I was feeling uninspired for a theme for today’s posting. So I turned to the magic of the internet for random videos. Thank you interwebs!! 
I am not one to be impressed by the latest or coolest consumer gadgetry. However, our Roku player arrived the other night and I can’t help but be amazed by this little box. It’s wild how this tiny little box can stream video over the internet to my TV. Whoa! If you have a Netflix account and high speed internet already you might as well get this too. I don’t mind watching movies on my laptop, but this way we can all watch something without having to crowd around the computer. It is definately a great way to get the most out of our Netflix subscription.
On Friday it was time to head out to Karen’s grandparents. We had breakfast at the hotel and then headed out. Some things we learned from this trip:
If at all possible, stay at one of the park hotels. We stayed in the All Star Music, which had pools, food, and a playground right there. The bus service was great, no need to drive and park. Even still, you have to remember that taking the bus at best will take 20 minutes and our longest trip, including wait time, was about 45 minutes. This adds up.
If you are going to see the fireworks in the Magic Kingdom try to be closer to the front of the park (by the exit). We were in the very back of the park and it took us a very long time to get out of the park. Plus we had to wait for a second bus since the first one filled up. This made for a very long night.
If you have little ones it is totally worth renting a stroller if you didn’t bring one (or like us wanted one for the older kids). We would never have gotten as much in on Wednesday if we didn’t have the double stroller in addition to the single we brought with us.
If at all possible plan a day in the middle of the trip to not do any parks. Chill out at the pool and playground or something. That way you are not exhausted on the last days.
Don’t have a weekend in the trip, or maybe use Saturday as the chill day. We arrived on Monday and left on Friday. The parks and hotel (pool, food, etc) were pretty empty until Thursday. Then it took longer to do everything. Next time I think arriving on a Saturday or Sunday and leaving on a Friday might be best with a day ‘off’ on Tuesday or Wednesday. The only possible downfall is there may be more programming over the weekend.
Get a meal plan. Food is expensive, but with the meal plan it is already prepaid and one less thing to worry about. We got the Quick Service Dining Plan, which worked great for our family. We each, except for Erin, got 2 quick-service meals and 2 snacks a day. We managed to use them all except for one meal. We also each got a refillable mug to use at the hotel cafeteria. This was very handy.The food at the hotel cafeteria was very good and it was very convenient to be able to grab food before going to and after getting back from the parks. The servings were big enough that Erin had plenty to eat without us going over our allotment. All of the meals came with so much food, it was really great.
This was taken in the main lobby of the hotel right before we left:
On Thursday we decided that we would take it easy in the morning. We lounged about for a while and then went to the playground that was part of the hotel (you could see it from the walkway outside of our room). The girls had a blast!
After lunch we decided to head over to Hollywood Studios. This was the loudest park we went to. There was a parade going on, but even still it was so loud I couldn’t hear myself think. We snuck around the parade and snapped a picture of the girls with a hedge Mickey:
After that we went to the Voyage of the Little Mermaid, which was a live action retelling of the Little Mermaid movie. The girls loved it! 
Then we went on to Toy Story Mania, which was really fun! It was funny though, on the way out the wait time had gone up to 80 minutes, and someone asked how long the ride was and the attendant said about 8 minutes. The person could not believe they had to wait 10 times longer than the length of the ride!
We didn’t wait that long, but after those two rides and the fact that we went late in the day things were already starting to wind down. We were going to to the Studio Backlot Tour, but that was closed. So we went to the Honey I Shrunk The Kids place but that was closed. So we headed over to Star Tours. Karen and Erin sat that one out, so I took Gilli and Bella. The girls had so much fun that we rode again. They probably could have rode that all night, but we figured twice was enough. This was right before the second ride:
Then we realized we missed the last show of the Indiana Jones show, and we were pretty tired anyway, so we headed back to the hotel. Towards the end of the week we just didn’t have the energy that we had at the start, but we still had a lot of fun.
New York Governor David Paterson is on the offensive again. He is again looking to blame unions and their workers for the State’s fiscal problems. He is now threatening to layoff 8,900 people because he feels that the unions should have given in to concessions.
I think the PEF president has the best response so far, you can read it at WNY Labor Today.
