Saturday - Day One

We woke up at 4:30 am on Saturday morning 'cause our flight left D/FW at 7:35 am. My dear friend MA graciously got up and took us to the airport. The flight was uneventful.

We had tagged our bags with the tags provided by Disney - we were staying on property at the Wilderness Lodge. Disney picked up the bags at the airport and delivered them to our room. Sounds good in theory. We didn't get our bags till 6:30 pm that night. I'm just glad we were smart and brought our swim suits.

We also took the Disney Magical Express. It was a bit of a mad house and we had to wait in a long line. But the lines were handled fairly quickly. We landed in Orlando at 11:30-ish and got to our hotel about an hour and a half later. They gave M this button when we checked into our hotel and she was really happy to get it. We hung out at the pool all that afternoon and had a really terrible hamburger in the Roaring Fork fast food restaurant. My in-laws had paid for the Disney Dining Meal(pdf). It was just so confusing. Somethings were on it, others weren't. Other's required two table meal tickets. After a while, we'd get our food, give the cards to the cashier and ask them what was covered. It seemed like we always owed more money. Like I said - frustrated.

The pool was a perfect pool for M. Half of it was 3.5 feet - which means she could stand up and touch. It also had a really fun water slide. It took a couple of tries, but once she slid down the slide, she was okay. "Do it again! I want to do it again!" J & I just hung out at the bottom and watched her have fun.

I insisted that we go and get a nap after a while. Do you know how hard it is to get a 5 year old to nap when there's a great swimming pool with a fabulous slide? Fortunately, she was so tired at this point, all we had to do was get her to sit still for a few minutes and she dropped off for about an hour or so.

We met up with J's family and headed over to the Wilderness Fort Campground - we had 7:15 pm reservations for the Hoop-Dee-Doo Musical Review. The nephews were disappointed because they didn't get to meet Mickey Mouse but we all still had a great time. The food was fabulous - fried chicken (so-so) and ribs (really good). They also gave us pitcher upon pitcher of beer. The show was interactive and my nephew was called "Cowboy B**". We sang and clapped and stomped our feet.

M got tired, though. About 3/4 the way through, the players said that the song they were about to sing was sad - and they kept saying that it was sad. Of course, the words were sad, but they camped it up - making it funny. Poor M had hit the wall. She started crying because the song was sad. Luckily, the song finished up and the actors were up-beat and told jokes that she understood. She left happy.

We headed back to our rooms around 9 and fell into bed. The first day in Orlando was successful!