Last year I blogged about my love for the Disney Princess Meet and Greet on the Disney Magic. (Read about that here) Anne was in a really shy phase, but those ladies made her day with their kindness and beauty. But that was a ten months ago, the shy phase is over and we finally entered the Frozen phase. I held off letting them watch it as long as possible, but Anne only had to see it once to be an ardent lover of all things Anna and Elsa. When it was time to actually meet these girls, Anne was over the moon. Ryan was so happy for her, it was really cute. He kept saying, "Are you ready Anne? Are you ready to meet them?" But I knew from the cruise that enthusiasm prior to the meeting doesn't always translate to a bubbly encounter. But let me take a step back. You can meet Anna and Elsa in Norway, which is in the World Showcase in EPCOT. The line is usually 20-60 minutes, and there is no FastPass+ for the Meet and Greet. When we got in line, it was a posted wait time of 25 minutes. Not bad. Rob went to get some Food and Wine snacks while I took the kids in. The line for Anna and Elsa winds through their house. But it's not a castle, it's a little cottage. I'm not sure why they live in a cottage. Um... let me see here (goes to google)ah yes! We meet Anna and Elsa in the Royal Sommerhus. So this is their vacation cottage. Got it. Anyway, the cottage, um, Sommerhus, is full of cool things to look at, throw backs to the old Norway Pavilion before Frozen took over, and hidden Mickeys. You will just have to take my word on this, because guess what! I forgot to take pictures! Spoiler alert! I'm about to ruin some of the magic. So if you don't want to know how the sauce is made, scroll down to see the pictures of our encounter with Anna and Elsa. Once you get to the front of the line, you are divided into a small group. I think maybe 8 people? Then a door in front of you opens to a small hallway and you go through another door to see the ladies. The secret is, there is more than one door off that hallway. So they have multiple Annas and Elsa just waiting to meet you, which is how they keep the wait times down. But because they keep the main door closed while they are opening and closing the doors to Anna and Elsa, the guests don't see the multiple rooms, and kids can keep on believing. Isn't that awesome? When the door opened and our small group went in, I was amazed. They closed the door and the room was absolutely calm and quiet. The adults were talking in hushed voices, and Anna and Elsa were taking their time and chatting with each child. We were at the back of the pack and this actually worked to our advantage. I pointed out to Anne and Ryan how it would work when it was our turn. They got to see how it was for the other kids. By the time it was our turn, they were ready! Up first, the Queen herself, Elsa. Another way that being in the back worked for us, is there was no one behind us. I kid you not, Anne talked to Elsa for about 5 minutes. There was no rush at all. Anne told Elsa about having toothpaste with her on it, which Elsa thought was so funny. She asked Anne if it tasted like chocolate, because that is Elsa's favorite thing. But Anne said it tasted like blueberries, which Elsa didn't think was all that great. Then, Elsa called over to Anna to tell her about the toothpaste, and all 4 of them had a great conversation about it. Priceless. Then, we met Anna, whom I adore. So there you go, another fantastic character greeting at Disney. Anne was over the moon, really, she was proud of herself for not being shy. And Ryan, well, two more princesses found him adorable. "I guess Princesses just like me," was his summation of the experience.
People tell me all the time to "cherish them while they are little." I have come to realize that isn't a criticism of me. When people say that, what they are really saying is they didn't always take a step back and appreciate their kids. I know that these princess days are a short time in a child's life, that's why I love the Disney experience. I will always remember this day!
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We woke up to a visit from the Shades of Green peacocks. Seriously, where else in Disney do you get to see peacocks right out your window? Luckily, the three Schneiders who had been sick were feeling much better this morning. Just in time too, because Rob was starting to feel crappy. But there was no time for sickness, so we dosed him up with vitamin C and cold medicine. We had a breakfast reservation to get to! When we rescheduled our trip, one of the ADRs I was able to grab was a pre-park opening breakfast with Mickey at EPCOT. Pre-park opening ADRs are great for families like ours. We are awake anyway, so it isn't that hard for us to get to a park at 8am, enter before everyone else and have breakfast out of the way before people enter the park. It's also a great way to snag a