Disney: Travel Day & Day 1 Epcot

Back in the spring Lane started making detailed plans and booking things for our Christmas-time Disney trip. We didn't tell the kids until October, just to make the wait a little more bearable for them, but they were SUPER excited when we shared the news.  So December 5th finally arrived...time to go!  (I took hundreds of pictures so I'm going to divide the trip into several posts.) 

Dec 5-Travel Day

Dec 6-Epcot

Dec 7-Animal Kingdom

Dec 8-Magic Kingdom

Dec 9-Epcot

Dec 10-Magic Kingdom/Mickey's Very Merry Christmas

Dec 11-Hollywood Studios

Dec 12-Epcot a.m., travel home p.m.

As excited as we all were, we were very sad to be away from Bogart for a week!  We've never been away from him for that long.  :)  We're so thankful my parents were willing to let him stay at their house.  He likes it there, and he did fine.  We met Mom on our way to the airport to send Bogart with her.  

We had a direct flight out of Little Rock Saturday evening, so we met up with friends at Purple Cow for a late lunch/holiday milkshakes!  It's always fun to get to see them.

This was Crosby's first time to fly, and he loved it!  They all did great.  It was nice that it was a direct flight so our airport time was easy.

We made it!

We stayed at Disney's Polynesian Resort, which we really liked!  It was convenient to everything, and had such a neat atmosphere and a fun pool.  It was warm enough in the afternoons to swim, so the kids did that a few times.  Our first morning there we did the "Best Friends Breakfast" at the hotel's Ohana restaurant.  

They met Lilo, Stitch, Mickey and Pluto.

The food was good.  I liked how they brought it all on one big platter for serving at the table.  

After breakfast we went to Epcot.  It was a beautiful day, perfect temperature!

We liked the Coral Reefs and Turtle Talk with Crush.

While Lane and Rhett went to ride rides, Crosby, Alexee and I met several characters.

We all met up for lunch at Tutto Italia Ristorante.  My favorite part of the meal was this tiramisu...but no one else in the family likes it so I didn't have to share.  :)  Yum.

We were happy that we decided to sign up for the Disney PhotoPass.  It was nice to be able to stop at the various photographer stations throughout the park and have family pictures made, scan your magic band and then upload all the photos at the end of the week.  

The kids ate lots of Mickey ice cream during the week.

I think England was my favorite country in the world showcase.  It had such beautiful landscaping and cute buildings.  

(Lane and Rhett didn't take as many photos as we did, so a lot of these are of A & C.)

Cute winter decorations

We all loved Soarin'!  We had a fast-pass for it, but we wished the line wasn't so long so we could have ridden it over and over.  We also liked Living with the Land, Spaceship Earth, and Lane and Rhett liked Test Track.

Pretzels in Germany

That night we had tickets to the Candlelight Processional, which was SO good!!  I'm glad we did that.  They read the Christmas story, and the choir and orchestra did many beautiful Christmas songs.

Rhett had read about the Croissant-Donut stand, and I'm sure glad he did!  They were yummy. 

We rode Spaceship Earth many times.  This was one of Crosby's favorites.  

It was a fun-filled, exhausting first day.  Disney is not relaxing AT ALL.  There's so much walking and so.many.people.everywhere.  But we had a successful first day!  

This was on the monorail ride back to the hotel.  We laughed because that guy on the right pretty much sat right on top of Crosby!?!  C is behind there somewhere!