#3 - The House That Mickey Built

Ok. I know I said trips to Florida weren’t considered for my countdown and it might seem like I’m breaking my own rule. But what I meant was trips to the Florida Panhandle. Besides, Disney World is not Florida. It’s Disney WORLD. It’s global. It’s an entity unto itself. It’s the happiest place on earth. That’s why it’s number 3 on my list.

Now I know most of you have been to Disney and will not see my experience as being any different from your own. But maybe there are some of you who are intimidated by the thought of it all. It is a little overwhelming, make no mistake. Or perhaps there are those who don’t see spending your vacation at an expensive, crowded theme park as a fun, relaxing vacation. Relaxing it ain’t. But fun is abundant and impossible to avoid. And it's worth every single penny.

It probably helped tremendously that we made the trip with our friends The Chapeks. We had been taking our beach vacations together for a few years and thought it made perfect sense to tackle Mickey’s house together too. Nicole and I started planning the trip (with a lot of help from our friend Trisha) about 6 months in advance. We are both slightly OCD about vacation planning which made us seem like maniacal freaks to our husbands at the time, but in hindsight they sing our praises. I dare say the two of us masterminded a plan and executed it flawlessly.

You must keep a few things in mind in order to fully appreciate the level of our success. First, our trip was in the summer. It was going to be very hot and very crowded. Second, we were traveling with 4 children, ages 7, 5, 4 & 1. Third, we were traveling with 2 men who were not at all excited about either of the preceding things. It was our bright idea to attempt this and we knew we would never live it down if we failed. We started by making a list of everything we absolutely had to do at each park. It was no small list. We mapped out a very detailed itinerary, and by detailed I mean rides were listed in order of importance and scheduled around our character dining reservations. We had a notebook and an excel spreadsheet. Yes. We were that obsessive. But do not mock us. By the end of the week we checked each and every thing off of our list.

There was one tiny and completely unforeseeable problem encountered on our well-planned vacation extravaganza. Rain. Lots and lots and lots of rain. I’m not talking the scattered afternoon shower that Florida is so famous for. I’m talking non-stop, pounding, driving rain complete with thunder and lightning that lasted for hours each and every day. Thanks to our overpriced Mickey Mouse ponchos and an unrelenting drive to succeed, we were not deterred. The biggest issue that arose from the storms was that the fireworks show on our checklist was getting rained out every single night. That was simply unacceptable. The good news is it finally stopped raining on our last night and we got to see the show. The bad news is The Chapeks left earlier that day and missed it. We found it interesting that the rain stopped the minute they left town. Coincidence? We may never know.

Now, I don’t want to brag or anything……. but I will. Thanks to our careful planning, we managed to ride The Kilimanjaro Safari, Kali River Rapids, Dumbo, Peter Pan, It’s A Small World and Buzz Lightyear without waiting in line AND without a Fastpass. We also managed to arrange it so the grown-ups could ride The Tower of Terror, The Rock n Roller Coaster and Expedition Everest sans kids by trading them off to each other. We met Woody, Buzz, Jessie, Tigger, Pooh, Piglet, Simba, The Little Einstiens, The Incedibles, Jasmine, Aerial, Belle, Sleeping Beauty, Mulan, Cinderella, Donald, Goofy, Minnie & Mickey. I have never seen so many movie stars up close. I am ashamed to say I was a little star struck. We managed to completely terrify and scar our kids for life at “It’s A Bug’s Life”. We ate more than we thought was humanly possible thanks to the Disney Dining Plan. And the best part was we were able to take each other’s family pictures.

There was simply too much fun that week to condense into a few paragraphs so I won’t ever try. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.





I took this photo impulsively and had quite a laugh afterwards. I called it "The Woodpecks" and threatened to send it as a Christmas card that year. It still makes me smile. What a happy little family.

Here we are in our ponchos. This is a pretty accurate indicator of how we looked the entire trip:

The boys weren't having much fun at the princess breakfast until Jasmine showed up. All of a sudden it was a whole new world....if you know what I mean:

This was the longest line we stood in all week. Sweet Aerial felt it was necessary to carry on 5 minute conversations with each and every one of the 3000 kids in line to see her. She called them all "Angelfish" and was very nice. It was endearing if she was talking to your child. If not, it was completely annoying:

We came:

We saw:

We conquered:

And my work here was done: