Disney!!! Day 1, Hollywood Studios

Around the first of the year we heard about the Disney 'Give a Day, Get a Day' volunteer program. (Thanks Kristin Buchanan!) So we immediately signed up! There were so many opportunities but we needed to find one that we could all do as a family. With Nick in college it's almost impossible! So we selected an easy one, we had to buy fifteen canned goods from list at a church in Yulee & donate them to their food bank. I signed us up online, then on the volunteer day I went to Wal-Mart & purchased fifteen cans of items from their list per person volunteering, Nick, Myself, Roman & Dallon. Then I delivered them. Sound too good to be true? I know! About a week later Disney emailed four vouchers to exchange for one day at Disney. I heard that you could upgrade so I called Disney for the scoop. They deduct one day's cost from the package you upgrade to. We bought the Florida's resident's four day package so it cost $21/ea for Nick & I, $17/ea for Roman & Dallon. (Rocco was $89.) I had been trying to figure out how to plan an affordable trip to the happiest place on earth and this truly made a Disney vacation possible for us! Praise be to God!! This would be Rocco's first visit and he was looking forward to meeting Mickey & Minney!! I booked a reservation at Royal Parc Suites through Bookit.com & we planned it for the beginning of May. We had to do it quickly because the package we were upgrading to expired May 25th. We were very nervous about our hotel, especially the closer we got. But we were very pleased with this French Quarters themed hotel! We highly recommend this hotel. It was secure, clean, spacious,had a great pool & had FREE breakfast! Not just danishes either! REAL breakfast!! That's $40/day savings for our family right there! We probably will visit this hotel again. We truly wanted this to be a relaxing non-rushed vacation, so we did not get up extremely early like we normally do for vacation. We left Hilliard at about 8:30am, stopped for breakfast at Cracker Barrel & arrived at Hollywood Studios at 12:30. We did not plan on being at the parks from open to close, we left in time for the kids to still have time playing in the pool. Our pool was open until 11pm!! We thought that was great!

First stop, Hollywood Studios

When we purchased our tickets they gave us four 'voluntEAR' pins & one 'First Visit' pin. We wore them everyday! We quickly found out that the workers liked to thank you for volunteering and ask you what you did. After the first few times of telling them we bought non-perishables for a church food bank I almost felt guilty for getting off so easy! So I quickly added some humor to the answer by telling the kids to tell the workers we pushed whales back into the ocean. You should have seen their faces!! (Of course, we told them we were kidding.)

This is a picture of Rocco catching confetti at Playhouse Disney. This place holds a special place in my heart. I remember bringing Roman & Dallon here for Roman's 3rd birthday!! Dallon was just 3 months old. They had Rolie Polie Olie & Bear in the Big Blue House & Stanley back then! I miss those shows. This time they had Handy Manny (which Rocco loves) & some of the classics; Mickey & Pooh. (Pooh is my favorite Disney character.) This was Rocco's first expression at seeing Mickey in person! Priceless

Not really knowing what our boys were going to be like with rides we thought we'd start out slow. We went on the simulated ride Star Tours and I just knew Rocco would get sick since he throws up when we drive to Jacksonville. Surprisingly no sickness & he loved it! Waiting in line, he was full of questions!
Roman was excited! We didn't get to catch everything since we weren't staying from open to close and rush~rush~rushing. But we did not miss the Power Rangers!

Strike a pose!

One of the boys' favorites was the 'Honey, I Shrunk the Kids' Movie Set Adventure. It was hot (not as hot as it is there now) so this playground that had miscellaneous water sprays everywhere was perfect! I could not talk the boys into riding Tower of Terror which kinda made me growl, mostly because I was concerned that they wouldn't ride any of the fun rides coming up in the next few days. Boy was I wrong! They rode & loved most of the rides! When we had enough and started getting hungry for dinner we decided to leave and grab some food on our way back to the hotel. After a disappointing dinner at Chili's the kids played in the pool for HOURS!! It was a great family atmosphere and almost everyone was nice. There was one incident that we witnessed but were not involved in thank goodness. Guess that's bound to happen considering the guests have an open bar from 5-7pm. Roman & Rocco played water football with a bunch of guys while Dallon played on his own. Nick & I sat & watched. This is the view from just outside our door. Just inside the door. The boys slept on the pull out bed so they could watch TV & we had our own bedroom. We had a mini kitchen that included a fridge, coffee maker, microwave, stove top & dishwasher but we never used anything more than the fridge.
Good Night, Animal Kingdom tomorrow!