vegetarian on the menu but they made us special and delicious veggie sushi.

Kiernan has been asking for (and eating) Sushi non-stop from this point onward.

We looked at the weather and at tropical storm (also hurricane) Nate coming in and decided to see what the penalty would be for leaving a day early. There was none.

We spent Friday morning at the pool and then left before 11.

Even the check out place was cool. They had scales for people to weigh their luggage and check in for airlines and for cruises. They had a kids activity corner so the grown-ups could do money things in peace. They even had a tiny souvenir shop to grab last minute items.

We headed north to go fresh water spring snorkelling.

The place we indented to swim at was closed from hurricane damage but there was still a spring open up the road.

We went to Salt Springs.

We ate at the picnic tables.

We looked at the huge 200 year old tree.

We swam in the colder than normal waters.

We played around and took pictures.

Look at Megan snorkelling!

Now look at the handrail under her.

Those stairs are supposed to lead down to the water. The flooding is still very much an issue.

The water was a bout 5 feet higher than it should have been. Because the water was weird we got to see many more things than we would have normally.

I saw an otter and David saw some turtles. We all saw lots of fish and We even saw the back of a manatee. The manatees moved inland after the storms.

Behold some fish.

We drove north some more and stopped in Savannah for the night.

The next day it was back to South of the Boarder and then off to a great little side trip that would not have been possible if we had stayed that last day at Disney.