Day 1: The Magic Kingdom (AKA Disneyland, Orlando)

Magic Kingdom...Oh how I love this one! It was a blast, and we made day one a MARATHON! I will have to post my own review and thoughts on the rides (sorry-attractions) we did and the places we ate in another post. For now I will just give you a few pictures of the fun from day one (I should note that we DID go back in the middle of the day for a few hours to swim, eat dinner and rest a bit so we could stay up until midnight with the excited kiddos! But I will say that it takes SOOOO long to drive from place to place-IE resort to park-that it was totally not worth missing the time at the park. Transportation was a bit of a hassle, but we can talk about that more later)
First thing the kids wanted to do was go to Space Mountain, so we did, and it had NO wait...we still got a rider swap (a MUST for families with babies or children too short to ride). A rider swap means you walk up to the "cast member" at the line for the ride with baby and short kids and all and you ask if you can get a rider swap. They look at you and small kids and hand you a rider swap pass. Then, in our case, Wes would go on the ride with the tall enough kids while I waited outside with the too short kids. He waits in the full line. When he and tall kids come out, I take the rider swap and the kids and we go to the fast pass line, hand them our rider swap and go on the ride with much less of a wait. Rider Swap is good for only 3 people but most rides just let us take all the tall enough kids that wanted to go. I did have one confrontation with a cast member-he said "Um..you can only have 3 people-not you AND 3 people." I said "Oh...sorry, down the line they said to just take all of the as I could not choose which child not I like least...my bad" I was a bit jerky but his attitude made me mad...Either way, I took the 3 tall enough kids with me.

Oh-many of the rides have a 40 inch minimum height and Kindle is exactly that, so she could go on most rides. But not Space Mountain. Here we are waiting for them with our rider swap:

I did not get pictures of a lot of the stuff, but I did get some fun ones. One of the really fun lines (yes I said FUN LINE) was for the Winnie the Pooh ride. I think the line was almost more fun than the ride. Here are a few pictures of the kids enjoying some of the activities in the line (the last one is on the ride):

Thank you Disney for thinking of that!

We of course went on it's a Small World (No Disney trip would be complete without this favorite) (BTW-on one of the last 2 days we went on this ride for like the 4th time and Solace took the camera and took pictures of her faves...watch for those pics in an upcoming post):

Disney LOVES to celebrate with you and so they will provide free pins for you to wear to let people know what you are celebrating. So, all our kids had "1st Time" pins that they wore around all week (I had a Happy Birthday one that I wore on my birthday and a couple other days). One cast member saw their pins and asked them if they wanted to play a ring toss game with him. They of course did. Here are the kids doing the ring toss:

We also went on the Jungle Cruise after which Solace decided she wants to be a Jungle Cruise Cast Member when she grows up (because they get to tell funny jokes and ride a ride all day!):

And of course Buzz Lightyear. After which we stopped at the Zurg photo op:

Wes and the kids from Kindle on up were on Splash Mountain during the fireworks, They said they could see them from the ride and they were awesome. Everest and I watched them from near Splash Mountain:

We saw Mickey's Philharmagic 3D show at the very end of the night when we were pooped. Here we are waiting in the lobby:

It was a fantastic day!!