Disney- Hollywood Studios & Magic Kingdom

The day after Mary's wedding, we flew to Orlando to meet up with my Mom and her sisters at Disney World! We were really excited to spend time with relatives that I haven't seen for a long time and to give Elliot his first theme park experience. My Aunt Wendi found a super rental house near the parks and used her extensive Disney knowledge to plan our itinerary. 

The Loback Sisters

Welcome to Disney Hollywood Studios!

Elliot hugging Jake the Pirate

This was a much warmer reaction than the Easter Bunny got

We bumped into a few characters coming out of their changing rooms on the way to their spots

Oh hey Pluto!

One great thing we had going for us was that my mom rented a scooter. She's recovering from ankle surgery and can't walk or stand for long periods of time. My Aunt Trisha had a scooter too. The scooters let us skip a lot of the lines. It was definitely the first real perk of my mom's crazy injury saga!

The adventurous group- Aaron, Brynlee, Uncle Troy, and Cassidy.
They don't let pregnant ladies like me on the fun roller coasters. 

We hit up the pool in the rental house after that first night. The Woolf girls had picked up some color flashing fake ice cubes from dinner that day, and we had fun tossing them around. 

The next day was Magic Kingdom, which was my favorite because it had the most rides that I was allowed to go on. It was also the most crowded. 

The crew at Magic Kingdom

It was a little crowded :)

We knew we were later going to be visiting the castle in Spain that the Disney castle was based on, so we snapped this picture for reference. 

Elliot and Mimi were doing some serious bonding.

By this point, Elliot was on board with the idea of going on rides. If we wandered around with him in the stroller for too long, he would start asking to go on another ride. 

Buster Bubbs and I flying solo on the carousel 

Kissing his horse thank you after the ride.
My boy is a little bit adorable sometimes. 

Very intensely playing in the gift shop after the Winnie the Pooh ride. Mom and I were quite content to enjoy the air conditioning while he played for a bit. 

The classic teacups ride

The dumbo ride had a genius line management thing where they gave you a restaurant style buzzer and let you play in an air conditioned playground instead of standing outside for half an hour or more. Honestly, waiting in this line was one of the highlights of the day and we were a little disappointed when our buzzer went off. I had to climb up and drag Elliot out of the net tunnels. 

Elliot couldn't reach the up/down lever, but loved telling Daddy which way to make the elephant go!

The Barnstormer- the only roller coaster Elliot and I were able to ride the whole time. Elliot LOVED it, even though his Mimi had to closer her eyes most of the ride!

At this point, I left with Elliot to put him down to sleep. He refused to fall asleep in the stroller, and it was impractical for me to drive half an hour each way to take him home for a nap during the day. We were hoping he would make up for it by sleeping extra long at night. He got enough to make it pretty happily (if also at times quite groggily) until day 4. But you will have to read on to get to that exciting part!

I thought that park closed at 9ish, and expected the rest of the crew back around then. I started getting nervous when it was 11 and had no word from them. The last text I had gotten was from Aaron several hours earlier saying "We got enlisted by some guy to go on a treasure hunt!" I started to suspect that the treasure hunt was an elaborate ruse to murder them in some Disney alleyway. Fortunately, the treasure hunt had been exactly the magical experience it was advertised to be. I didn't know they were staying for extended hours, and Aaron's phone had died.