WDW 2022, part 1

Brad and I decided several years ago that we wanted to take the girls to Disney World. We started planning in 2019 to take the girls in ~January 2021. Then we found out we were expecting a fourth baby. Then a pandemic started. So we scrapped that plan and put it waaay back on the back burner. 

But we moved it up the planning queue in summer 2021 and finally got there this past March. Thankfully, Amiee offered to go with us (and it would not have been nearly so much fun without her LET ME TELL YOU). 

We used a travel agency owned by a friend of mine (Jennifer at Kingdom Elite Travel), and I did very little actual planning of the trip. Disney is overwhelming, and I was happy to let Jennifer work out the details of our lodging and tickets, etc (I've learned that you cannot do Disney "on the cheap;" your best bet is to get the biggest bang for your buck. Because you will spend a lot of bucks.). We decided to do 4 days: Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, and Magic Kingdom again. We skipped Animal Kingdom for a variety of reasons, but primarily because we had so many things we were interested in doing at the other parks.

We didn't tell the girls anything about it so that we could wake them up and surprise them with the trip. That might have been my favorite part! It took them a few minutes to get it, as it was 5:00 am*, but then they were ecstatic! (*as parents facing long car trips, you usually have two choices: break the trip up and spend the night partway there OR grit your teeth and do the whole drive at one time. We have done both options- many times over- on long trips, and we have unanimously decided we prefer to get up early and push through whenever we can.)

We handed out Minnie ears to everyone when we woke them up!

We do not have the funds to purchase each girl her own *official* Disney Minnie ears, so I bought two of these two packs from Amazon. They were great! Definitely within my budget and held up the whole week.

Amiee had come to Durham the day before, ostensibly for a weekend visit, and she kept the girls busy while Brad and I secretly packed and loaded.

We knew we were going to be staying in a Lion King themed suite at Art of Animation, and we realized that the girls had never seen Lion King. I figured that they would be more excited about the theming if they had actually seen the movie. I was very correct about that.

Made a Buccee's stop...along with everyone else.

But, you know...we got the requisite pictures.

Speaking of requisite pictures

The girls were THRILLED when we drove up to our resort (resort sounds super fancy, but please note that this is a value resort and therefore very much like a regular hotel suite that has had fun Disney theming applied). I was thrilled that I'd thought ahead to have them watch Lion King before we got there.

It's really SO cute.

When we walked into our suite, they were like a swarm of very happy bees, never sitting still and inspecting every single nook and cranny. It was truly a delightful suite for families with small children. 

Couch, as well as Amiee's bed at night (fold-out)

We put all 4 girls in the bedroom (Hallie in a pack-in-play and Brynnie on a fold-out toddler travel cot that we have), while Amiee, Brad and I roomed together in the living/kitchenette/dining part of the suite. Amiee had the fold-out couch, and Brad and I shared the Murphy bed/fold-out dining table, which was really quite comfy. There were two bathrooms, which was excellent.

After we settled in and made ourselves a picnic dinner in our little kitchen-ish area, we wandered around our resort to see all the fun theming, which everyone really enjoyed.

The girls were SO cute about how amazing it was that we JUST WATCHED LION KING in the car and now OUR HOTEL IS LION KING!

Met lots of friends (of the cartoon variety)

Art of Animation is divided into 4 themed sections: Lion King, Little Mermaid, Nemo, and Cars. Ideally, we would have been in the Cars section (as that is a FAVORITE of our kids), but it didn't work out. We were really happy with our rooms, though.

We LOVED wandering through the Cars section of the resort! It was so very cute.

By the time we wandered through the Nemo section, our long day was catching up with everyone, and we ended up hustling through so we could get everyone to bed.

But we did stop to play on the playground for a few quick minutes.

I was so very pleased that our plans to surprise the girls with our Disney trip worked out rather perfectly. It was a great start to our week!