Disney World 2017 - Day 2 - Legoland

On day two of our trip, we woke up shortly before 8 am and packed up our things to check out of the hotel to head to Legoland. The Hampton Inn we stayed at had a very nice breakfast area set up. This was not just coffee and cold bagels, but they had juice, pastries, eggs, Canadian bacon, a waffle making station, fresh fruit, and more. We ate a quick breakfast and got on our way around 9:30 or so.

It took only a few minutes to drive to Legoland and by the time we parked and made our way to the gates, it was just after the Park opened at 10 am.

Ready for an amazing day!

As recommended by our excellent travel agent, Karen, we headed straight to the back of the park to work our way to the front, and thereby avoid the heaviest crowds (if you want to follow along, you can find a map of the park here). This was easier said than done, as every corner we turned brought something new and interesting to look at. Anywhere you go in Legoland, there is something really cool made out of Lego bricks to look at.

On our way, we saw the first signs that it was a Star Wars weekend at Legoland, as we ran into Boba Fett and Zam Wesell. Emma wasn't interested in posing with them, but Ben wanted me to join him for the photo op. Who am I to say no?

We made it three-quarters of the way to the back when we broke down and rode our first ride, Project X, a mouse-trap style roller coaster. Emma, usually the most fearless one, was nervous while waiting in the short line, but both kids loved it. 

Next, we hit a couple of nearby rides that we had heard usually had long lines due to the slower nature of the rides: the Boating School and the Driving School. The kids had fun on both rides as the boats and cars are not on rails, so they can actually be steered by the person at the wheel. I think the boat ride was the better of the two as the Driving School ride seemed to be very short, given how slow the cars went. I don't think either one was able to make a single lap of the track.

Then we headed over to the Flying School roller coaster, a steel hanging coaster where the track is above you and your feet are hanging in thin air. Again, due to the early time, there was almost no line for this ride yet, so we only waited a few minutes before it was our turn. Ben and Emily loved it so much that we got right back in line and rode it a second time right away.

The Flying School roller coaster was at the very back of the park, excluding the water park that we were skipping, so we now started working our way to the front again. After a quick water break, we tried Rescue Academy, a fun, firefighting activity. Four teams competed by climbing onto Lego fire trucks and propelling them down a short track by pumping large handles up and down. Then we all jumped out and Ben and Emily aimed fire hoses at a "burning" building while Mariah and I operated more hand pumps to pump the water. Then it was back on the truck to race back to the finish line. 

After saving the day, we next headed over to Coastersaurus, a wooden coaster with some nice hills. This one had a little bit of a line but was still probably less than a 20 minute wait. It is a nice ride and was a big hit with both kids.

Across the way from Coastersaurus is Safari Trek, so we decided to give that a shot. This was probably our longest line of the whole trip, maybe 30 minutes or so, and it was a long wait for not much ride. It is a slow, short safari ride, in some little self-propelled cars on a track. During the ride you get to look at some very nice animal models, most of which you can see from outside the ride without having to wait in a line. Oh well.

We then backtracked a little bit to head to Ninjago world. This area had some cool Lego statues, dragons and scaled up ninja mini-figs that Ben was able to easily name. It also had a bit of a play area where kids can do some ninja training, like a rock climbing wall.

Ninja Training in Ninjago Land

There is one ride in the area, the creatively named "Lego Ninjago: The Ride," an extremely cool 4-D moving, shooting ride. It seats four people per car, which moves down a track, spinning around in different directions as you move past multiple 3-D movie screens. Each person wears a pair of 3-D glasses and can thrust their hand out over some sensors in front of them which will then shoot out a fireball that appears on the movie screens. As you move from screen to screen, there are ninjas and monsters jumping around everywhere for you to attack. The ride has smoke and water spray effects timed with the action on-screen, and it keeps score for each player. Ben got the high score for our team with 176,000 points.

By the time we finished the Ninjago ride, it was around 1 o'clock in the afternoon, so we decided to eat lunch at the nearby Lego City Burger Kitchen. This was probably a mistake, as the place was slam-packed, probably due to its central location in the park. Although it took a long time to order, and then just as long to get the food, it was very good and everyone enjoyed it. 

After lunch, we decided to head over to the Imagination Zone. This area had some areas with piles of Lego bricks for the kids to play and build in and a room set up with a dozen or so video game consoles where the kids could play Lego video games (Ben was immediately drawn to this room, but we told him "no way," and that he could play video games at home). They also had a larger build room with several ramps and rails in it. Kids could go up to a counter and either get some wheels, or a block that let you attach a Lego creation to the rail so that your bricks could "fly" down the sloped railing. Ben took advantage of this to try out a few flying creations. The only downside was that they had a very limited set of bricks to build with in this room, mainly larger blocks, so you couldn't really built anything detailed.

Ben building a creation to fly down the railings in the background.

The coolest part of the Imagination Zone, though, was the display of Star Wars models, built by a local Lego club. These ranged from a huge AT-AT to some table-sized battle scenes and were very cool to look at.

Our next stop after leaving the Imagination Zone was the Kid Power Tower: a cool ride where you sit in pairs around a tall tower and work in teams to pull a rope which raises your seat in the air. The more you pull on the rope the higher your seats go, up to maybe 30 feet or so, and then when you let go of the rope, you gently drop back down. I rode with Emma and she had great fun going up and down, over and over again.

Next up, we stopped in a cool, two level, climbing and play area where the kids on the top floor could shoot foam balls out of air powered guns as the kids on the lower floor, who could put the balls into cannons that would shoot them up in the air. This was a great spot to get some shade from the hot Florida sun, and let the kids run and climb around for a bit.

After this, we headed across the park to the Lego Kingdoms area, where Merlin's Challenge, an old carnival style ride which spins riders in a circle.

We next tried to ride the Dragon roller coaster, but after 5 minutes or so the long line had not moved an inch. We decided to skip it for the moment, as it was starting to get late in the afternoon and the park closes at 6 pm.

So we bailed on the Dragon and instead the kids rode the Royal Joust, a ride where they got to ride around a jousting arena on Lego horses.

Ready to joust!

This turned out to be a stroke of luck for us, because while the kids and I waited in line, Mariah waited outside and was approached by an park employee who, completely unprompted, gave her a free fast-pass to the Dragon roller coaster! After the kids were done jousting, we headed back over to the Dragon. The line was moving now, but the wait was up to 45 minutes. Our fast passes let us jump straight to the front of the ride and we were seated in less than 5 minutes.

I love Emma's face in this one. She is in roller coaster heaven!

The Dragon was actually a cool little roller coaster, as it weaves it's way slowly through the castle first, where you get to see some scenes with knights and dragons before it exits the castle and turns into a more traditional coaster.

Next we walked over to Miniland USA, a huge area in the middle of the park where they have intricately built models of famous landmarks. These cityscapes were mind blowing in their creativity and attention to detail. The kids excitedly ran from one place to another yelling out all the little hidden things they would see. Because it was Star Wars weekend, there were even tiny little R2-D2 robots hidden all over the different sets that the kids took great joy in finding and showing to us. One could easily spend hours in this area discovering all of the little scenes and hidden easter eggs found all over the models.

They had also built a number of special Star Wars dioramas and life size statues. Ben was in heaven here, calling out every scene, character, what movie it was from, etc.

Ben gets "force choked" by Darth Maul.

Closing time was coming fast, so we made our way to the two-story Grand Carousel. All of the horses are, of course, fashioned to look like Lego horses. The kids wanted to ride on the top level, but it was already full by the time we made our way on. This didn't seem to dampen Ben and Emma's enjoyment of the ride though.

It was now 10 minutes to park close. so we rushed to get one more ride in and tried a cool looking, weird spinning horse thing called Mia's Wild Adventure, I think. It's kinda hard to explain. Behold this strange monstrosity:

So everyone sits in a circle on these horses facing outwards. The ride starts to slide back and forth on a curved, vertical track. Then, once you are moving pretty good, the whole thing starts spinning around while it is still moving back and forth on the track. It moves very much like an old school scrambler, but while traveling in an arc. It was lots of fun, but made me a bit nauseous by the end. Both kids loved it of course, and listed it as their #2 favorite ride, when asked later.

The park was now closed, but the stores were still open, so we stopped by the biggest store at the front of the part to let the kids pick out a souvenir. This took a while as there were, understandably, a TON of Lego sets in the store.

We finally said our goodbyes to Legoland and got back on the road, making the 45 minute drive back up to Orlando and finding hotel in Disney World, the Art of Animation resort.

This place was really awesome! The huge lobby is covered in some very cool artwork from different Disney and Pixar movies, they have a huge pool, and the different buildings are themed after different movies.

Our room was in one of the Cars themed buildings and Ben and Emma were excited to see all sorts of familiar sights and faces from the Cars movies, including "life-size" replicas of the characters from the movie.

The lobby of the Art of Animation Resort.

The Big pool at the resort. They have underwater speakers
so you can hear Disney music playing while you swim! 

The Cozy Cone sign spins and lights up, just like in the movie.

Hangin' with Mater.

We ordered room service pizza for dinner and ate sometime after 9 pm, then got the kids in bed around 10.

It was a long, crazy, hot, exiting, tiring, fun day, and it was only just the beginning...

Disney World 2017 - Day 1

Okay, this is it. The Real Deal (TM).

