Friday 26 February 2010

Epcot on Tues. 2/16





We stayed in the Port Orleans Riverside Resort at Disney. It is a moderately priced resort and the grounds were beautiful. They had a great cafeteria with great food and a really nice store. We were stuffed in our room. I tried to talk Kyle into getting two rooms but it would have cost us double so he said "no". We had two double beds and this weird trundle that rolled out from underneath one of the beds. It was like an over sized crib mattress. We had to force the kids to take turns sleeping on it at night since it was not comfortable. However, it worked out fine and I actually looked forward to returning to our room every night in exhaustion. Overall, we barely spent any time in there and it was very clean. We quickly planned our trip over Christmas break-it was $1500 cheaper to go in Feb. than in May and we thought that it wouldn't be very crowded in Feb. Well, we were wrong...it was crowded-come to find out...President's week is one of the busiest weeks at the Disney parks. Everything still worked out great. Disney is VERY family friendly. They have a "Fast-Pass" option for all the popular rides. "Fast-Pass" is like getting a reservation for the ride. You get a ticket and the ticket tells you when to come back and then you don't have to wait in line. They also have a "Rider-Switch" option which allows the parent waiting with the baby/toddler to go on (without waiting in line) after the other parent and kids get off-they get to take 3 riders on with them. The best part about this was that we used these on all the "Fast-Pass" rides. Faith, Sawyer and Eden got to ride all the best rides twice without waiting in 90 min. lines. Without these options the trip wouldn't have been nearly as enjoyable. The three oldest were able to ride every ride available-Eden couldn't ride one or two but she didn't care. My kids are daredevils...they will ride every single roller coaster and thrill ride without thinking twice. It is great...makes it a lot more fun for Kyle and I.

So, Tues. morning was Epcot. When we were all lying in bed just waking up I heard Sawyer say "my stomach hurts." I was screaming inside my head "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO"!!!! He was pale as a ghost through breakfast and would hardly eat. We went to the gift shop and bought him some Immodium, hoping that would help. Nothing was going to stop us on this trip. Well......we get on the bus that takes us to the park that is packed with people and a bad thing happened. He was sitting down and I was standing a few people away from him and I notice he is looking really bad. I always carry a zip-loc bag in my purse for emergencies and I was getting it out and he threw-up. We were standing next to a really nice guy from Louisiana (I think the whole state of Louisiana was there to escape Mardi Gras and celebrate their Super-bowl win). Anyways, he had a disabled daughter and carried hand towels around with them -he kindly gave us a hand towel to clean up Sawyer's vomit...plus I had a ton of baby wipes. Kyle, very efficiently, cleaned it all up. I think that bus floor was cleaner than it had ever been. I don't even think the bus driver even knew. After we got off the bus Sawyer felt 100%. He never got sick again and neither did anyone else...thank goodness. I don't know what his deal was but I was just so happy he felt better.

We had a great time at Epcot...but not enough time. We chose to use a Disney Photo pass while we were there for most of our photos. This is where a Disney employee takes most of your photos and then you have to order the photos or the disk. I don't have access to those photos yet so I can only post the ones we took. I could go on FOREVER about each of the parks but I am just going to try and touch on the highlights. The most popular ride at Epcot is "Soarin"-it was also our favorite. We were all standing in a 40 min. line for a different ride when an employee came up to our family, asked how many there were of us and then handed us 6 Fast Passes. I often wonder if people feel sorry for us with 4 kids or if we look frazzled or something. I felt bad for all the people standing around us but we took them and ran! We were also standing around deliberating on riding "Test Track" when some strangers came up and handed us their 4 Fast Passes that they weren't going to use. We felt really fortunate and were actually able to "pay it forward" a couple of times ourselves throughout our trip. In the country of "Norway" we ate dinner with the princesses-very fun! Kyle, Faith and Sawyer went close to closing to catch "Mission Space" while Eden, Beckett and ran into the Disney characters. They were all lined up and you could get your photo with them. I think the longest we waited in line was to get pictures with the various characters. Despite the vomiting on the bus, it ended up being a great day!

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