The Barker Blogs: We're Going to Disney!!!!!

Christmas 2017 we surprised the boys with the fact that we were planning a trip to Disney the summer of 2018. They say in order to get the best prices you need to plan at least a year in advance. We were so excited to tell them and we knew we wouldn't be able to wait a whole entire year to tell them so we thought Christmas would be a fun time! We had a puzzle made and hung each individual piece on the tree. The boys were to find all the puzzle pieces and put them together. The only interested one in the putting together part was Liam.

WE'RE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!!!!

The only one out of the kids that was able to read it :)

About a month in advance they send your MagicBands in the mail. Each kid got to pick which color they wanted ahead of time. They each knew which one was theirs!

Kane was placed in Mark and Maggie's room for cost purposes so his band was sent with theirs. He chose the color blue.

The day we left for Atlanta - because that is where we flew out of- I had to take Ref to doggie daycare for the week. We stopped at Sonic and picked him up a pup cup.

We drove down the night before our flight and stayed in a hotel in Atlanta. We stopped and found a Golden Coral because Ryan was craving buffet food. Our flight was leaving out at 0710 the next morning so we had to be up super early.

Look out Disney its their first time!!!!

This was the boys first airplane ride so they were so excited and fought for the window seat!

When the plane landed we stayed back to be the last ones out so that we could say hello to the pilots and see inside the cockpit. When they saw the kids they quickly got up and out of their seats so the kids could check it out!

The crew getting ready to board Disney's Magical Express Bus. One cool thing about going through a Disney travel agent is you get all the perks. Because we stayed at a Resort we were sent special tags in the mail, when we received our MagicBands, that we placed on our luggage. When you get off the plane you don't have to worry about picking up your luggage because Disney does it all for you. It will be delivered to your room that day. How cool is that!

While Maggie and I checked in, the kids and men found the arcade. Lucky for them it was "happy hour" and most games were free for a certain amount of time!

Ryan found a Mr. Incredible costume and decided to try it on in the store. I was so embarrassed and all I could think about was that he was going to bust it at the seams and I was going to have to pay $100 for this costume.

Maggie was able to check in through the Disney app on her phone before we got to the Resort but for some reason it wouldn't let me. When we got to the resort we both went to the check in desk to make sure each family was checked in. We waited about an hour or so and Maggie received a text stating that her room was available. We all grabbed our things and made our way to their room in hopes that ours would soon become available as well.

We stayed at the Art of Animation Resort. It is comprised of four different movie sections: Cars, Finding Nemo, The Lion King and The Little Mermaid. We stayed in the Little Mermaid section. There was so much detail that each section makes you feel like you are in the movie!

So, we get to her room and we all pile on the bed to rest a little while we waited on our room and before we started our Disney experience. Another hour went by and our room still wasn't available. We had adjoining rooms and the whole time we were waiting we never heard anyone cleaning the room beside us. Ryan called the front desk and about 15-30 minutes later we received our text stating our room was available. We walked over, used our MagicBands to enter the room, just to find messy beds and pee still in the toilet. Ryan called the front desk again and about an hour later we were finally able to enter our clean room.

8746, our room number. I will say that you definitely get what you pay for. We went cheap when it came to rooms because we knew we wouldn't be spending a lot of time there. Art of Animation is a Value Resort. Our building was the farthest one away from the entrance with our room on the backside of the building.

Once we were settled in we decided to go to Disney Springs and see how long the wait for the T-Rex Restaurant was. We expected for it to be a while but to our surprise we only waited about 15 minutes to be seated.

It was just like the Rainforest Cafe but with Dinosaurs. Every 15-20 minutes the lights go dim and the dinosaurs move around and make noise.

This was just one of our desserts that night - OMG - it was ridiculously amazing!

Next stop at Disney Springs was the Lego Store! Buzz and Woody were completely made out of Legos!

They had different areas where you could build things with Legos. Here, the boys were building race cars. After they were built you could race them against each other.

