Disney Day 1 - Travel & Hollywood Studios

Get ready!  The posts are starting and there are going to be a ton of them!!  

Our Disney adventure kicked off Thursday afternoon.  After school and work, we packed up the van and headed out.  We decided after much debate to take Ben out of school on Friday (not something we wanted to to but it is what worked best for our plans and how we got the best deal on our package).  We were all really excited.  We have never driven to Disney before so that was a new adventure.  It worked out really well.  We enjoyed having our car while we were down there and the drive wasn't too bad.  Ben and Kate are wonderful travelers so that helps.  We drove about halfway on Thursday.  We got to Cordele Georgia and stayed in a hotel for the night.  

 We got up early Friday morning (before the sun was up) and headed out.  We couldn't wait to get to Disney!!  We had a little party in the van when we saw this sign!

 Our first stop was actually at the ESPN Sports area to pick up our race packets for the next day.  All 4 of us were participating in the Tower of Terror race weekend.  We didn't stay too long at the expo but we did get some pictures with the race signs!

 Then it was off to our hotel to check in.  We ended up staying at All Star Sports.  It was not our first choice of hotels but it was what we could get with free dining so we took it.  It was nice enough.  We really didn't spend much time at the hotel so don't really have much to say about the hotel.  It worked well for us.  The kids enjoyed the fun theme and oversized sports stuff.

 We saw our first Mickey as soon as we walked into our room!

 We put down our bags and settled in a bit before hitting the parks.  Our original plan didn't include going to a park on Friday but we decided we wanted to go ahead and check out things.  We headed over to Hollywood Studios.

 Our main reason for going was to meet Wreck It Ralph and Vanellope (we thought it was going to be their last day to meet - but that wasn't true).  Sadly, Vanellope left right before we got up to the front of the line so we only met Ralph.  That was still fun.

 We also met Mr. Incredible and Frozone.

 Then ran into the Green Army Man out on the street.

 We then went over to check out the fun new Frozen area and the Wondering Oaken.  They had a fun "snow" play area.  It was really busy so the kids didn't get to play but they did get some fun Frozen cupcakes.

 We then headed over to the Tower of Terror area for Characterpalooza.  I had read about this awesome opportunity to meet characters each afternoon with almost no crowds.  It was awesome!!!  I would highly recommend it.  We met 7 characters in about 20 minutes with no lines.  It was so cool!!

 We then went to the Frozen sing along.  It was so much fun.  Kate fell asleep waiting for it to start and the minute the music started she popped up and was singing along at the top of her lungs.  It was so cute!!  Actually we were all singing along.  It is a not to be missed Disney activity.

 We were then lucky to have fast passes to ride Toy Story Mania which is one of our favorites!

 And then we rode Star Tours a couple of times.  The kids love that ride!!  We rode it a total of 4-5 times.

 We didn't have any dinner plans because we didn't know how our evening would play out.  We were able to snag a last minute reservation at the Sci Fi Diner.  It was where I wanted to eat if we could so it was great to get a reservation.  Disney tip - always check for last minute reservations if there is somewhere you want to eat.  It was a lot of fun sitting in the cars and watching the old Sci Fi movies. Food was just Ok but the atmosphere was lots of fun!

We called it a pretty early day since we had a really full day lined up on Saturday.