Personally I feel that the Governor is looking to blame the unions even though they have all contributed ideas to help in this fiscal crisis. He needs someone to blame and it is easy for the public, no matter how misguided, to believe that the unions are bad and at fault.
I saw that MTV has a playlist of their first 24 hours. Pretty interesting. Check out the whole list here. I was kind of surprised by the list in some ways and in other ways not so much.
The Pretenders – Brass in Pocket. I love this song!
Juice Newton – Angel of the Morning.
Andrew Gold – Thank You for Being a Friend. Wait, the theme to the Golden Girls is an actual song? And it was played in the first 24 hours of MTV? Whoa!
On Wednesday we decided to rent a double stroller and spend the whole day at the Magic Kingdom. We had Erin’s single stroller, but we figured with a full day ahead of us the double stroller for Bella and Gilli would work well; which it did.
Bella and Gilli were collecting autographs and meeting characters as the mood struck them. Bella decided she wanted to meet Pinocchio, but Gilli decided to wait with Karen and Erin.
Meeting Pinocchio
We lucked out, as we got to Main Street in the Magic Kingdom a parade was starting, so we parked at the curb and watched.
Interestingly this was the only time we saw Mickey
Since we went right to TomorrowLand on day one we took a left to AdventureLand and started at the Swiss Family Treehouse. I took these pictures of Bella and Gilli as Erin was getting out of the stroller.
After the Treehouse we went to The Magic Carpets of Alladin and then Bella and Gilli got to meet Princess Jasmine and Alladin.
Then we walked on to the Pirates of the Carribean. We skipped the Capt. Jack Sparrow show that was going on and took advantage of the minimal wait to get on the ride. Gilli was terrified of the ride and the dark, but Bella loved it. Since there was no line Bella and I rode one more time. Since I respected the “no flash photography” rule (unlike some other people on the boat) I didn’t get any good pictures inside the ride.
After that we went to FrontierLand. Bella and Karen were going to ride Splash Mountain but the wait was very lengthy so instead we went on the Walt Disney World Railroad, which took us on a relaxing ride around the park. If we didn’t have the strollers parked in FrontierLand we might have considered getting off at another part of the park, but it was a nice ride and a chance to rest our legs.
After a ridiculous search for a restroom we found Peter Pan, so Bella and Gilli got to meet him.
Since we were in FrontierLand we had to stop and see the Country Bear Jamboree. I had never seen it before, but after seeing the movie I can understand why the girls were not that excited and Bella said “that’s not the Country Bears!”
After that we almost got caught watching another parade but decided to skip it when the opportunity presented itself. We stopped for a snack as the day began to take its toll on us. We decided to split up since the next ride we were going on was the Haunted Mansion and Erin wouldn’t be able to ride that. I took Bella and Gilli (I was surprised she wanted to go) to The Haunted Mansion while Karen took Erin to Ariel’s Grotto.
Both Bella and Gilli were scared at The Haunted Mansion, so we skipped riding that again and trekked over to meet up with Karen and Erin. We decided that we’d let the girls meet Ariel and then go back to the hotel. Unfortunately we did not anticipate the almost hour long wait in the increasingly hot sun being forced to listen to three songs from The Little Mermaid over and over again in a perpetual loop. 
That is when my ears got painfully sunburned and Erin kicked the camera switching the settings which I did not notice until later, resulting in the blurry picture below.
Erin almost met Ariel, but then decided against it. 
On our second day at Disney we decided to check out the Animal Kingdom. We never seemed to be in the right place at the right time to catch any shows, but we did get to do a few rides and such. Personally, although I am glad to have seen the Animal Kingdom, I don’t think it was as exciting as the other parks.
It was very pretty there, but I guess I was hoping to see more things I had not seen before or were unique.
The Tree of Life
The only downside of the midway games was the one adult who kept playing, thereby making it impossible for any of the kids playing to actually have a chance at winning.
Meeting Balloo
If I recall correctly this was also the night we went into the pool at the hotel. It was actually kind of chilly as it got dark and the wind kicked up. I think that was also the night we played games at the arcade in the hotel. Gillian won about 40 tickets on one game and was very excited about that. We all squeezed into a photo booth for some fun pictures. The girls got to choose some prizes with their tickets at the end.
Erin also thought it would be fun to put on my socks, which she did all by herself.
Ankle high socks on Daddy = Thigh highs for Erin