photo of your family without a ton of other people in it! SoG is a quick walk to the Polynesian and the monorail. If EPCOT is your destination, however, you can walk through the Poly to the Transportation and Ticketing Center. At the TTC you can board a monorail to take you to EPCOT. I suppose you could also take the monorail around to the TTC, but it's a lot quicker to walk. One change since our last visit: you now have to go through security at the TTC (and at all resorts) before you board the monorail. I had not factored that into our travel plans to make our ADR on time so I was feeling stressed. A fellow passenger on the monorail who was staying at the Poly reassured me that when we got to EPCOT there was a separate entrance for people getting off the monorail, meaning we wouldn't have to go through EPCOT security. When the monorail arrived at EPCOT I found out that guy didn't know what he was talking about and we were stuck in a LOOOONG security line to get into the park. Grrr. I hate running late more than anything in the world. Once we got through security, we found the line for early entrance to the park and we were in! Official photo accomplished, we booked it over the The Land pavilion for our breakfast with the Main Mouse! This was a new restaurant for us. If you aren't familiar, the Garden Grill is a rotating restaurant and it turns through the attraction Living with the Land. LwtL is one of our favorite rides. I was looking forward to seeing part of it from another perspective. Plus, you get to meet Mickey in his farmer clothes! Once we were seated, our waitress came and took our drink order. She also brought our pan of gooey-gooey cinnamon rolls. This was almost like a cinnamon roll monkey bread, because of the way it pulled apart. It was delicious. I guess I should mention that Garden Grill is an all-you-care-to-eat restaurant. Unlike a buffet, it is a set menu. First the cinnamon rolls, then a family size skillet of eggs, breakfast meats, and Mickey waffles. Cinnamon rolls in place, the characters began to roll in. We met Chip, Pluto, Dale, and the Big Cheese. The character meeting process took about 20 minutes. This is where I have a major critique of this experience. While we were waiting for the characters, all we had to eat was the cinnamon rolls. Perhaps it's my fault, we normally eat breakfast at 8am, our reservation was at 8:30 and we were 5 minutes late. It was probably 8:45 before we were sitting down. We were hungry! The cinnamon rolls were good, but we all started to feel a sugar rush. Plus, there were long periods of time between the characters. It would have been nice to eat our breakfast while we were waiting. Once all the characters had visited, our waitress brought our skillet and disappeared again. There was no butter, so Rob and the kids were waiting to start their waffles (I just ate them without butter, with syrup you can't even tell). It took about 10 minutes for her to resurface with the check and we finally asked for our butter. The bottom line: the food was ok, skillet was nothing special but the cinnamon rolls were great; character interaction was great, and we love seeing Mickey in his overalls; location and atmosphere were neat. But due to the slow process, I don't think we will do this meal again. Bellies stuffed, it was time to ride some rides! First on the plan was Soarin'. For those unfamiliar, Soarin' is an attraction where you hang glide while watching a giant iMax movie. This would be the kids' first time to ride and the first ride for Rob and I with the new movie. It used to be Soarin' over California, now you soar over the entire world. We didn't have a FastPass+ for it because the FastPass+ system in EPCOT is tiered. This means you can only have a FP+ for Soarin OR Frozen Ever After. The line for FEA usually tops an hour, so I chose that FP+. We were out of breakfast at 9:30 and the wait for Soarin' was only 20 minutes. Nice! The kids looooved this ride. I was afraid they would be, well, afraid. But the dangling feet didn't scare them at all. The new film for this ride takes you all over the world. We saw animals in the arctic, the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, the Great Pyramids, and a few other places. It was so neat to hear my kids shouting out their names. But for those who remember the old film, I found the jump cuts between the locations to be a bit rough. Also, they used to have scents in the ride, like you glided over an orange orchard and you could smell the trees. That's gone and I missed it. After Soarin' I made a rookie mistake. Next on our plan was Living with the Land. This is a boat ride through some scenes about agriculture and the EPCOT greenhouses. I really wanted to ride it because this is the ride you cycle through when you eat at the Garden Grill. The posted wait time was 20 minutes but the line looked longer than that. We should have skipped