This year we decided to have Abby’s party down at Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique at Disney so that Abby and a couple of her friends could have “princess makeovers”. It was tough, but we did find an opening at Fort Wilderness from Sunday till Tuesday. So, we packed up the camper this morning and headed down to Disney after lunch.

We got the camper set up in record time (45 minutes) and we hopped on over to the boat heading over to the Magic Kingdom. We spent a majority of the time in Tomorrow Land. We even found a new “ride” we didn’t even know existed. It was an animatronic show called the Carousel of Progress, something Walt Disney designed himself and was presented at the 1964 World’s Fair. The audience rotates around various stages that talk about progress over the years. It wasn’t anything spectacular, we just thought it was amazing that there was something we didn’t know existed.

After watching the Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor show we got pissed because we thought our stroller had been stolen. It turned out that one of the cast members had moved it so we wandered around in the dark for over five minutes trying to find it. This was complicated by the fact that Isabelle had passed out during the show because she was so tired from not getting a nap.

We found it and headed over to watch the Wishes fireworks show. I’ve put a few pictures from my phone up on Flickr if you want to check it out. After the show, we headed back to camp to go to bed.

Today we continued the use of our Seasonal Passes with a trip to Epcot and again we wanted to hit the areas we hadn’t been. We got to the park at 10:30 and headed straight for Soarin’ to get a Fast Pass. This ride is by far the most popular ride in the park and each time we’ve tried to go on it’s either sold out or a two hour wait. Even though we got our passes at 10:30 our tickets weren’t good until 3:00. It was worth the wait. It’s another ride film, but in this case you are lifted up into the air and are suspended right in front of the screen. The film has you gliding over various terrain while the screen is wrapped around you. Very good.

We only went to three buildings in the park in our 7 hours there. The Living Seas, which is a giant aquarium, but has been revamped with a new ride featuring Nemo. The Land, which is where we went to Soarin’ and a few other rides about the Earth. Finally, we went to Imagination! where we saw Honey, I Shrunk the Audience, a 3D film. We can’t believe we only saw those three things in seven hours.

It started raining so we headed back to camp for dinner and bed.

We woke up to a colder morning than we are used to. The plan was to go to Typhoon Lagoon, but with the cool breeze, we figured the girls (especially Izzy) would freeze to death. So, we went ahead and bit the bullet and bought Seasonal Passes to Disney World. The difference between Seasonal and Annual passes is that the former has blackout dates a week at Christmas, a week in the Spring, and a couple of months in the Summer. A pretty good deal if you don’t intend to go at any of those times.

We decided to make our first park choice one we hadn’t go to yet: Disney-MGM Studios. The biggest rides we rode were Star Tours, a Star Wars themed ride film; Muppets 3D, a 3D film featuring the Muppets; and the Indiana Jones Stunt Show, a live action show recreating some of the stunt scenes from Raiders of the Lost Arc.

We had a full day and Isabelle fell asleep on the way home. We had dinner at camp and then rounded out the evening at the campfire sing-a-long roasting marshmallows and making smores.

Izzy got up twice during the night, the second time being 5:00 a.m. So, I collected her and brought her to our bed where she fell back to sleep. Once we were up and moving, we rode our bikes up to Trails End for some breakfast. Afterwards we headed back to camp for a little more set up. It was too dark last night so we couldn’t get everything out like the awning.

For lunch we just picked up some snacks and headed over to one of the playgrounds in the campground. We played and ate and then Emily and Isabelle rode some ponies at the Tri-Circle D Ranch.

We tried to go back to the camp for a nap, but Izzy refused and thrashed around for an hour before finally passing out.

We ate dinner early and then the girls put on their costumes as we headed out to the Magic Kingdom for Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party. This was the second time we’ve been to Not-So-Scary and the first time for Isabelle. This year Abby was an Indian, Emily was a witch, and Izzy was a baker with name “Cutie Pie” on her hat. We got a ton of comments on how cute “Cutie Pie” was. Every line we got into there would be people pointing at Isabelle say “Oh, how cute.”

We ended up riding several rides we hadn’t ridden before like Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, The Haunted Mansion, Space Mountain, and the new Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor. Just over the height requirement of 44″ Emily rode Space Mountain with me. I didn’t realize until we got there that the ride was one person per seat, but Emily said it was okay and she sat in the seat in front of me and we held hands over the top of the seat. It was a pretty cool ride like a roller coaster through space and we both thought it was fun.

Believe it or not but the girls stayed awake the whole time and we didn’t get back to the camp until 1:00 a.m. All of us went straight to bed. There wasn’t any bed girl giggling this night.

It took a lot of coordination, but we made it to Disney and setup camp in the dark, which was a first. My boss, Dave Ross, picked me up this morning and gave me a ride into work. This allowed Jennifer to come and pick me up, which is about a quarter of the way to Disney from our house. I had a big managers meeting at 5:00 which I conduct and I warned them that the meeting would be over when my cell phone rang. Almost exactly at 6:00 the phone rang and the meeting was adjourned.

We picked up food from Chick-Ole and ate on the way down there. We got to the campground around 7:30 and the sun had pretty much gone down. We got one of the sites that we liked and pulled in, but it was a little un-level so we got to use one of our leveling blocks for the first time. Since this was our first time using the blocks, our inexperience showed. We forgot to put the rolling blocks down and the camper started rolling. I scrambled around the sides getting the girls out of the way of the rolling camper. Fortunately it only rolled about a foot before it stopped. So, we got it back on the hitch and tried again. This time we remembered the rolling blocks and we set up the rest of the camp. It started to rain right as we finished setting up. Now we are heading off to bed and the girls are off giggling in their bed.