Magic Kingdom

We went to the Disney parks for 5 days.  We visited all the parks and went to the Magic Kingdom 2 days because there is so much to do there.  The favorite rides of Magic Kingdom  for all were the the Buzz Lightyear ride, Pirates of the Caribbean, Peter Pan and Jungle Cruise. We also all liked the Enchanted Tales with Belle.  Anna and Luke thought the Seven Dwarfs ride was a little scary.  Nana was too scared to go on this at all.  The 3 of them also did not go on the Splash Mountain.  That was a favorite for me, Tim and Pa.  The 3 of us also liked Space Mountain. 

We did a go-cart ride.  It was kind of hard to steer that thing.

Anna was Mrs. Potts and Lukey was Belle's dad in the Enchanted Tales with Belle.  It was pretty cute.

After the Tales with Belle, we went to lunch at the Beast's castle, Be Our Guest.  The decorations were pretty cool in there.  This is the only place that serves booze in Magic Kingdom, but only at dinner time.  They seriously need to re-think the no-booze idea in Magic Kingdom.  With all the chaos and crowds in that park, being able to have a beer would be much appreciated.  The other day we were there we had lunch at Pecos Bill Tavern. That was good too.  Would've been even better with margaritas...

Rapunzel's tower

In front of Splash Mountain.  They ended up not going on this.  Though, I think Lukey was very torn about this because he kept talking about it.  Then, when we were on our way to Georgia then back to Michigan he kept asking about how if the hills we were driving on were faster or slower than Splash Mountain.

On our last night, we went back to the Magic Kingdom at night to go on the Buzz Lightyear ride one more time then see the Electrical Parade and fireworks.  You can't tell from the pictures, but Anna was blowing kisses to all the floats.  They liked the parade a lot. We didn't make it to the fireworks because Anna fell asleep right after the parade so we decided to call it a night. 

Epcot

Epcot was a very fun day. We started off by going in that big golfball on a ride called Spaceship Earth.  Everyone liked that.  It was one of the kids favorite rides of the whole trip.  Most of us liked Soarin' too.  Anna loved it.  Lukey did not.  He cried and then continued to complain about it for the rest of the trip to anyone who was willing to listen, including random people on the bus.  He made it clear that no one was allowed to talk about Soarin'...yet he kept bringing it up.  

We ate lunch in Mexico at La Cantina De San Angel (I think that's what it was called) which was nice because we sat in a gazebo and had a lovely view and it was good to have an afternoon margarita.  We had dinner at Via Napoli, which was had pretty good Italian pizza.  Epcot is a great place for food and drinks!

A cool thing they had at Epcot at each of the countries (I think there's about 11) was Kidcot stations.  These were tables set up in each country where someone would give them a stamp and draw a picture on a fan they made.  Some of the cool ones were their names in Chinese and a picture of Hello Kitty from Japan.  It was cool free souvenir and kept the kids happy about visiting the different countries.  

Another big hit of Epcot were the pandas Pa Bob bought in China.  Lukey named his cub and wanted to take him everywhere he went.  When we made him keep Cub at home he told us to take a picture of him and Cub and requested that we show it to him once and awhile.

We took a boat across the pond back to future world after visiting all the countries.  The only country we didn't visit was Canada because nobody cares about Canada.

Jambo House!

Last week we went on a vacation to Disney.  We didn't tell the kids until the night before we got there, after we had driven to Tifton, GA for a stop on the way.  We met up with Nana and Pa Bob at Chic-fil-A.  They were a little surprised that Nana and Pa were there because they didn't know that they were going on vacation with us.  We then told them that we were going to Disney.  They were a little surprised and excited but also seemed confused.  And then just acted like it was cool, just like an everyday thing to go to Disney. No biggie.  We had a great vacation.  We stayed at the Animal Kingdom Lodge Jambo House.  Luckily, we got upgraded to a Savannah view room on the Kudu Trail there.  We had an awesome view of a lot of animals everyday.  

That building thing in the back was where they fed the animals each morning.  Then they'd put food throughout the Savannah areas so the animals would all roam around.  At about the time we'd wake up each morning, this is what we'd see.  We could sit on the balcony and drink coffee and eat breakfast and look out to this.  Giraffes, zebras, antelope, ostriches, wildbeest, vultures, scimitar-horned oryx, etc. etc.  We absolutely loved this hotel!!

Nana and Pa stayed 2 rooms down from us and basically had the same view.  They liked it too.  

A cool thing about the animals here compared to a zoo is that they had so much room to roam around.  They animals all seemed very happy and well taken care of.  

We had some really good restaurants at the hotel.  This was the quick service place.  

There was a flamingo pond right by the playscape area near the pool.  

Flamingos with a giraffe in the background.

Our pool was fabulous too.  There were two sections of the Animal Kingdom Lodge.  We stayed at the Jambo House, where this picture was taken.  We also went over to the Kidani Village.  Their pool was pretty cool too.  Both had slides.  Kidani Village had a longer slide but smaller pool.  

We had snails at the hotel too!

Luke and Anna slept in a bunk bed.  Luke slept on the top and Anna on the bottom.  It was their first time sleeping on a bunk bed and they seemed to really like it.  

This was outside of Sanaa, which was at the Kidani Village.  We had a great dinner there! 

The ostriches were so handsome!

It was fun watching the giraffes eat and seeing their black tongues.  

On the last morning at the hotel the kids decided they wanted to wear life jackets.  This was the slide at the hotel.  Not as cool as Kidani Village (which I didn't get a picture of), but still pretty fun.  

Of course the animals were cool, but we also loved how pretty everything about Jambo House was. After we left and moved on to the next hotel in Georgia, Anna wrote 'Jambo House' on a piece of paper and put hearts all over it and cried hysterically about how much she missed Jambo House and wanted to go back.  It was sad.  We all miss Jambo House.  

The lobby was pretty amazing too.  

Frankenstein

Lukey and Anna have been talking about going to Frankenstein (Frankenmuth) all summer.  So, last weekend when Kent was up there for baseball we went up there.  The baseball game got cancelled because of rain but we still had fun at the outlets and Zehnders for dinner.  The kids were really bad at the outlets as usual but they had fun at dinner.