it and headed to our FP+ at Nemo and Friends, but we didn't and ended up waiting almost 40 minutes for it. This would be our longest wait of the whole trip, and caused us to miss the Nemo ride. Oh well, live and learn. At this point we were done with the Future World section of EPCOT. There are other rides, which our kids aren't tall enough for, and other distractions, like the Innoventions Plazas, but we were on a mission to see as much of Food and Wine Festival as possible before 4pm. You see, it was the very last day of F&W. My online research told me the festival would start to get busy (and drunkardly) after locals started getting off work. So it was time to eat and drink! Perhaps I should take a minute to tell you a little more about the Food and Wine Festival. Each Fall, EPCOT adds additional booths to the pathway around World Showcase. These booths sell food (and wine) from additional countries around the globe. They also have all kinds of events, like wine pairings and cooking demonstrations from celebrity chefs. It is a real treat to experience! For those who have never been, the World Showcase is a serious of countries that are in a circle around the World Showcase Lagoon. You can either tour clockwise, and enter through Mexico, or counterclockwise and enter through Canada. The countries are not arranged geographically, in fact, I don't know how the layout was chosen. Anyway, we entered through Mexico because we wanted to get to Norway in time for our Frozen Ever After FP+. Here's the part where I am a terrible blogger. I didn't take ANY pictures of the things we ate. Not one. I have a few pictures of wine and beer, but none of food. If you really want to see what the food is like at the festival, head on over to The Disney Food Blog where she does a great job of photo documenting the festival. All four of us really enjoy the world showcase. Each country has fun stores to poke around. There are lots of spots to sit in the shade and people watch, which Ryan especially loves to do. People say EPCOT is boring. I don't get that at all! Maybe there aren't a ton of thrill rides, but for our family, that's ok! One ride we did get to experience was Frozen Ever After in Norway. And if I do say so, this was one of my awesome planning moments. You see, this line is regularly more than an hour long and the FastPass+ goes fast for it. Initially I wasn't able to get us FP+ for it. But I checked about 20 times a day until I got the EXACT time I wanted. Woot woot! You see, people are always changing their plans. People cancel trips, or get a good dining reservation, who knows why. Anyway, if you don't get what you want initially, be persistent and you will almost always get what you want. We entered the FP+ line and the standby wait was 90 minutes. We waited less than 10 and totally loved the ride. I won't give away any spoilers, but it was great. Maybe not worth 90 minutes in line, though. After Frozen Ever After, we met Anna and Elsa. This was a really cool experience, and since it was such a big part of the trip for Anne, I'm going to do a separate blog post about it. Ride and princesses complete, we made our way around the lagoon, eating, drinking, and exploring. By the time we made it to Canada (the last country) it was 3:00 and really getting crowded. You could tell the dynamics were shifting from families exploring the park to people who were just there for one last Food and Wine experience. It was time for us to ride Spaceship Earth and head out of the park. But first, we stopped for a photo in front of the dancing fountain. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the worst vacation photo ever! Yeah, that's just bad.
Anyway, our last ride of the day was Spaceship Earth. This is the ride inside the giant golf ball, for those unfamiliar. We usually save this for last. Since this is the first thing you come to when you get to the park, a lot of people stop and ride it right away. This means long lines early in the day, no wait later on. At 4:00 I think we waited 10 minutes. Awesome. And that folks, was our day at EPCOT. It was a long day and a lot of fun. And you know when your kids look like this at 8pm your day was a success! We woke up on our first full day feeling much better. At least, Ryan and I were. Rob was just starting to get sick and Anne was only on day 3 of her antibiotics so she was still a little cranky. Luckily we had a light day planned for Hollywood Studios. But our first stop was the BX at SOG for some cold medicine for Rob. Once he was fully medicated, we hopped on the bus to head to the park! You may remember from my pre-trip report for the cancelled trip that we had a lot of firsts planned. To start with, this was our first Disney Trip since I got my Cricut. And you know what that means? Matching shirts! Since Hollywood Studios has a lot of Star Wars stuff, I made these beauties. I love these