We were fortunate that our flight was not delayed and quickly moved from check-in, through security, and on to our gate. That's where the "quickly" changed to slowly. The train to the gate sat and sat and sat. Usually it is in a hurry and a lady's voice comes on saying "You are delaying the departure of this train..." We finally arrived at our gate only to realize that we had missed our "A" boarding on Southwest. Still, we made it and were off to Florida.
A friend who had recently spent a week in Orlando warned us to dress lightly--no layers--and to just plan on our hair looking awful while we were there. We could all wear t-shirts and shorts, but I wasn't too keen on a week of bad hair days. Fortunately, I was the one behind the camera 95% of the time, so you may not believe I was in Florida at all! But I was, bad hair and all.
We arrived at lunch time and after a quick stop to refuel our children we headed straight to a Disney park--Epcot was the choice for the day. Looking back over the week, we arrived on a relatively nice weather day for Orlando. It was low 80s and moderate humidity. It was still HOT and HUMID! It got hotter. The girls got noticeably more and more excited the closer we got to Disney World. They loved this sign.
We paid our $14 parking for the day and joined the throng of cars waiting for the folks in buttercream yellow to direct us to our parking spot. From there we made note of our parking spot and headed to the tram.
Ahhh Epcot. Our first stop, Spaceship Earth.
The line wasn't too long so we parked our stroller in the designated stroller parking with the hordes of other strollers and proceeded to.....stand in line. Actually it wasn't too long before we were boarding our buggy for our journey into space. It was a pretty tame ride, but a great introduction to the magic of Disney.
We exited the giant orb and hmmmm, our stroller. We parked it for sure, but it wasn't there when we returned. We looked around thinking maybe someone had moved it (because they definitely do a lot of stroller rearranging at Disney) but nope. It was gone. We did happen to notice a stroller similar to ours sitting innocently close by. It had a name tag; we tried calling. It belonged to a VP at Merrill Lynch. We decided to check back later and see if ours had been returned. Until then, Kristen would walk. She got tired walking the block home from school this past year so this ought to be fun!
Because we arrived later in the day at Epcot, many of the Fast Passes were already used up. But we did happen to get one for Mission: SPACE. Until it was time for our designated return, we visited other attractions and shows. You never know quite what to expect with each Disney ride, but they are often intricately and realistically (as possible) designed. Mission: SPACE was one such ride. Kristen and I went on the kinder, gentler green mission. Amy, Misha and Chris opted for the orange more intense mission. I'm not sure Kristen knew what she was in for when she climbed onto this ride.
I know I climbed off feeling a little woozy from the G-force experience. I was a little worried about her, but she just hung on and tried to push her "Navigator" buttons when it was her turn. Quite a trooper. Funny how most rides dumped us into a gift shop on our exit. Sneaky. We didn't buy the hats.
We knew that we would be back another day, so we weren't too sad to miss riding "Soarin'" or the "Test Track". We checked back on our stroller, but it still was missing with Mr. Merrill Lynch's still there. Chris reported our loss to Guest Relations. Chris sent an email to the address on the stroller tag, but nothing. It was getting late and we needed to find dinner. We didn't have reservations anywhere and our picky children weren't interested in Fish and Chips or Chinese food, so we walked around until we got to Morocco. We ate at the Tangierine Cafe--they had chicken nuggets. Woohoo. It wasn't my best meal ever, but it filled our empty spaces.
The fireworks were about to start at 9 pm so we made our way back around to the entrance of the World Showcase and found an empty spot for firework watching. It was quite impressive. After the finale, we joined the throng of people exiting the park, each of the girls hanging on to our hands. We'd already lost a stroller, that was enough for the day. Chris stopped one more time at Guest Relations and with no Kline stroller making an appearance, we hopped the tram back to our rental van.
Before heading to our condo, we stopped at Wal-mart for groceries and a few other supplies--like a cooler. The store was packed. It obviously did a good business supplying the needs of tourists. After such a long day, we were all exhausted and happy to check in at the Lake Beuna Vista Resort in Kissimmee. We unpacked suitcases and groceries, loaded up the luggage cart, and made our way to the 15th floor...of building 5. Our reservation was in building 3. Some people in our family don't have a lot of patience after a long day, but we rode the elevator down to the first floor, exited the building with our luggage in tow, found building 3 and made our way up again. Finally. The girls looked around a bit, checked out the cool pool below and were asleep within minutes of being tucked in. Chris and I weren't too far behind.