Some more adventures

Besides rides, shows, parades, fireworks, and food, there are some "hobbies" that are easy to get sucked into while visiting the world. Fortunately for us, our kids were into the free one: character meet and greets. The competition was fierce: Who could get the most autographs? Logan and Kelsey got the upper hand almost immediately: on our second park day, while Grant was at his homeschool class at Animal Kingdom, the 2 conspirators were at the front of the crowd at morning rope drop. We quickly made our way into Camp Minnie Mickey and met up with at least 6 or 7 characters (pictures to come later). Within a few days, Grant had found those characters and caught up.

Since we mainly travelled in a pack, they continued to be neck and neck. The autograph books were filling up fast, along with our photo pass and my memory card.

Then came the turning point. One evening at Magic Kingdom, someone handed us 5 fast passes for Space Mountain. We thought we were done with Space Mountain, as Kelsey's very first experience at Disney world was to be whisked unwittingly into this vortex. She came out crying, we made nice and promised never to go near it again.

Fast forward to the fast passes. This was pretty amazing to us, because about a week earlier, we handed an unsuspecting, adventurous looking family of 5 our fastpasses to Expedition Everest, because while 4 of us thought that ride was the best thing around, one certain little girl decided she was NOT going to ride it a third time. So when we were randomly chosen to receive someone's fast passes to Space Mountain, well we had to accept them. Guess who started crying at the thought of being dragged on that ride once again? Yup you guessed it. And Kelsey cried too (I kid, I would have done it again!)

We decided to split up. The boys would get hurtled through space in pitch blackness, while Kelsey and I had girl time. We headed straight for the princesses. 3 princesses and 3 fairies later, Kelsey was the undeniable winner in the autograph category.



The other hobby that many get into? Pin collecting. We abstained until Jason bought Grant a safari type hat with several pins on it. The only problem was that Grant didn't really want to wear the hat. I think it was one of those things Jason really liked so he used Grant as the excuse to buy it. The cool thing about pin trading is that most (if not all) of the Disney cast members wear pins, and will trade with you. If you see a pin you want, just trade with them for one you have but don't want. They will take anything and they'll let you trade for any of their pins. Next time, before we go I am going to try to find a bunch of Disney pins on ebay for trading. They are just too expensive to buy in the parks.

Besides the theme parks, we also visited Disney's two water parks, Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon. Here the kids are posing for me as we entered Typhoon Lagoon.



I'll have much more on the water parks. We had so much fun at both of them.