MomCat Goes to Disney World - Part I

At long last, it is the much delayed summary of our Disney World trip. I'll try to keep this as short as possible (for me) and entertaining.

The first day of traveling from Houston to Orlando I learned that my four-year-old daughter really hasn't reached the low-maintenance point when it comes to airflight. While my son sat peacefully playing his PSP and reading books with my husband, I was paired in a seat next too Squirmy McWiggleton and her ever changing bag of charms. Packing a lot of things to entertain her was good in the sense that it kept her occupied, but bad because that occupation typically lasted for, oh, around 5 minutes. Then, we'd have to switch to the next thing.

I also learned that Squirmy had an issue with volume control. OK, I knew this before. But, it was magnified in flight. It felt like the entire passenger load of people knew every word that my daughter said both to Orlando and back.

We arrived at Disney, and quickly got our bags and surprisingly our car, thanks to my smart thinking (thank ye very much) that we split up and Hubs take Squirmy to get the rental car while I wait on the bags with my son. Before we knew it, we were at our hotel--the All Star Sports Resort, waiting in a small, but very slow line to check in. Here's a shot of our hotel from the main entrance:

The hotel was kind of nifty on the outside, not so spectacular on the inside. I should say here that I'm a big of a hotel snob. We typically get suites when we can so the kids have a separate room to sleep in from us. Well, this place was clean, and acceptable with decent amenities, but the room was sooo tiny. We knew this going in--our logic was we'd just be there at night to crash so who cares about all the fluff. (For the record, I learned...fluff is good... even if it is just in the evening. I like me some fluff. So sue me.)

Each section of the hotel was dedicated to a sports theme. We stayed in the baseball section. The football was by far our favorite because it had giant helmets on either side and a mock football field complete with yard lines and giant X's and O's and goal posts. But, the kids found their favorite part of our section was the stairs disguised as a giant Coke cup. They had me take pictures of it even.

At long last, we grabbed a less than average lunch at our hotel and made it to the park. Our first stop was Disney Hollywood Studios. One of the first things we saw, was one of the best this day--the live action stunt show. It was so interesting seeing how they film action scenes in movies and watching the car chases, fake falls from buildings and even a guy catching on fire! And, of course, we loved the cameo role by Herbie the Love Bug.

Most of this park was all about shows. We saw a Little Mermaid interactive show that was neat, enjoyed a blast from the past by the Muppet's 3D show, and walked around. It was interesting explaining to my kids just WHO the Muppets were. It makes me sad that they've lived their life without knowing such lovable friends as Fozzy, Beaker or seeing a single episode of Pigs in Space.
By the time we left, it was well into the evening and we were completely fried from the flight and park activities. So, we gladly took our rental car (the best thing we ignored friends' advice on and went ahead and got) and drove to a great little Italian joint and had a fantastic late dinner before crashing.

Tomorrow, I'll update you on our first full day at my favorite park, The Magic Kingdom. Stay tuned for parades, princesses and pirates...oh my! Here's my cute kid pic of this day--because while I don't normally show my kids here, I can't resist sharing this shot of my son and his little sister looking up at him adoringly: