Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time

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.