The Rest of Our Magical Disney Vacation

Now that the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration was official over, it was time to make up time with my family.  First off we switched hotels from the Grand Floridian to Disney’s Pop Century since it was more affordable for us.  What I liked about Pop Century is that it is affordable but still nice and on the Disney World grounds.  We still had access to all the Disney buses and the hotel had three pool areas (unfortunately we didn’t have time to go in any of them.)  Pop Century has a great food court, game room, and huge Disney store.  The rooms are relatively small with two beds (I think they were full not Queens), a table with two chairs, tv, dresser, dressing area with sink and a bathroom.  It was no Grand Floridian but still worked for our family.

We had all day Sunday, Monday and Tuesday to catch up on everything we missed and still had to do.  We hit up Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom and Epcot one last time.  We had a few rides we wanted to ride one last time and we didn’t spare a minute!

Everything was magical and I loved seeing my boys faces light up with everything.  They were so excited just walking around and soaking in the sights!  It also helped that we had incredible 85-degree weather (then came home to the 30’s!)

Tuesday we decided to hit up Typhoon Lagoon since we couldn’t do it last year due to the cold weather.  I was very impressed with how spread out everything was so it didn’t seem crowded, but still it was full of people.  My boys loved the kiddie area which featured kiddie slides, water shooting areas, and more!  Then we hit up the wave pool which had crazy big waves every few minutes, luckily they didn’t affect us too much at the beginning.  Typhoon Lagoon also has life jackets for kids, but we had brought our own.  The food was decent and average priced, but the best part was that the kids meals came in sand buckets.  My boys took advantage of those sand buckets right away in the beach area!  Overall, we had a great time and basically spent the entire day there!

Wednesday was the day we checked out Pop Century and headed over to the Downtown Disney area to check out Disney Quest.  I had actually been to the Disney Quest in downtown Chicago a few times but then it closed down and I kinda forgot about it.  The way Disney Quest works is that you pay upfront to get in ($30-$40 depending on child/adult) but then you get unlimited game play inside.  There are classic arcade games, skeeball, basketball, racing games as well as a few virtual games.  It is pricey but if you have a day to kill at Disney or want to avoid the rain, Disney Quest is a great place to do it.  We played tons of games – my boys loved the kiddie area and I loved all the classic games including Burger Time which I hadn’t played in forever!  You can also add Disney Quest to your Disney tickets if you want to.

After Disney Quest we started our 17 hour drive home.  It was kinda tough since we started at about 1 P.M. and didn’t get home until 7 A.M., but we did it.  Luckily we didn’t hit any major weather and the drive went pretty smooth, except for my 2 year old who started having night terrors or something in his car seat.  We had to pull over at one point so he could sit on my lap and calm down at a gas station.  All I can say is what did families do on road trips before the iPad and DVD players!  We crashed as soon as we got home Thursday and ever since I have been catching up and doing mounds of laundry