shirts, but we realized at the end of the day that they only work when we are together. If, say, Rob has to go to the front desk of the hotel by himself, it looks like he is a know it all. And if I'm alone, it kinda looks I love everyone. I didn't get a good photo of the shirts I made for the kids. Ryan's had Buzz Lightyear and Anne's had a pink cowboy hat (to represent Woody from Toy Story). Both shirts said "You've Got a Friend in Me" with arrows that pointed at each other. Very cute, and these were actually executed by a friend of mine who has way more Cricut skill than I do. We usually skip Hollywood Studios because there isn't enough for us to do there to justify a full day. But a certain little girl is alllll about Frozen right now, and they have a Frozen sing-a-long show that made it worth adding to the plan this trip. There have been a ton of changes since we were last at the Studios. The car stunt show is gone and so is the giant sorcerer's hat. They've closed the Great Movie Ride and One Man's Dream, two of our favorite attractions. They've added some Star Wars stuff and will soon add a ton of Toy Story stuff, like a slinky dog roller coaster. So maybe on the next trip we will come back to see the new stuff. We did really enjoy the things we were able to do this trip. Our first attraction was Disney Junior Live on Stage! This show is right in our wheelhouse. The kids love all things Disney Junior and this show promised to have them singing and dancing along with their favorite characters. The set is a giant storybook and it opens up as Mickey, Donald, Daisy, and Goofy seek the help of Sophia, Jake and other Disney Junior characters to make a special party for Minnie Mouse. Unfortunately this is as much as I can tell you about the show, because they experienced technical difficulty after the first song. I thought 200 preschoolers were going to mutiny! Luckily there was a meet and greet with Sophia the First happening right outside, we hopped into the line and our two perked right up. After meeting Sophia, we encountered some Storm Troopers. Disney has really doubled down on Star Wars to bring boys to their parks. The Studios have added what they call March of the First Order, and it was kinda neat, and kinda annoying. Every hour there is a cadre of Storm Troopers that march down the main thoroughfare, into a courtyard, and are inspected by the silver Storm Trooper (does she have a name?). After the inspection, she dismisses the Troopers to patrol the park. You are guaranteed to interact with these guys if you spend any time here. Pretty cool. The annoying part is that they do this exact same show, every hour. And the park isn't big. So you will here the show 4-5 times while you are at the Studios. The novelty wore off for me. Oh, and those patrolling Storm Troopers? If your kid is afraid of them then be prepared to find new routes everywhere you need to go. I speak from experience. Side note: Ryan loves to learn about animals and their natural defenses. It's common for him to ask "what's a lion's defense? What's a caterpillar's defense?" etc etc. Once it occurred to him that the Storm Troopers were defending this park, he wanted to know what each park's defense was. Every day as we walked around he would say, "Oh, Epcot's defense is all this water, its a natural barrier." Very cute. Once we were cleared by the Storm Troopers, we had a FastPass+ to get to. If you aren't familiar, FastPass+ is a reservation to ride an attraction at a certain time. It allows you to skip the line, although sometimes you still have a small wait to load onto the ride. A good FastPass+ strategy will save you hours in line (and make you the hero of the vacation). This first FastPass+ was for For the First Time in Forever: A Frozen Sing-Along Celebration. This was highly anticipated by our group and it did NOT disappoint. We got great seats in the middle of the theatre and waited about 10 minutes for the show to start. During the show, two narrators take you through the history of Arendelle, which is just an excuse to belt the songs from the movie at the top of your lungs. I was lucky enough to be sitting next to Anne, and we really "let it go." This show is a must do if you have a little Frozen lover in your group. Up next, lunch! I had booked us lunch at one of our favorite sit-down restaurants in WDW, The 50's Primetime Cafe. We love the kitschy 50's decor, being harassed by the wait staff, and the food! The food here is home-cooked comfort food. I got the fried chicken (which is generous enough to share) and Rob got the blue plate special, which was a delicious cod dish with crab meat. I was going to order the kids one mac and cheese to share, but the waitress said it was a "tiny portion" and we should get two. I did, and was flummoxed by the two GIANT bowls of mac n cheese that came out. Oh well, lesson learned. Fully stuffed, we headed over to see