Since Disney is expensive and most of us were on tight budgets, Lindsey spent months doing brilliant research on the best place we could each go buy our tickets, bringing food into the parks and the best places to eat, and which parks were going to be the least crowded each day so we could get the most for our money. Then she and Jordan came up with the best way to do the Fast Passes so we wouldn't spend all day every day waiting in line.
A few days before our timeshare started, the Bells and Riley flew in and Jordan and Kaitlyn drove down from Charleston. We spent a few days catching up and went to take Brown family pictures! My Mom had Naomi Jennings as our photographer because she, Lindsey and I always see her amazing work on Facebook and since then we've been dying to have her take them! We took them outside at Atalaya Castle in Huntington Beach State Park. It got pretty cold, but we had fun! I can't wait to see how they turned out.
Chandler and Tanner were buddies:
The next day we got up early and made the 2 hour drive to Charleston. Jordan, Kaitlyn, and Riley had driven there the night before so we met up with them and then all 3 cars continued the next 6 hours to Orlando. Chandler did awesome! I was really stressing about it because it's such a long drive and Chandler hadn't been crazy about his car seat lately. But Hunter and Halston were sitting next to him and kept him super happy. He hardly cried at all; it couldn't have gone better!
When we made it to Orlando, we unloaded our stuff, ate, made a grocery run, and got a good nights sleep so we would be well rested for our first Disney park as soon as it opened. Our first stop was Epcot!
We were so excited we could hardly handle it. We were the nerds chanting "Disney! Disney! Disney!" as we drove up through the gates.
Josh and Jordan rushed off to get our first Fast Passes while the rest of us jumped in line for the golf ball (or what the rest of the world calls Spaceship Earth, but when we were kids we thought it was a giant golf ball and we've called it that ever since). All of the kids loved it; I think they ended up riding it about 5 times. The ride takes you through the history of the world and the development of knowledge (sounds boring but is actually awesome) and at one part there is a man holding a golden instrument and teaching a few men who were sitting on the ground around him. Each time Kenzie saw it, she would yell "It's the Liahona!"
One great thing about Disney was that the kids could go on most of the rides! For the ones the kids couldn't do, we would trade off with Mom, Dad, and the Bells. We went on a ride that we thought the kids were going to love because it had anamatronic dinosaurs. As it turned out, they found it terrifying and cried the whole time. Except for Chandler, who was fascinated.
The lines weren't super long (especially when you do FastPasses and Child Swap Passes), but they're not so bad anyway when you've got these cute faces to look at.
When it came to "thrill" rides, though, they surprised us! There was a boat ride in Norway (Epcot has a little around the world section where you visit different countries) called the Maelstrom that had a part that slides pretty fast and steep. Tanner was a little freaked out and covered his eyes, but he rode it more than once! Kenzie was in love with it...she just wanted to ride it over and over. Chandler was fine until the drop. That made him cry, but he calmed down pretty fast.
The humidity was making Kenzie's hair super curly and it was so cute:
Tanner and Chandler loved the Mexico boat ride:
They had a cute Finding Nemo ride and there were a bunch of aquariums around it. Chandler's favorite part of the entire day was probably those fish tanks. He got so excited!
At the end of the night, there were some amazing fireworks. Chandler liked them at first but when it got really loud it upset him so we had to cover his ears and sing to calm him down.
The first day was a huge success!
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