Disney Marathon Weekend Trip: Days 1&2

As planned I was able to land in Orlando with just enough time to don my Goofy hat and mortify my children. In fact I was so fast that I beat them all to the Magical Express!

We dropped off our stuff and grabbed some lunch at the resort (first cupcake of the trip... YUM!) Then the adults got settled into Bay Lake Tower (BLT) and the kids and I went to pick up our annual passes. The walk to the Magic Kingdom (MK) only took about 6 minutes!

While we were there we decided to play a round of a new game called "Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom". You get these cards and then find hidden portals and use your cards to defeat villans. It's really cool and all 3 of us loved the game. Many of the portals are so well hidden that you could be looking right at one and never know they were there!

Please stand clear of the doors:

We headed back to our villa and picked up the rest of the gang. It was time to go to the Studios and see the Osborne Family Festival of Dancing Lights! But the first the rest of the gang had to get their park tickets.

What a crew!

 

Our arrival day fell on the very last night of the Osborne lights so we were really lucky to get to see them. When they all light up at once it's pretty amazing! Here's the backstory on the lights.

Mema even found the black cat!

We left the Studios and took the boat to Kouzzina.

The food was AMAZING - definitely a new Disney fav... and the kids added another over-the-top dessert to their list of favorites.... design your own cupcake!

Teddy's final masterpiece...

After dinner we were ready to hit the sack so we drove back to the Contemporary. The Mickey wreath was all lit up and the resort looked beautiful!

View of the MK from the top of BLT:

View of the main Contemporary from the top of BLT:

The next day my Mom and Dad decided to take it easy in the morning but Jeff and Papa had a 9am segway tour in Epcot. We got there on time and they got checked in.

While they were doing their tour, Mema and the kids and I rode Mission Space:

....and Soarin'

And the Sum of all Thrills. All with no line! This time Sasha was tall enough to go upside down on this ride so she and I built one doozy of a coaster and then there was still no one at the ride and the cast member asked us if we wanted to ride again! Yes, of course we did! So he sent us on a great jet ride that someone else had designed.

We grabbed some Fast Passes for later and then got to see Jeff and Papa finish up their tour.

Looking good gentlemen!

We ate lunch and rode Test Track with Jeff and Papa as their tour ended just when our fastpass window started. Nice timing!

After that we went back to the Villa for a mid-day break and then grabbed my Mom and Dad and headed back to Epcot for dinner. We ate at Via Napoli, a table service restaurant in Italy with three huge wood-fired ovens. The food was excellent.

Can't go wrong with Italian food!

The funniest thing about the Italy pavillion is that it is all staffed by Italians and they are all gorgeous! In our restaurant it seemed like a bunch of GQ models had all gotten fired and been forced to wait tables. Everyone was thinking the same thing but no one mentioned it until my Mom goes to our waiter "Can we have some more water?..... handsome man?" We all lost it. So I had to grab a shot of the 2 grandmas and our waiters.

After that the plan was to stay for Illuminations but it had started to drizzle and it was a little bit cold. No one wanted to get sick for our races so we decided to head home and save Illuminations for Sunday night. At least we got 2 chances for it. On the way out Teddy cracked us up trying on hats in Mexico. It was a great first 2 days and we were glad that we got to go to bed relatively early on our first 2 nights!