WDW Wrap Up

You must be thinking that surely I have nothing left to say about Disney. You would be wrong...

We dropped Alaina off at the Orlando airport in plenty of time to catch her flight and we started to make our way home. By the time Kevin got us through another round of Orlando traffic, I was so exhausted I couldn't keep my eyes open. We both wanted to make it home, but I was literally incapable of driving. My plan was to get to Georgia and stop for the night. Kevin had other plans, and hauled all of us home, arriving just before 3am. I don't know how he did it, but I am glad he was able to, because it was good to have a reset day before I had to go to work that night. Stephanie even went to school, just arriving late. I hadn't planned on it, but she woke me up at 9am and told me she wanted to go.

I have some final thoughts on Disney, and then I am closing out the Disney series and moving on to our normal happenings.

1. Meal Plans: I am the only adult that strongly considered getting a meal plan. Ultimately, it was a great choice not to. Alaina assured me that the cafeteria lines in the hotel were outrageous and we saved big time and money doing it our way. HOWEVER, if I ever flew there with the kids and didn't have as easy access to food from home, I would reconsider the meal plan option.

2. Disney PhotoPass: Who needs that, right? Alaina and I aren't shy with our cameras and are intent on capturing everything! Since we weren't leaving the cameras at home no matter what, we thought we should skip the PhotoPass, even though it came recommended by several people. Ultimately, this is my one and only true regret. I didn't know it would include so much, specifically all of your ride photos (if you scan your magic band when yours is on the screen) and they had photographers everywhere to get group shots. Alaina ended up purchasing a few a la carte, including some on Space Mountain. I love how bored Stephanie looks on her second ride (the one with me and Alaina). You can always buy the PhotoPass later, but since we didn't pre-purchase it, we didn't utilize it well, so we missed a lot of photo opportunities and thus decided that purchasing it after the fact wasn't worthwhile.

  

3. Weekends: We were not able to skip going to the parks on the weekend, but if I definitely would if I had that kind of time. Show up on a Sunday, spend a fun hotel/pool day and then kick off Disney on a Monday.

4. Hotel Pool: We didn't have enough time to spend much time at the hotel, which was fine by me. If we ever take a more leisurely trip, I think I would like to plan a day off of parks at the pool to reset.

5. Shirts: I wanted to get Stephanie a distinctly Disney Star Wars shirt. This didn't, oddly enough, exist at Disney. The shirts could have been from anywhere but cost a Disney premium. I ended up making her a shirt when we got home, but I wish I had known to do it before and had a few with me to give her while we were there. This is the only picture I have of her in it, from my phone. She likes it a lot more than her expression would indicate...

I think that is about it! A lot of life has happened since Disney, but I have really wanted to finish this adventure before I posted anything else. And it is done! Hooray!