Pete and Tanner: February 2012

My favorite thing in Hollywood was the Beauty and the Beast show. Reagan loves Belle, and didn't take her eyes off the stage.  During the parts she doesn't like (kill the Beast song) she kept saying "My want them to be married now!" It was so cute, and we videoed about the whole show and can hear her saying it in the background. : )

This is what she wanted to do in the gift shop... get 'comfortable' and read. : ) Ashton was around the corner buying her the book we were reading as a Christmas gift, and Mom was buying her the Cinderella doll house Castle as a birthday present. She got a little spoiled this trip, but... it was her first time! I wouldn't have changed a thing, it was perfect. : )

The Little Mermaid show. Would. Have. Skipped. It.
We got crammed like sardines into this little waiting room that was dark and stunk like fish (I can only imagine it in the heat of the summer) and the show was ah-ight. I think Reagan liked the first few scenes with glowing fish swimming in a black light, strange, and Ariel singing was cool. Then this 20 foot Ursula came out on stage. Talk about freak Reagan out!!! She hasn't watched that movie but a couple times, and has always made me skip past the scenes with her. It may not have been, but it felt like Ursula was in half the show!  Reagan waved her hand in front of her face telling her to "go away!" so we did our best to distract her with an iPhone. It worked alright, but I couldn't wait to get out of there.

Churro break.

Another wrong move on our part. The Great Movie Ride. Horrible for Reagan and she had to be distracted with an iPhone again. Boy they fooled me, all glamorous when you walk in, my fault for not researching beforehand, but it was NOT for children. I was thinking the 'glamour' side of Hollywood, nope. More like, Aliens, Casablanca, Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Public Enemy. You were pretty much riding through the sets, with aliens popping out at you, snakes, and a mob war with guns firing in the slums of Chicago. They even try to make it more real when the gangster kicks off the tour guide and holds our car of passengers captive with a gun. I was just trying to distract Reagan to keep from panicking. There were good ones too, Mary Poppins, Singing in the Rain, and half of Wizard of Oz. There was the yellow brick road scene, cool, but I thought the ride through Munchkin land was sure to creep her out... little weird since she hadn't seen the movie and these creepy kid dolls are popping out of the bushes...? Maybe when she's older she would like it. She really didn't seem to effected by the whole thing, I think we distracted her in time.

Now this was funny, there are people everywhere all over Disney that take your pictures for you to purchase later. They took a group shot for us, it was great, and the lady wanted to take pictures of Reagan by herself. I didn't share with her that we had already taken 8,000 of her in the last 4 days, but we took a step back and let her do her thing. I stayed quiet, not getting involved and was really curious how she would do in front of another 'photographers' lens. It was hysterical! She was such a little model, and it was so strange seeing someone else give her instructions on how to pose. The pictures turned out okay, but this picture just said it all. Yeah, I was just a little proud right then : )

The one thing I remember as a kid was the 'Honey I Shrunk the Kids' play area. I was really cool, but the way it was layed out, you were sure to loose your kid! We made sure to have one of us with her always, but then she'd go down a slide with one of us at the bottom, and then we couldn't find each other. It was impossible to stay together! I was okay because she was having fun, and it did help finding her dressed in polka dots.

We stayed till mid afternoon and then came back for a relaxed evening at the resort instead of going for the Fantasmic firework show. We had already seen two night shows, and it was nice just eating pizza by the pool for a change. Alden and Ashton both had massages done, and came and sat with us in the hot tub after we put Reagan to bed. (While Mom was in the condo with the Biscuit.)  I felt so spoiled sitting in the hot tub, especially since we don't have a bath tub at home, not to mention we are rarely without Reagan.

It was a good day, despite Ursula and the mob wars... ; )

Surprised? Yeah, I'm not done with Disney yeeet!

I've posted 3 days so far, and 3 more to go... whew! I have to admit, I know I said I would be posting a lot this last month but I have a really good excuse. Unlike my pregnancy with Reagan, this one has brought some morning sickness. Just enough to make me miserable and looking at the computer screen was making it even worse. Wonderful for a photography-addict who edits their own images! A few days ago I could not keep my eyes open and slept about 11-12 hours and the next morning I felt great. So now it's day 4 and I'm beginning to think I'm past the sickness, and only 31 weeks to go! I can now look at the computer, and with Marti's nudge, I'm getting back to Disney : )

Our 4th day, we went back to the Magic Kingdom because there was A LOT we still wanted to cover. We got in first thing and bee-lined for the Dumbo ride. I have pictures of us as kids on this ride and HAD to get some of Reagan. She loved it : )

(Man... I wish I had those pictures but it would take some digging, I'll post them sometime.)

We kept tabs on our iPad Disney app that gave us up-to-date wait times on all the rides, most awesome thing EVER. I would say this was the best way to work a day in Disney. The app said there was no wait for Pirates of the Caribbean, so Mom and Dave took Reagan for the Pooh ride again while we went with Alden to see Sparrow. It was pretty cool, and AWESOME to literally walk straight onto an empty boat like the ride was deserted. When we got out, Ashton had eventually made it over there so we went through again with her. After that we were dying to get back to Reagan, that was the only time we weren't with her all week. We must have only been gone 20 minutes but I was worried about missing out on her Disney excitement.

We would have been fine doing only Reagan rides the entire time, it was so much fun...

Yeah, we kinda like her : )

Uh oh, it's 10:30 and Daddy is already hungry... I'm telling you the man can eat.

Burgers for "brunch," I guess you would say...

Crazy.

We spent some time in Tomorrowland. The Buzz Lightyear ride overall was of no interest to her but she liked seeing Buzz. It involved shooting targets and Reagan did NOT want to participate, but Junior and I liked it : ) After that we rode the People Mover that tours Tomorrowland like a monorail a couple floors up. We loved getting to relax for a few minutes except I left my phone on the ride... eventually got it back after the 20 minute wait for my car to come back around.

Tomorrowland is right off the castle, and we could hear the 'Dream Along with Mickey' show starting. We ran over and Reagan was enthralled with the show (probably watched the video 30 times.) She loved seeing the princesses of course, and I felt so satisfied to check another show off our list. I tried so hard to plan everything and somewhat map out our stops because there is so much walking to do already while you're there. I know myself, and I would be SO disappointed if I forgot or didn't know about something until it was too late.

One (or two) more stops at the Tiki Room : )

We all headed back to the resort for an afternoon break. The plan was to chill for a bit and head back to Epcot for the laser show that night. Everyone fell asleep but us, and I was feeling the idle time burn a hole in me - Junior too. Ashton was the only one we could wake up, so we decided to head back to the Magic Kingdom for a bit and ride the monorail over to Epcot for dinner and the show.

I would have thought the late afternoon would be busy, especially with PERFECT weather, but it wasn't at all! We strolled and hit the Tiki Room aaagain. Her favorite by far, I think we went 5 times total. : )

The monorail ride over to Epcot put her to sleep (finally) and we didn't wake her up until we were in the park with food in hand. Worked out great.

We got our chicken sandwiches and fries and found a spot to sit for the show. The ducks came up to us from the pond and were CRAZY about our food! I almost got bit a couple times!

I love this picture, I love my camera. It was sooo dark here and you would never know it. : )

The show was neat, but it was a windy night and the smoke from the fireworks didn't stay long enough to see the lasers. Bummer. We were also told that there was no "best view" of the show and it was the same from all around the pond. Wrong. We were towards the back and got a great view of these horrible pine trees. I mean really... With the way everything Disney is flawless and perfectly manicured, they have these scraggly 10 pine trees at the center of the show?! I'll never get that one.