the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular. We had a FastPass+, but because of our lunch we arrived 5 minutes prior to the start of the show and there were no seats, so we couldn't see the show. Oh well, the milkshake was worth it. But lesson learned: a FastPass+ does not guarantee you a seat! It was starting to drizzle, so we went to see if Disney Junior was up and running. Nope. Closed for the day. This rain forced us to seek shelter, so we decided to check out the Launch Bay. This is a new experience for the Star Wars section of the park. It's part store, part museum, part meet and greet facility. If you are into Star Wars, you could probably spend hours in here looking at everything. It was really well done. It was almost time for our Toy Story Midway Mania FastPass+, so we headed over to the Pixar Place area of the park. There was a huge wall blocking off where the new expansion will be. I really hope in 2 years when that part opens my kids are still into Toy Story, because it looks like it's going to be awesome. We did get a cool photo with Cruz Ramirez from Cars 3 and we ran into one of the Army Men from Toy Story. And we pressed some pennies, of course. After spending so much time in a galaxy far, far away I was happy to get a big dose of Disney!! Finally we got on the big ride! The posted wait time was 90 minutes. Thanks to our FP+ we only waited about 5 minutes to board the ride. Toy Story Midway Mania is one of the best rides in Disney. First, the queue is well themed and you are immersed in Andy's Room. Everything is scaled so that you feel like you are the size of a toy. Then you board a toy box vehicle that takes you through all these carnival style games. Each person has there own pop gun and you compete head to head to see who can get the most points. And since it is all digital, each section of the ride is different. So your pop gun sends darts at one screen, then rings at the next. Too bad the wait is always so long, I could ride this one all day. Toy Story was our last ride of the day. We could have circled back to Indiana Jones, but there was an hour until the next show and we had seen everything already. For us, it wasn't worth the wait. If your family is taller or more adventurous, there are two other headline attractions: The Tower of Terror and Rock 'n ' Roller Coaster. I dread the day our kids want to ride these. Rob gets motion sick (except on cruises. grr) so I will have to ride them with the kids. I should bring dramamine. On our way out of the park we were lucky enough to see, yet again, The March of the First Order (sarcasm). At least this time we saw it from a different vantage point. Ok, so now it's time to talk about Shades of Green transportation. The resort is located a short walk from the Polynesian Resort. This means, if you are heading to the Magic Kingdom or Epcot, you can walk to the Poly and hop on the Monorail. Awesome! For the other two parks, Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios, you ride a free SoG bus. These are similar to the Disney buses, with one notable exception. They run on a schedule. Each leaves SoG at a set time, drops people off, picks up people, and returns to the resort. Then it waits until the set time to depart and do its loop again. This is nice, because you know when the bus will be there and when it will leave. But if, like us, you want to leave about 5 minutes after the bus has left, you are stuck waiting 55 minutes. We have developed a work around. If we miss the SoG bus, we hop on the next bus headed to the Poly and walk back to SoG. This always gets us back faster than if we had waited for the SoG bus. The kids wanted to swim and Rob wanted to get in the hot tub. SoG is very strict about their no kids in the hot tub rule, not even their feet! Anne and Ryan were happy to play in the pool. Oh, in case you were wondering, since it was November, the weather was in the low to mid 70's. The pools are heated, so my kids hopped right in and for most of the time had the pool to themselves. Of course, when they got out they were freezing and acted like they were going to die. We ended Day One with dinner at the SoG buffet with our friends, the Wendels. Sponsoring additional rooms is another great benefit of SoG. The service member can book a room for their family and sponsor an additional 2 rooms. If the service member is traveling with their spouse, the spouse can sponsor another 3 rooms. We took advantage of this and invited the Wendels and Greens to join us. Since they both have older kids, our park touring strategies were different. Luckily we were able to join them for meals. Our Hollywood Studios day was just the right amount of park touring and relaxation, considering three of us were still on the upswing from being sick. Finally, it was Disney Day!! In all honesty, I wasn't that excited as we set off. You see, in the days leading up to our