Disney World 2015 (Day 1)

It's the first official day of our Disney Trip..   Today we got up early, checked out of the Shades of Green and headed over to the Port Orleans Riverside resort. Since Disney does not allow pets in the hotels, we checked Morla (our tortoise) into the Best Friends pet resort which conveniently is right across the street from our resort.  Port Orleans is an absolutely beautiful resort that is designed to resemble the old Plantation homes found in the Old South.

Port Orleans Riverside Resort - Alligator Bayou 

When we checked in our room wasn't ready so we headed off to the Magic Kingdom to start our day.  The hotel would text us a message saying what our room number would be.  We headed over to Best Friends Pet Care and got Morla checked in for the week.  Best Friends is awesome and they were thrilled to get a Tortoise to care for.

It's every mom's dream to see the excitement on their kids faces when they first enter Disney World and they see the castle for the first time..  And sure enough, the excitement was there, the kids freaked when they saw the castle for the first time.   But so was a massive thunderstorm.  We tried not to let a bit of rain ruin our day though and so we trudged through the rain and made our way to Frontierland. We were all starving and so we headed to Peco's Bills for some burgers.

Since we were already wet, we decided to head over to Splash Mountain for our first ride.  The rain had dispersed the crowds and we were able to walk right onto the ride.

Garrett knew this ride from playing a player made Little Big Planet level that someone had done of Splash Mountain. Because of this, he recognized the music and much of the stuff going on.

Ash hung on to mom for dear life for the big drop but overall the kids seemed to enjoy it very much and said they wanted to ride it again.    Luckily we didn't get on the third boat that tends to absolutely soak the people riding in it and we didn't get too wet from the ride.

The next ride we headed to was Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.  Both Garrett and Ashleigh were really looking forward to this ride but when Ashleigh started seeing it in real life, she started getting a bit frightened by it.  She found the steep banking to be a bit intimidating and was afraid that she would fall out of the train. I had to assure her that no, she would not fall out and she did indeed ride the ride but it would not be considered one of her favorites. LOL   Garrett however, loved it and wanted to ride it again (which we probably will).

After catching the two big rides we got lucky and were just in time to catch the Festival of Fantasy Parade.  We lucked out and got a spot for all of us up front.  The kids had so much fun waving at all the various characters that they got to see.

We had  reservations at Chef Mickey's for dinner so we walked over the the contemporary resort and checked in.  The food has improved greatly since the last time I had been there and the character interaction was great.. Ash and Garrett got to see Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Pluto and Donald ( a couple of them even came over twice).. Minnie even snuck in a surprise kiss on Dad.

After dinner we hopped on the Monorail and took a tour of the various resorts on the loop and watched some of the fireworks.  We were all exhausted so we decided to call it a night and head back to the hotel, however, we didn't realize that Alyssa's prepaid phone needed to be renewed that afternoon so we missed the text message.  After a quick trip to the front desk, we headed off to building 28 to room 2803 in Alligator Bayou and got settled in.   The room is amazing, decorated in very rustic looking furniture and with a cute little Murphy bed that pulls down with Louis the Alligator as well as Tiana and Naveen from "The Princess and the Frog".

Two Queen Beds

The Murphy Bed

There's a pool almost right outside the door to our room so we all had a nice swim before hitting the sack.  Needless to say, the kids (and mom and dad) crashed hard and had a great nights sleep.