I've been woefully negligent in updating this blog over the past few years. I've tried several times to chronicle our adventures, but all I have to show for it are unfinished drafts. But now we have embarked on the vacation to end all vacations (so far), Disney World (with Legoland for an appetizer).

This trip is the reason I started thinking about doing a blog in the first place, so I'd better get to it.

Day One started with us packing the car on Thursday, May 11th. I wanted to drive down rather than fly and thought it would be an especially awesome idea to take the Tesla, so we could make the trip on only electricity, rather than drive our much more spacious van. Not that the Tesla is lacking for cargo space; we actually fit all of our belongings in the car and trunk, and never really put anything in the front trunk, or "frunk". Things were certainly more crammed for the kids, but they were troopers and were excited about the little cubbies that their seats had become once everything was packed in around them.

Ready to Roll!

Mariah has been going all out to make this trip a special one for them and came up with enough cool stuff for them to play with and do in the car to last them a week! She got trapper keeper binders and filled them with travel bingo games, coloring book pages, find the state license plate games, and on and on. Then she made goodie bags for the kids to open up, one for each state line we would cross and one for each of the 5 charging stops we had planned to charge the car.

Needless to say, Ben and Emma were beside themselves with excitement to see all of the loot they were getting and couldn't wait to play around with everything.

So at 12:00 AM on Friday, May 12th, we left our home to drive to Orlando. The plan was to drive straight through the night and all day until we got there, rather than split the drive into two days. The hope was that the kids would sleep through half of the drive this way.

It was drizzling and in the mid 50's when we left, and we made good time to our first charging stop in Rocky Mount, NC, a little after 2 AM. The kids woke up for this first stop and tore into the first goodie bags, which contained the "spinners" that they have been wanting so badly ever since the fad broke out and every other kid in the country seems to have gotten ahold of one. The little things were nearly impossible to find, but my mother, Nani to the kids, had somehow managed to find a really excellent set. To say that the kids were excited would be a massive understatement.

Coloring on their new tray-tables at 3 AM.

We charged for almost 50 minutes at our first stop. Longer than was necessary, but I noticed that we had used more energy than I had previously anticipated on the first leg due to the rain and wet roads and how loaded down the car was, so I wanted to err on the side of caution and have plenty of electrons in the "tank," as it were.

We stopped next at Lumberton, NC, around 5 AM, and this time everyone stayed asleep for most of the charging.

The next stop was Santee, SC, around 7:45 AM, where we got some breakfast at McDonalds while the car charged back up.

Another quick 109 mile leg later and we arrived at the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport in Georgia for the next charging stop at 10 AM. We walked over to the airport for a quick bathroom break and a look around before heading out. Emma was excited to see all of the palm trees, and things were starting to warm up and feel much more tropical than it did back in rainy, 50 degree Richmond!

Our next destination was St. Augustine, FL, which we reached at around 1:30. This supercharger is located at an outlet mall, so we decided to take a quick walk around and did a little shopping while we charged up. Once again, we dawdled longer than necessary and left around 40 minutes later.

Charging in St. Augustine.

Up until this point, we were feeling really good about our progress and were planning on reaching our hotel around 4:30 or so, but Orlando traffic had other plans for us.

While we had enough juice to reach the hotel just fine, I thought it would be more prudent to make one more stop at the Orlando Supercharger before we went further south to the hotel. Since we weren't planning on charging at the hotel itself, this would make sure that we had plenty of range to make it back up to Orlando after our first day at Legoland on Saturday.

Unfortunately the traffic around Orlando was horrible and it added hours to our trip. I think at one point the GPS estimated that it would take us 50 minutes to travel the next 12 miles and it wasn't joking! We finally made it to the charger at 5 pm and after a quick charge forged through the final hour of traffic to our hotel in Winter Haven, FL.

On the road for 19 hours and still smiling!

Exhausted, we picked up some dinner at a nearby Chick-fil-a and finally checked into our hotel at 7 pm to chow down and finally relax.

Overall, other than the last chunk of the trip through Orlando, it really was a great time. By stopping more frequently and for longer breaks, i felt much more refreshed to tackle each new leg of the trip and I think the kids did too. Ben and Emma had an amazing time opening their gift bags at each new state and charging stop. They kept asking to check the map to see when they next prize would become available. They had a blast looking for license plates, coloring, telling the jokes that Mariah had packed in the gift bags, eating earwax flavored jelly beans out of the Harry Potter themed jellybean boxes they received, and it seemed that, through it all, I could always hear those spinners going round and round as they endlessly played with them.

It was a real shame that it all caught up to us at once in the end, but now that everyone has stretched out and decompressed a bit I think we will be good to go for the real adventure tomorrow at Legoland!

Speaking of which, it's now 11 PM and I REALLY should be getting some sleep! Big day ahead tomorrow at Legoland!