trip we all got sick. First Ryan, then myself, then Anne came down with sinus infections. Rob was only spared because he was away at Scott AFB, but the germs would eventually catch up to him too. Luckily, the three sickies were on antibiotics and on the upswing when travel day arrived. Aren't we cute in our matching Lularoe? Don't we look ready for a flight to Orlando? Well, we aren't flying to Orlando. The non-rev gods were not smiling on us for this trip. Luckily we know to be flexible and we were able to hop onto a direct flight to Tampa. A quick stop at the rental car desk and we were out the door for our hour drive to Orlando. Except there was major traffic and the drive took almost 2 hours. But hey, at least we were in Florida! Our check in at Shades of Green was painless. The hotel was fantastic, as always. The room was pretty far from the front of the hotel, but right by the pool and sports bar. Plus, turkeys. We relaxed in the room for a bit, then headed off to ride the monorail and activate our tickets, which is our usual first night routine. We didn't have a meal reserved for this night, which I usually do. But with all the stress of the flight and the traffic, I was glad to not have something I was afraid to be late for. So we had a pizza for dinner from Evergreens, the sports bar at SoG, and called it a night early. We were all sick and it had been an exhausting travel day. But we were all excited to tackle Hollywood Studios the next day! One of our favorite things to do at Disney World is press pennies. If you aren't familiar with this practice, there are machines all over WDW where you can put in a penny and two quarters, and the machine squishes the penny flat and imprints a design on it. But wait, you say, isn't it illegal to mutilate money? Sort of. It is illegal to mutilate money with the intent to use it fraudulently. Since there is no way someone would be able to spend a pressed penny, it's totally fine. So for a measly 51 cents you can get a great souvenir! And it's fun to hunt for the machines and select a design (most machines have 3 to chose from). But if you are thinking you would like to spend some time making pressed pennies on your next Disney vacation, there are a few things you can do ahead of time to make it an even better experience. 1. Not All Pennies Are Created Equal. Have you seen a penny lately? They feel really light and have that weird shield on the back. Yeah, you DO NOT want to press those. They are made of zinc and they just don't squish well. So prior to your trip, go through all your jars of change and look for pennies made BEFORE 1982. That's when they stopped making pennies out of copper. The dark color of copper pennies and the heavier metal make much better souvenirs. 2. Shine 'Em Up! Older pennies will most likely be tarnished, turning brown or even green. You want to get your pennies as clean as possible. The best way to do this is soak them in ketchup and then scrub them. Seriously, the salt and acid in the ketchup will have your old pennies looking as good as new, ready for squishing. 3. How Much Does a Penny Cost? Each penny you want to send through the machine will cost you $0.51. I made the kids each a penny tube using a mini M&M's tube. Pre-trip, we load the tubes with 2 quarters for each of our clean pennies. That way, as we go through the parks if we see a machine we just grab the tubes and get squishing! No hunting for exact change. Plus we put the flattened pennies into the tube so we don't lose them. 4. I Went to Disney World and All I Got Were These Worthless Pennies Once you get home with your pennies, what do you do with them? There are tons of ideas over on Pinterest. People make them into jewelry, frame them, put them into custom made books. I made ours into a shadowbox with a park map as the background. It's fun to add our new pennies after we visit the world! Alright! Are you excited to get to Disney and make some souvenir pennies? Rob had to be at Scott Air Force Base for 8 days, so the kids and I loaded up the van and went to see him. It wasn't ideal because Rob was working nights, so we had to be quiet in the room while he was sleeping. But even with those conditions we would rather be together than apart. One thing we have been meaning to do in St Louis is visit the City Museum. Don't let the name fool you, it is more like an indoor playground than a museum. It's located in a former shoelace factory downtown. I had high expectations, because the place looks really cool online and gets great reviews. My thoughts: the City Museum is an indoor, urban playground. If it is cold and has been raining for days while you were trapped in a hotel room being quiet, this is a great place to let the kids run around. However, I doubt we will go again. First, it was one of the most expensive things we have done in St. Louis. With an excellent (and free) zoo and Grant's Farm (just