Disney 2016: Hollywood Studios

Or, as I should probably call this post: Star Wars Studios! Hell, at this point, Disney really should just rename the park. They know where their bread is buttered, and what people are going there for. We saw all of the signs for the Star Wars expansions, and it will definitely mean a trip back again in the future for the Macbeths!

Here we are when we arrived (left) - look how fresh faced and eager to start our day! And on the right, the kids after an exhausting, super hot day. Still happy, but so hot and tired.

One more shot from when we started - it was the idea of the Disney photographer to have them jump in the air. I caught Evan in the air at least!

I love how the cast members get involved with the kids (all guests, really, but especially kids). He and Natalie had a mock light saber battle!

We then headed straight over to Star Wars. The kids were so excited to ride the Star Tours ride again - while the lines were a little longer than when we were there two years ago, we were still able to go about 3 times in a row with minimal waiting.

When we got back outside, we were in time for one of the shows. Turns out, kids could sign up to be part of the show (as Jedi trainees), but we would have had to do it about 20 min earlier. Neither of my kids really wanted to do it anyway; they were excited to watch (and participate) from the side.

The show was great. Darth Vader came out, Kylo Ren, an evil Jedi woman who I don't know...it was all acted so well. The two Jedis fighting them (both women, yeah!) did a great job, including with the kids on stage.

It wasn't just Star Wars though...there's also Frozen! Two years ago, I took just Natalie to the Frozen sing-along; this year I got a fast pass for all of us to go. The show had moved to the largest theater on the park, and it was still packed. We had pretty good seats close to the front!

We did a few other shows and rides there; the day was a bit disjointed because I had to go back to the hotel to work for about 90 minutes (infuriating, but there you have it). But we all had a great time, both that day and on the vacation as a whole. We were sorry to leave you, Swan and Dolphin, but hope to be back soon!

Disney 2016: Epcot fireworks...and magic!

After our fun-filled day at Epcot, we did a quick service (relatively inexpensive) meal in Japan (that amazingly everyone ate, including my super picky child!) in the world showcase at Epcot. It was pleasantly tasty and we couldn't beat the price. We were then in a prime spot to stand at the top of a set of stairs to look out over the lake and watch the fireworks.

Oh - I should mention that while waiting for fireworks, I had one of the tastiest things ever for dessert. I walked over to France to an ice cream shop. While standing in line to see Jasmine & Aladdin, the woman behind me mentioned a treat that they serve there. I cannot for the life of me remember what it's called now, but it's basically cold ice cream (you choose the flavor) inside of a pressed bread bowl. They use a panini press to make the bread hot. The mix of hot bread and cold ice cream is absolutely amazing, and it was worth every bit of the $8 I spent on it!

Anyway, back to fireworks. I met up with the family at our spot in Japan, and we happily watched the entire show. Here are a few of my favorite photos.

A video I shot with my phone:

After the fireworks, Epcot closed so we headed back to the hotel. On our walk, we went through the Disney Boardwalk (as I mentioned previously). Since it was night, there were a number of performers, including this magician we stopped to see. Natalie once again got pulled into the show!

And, when we were almost back to our hotel, we saw a few of the fireworks from the end of day show at Hollywood Studios, which was on the other side of our hotel.

It was a long, hot, exhausting, hot, day but I do think that Epcot was my favorite. Next up: our last day at Disney, spent at Hollywood Studios.

Disney 2016: Epcot character encounters

On this Disney trip, unlike in 2014, we hit a "new" park: Epcot! We didn't go last time as we thought the kids wouldn't enjoy it enough. Since then, they added quite a few new things, and I have to say I thought it was my favorite part of our trip! I think Natalie would agree - she finally got to meet Anna & Elsa!

When we arrived, we headed straight to the Norway part of the World Showcase so that we could hit the Frozen ride first. I knew that the line would be long from things I saw online, so we did it first to avoid that, and only had to wait about 10 minutes! The ride was a lot of fun, and we were able to go from there to go meet Elsa and Anna. Can you tell how happy that made Natalie? Look at those smiles!

 

 

We then headed up towards the front of Epcot (Future World), and got a few photos with the Sphere.

 

We had a few fast passes to use on rides, and due to lack of lines went on a couple of rides more than once. The kids really liked Journey into Imagination with Figment - super cheesy ride, but we did it twice because they liked it so much! We spent a lot of time in Future World West: The seas with Nemo, Turtle talk with Crush, Living with the Land, and our favorite ride of the day: Soarin! We spent a lot of time on these rides because they were inside...it was SO HOT out.

After lunch, we split up for a bit as Natalie wanted to meet more princesses and Henry was just done with that (he'd been a trooper all morning with that). Natalie and I first went to Morocco and stood in line to meet Jasmine and Aladdin.

(You'll note Natalie is in a different outfit now - I brought an outfit for her to change into as I thought her polyester dress was going to get hot, and I was right!).

