Today my mom, dad and Ethan arrived in Orlando after their red-eye flight from Salt Lake. Tanner and I took a shuttle from our hotel back to the airport to meet them. Tanner was so thrilled to see Ethan again and they had a sweet reunion. A Disney Cast Member asked if they were cousins. Hmmmm, don't you think they look like brothers??? There's such a strong resemblance.
We hopped on Disney's Magical Express bus service to take us to our Disney hotel. This is a "free" service included when you stay at their hotels. We shared a nice, big bus with two other people and only stopped at our resort, the Polynesian. It was great! The Polynesian was just like I'd remembered. Absolutely beautiful. The boys were instantly wowed by the water outside the hotel, and especially enjoyed the stunning waterfalls in the lobby. While I checked in they enjoyed looking at the water.
Our room assignment was in Room 3903 of the Tokelau building. We all loved this location. It was close to the quiet pool, only a short walk to the Great Ceremonial House, the volcano pool, the beach and the bus stop. Also, it was fairly close to the TTC where you could catch the monorail to Epcot. Our room was very pretty, on the 3rd floor, and it was spacious. We fit the five of us, our luggage and stroller in the room with plenty of room to spare. We had a flat screen television, but we didn't do much t.v. watching on this trip.
We lingered in the room for a little while and then we headed off to grab a van to Disney's Saratoga Springs for our tour of the Disney Vacation Club. We did this to get some fastpasses, but we got something even better than that. If I win a major prize in the near future I am going to buy some points for Disney's Animal Kingdom Villas. I think a membership would be great for getting my Disney fix every couple of years. The rooms are really pretty and well appointed. The boys played in their kids club while we did the tour. Ethan liked it and Tanner didn't. Surprise! At the end of the tour we got 5 $15 gift cards to get lunch, but since we were on the Disney Dining Plan we just got some fun souvenirs instead. Ethan was showing signs of only getting three hours of sleep the night before at this point. He could hardly keep his eyes open. When we got back to our room we had a towel animal waiting for us!
That night we headed to Epcot for dinner reservations at Restaurant Akershus in the Norway pavilion. This is a popular spot now that they've made it into a character dinner with the Disney princesses. We had a little bit of a wait and then we were in. They did a good job of making sure we saw all the princesses, although Tanner wanted nothing to do with them. I'm sure he was thinking "Who are these girls with all that makeup anyway?" Our waiter was great and I even tried out my Danish on him. It was fun to talk to him about Norway, and it made me want to visit Norway again. This was our first table service meal using the dining plan and it was great. We all got to take advantage of the buffet and our drinks were included. The boys shared a pizza so I didn't have to pay for a meal for Tanner. This was definitely the way to go! We knew we were going to like free dining at Disney World!
Ethan was so anxious to ride Maelstrom since he had seen this online and it must of lived up to his expectations because he wanted to ride again later. Tanner was mostly terrified and kept his head buried in my shoulder during the ride. While we browsed the shops in Norway Ethan and Tanner discovered that they were "Vikings" and they battled it out in the shop.
After our evening at Epcot we headed back to our hotel for some rest. Mom, Dad and Ethan were especially exhausted since they'd flown all night. I tried sharing a bed with Ethan, but it didn't go so well. He likes to sleep horizontally on the bed, so near morning I decided to move to the daybed and I ended up sleeping there for the rest of the trip. Good thing the bed was comfy!
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