Everywhere you turn there are statues or something made completely of Legos

When we were leaving the Lego store we noticed these golden "statues." They would change poses with each person who took pictures with them. They were so funny. As we were leaving they were bringing out the bronze "statues."

When we got back to our room we had a gift basket full of snacks and drinks from our Disney Travel Agent, Jamie!

Day 1: Magic Kingdom

We took the resort bus to Magic Kingdom and hopped on the Monorail to the Contemporary Resort to eat at Chef Mickeys for breakfast.

I spent so much time making t-shirts before our trip - I was so sad to see Ryans shirt falling apart before our day even started.

Chef Mickey's

The only time you can eat mickey waffles with gummy bears, chocolate chips, peanut butter chips and chocolate sauce! (This was Liam's plate, not mine)

Pluto

Mickey

Donald

Minnie

AHHHHHH!!!!! Cinderella's Castle

Dumbo!

Mad Hatter Tea Party!

Splash Mountain!

Meeting Buzz Lightyear! One of my many favorite parts of Disney is meeting all the characters!

We haven't watched Lilo & Stitch much but for some reason Kane fell in love with everything about Stitch. Before we met him we were looking at mickey ears and hats and he was dead set on these Stitch ears. Seeing the joy on this boys face when he met Stitch made Disney so worth it!

We found the Dole Whips!!! Amazing!!!! My favorite was the swirl!

Awe, I love him!

The Dorak's were at Disney the week before us but we overlapped a couple days so we made sure that we got together while we were there, even if it was just for a few minutes and we were in our PJ's!

Day 2: Epcot

Riding the bus and taking pictures with Brooks.

This picture makes me laugh. The boys were supposed to be covering their eyes - they are horrible at following directions.

Showing the photographer how to floss!

Waiting in line to meet Anna & Elsa. Kane had talked about seeing Elsa for weeks. When he saw her he was star struck. He choked up, became mute and tried to hide behind me.

Meeting Elsa ...

Meeting Anna....

Meeting Baymax!!!!

Joy & Sadness

Turtle talk with Crush. DUUUUDE, this was the coolest. It was was an animated video screen but he was able to talk in real time to Liam and I. I have it on video on my phone. Crush and I "bonded" as he put it over our kids and the many questions they like to ask us "about the ways of the world."

We ate lunch at Via Napoli's Italian Restaurante and then took the kids back to the resort to spend the rest of the day with Nana and Papa while the big kids went to the Food and Wine Festival.

First things first - the Mimosa bar!

What we did was use some of our snack credits we had and chose a meal from each country to try and share it between the four of us. We ate at pretty much every country except for a handful that we really didn't care much about. Everything was really good but the best thing we came across was this Maple Bacon Funnel Cake. It had a slab of maple ice cream with candied bacon bits on top. It was amazing.

Day 3: Hollywood Studios

We had breakfast reservations as Hollywood & Vine to eat with the Disney Jr characters. We were told to try to get in line and get reservations to do Jedi Training first thing if we could. We checked into our reservations and hopped in line to get a training time. Liam, Reid and Hudson chose to do it. Kane refused. Now he says he wants to do it next year! While waiting in line some Storm Troopers came through trying to get us to join the dark side.

Breakfast with Sophia the First...

Roadster Racer Goofy....

Doc McStuffins...

I would be her nurse any day!

and Vamparina

First stop after breakfast was Toy Story Land. We had fast passes to Toy Story Mania.

You really feel like you are in Andy's toybox!

The Army men playing games in the streets

Im so glad he had such a good time! He can't wait to go back and neither can I!!!!!

I LOVE me some ALIENS!

We had some time before our FastPass to Toy Story Mania so we rode the Alien Saucers

Waiting in line for Toy Story Mania

All this fun calls for Mickey Shaped Ice Cream

We stopped to watch the Indiana Jones show for a break from the heat and walking. They picked out volunteers from the audience and Ryan jumped up and down and got picked.

He was an extra....

Our next FastPass with Frozen Ever After. I loved it. It was funny, summed up the whole movie in 20 minutes, were able to sing our favorite Frozen songs and at the end it even SNOWED!!!!