Tuesday, February 16, 2016

The Morris Crew Goes to Disney - Part 1

At age 4 and 15 months, Carter and Garrett made their very first (but certainly not last) trip to DISNEY WORLD!!!!  We've been planning this trip for over half a year now with Justin's parents and with his sister and her family.  This also made the very first time either of my boys have been on airplanes.  Garrett was a champ and slept the whole time.  He was on my ticket as infant in arms so we didn't have to pay for him to have his own seat.  Carter did get his own seat and he made sure it was by a window every single time!  We flew from Birmingham to Atlanta for a small layover and then Atlanta to Orlando.

**Yes, there are going to be numerous parts to this blog about Disney.  Too many parks visited, too many pictures, too many AWESOME memories to put all in one post**

 
Playing on the fun little playsets at the Birmingham airport


 
Carter loved looking at all the planes with Papa!

 
My sweet baby boy!!  This is what he did most plane rides...and most of Disney to be honest!


Once we got to Orlando we rode a bus to our hotel, the Contemporary Resort.  We chose our hotel intentionally because it has the monorail run through it but also is within walking distance to Magic Kingdom.  This ended up being crucial because of the days we were there, the two days we scheduled to go to Magic Kingdom-it was POURING.  So on the days we went to Epcot and Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios, we came back to our hotel and rested for a bit and then headed to Magic Kingdom for a couple of hours.  We were surprisingly able to get a ton done in Magic Kingdom on all those half days.  We all pretty much had that park memorized by the end of the trip because we were there every single day!  Which is fine because Magic Kingdom has BY FAR the most kid stuff.

We didn't do anything our first day there.  Just hung out at the hotel for a while and watched the fireworks over Cinderella's castle before bed.  The next day was Animal Kingdom and I just knew Carter was going to love it!  We got two double strollers for all the kids (there was a total of 3 four year olds, a 15 month old and a 10 month old with us).  Jennifer (Justin's sister) wore Charlotte around her chest the whole trip.  Props to her because I could NEVER do that.  The strollers fit the other 4 kids.  And it was great because the strollers leaned back so when it was naptime for Garrett, we just leaned his seat back and he went right to sleep!


This was Garrett's home for the week!  I highly recommend these strollers!!  They were great for us.  It's the City Mini Stroller and we rented it from Kingdom Strollers.
 
 
Carter was loving the Kilimanjaro Safari ride, just like I knew his animal loving self would!
 


Garrett enjoyed a lot of the rides too!  Anything to get out of that stroller!!!

 
We did get to sneak away for a bit while everyone else went to see the Finding Nemo show.  It was Garrett's naptime and I said I wanted to walk him around the park in the stroller for him to fall asleep.  Justin joined me and we had just a few moments of one on one time :)

 
There was a kid play area called Dino-Land and they had a huge playset.  Carter absolutely loved it and could have spent the entire day there!


All three of the 4 year olds at the playset in Dino-Land!

 
Me and Garrett rode the dinosaur ride together.  It's the exact same ride as Dumbo, just dinosaurs instead of elephants!

 
Love my little ninja turtle!!

 
We took a break and let Garrett get out of the stroller and walk around.  He and Carter really enjoyed chasing eachother around this stage.  Precious brothers!

 
Our little family in front of the Tree of Life

 
The entire family in front of the Tree of Life
 
That night we went to Magic Kingdom and were able to ride It's a Small World, Dumbo, Winnie the Pooh and the Little Mermaid ride.  After the Little Mermaid ride they did the fireworks in the park.  We all loved them except Celia.  Celia gets a little freaked out by loud noises like that so she rode the Little Mermaid ride again while the rest of us watched the fireworks.  Then we all headed towards the exit where we got to see the parade!  I honestly didn't think Carter was going to care about the parade but he loved it!
 

The view of Main Street leading to the castle

 
 
 
Riding It's a Small World
 
 
 
This baby y'all!  He is amazing.  It's 9pm, he's only had one nap and he is smiling from ear to ear!!
 
 

This is the Winnie the Pooh Ride.  Carter didn't have a clue who Winnie the Pooh was (he's never watched the show) and yet after this ride, he required a Winnie the Pooh stuffed animal.  He is inseparable from this stuffed animal even now.

 
Garrett rode with Justin and I on the Little Mermaid ride.  It's a shame that most of the kid friendly rides are inside and I can't take good pictures!!
 
 
Carter rode a seashell with Nana and those two danced the entire time.  These seashells go through a course and it has all kinds of wax figures and stuff showing major scenes from the movie.  Everytime our shell turned to face Carter's, he was dancing to Under the Sea or some other fun song.
 
 
After the ride, the girls wanted to meet Ariel and the line was short so we all went to meet her.  Now if you know Carter, you know how shy he is.  He is already shy around people he knows, but he is SUPER shy around girls that he doesn't know.  So Ariel had to work with him to get him to open up a bit.  In this picture, she was showing him how to make fish faces.  He was eating it up!!!  This was when I realized (after meeting Ariel at MK and Rafiki at Animal Kingdom earlier that day) that Carter was going to have almost no interest in meeting characters.  He was way more interested in rides than in meeting people.
 

 During the fireworks!  The sound didn't really bother Carter but he wanted to try on Celia's headphones just to see how they worked. 


 Completely mesmerized at the lights parade.
 
 
 This is the video of Carter watching a section of the parade and waving at Mickey.
 
We headed back to the hotel after the light parade to put these exhausted kiddos to bed.  It was a fun and jam-packed first day at Disney and we had to get ready for Day 2 - Breakfast with Mickey and Friends, Epcot and another night at Magic Kingdom! 



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