the parking fee), we have found much better options for letting the kids burn off energy. Plus, Grant's Farm had free beer, so it will always get Rob's vote. Second, it just wasn't aesthetically pleasing to me. The museum seemed to be a whole bunch of random stuff people found at industrial garage sales and welded together. I mean, there is a bus hanging off the roof! Very cool for kids, but I am who I am. I like things well themed, with signs telling you where things are. This place has no maps and very little signage! So, it wasn't a wasted day, but not one we will repeat any time soon. But I did take some of the mediocre photos you have come to expect from my blog! Back in September I wrote a very excited pre-trip report for Disney World. Then we had to cancel it all thanks to Hurricane Irma. Now I'm tempting fate by telling y'all about the new trip we have planned. Thankfully, when we cancelled our trip back in September we were able to get a full refund on our resort. The tickets we had purchased, however, were non-refundable, because had purchased discount military tickets. This means we needed our new trip to be before December 19, 2017. So here are the 4 big "W" answers about our new (fingers crossed that the whole thing doesn't fall apart) Disney 2017 trip! Where Will We Stay?? There was no availability at any Disney Resort with the military discount for the remainder of 2017. This means we will be staying at the old faithful, Shades of Green. Ok, that sounded totally ungrateful. I love SoG, I really do. The pool, amenities, and room size cannot be beaten, especially when you consider it is in walking distance to the Polynesian. Plus, I get the chance to recreate this picture! When are we going? Super soon!!! We were able to get a room at SoG for the week before Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, that's a pretty crowded time to go. And since we booked so late, I'm having trouble getting reservations at the places we like to eat. But I won't give up! What about the trip being a surprise? So far, the kids don't know about this trip. We are telling them for their birthday present on Wednesday. That means they will know for 10 days, which is hopefully not long enough for them to drive me crazy with asking if it's time to go yet. I have a whole countdown thing planned with daily activities to get them ready for the trip. Who's Going?
This is the best part! Our good friends the Wendels and the Greens will be able to join us at Shades! Hooray for friends! There is even a tentative plan for a Girl's Night Out followed by a Guy's Night Out. Woot woot! So those are our plans. I really hope the hurricanes leave this trip alone! This is our first year of homeschooling in a Classical Conversations community and we are loving it! CC uses a classical model to present history, geography, english, latin, science and math. What that means for the littlest learners is lots of memorization using songs, dancing, silly voices, games and legos. But the biggest draw for us was the community aspect. We meet each week with a group of fellow homeschoolers to learn the new material, practice public speaking, learn about the arts, and most importantly (at least in A&R's opinion) have recess! Also, our group goes on a lot of field trips. We are studying American history and geography this year, so it's great to make these things come alive for the kids. Which brings us to the subject of this week's blog, The Dinsmore Homestead, which is located about 40 minutes from our house. We gathered here on a cool October morning to have the kids experience what life was like for people in the 1860's. The kids were divided into three groups by age, we were in the youngest group. First, the volunteers showed the kids what children wore in the 1800's. Then we were taken outside and they showed the kids some of the chores they would have been responsible for. Each child got to try their hand at: laundry, beating rugs, grinding coffee, carding wool, grinding pepper, churning butter, sifting flour, and writing on a slate. Next, our group was given a tour of the homestead itself. The tour guide did a great job catering the tour to 5, 6, and 7 year olds. I would love to go back and ask 1000 questions. Our third rotation was into the graveyard. I'll be honest, I was paranoid about my kids getting poison ivy, which was growing all over the place, and I didn't give this section of the tour my full attention. We did learn that one of the descendants of the Dinsmore family became the first female senator from the state of Arizona. Our final rotation was into the kitchen cabin behind the main house. Here the kids were given examples of toys that would have been available to the Dinsmore girls. It was a lovely day, made even better by the amazing Dinsmore Volunteers. If you ever have a chance to explore the Homestead, I highly recommend it! I cannot believe it