Trip Report: Day 8

Our magic week was over so soon.

We booked our returning flight for as late in the day as we could, so we were scheduled to fly out at 6:45pm. The Magical Express Bus would be picking us up at the airport at around 3:30 which left us plenty of time to squeeze in just a bit more fun!

You probably have learned already that we are into family traditions. One of our favorite parts of our last trip to Disney was breakfast at 1900 Park Fare. Naturally on our last morning of the trip this year, we decided to do the same thing. This also gave us an excuse to go back and visit our beloved Grand Floridian.

We spent a few hours packing up our rooms, returning strollers to the bell men, and getting our bags checked for our return flight. That is another wonderful benefit of staying on Disney property. We were able to check our bags at our resort! We said goodbye to them that morning when we checked out and didn’t see them again until we were back in Buffalo! Isn’t that great:)

We hopped a bus to Magic Kingdom and then jumped on the monorail to the Grand Floridian. When you to go to WDW with toddlers, a big part of the fun is just riding that monorail!

Ahhh…the Grand Floridian. I missed this place!

It was time for our reservation at the 1900 Park Fare breakfast buffet. The food here is so, so, so yummy! We are still thinking about the Mickey waffles, bananas foster syrup, and this amazing vanilla sauce on top of the caramel pecan rolls. Oh my.

The character interaction at Park Fare is great too! Each character spent a lot of time with us and I love the way they playfully interact with the kids.

 

 

With our bellies full, we enjoyed one of the most beautiful lobbies in all of WDW.

We didn’t have any park tickets left, and not really enough time to go anyway. We thought it would be fun to check out one of the Vacation Club Resorts called Saratoga Springs. Disney has a time-share-like program called DVC (Disney Vacation Club) and some friends of ours are a part of it and encouraged us to check it out. A girl can dream, right?

The wonderful people at the DVC picked us up in two passenger vans and drove us over to the lovely Saratoga Springs Resort. While the Grandmas and the kids played in an awesome kids’ room (complete with toys, movies, and snacks), Matt, grandpa, and I learned more about the DVC and got to tour some deluxe rooms. This type of lovely vacationing isn’t in the cards for us now, but maybe some day! It was a wonderful way to learn about something new and spend some extra hours that we had:)

I’ll condense our “long trip home” story into just a few sentences. Our flight was supposed to leave at 6:45. Some strange and wild weather started in Orlando (tornado warnings, pounding rain, lightning). Our flight got delayed, and delayed some more. We didn’t take off until close to 9pm. The flight was long, the kids were tired, Allie cried a lot, we were all kind of sick of it! Eli started coming down with something, he had a fever by the time we made it to Buffalo at 11ish. It was a long, cold drive home.

 

There you have it! Disney 2011 in pictures and some very special memories!!!

We have a few really great videos that I’d like to get on the blog soon (ahem, Matt, pretty please?).

I hope you have enjoyed reading! Our kids are the best, our parents are the best, and you guessed it…this trip was the best!