Our big Disney trip finally arrived! We have been preparing for this trip for over a year.. we had monthly "hype" nights where we did a different Disney themed night every month with the girls, and we were so excited for our trip with the Delias!
Due to having our Hyatt credit card and having Hyatt points, we were able to take advantage of some cheaper flights and go into Orlando two days early. We got in on Thursday around 11am and went to Miller's Alehouse for lunch. Our tradition!
We were staying at the Hyatt Grand Cypress for two nights. When we first got there our room wasn't ready so we headed to the pool for a few hours and had fun in their massive pool.
Kayla loves swimming and she's a good enough swimmer that while she's with us she doesn't need to wear floaties anymore. She loves swimming under water and diving for items.
We had a really nice room and had a suite with a living room and a bedroom.
Here is our bedroom. Kayla also loves the parrot that is the lobby of this hotel. We've been here enough times that it's familiar now.
Here was our view! It was nice because we could see the Disney fireworks at night.
We went to Disney Springs for the night. We first went to the Disney store and looked around. Kayla got a baby rajah toy. Then we went to eat at the Polite Pig and I was not overly impressed. You order at the counter and there aren't any servers. The price was expensive and the platters to share gave really small portions.
This is the platter that they advised to share for 2 people... I barely thought it was enough food for 1 person let alone two people.
After dinner, we started heading to Gideon's for cookies, but it started pouring. We ran under cover under an awning. It stopped raining pretty quick so we went back in line for cookies and we were almost inside when it started pouring again. Clearly we got drenched haha. We figured we'd waited too long to get our cookies and couldn't get out of line again. We ran under another awning across the way after getting our cookies.
Definitely a crappy day. We kinda hung out until the rain let up, and we saw more was coming so we decided to head back for the night. We did stop at Dollar Tree to pick up a couple of pool floaties and stuff for the next day which was a lot of fun.
Yummy Gideon's cookies!
Kayla and I watched the fireworks from both Epcot and MK in the distance from our room.
I woke up early the next day to get our fast passes for the parks and I was really excited with everything that I got initially besides Hollywood Studios. I was hoping to improve them before we got to the park. We hung out in our room until 11:30am because it was raining. Here was Kayla sitting in her new pool floaty waiting to get to go out haha.
Luckily we were able to get 3-4 hours of swimming in before lightning was in the area and we had to get out of the pool. I forgot to bring down our pool noodles and Kayla was teasing me all day about forgetting them. We had a fun day in the pool.
We ate lunch by the pool. It was pretty reasonable there to get food and it was easy to just order something there instead of trying to go somewhere.
Basic burger, fries, and Kayla had chicken tenders.
After swimming for a while, we got out and got changed and hung out in the room for a bit. We went to Sal's pizza bar for dinner. The shop was small without a lot of seating, but it had the New York style pizza that Cody likes. We liked the pizza and garlic knots.
They had an Italian bakery there too.
After dinner we went to Disney Springs again, and Kayla wanted to go to the Goofy candy store. I was hoping to find churro toffee like they have in California here, but no luck...
Kayla got a mark your own Mickey's chocolate bar. I was surprised it was only $10 because it felt like a good value for that price.
Posing!
Trying to snack on it.
Afterwards, we walked across Disney Springs to Everglazed and got some big yummy donuts to eat. Kayla had a donut from there and a woman came out and said that donut is bigger than your head! Kayla thought she was crazy and was like my heads a lot bigger than this haha. Only to have Cody walk out to her chagrin, and say "Woahhh that donut is bigger than your head!!" and she was like whaaat?? Lol. Afterwards we walked around a bit, and watched some live music performing and Kayla jumped and played around a bit.
We decided to head back to the hotel was a swim, and Kayla goes.. "Now mama I want you to listen to me because this is very important for you to hear. Do. Not. Forget. The. POOL NOODLES!" Hahaha! Silly girl. She was as serious as could be too.
We went back into the pool for about 45 mins. Kayla was loving playing in her rainbow inter tube and it was HARD getting her out of the pool. She really didn't want to get out, but I told her that I wanted to watch the fireworks from our room. The next morning, we woke up to storms and no water in our room! The room also had an area that was flooding by the sliding door by the balcony. We were pretty surprised with that. And unfortunately, the Delia's flight were delayed by an hour so we were kinda waiting around to start the day. We ended up checking out and going to a giftshop near Miller's House to buy a few things.
