Disney Part 1: Finally Posting from May- Epcot & Animal Kingdom

I have been waiting until things slowed down to post our May trip to Disney. It's been a busy couple of months with the move and things haven't completely slowed down yet but I am finally finding moments to sit down. This has been the first trip that we have ever taken to Disney that we visited all 4 parks on the same trip. The boys had a blast and we were exhausted by the end of the week. Mimi rode down with us and everything went smoothly until Caden threw up :-( After stopping to get the car seat cleaned up, get his clothes changed, and finding a pharmacy for some Dramamine, he felt much better and we were back on the way. Thankfully, we were staying in a villa for the week and I was able to wash the car seat cover when we got there. Once we arrived, the boys were ready to put on their ears and explore.

And the first thing we did was check out one of the resort restaurants. This was our first time to stay at Saratoga Springs and we LOVED it!

After eating, we walked around the resort for a bit before heading to Downtown Disney. This infamous picture below that I took the day that we arrived is the beginning of the end of the trip. The boys climbed over the side of the carriage after I took the picture and got stuck. So, I sat the camera down to help the boys off of the carriage...completely forgetting about the camera and walking away. It wasn't until we were at Downtown Disney a while later that I realized that I no longer had the camera. And at that point, I did not remember where I had left it. I was devastated but tried to make the best of it. I had the point and shoot in my backpack as a back-up and I had my phone but it wasn't the same. When we returned to our villa that evening, I called the front desk and Lost and Found at Downtown Disney but no one had turned in a camera and I still couldn't remember where I had left it.

So, this Disney trip probably had about 2,000 fewer pictures than any other vacation we have been on :-(  Either way, we headed on to Downtown Disney and checked out their favorite place The Lego Store. We also checked out almost every other store down there but without my good camera our visit was not well documented :-( That evening, we returned to our villa to get some rest and get ready for our big day at Epcot!

The next morning we hopped on the bus and headed to Epcot!

This was also our first trip to Disney that we used Photopass. It was really nice to have someone else take pictures for us!

 

The boys loved the park and had a blast! This was our first visit to Epcot and there was way more for the boys to do there than I truly thought there would be. We really enjoyed the park!
Seabase was awesome and we totally could have spent more time there. We loved Journey into the Imagination with Figment, Imageworks, and Innoventions! The boys loved Soarin' and Spaceship Earth. They thought Turtle Talk with Crush was amazing and Ben and Ethan enjoyed Test Track more than anything else in the park.

Even our tour through the World Showcase was fun :-)

Unfortunately, I didn't take as many pictures as I normally would have including our night at La Hacienda de San Angel eating dinner and watching the IllumiNations fireworks. It was a late night but we finally got back to the villa to rest and get ready for our next day at Animal Kingdom.

We started with breakfast at Tusker House the next morning.

Goofy was ABSOLUTELY hilarious and the boys thought he was the best thing ever! He would do a quick tap dance and Ethan and Caden would laugh hysterically!

After breakfast, the first thing we did was the Kilimanjaro Safari

We had a light rain but we trudged through and took the Wildlife Express Train to check out Rafiki's Planet Watch and the Affection Station.

After that, we saw the Festival of the Lion King

which was amazing!

And kept everyone enthralled

I love that Ethan didn't want to miss anything with his binoculars!

Then we went to The Boneyard to dig for some bones before we headed over to watch Finding Nemo which was probably my favorite show of the whole trip!

The Triceratop Spin was not working so we skipped it and Ben and Ethan decided not to do Expedition Everest so we headed back to the resort. Even though we could have spent more time at Animal Kingdom and we definitely missed a few things that we would have liked to do, we were tired from the previous last night and ready to relax. Again, the Photopass was awesome and we got some pics of all of us!

After returning to the resort, we hopped around to several of the pools for a few hours then ate a little dinner and rested up for Magic Kingdom!