Day One - Heading Out

This trip to Disney World has been a year in the planning ....  mostly by Shawn! It will be quite the family adventure as Shawn's mom Penny and his son Brandon will be coming down from New York to meet us.

We got up at the ungodly hour of 3:00AM to be at the airport for a 6:00AM flight to Orlando via Salt Lake. An uneventful flight got us to Orlando about 3:00PM.  We took the Disney Express to our room at the Contemporary Resort Hotel.....finally arriving at 5:30. The rest of the family is staying at the Coronado Resort outside the park. So we split up for the night; we'll meet at the Magic Kingdom first thing in the morning.

(Note to remember: we left our luggage to be delivered by the Disney folks from the airport. Less hassle, but we didn't see our luggage again until almost 9:00PM. I wouldn't do it that way again).

After we got settled, we had a great steak dinner at a hotel restaurant called The Wave. We have a Disney Meal Plan so its fun not to pay any attention to the price of things! Returning to our room, which has a view of the Magic Kingdom, we watched great firework show from our balcony!

The weather is lousy - 50's, cloudy and breezy. Not Florida-like! Forecast doesn't look any better.

To bed early, Janet insists on an early start in the morning at Magic Kingdom.

Sunday Jan 27

In spite of the fact that it rained all day, sometimes hard, we had a fun day. We met up with Janet and the gang at Magic Kingdom. It was fun to meet Penny and Brandon. We did the usual rides enjoying short lines due to the weather. As the day wore on we got wetter and wetter, hair matted and shoes squishing! For our dinner reservation we took the monorail over to the Polynesian Village for dinner at 'Ohana. More than we should eat!

Tomorrow we go to Hollywood Studios. The weather is supposed tb better the rest of the week.

Monday Jan 28 Hollywood Studios

Much better weather today! Cloudy and cold to start but by mid-afternoon the sun appeared and it was quite pleasant. We took the bus from the hotel to Hollywood Studios where we spent the entire day. (The Disney bus system is quite an operation!)

We hooked up with the family at the Starbucks just inside the entrance. The events we saw included, but were not necessarily limited to, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Muppets, Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast.....pretty much covered it! Dinner at the "Sci-Fi Dine In Restaurant".....clever motif of  50's drive-in theater, dinner while watching old sci-fi movies!

Back to the hotel by about 7:30, in time to fireworks out the window! Tomorrow: Wilderness.

We didn't!

Tuesday Jan 29 Wild Kingdom

Spent a long day in Animal Kingdom among teeming throngs of humanity from all over the world (seems to be a lot of Brazilians). The weather today was absolutely perfect!!  We arrived at the park around 9:30 after a one hour bus ride. The first thing you come to entering the park is the "Tree of Life", an unbelievable example of Disney-magic!  (In case you haven't seen it, its not real!) and right nearby was an impressive flight of beautiful macaws

We started with a hysterically funny 3-D movie called "Its Tough to be a Bug!".  Then on to Dinoland and a rather uncomfortable coaster ride featuring real dinosaurs. Stops in  Asia section for a snack on our way to the Africa area e enjoyed the Lion King show, the Kilamanjaro Safari and the Gorilla Falls trail.  Lunch at Yak and Yeti; buffet dinner at Tuskers.

A fun surprise this afternoon was meeting up with our Oneonta friend Linda Jump. Linda lived nearby and will jump at any excuse to visit one of "her" parks. Sam and Linda had babies together 40 some years ago and we reconnect every now and then.

After dinner we returned to the Pandora area for a very cool night time boat ride through a world of iridescent creatures. The final show of the day was a beautiful "movie" projected onto the base of the Tree of Life.

Back to our room by 9:00PM. Crash until tomorrow for Epcot. We'll leave mid - afternoon to get our rental car and take off on our road trip.

View from our room

Monorail goes right through Contemporary Hotel

Tree of Life

Mt Everest

Lion King

with Linda Jump

Pandora