We then waited outside, in the heat, to meet Snow White at 1:15pm. It was ridiculously hot; I had Natalie stand in the shade as much as she could while I saved our spot in line. These poor girls who play Snow White, too - they only let them be outside for about 10 minutes, as I'm sure they are sweltering!

 
I actually saw the shift change happen; there was a gate near where we were standing, and two young girls came out while we were waiting to meet Snow White. One of the girls looked VERY similar to the girl above (but was wearing cutoff shorts and a plaid shirt); she had on bright red lipstick, dark sunglasses - i'm pretty sure she was the previous Snow White. Kind of neat to see that, as you don't often at Disney!

After meeting back up with Evan and Henry, we went back to Future World for some indoor character meetings. It was worth the lines to be in the AC. The kids met Baymax from Big Hero 6 (a movie I still haven't seen!).

 

And then we all stood in line to meet Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy! I found on this trip that the photo pass cast members were more than happy to take photos for me with my camera, which let us get photos like this, since we didn't buy the photo pass this time.

After this, we headed back around to the World Showcase to grab some dinner and find a place to watch the fireworks; that's in my next post!

Disney 2016: The Swan & Dolphin

As I mentioned in my previous Disney posts, we were fortunate on this trip to stay at one of the nicer Disney properties (that didn't used to be a Disney property, but now is...I think. It's rather complicated according to my digging around online!). Because my conference (the whole reason we scheduled our trip to Disney at the end of July) was at the Swan & Dolphin resort, we were fortunate to be able to stay there for almost a week! While were in Orlando for a week (Wed-Wed), there was no availability at the S&D on Wednesday night, so we used some of my many Hilton points to stay at a nearby Doubletree Suites. On Thursday, however, we checked into the resort, and oh my was it stunning!

The resort is two connected hotels: one with giant Dolphin fish on top (you can see one on the far left in the above photo) and one with giant Swans in the same place. We were staying in the Swan, which was behind me in this photo. It's the smaller of the two hotels; the conference center is in the Dolphin. They're connected by a walkway (seen in the middle left of the photo above). The pool is way off to the left (can't be seen in the above photo).

One of the coolest things about the resort is its location: just to one side is the Disney Boardwalk - the entrance was across this bridge, and can be seen below.

On the boardwalk are restaurants, shops, a few late-night places, street performers in the evening; it's small but fun. There's a small hotel there, and just past the Boardwalk is the back entrance to Epcot! So we were able to walk there in roughly 10 min, which was really great on our Epcot day (photos of that coming up next).

I had two nights at the resort to myself, as during the conference Evan took the kids up to his parents' house in Hilton Head. On those nights I wandered around some, and was fortunate to see some beautiful sunsets. This photo was taken from our room in the Swan!

And finally I grabbed a photo of the Swan from the opposite side, as I wandered about with my alcoholic milkshake. So delicious.

On Sunday night, Evan and the kids rejoined me at the hotel. It was later than we'd all hoped they'd get back, and we were tired, but with light sabers and an awesome light show outside of the hotel, what could we do but take some night time photos? Plus, the kids had been cooped up in the car so long that we needed to let them burn off some energy before bed.

 

It's a really awesome hotel, made more awesome by the fact that 4 nights were covered by my company (due to conference), and we were able to get the remaining two nights at the discounted conference rate. If/when we get back to Disney, I would absolutely stay there again...assuming the normal rate isn't too much for us to afford. If you can, I highly recommend staying there!

Disney 2016: Magic Kingdom Part 2

On our way out of the Magic Kingdom, we happened to catch the 3pm Festival of Fantasy parade. Despite the heavy crowds, we got a spot on the sidewalk and caught the entire parade! It was truly beautiful - the colors, the floats, the dancers, the cast members; we loved it all! I took a ton of photos, but am just including a couple of my favorites here.

 Rapunzel & Flynn Rider!

 Ariel's float

 Tinkerbell on the back of the Peter Pan float

 Merriweather, Flora, and Fauna. Love their costumes!

 A steampunk version of the dragon that Maleficent turns into (from Sleeping Beauty). I love this thing!

 The colors on this nearly last one kill me. It was all so pretty!

Then one last character meet-and-greet (because again, no line): Tinkerbell!

 

After a break at the pool, and a change of clothes, we headed back over to the Magic Kingdom.

First up was buying new light sabers for the family; we found a make-your-own store in Tomorrowland, and the cast member there was great about helping us out.

By then, it was dark, and it was time for the castle to be lit up

 

And then the Electric parade (which no longer exists, so we got to see it one more time, which I was so happy about!). We didn't have the best spot, but we managed to see the parade and I got a couple of great shots (particularly this one of Tinkerbell).

 Pete and the dragon

 We then headed over to hit Henry's favorite ride:

And it turns out from up there we could see the fireworks! Because no one else wanted to ride the carpets, the cast member running the ride just let us stay on the ride for about 4 spins around, so we just kept watching the fireworks from up in the air.

I did manage to capture one good shot of the fireworks with my real camera. Such a great way to end the day!