Florida: Day Four and Five

A few years ago:

Val's friend, "every parent has to take their child to Disney"

Me, "no"

****

A few weeks ago:

Greg's friend, "you're going to Disney?  That doesn't seem like a place you would go."

Greg, "you're right, it's weird"

***

Once we started planning our trip to Harry Potter World and Legoland, Greg mentioned that he'd like to see Star Tours again after seeing it as a kid.  I was a little surprised, but started making plans....

 We started at Disney Hollywood Studios

 Pizza Planet! 

 Giant Lincoln Logs! 

 Acting like Monkeys

 Oh yeah! Jedi Academy! 

 I'll admit I was nervous that somehow our kiddos would be the ones to mess up the whole thing, but they did great! 

 First they learned all the light saber moves...

 And then Darth Vadar showed up!  Scaring as ever! 

 But they were ready and took him on one by one...

 Yoda and Mimi decided on small droids as their souvenirs. 

Mimi rockn' out...

Magic Kingdom Day

one day Yoda got sunblock in his eyes and needed to go to the first aid station.  Another day Parker slashed his leg on a rock and needed band-aids.  This time I was nervous we were loosing Mimi for good.  We found this spot in the shade and cooled off and drank lots of water.  If you see below she did recover! 

Tomorrowland Raceway

You can't see what this card reads, but it says something about us having a "Magic Moment".  Yoda came off of Space Mountain screaming about how much fun he had, so the lady gave us this card for a chance to get right back on! 

Another thing from Greg's youth that he wanted to do again was this shooting gallery. 

Obligatory Castle photo!  can you spot the Gibbys? 

One more day...

Florida: Days Two and Three...

Two more days at Universal Studios (they have a deal -- buy 2 days and get the 3rd free!)  Again we headed straight for the Harry Potter stuff. 

  Hamming it up on Hagrid's Motorcycle

 Playing with a bunch of stuff that we weren't going to buy. 

 

 Here's where you meet Anna (blog nickname).  She's basically one of the nicest people in the world.  Plus she gets summers off and we had room for a 6th so we invited her along on our trip to Florida. She was awesome to have around, and I think she had fun too :)

At the Leaky Cauldron in the London part of Harry Potter world.  Yummy English food and Butterbeer.  (it comes frozen, cold or hot, I was not prepared for those choices!)

 So two people on our trip had nosebleeds...

 Photo-bomb! 

  I've always been fascinated by the E.T. ride, who else remembers the commercials from back in the day?  Well I finally rode it!  Twice!  We even got to ride the bike that holds E.T. both times--how much do you envy me?

 Suddenly Yoda loves Woody woodpecker! 

 We rode this like 8 times....

 Yoda is also into cars lately!  He likes to figure out cars by their symbols since he can't totally read yet.  He was so excited to see these old Chevy's (this one is from the American Graffiti movie)

 Storm clouds rolling in...we stayed through the rain all the way to closing! 

 Day Three, this day we wore our bathing suits! 

 He ran up to him and gave him a hug! 

 Pretend you're mad like Yoda. 

Pretend you're not mad, Yoda isn't pulling it off.  

 Crossing Delancey...Get your hands off her! 

 Running after the Knight bus

 holding together the leaky cauldron.

 Platform 9 and three quarters

video
Here's where you walk through the wall of the station and disappear. That's me yelling "go!" at the end because the people behind us were getting a little antsy...

 Sometime during day 2 we caved and bought the crazy wands that you wave at windows in Harry Potter world and make stuff happen.  It's fun, but also kind of hard to get the hand motion just right. 

 Mimi LOVES Nancy comics, so we were happy to eat at the comic cafe

Still HOT!

 Parker wanted a coin minted just for him for his souvenir.  They made it a fun experience.

 Playing in Jurassic World

  Scanning for fossils. 

After water rides and LOTS OF RAIN, we got some goodies in Dr. Suess land and called it day.

More to come....