Quite conveniently, the Swan is very near Hollywood Studios. Even though we arrived a couple of hours before check-in time, they had a room ready for us and we were able to get moved into our new room and get everyone down for a nap quickly. The goal was to get to the Magic Kingdom [...]

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Day 8 – the last theme park touring day of our vacation – was a split day (in more ways than one). The plan was to spend the morning at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, transfer our stuff from the Polynesian Resort to the Swan, take a nice long nap, and then go to the Magic Kingdom [...]

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We decided to spend Mikaela’s birthday in Epcot, culminating with dinner with the princesses at Akershaus. By this time, we had the morning routine down pat – wake up, get dressed, breakfast in the Concierge Lounge, fill the water bottles, and get on our way to our theme park for the day. We were at [...]

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The original plan for this day was to spend it in Hollywood Studios. But I really wanted another full day at the Magic Kingdom, and the more I looked at our plans, the more it seemed we could be happy with a 1/2 day at the Studios. I was a little worried that we’d have [...]

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OK, a little background is probably in order here. The decision to go to the Main Street Electrical Parade and Wishes fireworks show caused a major shuffling of our plans. Part of that shuffle was that this day was all kinds of problematic. Against my better judgment, I decided that we’d go ahead and make [...]

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I was a little concerned about our early start this morning, after the late night at the Neverland Club the night before. But the morning routine we’d established the day before getting ready for Animal Kingdom went off without a hitch. We breakfasted in the Concierge Lounge and loaded up our water bottles there, and [...]

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The kids were completely wiped out by the morning in Animal Kingdom. How wiped out? How about this wiped out. (Sorry for the crappy cell phone picture – clearly I was just about as wiped out as they were).
I had been concerned about our fairly late (7:15 p.m.) dinner ADR at California Grill since I [...]

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We woke up early Sunday morning, and enjoyed a quick Concierge Lounge breakfast. Jonathan was thrilled to discover that they had his favorite cereal – Froot Loops. While the breakfast offerings weren’t anything really special, they were certainly sufficient to give us a good, quick, start to the day. Beverages were the only disappointment – [...]

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The day at the Universal parks had been something of a mixed bag. The highs for Mikaela were lows for Jonathan and vice-versa (e.g. Jimmy Neutron, E.T.). After lunch, everyone was hot and cranky and ready for a change. We loaded up the car, plugged “Disney Polynesian” into the GPS, and headed to Disney World. [...]

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Day 2 meant a return to Islands of Adventure. Staying at an on-property hotel earned us entry to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter an hour before it opened for everyone else. The original plan had us enjoying most of the Wizarding World attractions on this day – but with Ollivander’s, Forbidden Journey, and Flight [...]

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