The Curtis Clan in Walt Disney World

23-29 January 2009

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The Happiest Place On Earth

WDW Cinderellas Castle.jpg

The big-ticket item for the family Christmas was booking 7 days at Walt Disney World (WDW) at the end of January when Randy has to be there for work a few days. AAA was running a special in addition to the off season rates that seemed too good to pass up (buy a 4 nights and tickets, get 3 free), especially since Randy had to be in Orlando anyway. Given the age of our little “princesses” (a word that is applied to all girls under the age of 10 at WDW) we figured yanking them out of preschool and kindergarten for a week and half wouldn’t negatively affect their long term learning prospects too bad. Besides visiting EPCOT is like a going to a science center/foreign land right? Follow links to the WAY too many pictures.

The Magic Kingdon

Posing with Mickey

(at Hollywood Studios)

We left on a Wednesday after Jane got out of school, driving to Nashville before stopping for the night at the Airport Marriott, about 1/3 of the way there. The next day was our really long day where we didn’t get into Orlando until about 8:30 at night. It started off poorly with our DVD player that the girls used to watch movies refusing to work. A stop at a Wal-Mart and Target got us hooked up with a headphone splitter and DVD cleaner. The cleaner didn’t work and we decided it was dead. Fortunately we had the laptop and a power inverter, so we were back in business. We not sure we could have done without it. We stayed at WDW at the French Quarter Port Orleans Resort room 4306.

Mom and the girls on the Port Orlean Balcony

Girls playing on the Mardi Gras Gators on the way to the pool

WDW JC with Port Orleans Mardi Gras Gators.jpg

With our seven days we wanted to go to each park at least once, and figured multiple trips to the Magic Kingdom and EPCOT. So it went Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios EPCOT, MK, E and than MK again. On this page are our favorite pictures from the MK (there are links to pictures at the other parks at the bottom)..

The first ride on the first day - the Tea cups

More fun on the Tea cups on the 2nd day at Magic Kingdom

Jane on our 3rd day to Magic Kingdom on her favortie ride

Actually the girls now say Aladin's Magic Carpet Ride is their favorite

No doubt in part because of their Mother's displeasure of the spitting camels

On the Dumbo ride which is essentially the same as the magic carpet one

but without the spitting camels

Sure they're common but the carousel is always a pleasure

(dig those safety belts)

Dad and Cate on the Goofy roller coaster

Dad and Jane on the Goofy roller coaster

After primarily experiencing theme parks from a Six Flags point of view, it was interesting to see how parks differed unexpectantly from the home town product, when at first many of the rides were a direct copy. The roller coasters offer the clearest difference: Six Flags has a large number of exceptionally thrilling coasters which appeal to the pre-teens, teenagers and 20 somethings. Disney on the other hand has only a few and would quickly bore that demographic. It still proved too thrillers for the 6 ½ year old.

Dad and Jane showing thier feelings about the Space Mountain roller coaster

Photo ops are more prevalent at Disney, whether at cut out signs, statues or with the numerous characters at the designated character spots (see links at the bottom for pictures with the characters).

A much more agreeable space attraction:

posing as Toy Story aliens

Bethany in fear of Cruella Deville

Curti Clan at Cinderella Fountain

Cate Mom and Jane riding the monorail

Jane in time out?

Dad sporting the Cate backpack

Dad and the girls at Cinderella's castle

A major part of our experience was the eating. When we purchased the vacation, we decided to sign up for the Deluxe food plan, which costs an extra $102/day for the four of us. While that might sound like a lot, going to McDonald’s comes to $15-20 a pop for us anymore and stopping at the Cracker Barrel comes close to $40 with tip. Since it wasn’t convenient to cook for ourselves or even go to that level of restaurants, it seemed like a pretty good deal. For that price, we got one sit down meal a day, one fast food meal and one “snack” meal. The meal plan becomes an exceptionally good deal if you want a “character” meal, where ~5 characters come and meet you at the table for some personal time and pictures. Given the ages of our girls, the princess character meals were almost a given so we signed up for all those meals we could. The Cinderella Castle Brunch Buffet was already booked up by the time we decided to go. The WDW tip books suggest calling when the reservation lines open at 7 am 6 months before the desired reservation date (yes its that crazy. Forget the mouse, forget the Pooh bear; the princess gig is wear the deniro is). We were able to make reservations for the “Princess Storybook Dinning at the Ackershus Royal Banquet Hall” in the Norway section of EPCOT twice (there are reasons why Norwegian restaurants are not more common in the US) and the Cinderella dinner at the 1900 Park Fare restaurant of the Grand Floridian. All of these would have exceeded the one day meal plan total costs for that meal alone.

Cate enjoying a strawberry at breakfast

Jane displaying her Mickey Waffle at the Crystal Palace breakfast buffett

Since we already had paid for the meal plans, we were like “what the heck” and signed up for the Mary Poppins and the Winnie the Pooh and friends breakfast buffets too. That was probably a bit overkill as by the 4th and 5th character meals, the thrill had passed and the girls were having trouble getting up from their meal for another picture. Fortunately we had two non-character meals: one at the Animal Kingdom Lodge’s Boma with global food buffet (they had fries and chicken nuggets so the girls were happy) and the charming/kitschy 50s Prime Time Café a 1950s comfort food of home cooking with Formica tables, 1950s TV clips and a wait staff dispensing parental dinning guidance regarding finishing your plate, elbows on the table, etc.). Generally speaking we always had plenty of food (actually too much usually per person). At the end of the week, we burned up the unused snack certificates on candy to take home.

Mom and the girls waiting for fireworks on our 1st day

WDW BJC with Cinderellas castle at night.jpg

Three pooped princesses

On the last day at WDW we let the girls

spend their Christmas $ from Grandpa and

allowance on what they wanted

despite Bethany's edict of no more Barbies

(at least they got horses as part of the package and thier first watch for when they can tell time).

Magic Kingdom Pictures
EPCOT, Hollywood Sudios and Animal Kingdom Pictures
Walt Disney World Characters Picturess
Walt Disney World Characters Pictures - Princesses and then some

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