The plan was simple enough.
Early breakfast reservations at Hollywood & Vine (Hollywood Studios) for the Disney Junior characters.
Back to the hotel to pack and check out.
Lunch reservation in Epcot- Biergarten.
Back to the hotel to jump on the Magical Express, and sadly return to the airport for our 8:30pm flight out.
First up- the breakfast.
I had been looking forward to this breakfast- combining two of the duo’s favorite things- Breakfast & Disney Junior… DOC!
Warming up?
The bonus of having an early breakfast reservation is that we were able to enter the park before it opened for the day! They checked our reservation on the way in, and let us know that we should go to Jedi Training prior to breakfast if we were hoping to do that.
We decided not to try to fit Jedi Training in, and instead went straight to the restaurant. We have a very short wait, and we were quickly shown to our table. The characters were out and about already! This was probably our favorite character dining experience. The characters came around frequently enough that we were able to see most of them more than once. While most people may not appreciate that, since it interrupts your eating, it was helpful for our kiddos, who needed a little time to warm up to the characters.
Still pretty cold.
We also took our time, which helped. The food was your standard Disney breakfast fare, but we were happy.
After breakfast, we checked our My Disney Experience app and saw that the Tower of Terror had almost no wait. Sure enough, it was a walk-on. Nonie took the kids on a walk while TT Dad, Pops, and I jumped in line. Proud of ourselves for fitting in one last ride, we started to make our way out of HS.
We almost made it out, but ran into Donald near the exit. The line wasn’t long at all, so we decided to squeeze one last Photopass experience in.
Photo Cred: Photopass
Photo Cred: Photopass
Noooooope.
Photo Cred: Photopass
It’s Donald!
Step one: Check!
Time to finish packing and get cleared out of the room. This was a very sad moment. We had to say goodbye to this wonderful room, knowing our goodbye to our magical vacation was coming soon.
But NOT yet.
We had been notified that our flight would be a little later than expected, so we checked with Bell Services to see if our Magical Express pick up would be delayed. It wouldn’t. No big deal, we were just hoping to extend our stay by an extra hour or so. Every little bit helps.
With all of our bags packed, and safely stashed with Bell Services or in Nonie & Pops car, we headed towards Epcot.
Isn’t that appropriate? We began and ended our visit with Epcot.
Photo Cred: Photopass
We got there, and sure enough, on our way to lunch, the kids fell asleep in the stroller. We checked in, and asked if they could hold off on seating us for a bit, to allow the kids to sleep a little longer, hoping they would get as much of a nap as possible.
The Cast Members were extremely helpful, and allowed us to hang out in the shade with our sleepy kids for almost an hour. When we were ready, they took us right in, and we enjoyed our lunch.
After lunch, we used our final FP+, and took a ride on Spaceship Earth.
Here’s our tip for Spaceship Earth: Don’t let your two year old son choose to hear the presentation in Spanish if neither of you speak spanish!
Never fear, we did our best to narrate the ride as accurately as possible. (Hint: That was probably at around 15% accuracy.)
We let the kids wander around outside a little bit, just to burn off a little energy, before starting towards the exit. It was time.
But not yet. As we were leaving, Zoey spotted Daisy Duck, tucked away with only a couple of families in line! ‘DAISY DUCK!!!’ were perhaps some of her first extremely clear words. Girl knows what she wants.
Before we knew it, we were holding her back from photobombing the families ahead of us. When it was our turn, she ran right up to Daisy and gave her a great big hug. Flabbergasted. It happened. After a week of force feeding characters to my terrified children (I might be exaggerating just a bit) she was finally excited and happy to meet someone.
Photo Cred: Photopass
Photo Cred: Photopass
What a memory.
I admit. I was not quite sure that bringing our two year old kids to Disney World would be such a great idea. I had visions of overwhelmed, overtired, newly-potty trained kids making for an absolutely less-than-wonderful trip. I knew we’d have fun, but I was pretty certain we wouldn’t be ‘making the most’ of this very expensive vacation. Such relief.
But I digress.
We said goodbye to Daisy, and slowly made our way to the busses. As we were leaving, we almost followed the signs to Express Transportation. What’s that? Good question… It’s probably the most amazing, lesser known perk that you can purchase at WDW. We’ll get to that later.
We realized our mistake, and corrected our path, and before we knew it, we were back at the Wilderness Lodge, saying goodbye to Nonie & Pops.
At some point between learning that our flight was slightly delayed to our arrival at the airport, we were informed that our flight was delayed even more, and it didn’t stop there. We left approximately two hours later than scheduled.
So there we were. One airport, two unruly toddlers, three extra hours to kill.
We had packed a bunch of potential airplane activities, but I didn’t really want to break into them just yet. It was getting close to dinner time, so we found a table in the food court, and picked up some food. In the middle of the food court area was a very large, circular fish tank. This kept them entertained for a few minutes. After everyone was done eating, we took a short walk, and found a couch to set up camp. It was time to Divide & Conquer. TT Dad took them for a longer walk, one by one, while I kept the other and colored with them.
Once they began to get antsy, we started towards the gate, pausing to let them explore everything their little hearts desired.
When we got close, we camped out in a little section of chairs, and broke out the toy cars. This kept them entertained until it was time to get onto the plane.
As soon as they were buckled in, I broke out the tablets, until takeoff. We sang songs, snacked, and drank water until the tablets could come out again. They happily watched movies up until approximately two minutes prior to landing…at which point, they were fast asleep.
We got home late, with two very sleepy kiddos, but they were kind enough to stay sleeping once we got home, and transferred them into their beds.
Just like that, our epic Disney Vacation (and my second runDisney event!!) was in the books, along with our first four seat flight experience, and first good character experience!
Coming up next… the run-down. All of our lessons learned, and even the few things we did right!