Finally our vacation was kicking off with the Delia's getting into town! The girls were sooo excited to be together.
Cheers to starting our vacay!! We got a pitcher of margaritas and hung out at Miller's Alehouse.
The girls were soooo happy to be together!!
We stayed at the Sheraton Vistana resort, and when we first got there our room wasn't ready so we walked around the resort for a bit. Then we went to get our room keys and went to our room... and that is when our problems started. Our room key worked fine, but the Delia's didn't. When they tried to scan the key it turned yellow. So we went to the front desk and had our keys re-made. We went back and they still didn't work. They called security to come up and as we were going to get in a man and a woman who were cleaning people walked out. They didn't have any supplies and our room was already turned over as cleaned. So we think that they were in there having an affair with each other. Bobby and I were absolutely shocked when they walked out. The security girl didn't do anything, and we walked back to our room. Cody was appalled and was like that's awful! Who knows what they were doing in there or if the room is clean, and I got to thinking and I was like geee you're right! We went and tested the door and if you do the dead bolt from the inside and scan the key it turns yellow. And if the dead bolt is open then it'll turn green and open. So we think they knew it was an empty room and went in and locked the deadbolt and did god knows what. So Becky and Cody took the girls to the pool, and Bobby and I went back to the front desk. I wanted to talk with a manager. I told him nicely but firmly that it just wasn't acceptable and that we did not want to accept that room. We did not feel confident that it was clean and we wanted a new room. So the manager was really good to work with and agreed and ended up getting us a new room and gave us a $75 resort credit for the hassle. But it took until 5:30pm to get all this resolved so it definitely impacted our day. But we would have never expected that from the Sheraton. Bobby and I didn't get to go swimming, but at least everyone else did. We ended up back at Sal's pizza for dinner because it was quick and easy. We then went to Meijers for groceries for the week, and they had a lot of good buy 1 get 1 sales. Afterwards, we came home and unpacked and got ready for the Magic Kingdom the next day.
The next day was our MAGIC KINGDOM day!! Our group did a great job with getting up and getting ready, and we got to the park on time! Here are our girlies ready to start their day! Our first ride was the Barnstormer! Kayla liked it, but Abby did not like it.
Waiting in line for their ride... Dumbo!
We used our lightning lane for Dumbo and got right on it. We had bought standby skipper for this trip, and I wasn't sure how I felt about it... but Tiana's Bayou Adventure was sold out for the day and VERY quickly SS got us a time for 11:30am which was a huge win! It was sooo nice not to have to focus on the lightning lanes and to let it book stuff for us! After Dumbo we rode the Little Mermaid right with our LL.
We all tried our luck at pulling the sword from the stone, but no one in our group had the magic touch.
Then we headed to It's a Small World on standby and our group really loved this ride. It's such a cute and fun ride.
Next we used our lightning lane for the teacups. This is our traditional family picture on the teacups! Cody spun our teacup like crazy!! Haha!
Afterwards, we stopped at the Cheshire Cat and got Chestire Cat tail snacks which were yummy, and we all took a potty break. Then we headed to the castle show. I ALWAYS love this castle show. It's so cute and always warms my heart... It was such a perfect morning for us so far that I was even a little teary eyed. Elsa waved to the girls and they were soooo excited. It was a great start of our day.
We went around and took some photopass pictures. I love that we bought this package! I LOVED this picture of the girls. I thought it was so cute.
More silly girls.
In front of the castle.
I'm not sure where the boys wander off to when we were doing pictures right here... They might have been getting coffee or something. But here is a mommy and daughters picture.
Castle shot of the girls.
We went on Tiana's Bayou Adventure with our lightning lane which saved us 75 mins. This ride is only ok now... They just didn't add enough into the ride to make it all that exciting. I don't feel like the story line is as good as splash mountain... after seeing the original and this new version I just miss all the action of the other. I think re-theming it was fine... I just wish they had made it more exciting. Bobby and I took one from the team and sat in the front row to get all of the splashes haha!! This is where we started to realize that Bobby and Abby aren't really into rollercoasters/drops.
Next was our Aladdin LL. We did sooo well with not having to wait in hardly any lines. Delia family!
Charles family! Of course, Kayla wants to sit with Cody and mama is scrapped haha.
