downtown disney: enough fun for now!

we had a couple of days to spend in orlando, but we weren't quite ready to do the "disney thing" with our young kids. (never fear, disney fans, the wheels for our 2011 trip to disney are already turning in my brain!) so we did disney the low-key, low-budget way... and ethan and caroline still wore million-dollar smiles! our first stop was downtown disney. the kids loved having dinner at the rainforest cafe. ethan wanted to eat "outside", which was actually the inside of the restaurant. we ate under a canopy of trees filled with gorillas that reminded us of their presence every now and then with loud ooo-ooo-ooo-ing! caroline especially loved the trumpeting elephants that we could hear across the room. ethan got a big kick out of the thunderstorms, and i appreciated that it was generally noisy in there so that nobody was bothered by frequent toddler outbursts! :) here's a family picture outside the restaurant the day after we ate there. apparently, the kids were on the lookout for those elephants! :)


my favorite store at downtown disney is "once upon a toy", where you can fill a box of mr. potato head parts. there are all kinds of cute disney original parts to buy for the regular mr. potato head, and i had a ball filling a box last december. the kids were overwhelmed by all the things to look at! caroline has recently figured out who mickey mouse is, and she found him on everything during this trip. it started in the toy store... "mi-y mouse! mi-y mouse!" and it continued as we passed billboards, bumper stickers, nametags, and antenna toppers on cars going 50 mph. she could spot the mouse! so the kids loved just looking at everything in the stores. upon entry to "the world of disney", caroline was greeted by two ladies who generously sprinkled her with "pixie dust"...glitter. we deemed this the everlasting disney souvenir because the glitter stayed in her curls after the pool and a bath, and it is probably still in the stroller! but she sure was cute and sparkly! "the world of disney" was quite overstimulating even for mom & dad, so i'm sure ethan and caroline's little brains had soaked up enough disney in the short time that we strolled through the mega-souvenir store! here's a shot of the mr. potato head headquarters at "once upon a toy".


apparently, "fill your own box for a slightly-ridiculous-but-not-too-ridiculous-when you're-on-vacation price" is the way to go for stores these days because the lego store had the same idea. the kids loved sticking their hands in the buckets of different colored legos that made up the rainbow wall of blocks. you could build your own little lego guys, or you could just watch the lego employee construct the taj mahal out of legos. now that's a dream job for a guy. come to work and build with legos! (no, brian, we are not moving to orlando! ha!) outside, they also had racing ramps set up where you could build little cars and race them... but it was pretty packed with boys and dads when we were there, so brian, um, i mean ethan will have to wait till next time to enjoy that.


we really talked up riding the train at downtown disney, but ethan asked to ride the carousel twice vs. riding the train and the carousel. so double the carousel it was, and that meant double the squeals for ethan! he squealed the entire ride... i wish i could just bottle that up! i know the kids don't look super excited in these pictures, but they really were happy! :)



during our first visit to downtown disney, it was raining, so we came back another day to take pictures of ethan and caroline with the disney characters. (because of the rain, i also slipped in the parking lot during the first 5 minutes of our vacation and landed on my very padded rear end. amelia was safe and sound on the other side, thankfully, but i ended up with a sore knee, very wet pants, and a very concerned husband!) back to the characters... ethan and caroline were absolutely ecstatic to take their picture with these guys! shhh, don't tell them that these are boring, immobile, non-autograph signing versions of the "real things" across the lake! look at those smiles! (and we were smiling because there was no waiting in line for these guys!!)





"to infinity and beyond!" anytime caroline sees a toy story character (besides woody), she exclaims, "woo-DY! woo-DY!" ironically, she doesn't really care about who woody is, but she associates all the other toys from the movie with his name. pretty funny. :)

so a nemo ball and a couple of disney stuffed toys later, the kids had their first taste of disney. it was short and sweet, and it made me and brian really want to go to disney for real! we also toured a little more of disney, which was an adventure that needed no fast pass...