Our Disney World adventure Part 3

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The final installment of our Disney trip is finally done.

And its all about our time IN Disney.

The above pics were taken by a Photopass photographer
at the Epcot Character meet and greet

I found these great pics of Port Orleans Riverside - Alligator Bayou section, on the DISboards.com message boards. So I thought I would post them, so you can see where we stayed.

Pic of Alligator Bayou section of Port Orleans Riverside resort.

Our room was in the second building in this pic.

This was the view from our room and my smoking bench

that I sat at every morning and evening. What a beautiful view.

It was such a beautiful place, the landscape and grounds were so beautifully rustic and peaceful. Daily, our boys fed the birds, ducks, bunnies and even tried to feed an iguana one day. POR Riverside has so many fun things to do right on the property: horse drawn carriage rides, boats and bicyles made for four people you can rent and drive them around the resort. So much fun!!

Here is some basic info about Port Orleans Riverside
Total Number of rooms: 2048

Room size: 315 Sq Ft.

The great things about Port Orleans Resort is that your have access to seven different pools and two water slides. In addition to the bus transportation, resort guests can use the water taxi to make their way to the Downtown Disney. The overall southern theme and beautiful landscaping sets it apart from any other moderate resort on Disney property. I have also stayed at the Caribbean Beach Resort, which is also a moderate resort and we love it there also. They are two totally different themed resorts with similar amenities. They are both fairly large resorts and there is alot of walking to do between food court or pool and your room. I would stay at both POR and Caribbean again and again.

Enough said about the resort now onto our fun filled 8 days in Disney.

Day one- On our arrival day we just hung out at our resort, got settled in, explored the resort and had dinner at Boatwrights restaurant, the food was delicious.

Day two - We got up and spent the morning and all afternoon at Magic Kingdom. We went through Main Street USA, Liberty Square and Fantasy Land. The boys rode rides (some they rode several times in a row ☺) - It's a Small World, Tea cups, Haunted Mansion, Cinderella's Carousal, Dumbo the flying elephant.
That evening we got dressed and jumped on the boat to Downtown Disney where we had dinner ressies at Capt'n Jacks restaurant, again the food was delish. We shopped at the toys store, Once upon a Toy Store, the Lego store, Mickey's mart (everything is 10.00 or under), and the World of Disney store. We had a great time in DTD.

Day three- As we got up that AM with anticipation to go to Typhoon Lagoon water park, one of our boys had a bad accident in the room. As John and I were walking out the door, the boys were so excited they were jumping on the bed and Jason fell off and hit his little noggin on the wood bed rail. My poor baby was bleeding everywhere, so we took him to a pediatric clinic where he got stitches.

After we were all done at the clinic, we headed back to the resort to relax for the day. But Jason would not have that, we were in Disney and he wanted to be on the run going, going and going. So we asked him where he wanted to go, he said "Magic Kingdom, for sure" So there we went and spent the entire evening until 1:00am there. We went on tons of rides, spent alot of time in Toontown at Mickey and Minnie's houses, rode Goofy's Barnstormer, and all the other rides we had rode the day before. This time we headed to Tomorrowland and rode the Buzzlight year ride, Monsters Inc laugh floor, Tomorrowland Speedway.
We ate at Cosmic Ray's Starlight Cafe, we had BBQ Ribs and chicken, it was very tasty. Really cute set up in there, there was a puppet like character playing music and singing. Jason was really afraid of that, so we ran through that seating area and found a different place to sit.

Day Four- Off to Epcot we went to meet up with John's entire family. We hung with them for a little while and took a few really cute pics of all of us. We parted ways, so we could get to our first character meal at the Garden Grill. We met, Mickey, Pluto, Chip and Dale. It was tons of fun and the food was good, John LOVED the food. The characters spent alot of time with our boys. Chip came by and tickled Justin til Justin practically fell of his chair ☺, it was so cute. And of course, Justin got up and tickled Chip right back, it made for some really cute pics. Oh and Mickey Mouse was obsessed with Johns tattoos, he could not get over how many Johnny had. I got a cute pic of Mickey pointing at Johns tats. The cool thing about the Garden Grill restaurant is it rotates. We didn't realize it at first and after we were sitting there for about 15 minutes, John said, whoa, the floor is spinning. It was so funny.

After lunch we went on some rides, we rode the Living with the Land boat ride, The Seas with Finding Nemo, Turtle Talk with Crush, Soarin, Test Track, and Innovations West. We had a blast at Epcot. And then we ended our time at Epcot at the Character connection and met, Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Goofy and Dale. It was amazing, we got family pics with each character and got pics of just the boys with each character. Fun Fun Fun!!!!! I just LOVE Disney!!

That evening we met John's family at MGM and hung out, had ice cream and did some shopping. The kids played and had tons of fun with these cool Mickey Mouse light sabers.

Day 5 - I can't for the life of me remember what we did during the day. But I remember we had an early dinner at the restaurant, Boatwrights at our resort.
And we went to Epcot in the evening to ride Soarin and Test track again and watch their fireworks. We found a perfect spot and saw everything perfect. This is one of John's favorite things in Disney, he loves the Epcot fireworks.

Day 6 - Was not so great for me, as I was sick with the stomach flu. But Johnny took the kids to Magic Kingdom with his family and they spent the morning and afternoon there, having a great time. Going on rides with their cousins. They got Jason to go on Pirates of the Caribbean, which was a huge accomplishment, since he had been saying for months that he would NOT go on POTC. He loved it!!!!
After a long day at MK, we ended the day by ordering pizza to our room and swimming in the resort pool.

Day 7 - Animal Kingdom - We got up early that morning to make it to our character meal at 8:30. We went to the Donald's Safari Breakfast to meet Donald, Mickey, Daisy, and Goofy. What a blast that was, it was so interactive, the characters grabbed all the kids and gave them musical instruments and they all paraded and danced around the room. It was a blast!!! We will definitely be going there again next time we go to Disney. The food was great!!! They had this Jungle Juice, it was soooo delish.
We rode some great rides and saw some cool attractions here. We took the Kilimanjaro safari ride, saw its tough to be a bug, rode the Triceratops spin, and played in the boneyard.
We ended our day at Magic Kingdom to see Spectromagic parade. That was amazing, so many lights and you get to see tons of characters. We rode all our favorite rides again, Buzz Lightyear, Pirates of the Caribbean, the teacups, Its a Small World, and soo many more. It was a great way to finish out our trip as this was our last full day in Disney.

Day 8 - We got all packed up and ready to leave. And headed out to meet the Gottfried Gang at Hollywood Studios (formerly MGM) to see the Lights, Action, Motor Stunt show. That was awesome, the kids loved seeing the fast cars, cars driving in revise, the motorcycles and jet skis speeding around. It was a nice way to end the trip. After that, we headed back to the resort to grab our bags and get on the Magical Express bus to go to the airport.

All in all, we had a fantastically, wonderful, amazing, perfectly, magical trip!!!! I hope to get back there sometime in the next year and a half. I am trying to convince John, we need to go back next December so we can see all the holiday decorations and lights. We will see??!!!!

That's it!! I am finally done...
Have a great day.
Fran