is already the end of our camping season! We have big plans for 2018, which I will tell you more about soon. But first, we wrapped up this year with another trip to our favorite Gatlinburg campground, Bear Cove RV Park. This year, we were joined on our adventure by two families that have been a part of our journey since the very beginning, The Wendels and the Greens. The Wendels brought their 5th wheel camper and were next to us. The Greens rented a cabin up the hill from us and were able to walk down to the joint sites. These guys have kids the same ages, plus the Wendels have a 4 year old, so everyone had someone to play with! The Wendels arrived Thursday night, just in time to set up camp and join us at the Dixie Stampede. It was a bit of a dash to get there on time, but we made it. If you have never been, its a dinner show with horses. There is no silverware, which was Ryan's favorite part. They gave everyone soup, a cheese biscuit, a whole chicken, pork roast, corn on the cob, and a potato, plus an apple turnover for dessert. The food quality is what you would expect when 400 people are being served simultaneously. And their system works really well. My only complaint was about the sweet tea. I don't drink tea very often, but I was having a craving for it and thought it would go well with the meal. But it tasted like Nestea or some other fake tea product. Gross! The grand finale of the show is all about America, with lots of flag waving, a video montage of American scenery, and Dolly singing. It was touching and brought everyone to their feet. The highlight for me, was looking over at my son, standing on the bench with his hand on his heart. Totally unprompted. Not going to lie, I teared up! Of course, you exit through the gift shop, but we steered the kids out to the paddock where you can see the horses who perform in the show. On the way out the door, there was a woman dressed as a southern belle wishing everyone a good night. She gave Anne a hug and called her "sugar." It was by far Anne's favorite part of the night. The Greens were set to arrive Friday afternoon around 4. The Wendels were bound for Dollywood that morning, but since we went last year (and since we are headed to Disney soon!!!) we decided to go explore Great Smokey National Park. We found a scenic drive, which had a short hike on it. This worked out so well for us, as we could stop and see things when we wanted to. The weather was perfect for a drive and the national park is never short on things to look at. After driving through the National Park, we returned to our camp site and met up with our friends. We grilled out dinner, and the men had much buffoonery, including drunk karaoke, but I didn't get any pictures of that, Saturday we had a leisurely breakfast, then headed into Gatlinburg to ride the gondola up to Over Gatlinburg (Oktoberfest fun!) We thought this was a great idea. So did 20,00 other people. It took 2 hours from the time we parked the car to buy tickets, wait in line, ride the gondola, and get our food. We were all a little hangry by then! After eating, the big kids played in the arcade, the little kids rode the carousel, and a few people had good German beer. Then we took the scenic skyway back down the mountain. The Greens and Schneiders took the wrong turn and missed the bypass. This resulted in another hour of traffic. Luckily, the Wendels went the correct way and we were all ready to roast hot dogs, steak and burgers when we got back to the camp sight. Unfortunately, Sunday morning we had to be out by 11am. We were able to have breakfast all together before breaking camp. Breakfast was a bit wet though, because it had started to rain. And let me say, packing up camp in the rain is NO FUN. Driving a camper home through the hills in the rain, NO FUN. But a weekend in Gatlinburg with friends, lots of FUN! Now the Four Winds has been winterized and bedded down until the Spring, getting her rest before the biggest adventure we've ever planned! But don't worry, we have a little more travel planned for 2017! Let me start by saying our thoughts and prayers are with all the people in Hurricane Irma's path. This storm appears to be a monster and many people lay vulnerable in its path. Especially the people if the Caribbean who have limited abilities to evacuate. My prayer is that they are safe and the damage to their homes is minimal.
With a heavy heart, I write that we have cancelled our Disney trip. I know Irma's path is still shifting at this point, but instead of stressing and watching, we made the call yesterday to cancel the trip. My amazing travel agent was able to work with Disney and we got a full refund. Hopefully in the next few days I will have news of a future trip, but right now I am nursing my disappointed feelings and praying everyone stays safe. At least we didn't tell the kids! |
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