Magic Kingdom here we come! Always my favorite park because it makes me feel like a kid again. I love seeing the excitement in my kids eyes as we walk in the gates. We took the ferry boat over this afternoon. We waited for their dad to finish up at his conference so we got a bit of a late start but at least we all got to come over together!
I adored this glass slipper hat from Hatopia. It let me get in touch with my inner princess and the glitter is so my style. I love all things with sparkle! Love how they managed to make this trucker style hat feel super girly and pretty. Hatopia offers a wide range of hats - something for everyone in the whole family. Wait till you see the Jungle Book hat my boys got to wear!
This dainty Cinderella Charm bracelet from Birdicatt is so beautiful! I love the happily ever after charm and the way she used blue accents to tie the charms all together. It is seriously gorgeous when you see it in person. I love charm bracelets and find that good ones are pretty tricky to find. I hate when they seem sparse and this bracelet is packed to the brim with amazing charms.
Heading over on the ferry boat. Look at how dark the sky looks over the castle. It was kind of creepy. We knew that Hurricane Matthew was supposed to hit that evening but we felt like it would be ok to ride it out - so we headed into Disney with the hope of having very short lines.
The boys loved riding across the water on the boat. I had expected the monorail to be their favorite but going forward I think they will only want to ride the boat. Can I just say - I wish you could park at the actual Disney gates. It's so exhausting to get back to your car when you leave the Magic Kingdom! My husband googled it and said that Disney did research and found it takes the average man 23 minutes to get over how much it costs to buy tickets to Disney World. They then put the ticket gate in a place that would take visitors 23 minutes to get into the park - the hope being that the frustration over the cost would be gone before they walked into the magic. Crazy huh?
Jack's face when he found out the Magic Kingdom was closing early today - at 5 - and we had only just walked into the park at 1:30. It's going to be a short day for us and he was so bummed out. It worked out fine though because the lines were crazy short. It was like a ghost town for Disney. It really felt weird and a little ominous. We were able to ride a ton of stuff though. Even got on the rides that usually take hours like the seven dwarfs mine train and peter pan. PS - his Star Wars inspired magic band decal is from Magical Monograms and only $5!!
There was plenty of rain. We spent the day in ponchos but it was worth it to avoid lines. We had planned to stay until close but about 3 everyone we knew started texting us that the hurricane was going to hit us really hard and we should get out of Orlando. At that point we started to seriously worry. Were we being stupid to stay or would we be overreacting to leave. I called my grandma in Tampa and we reached the decision to err on the side of caution and go stay with her for the night. We let ourselves have one last hour to enjoy to lack of lines and got ready to head out of the park at 4.
It does look pretty scary right? I had this nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach all day. It felt so weird to see hardly anyone at the park and each time I looked at the sky I was reminded of the storm headed our way.
Connor was definitely the most scared of the group. Since a young child he has been very scared of storms, even wind. We blame his pre-k teacher as she told the children during a storm to stay away from the windows or they would be sucked out and die. She no longer works for the school. She told him many things that gave him nightmares. It was so bad we pulled him out of the school.
So what happened?! By now you know that the storm didn't do much of anything in Orlando. When we got back to the hotel that day we passed the insane amount of traffic going into Tampa. We talked the hotel staff and learned that there was to be a curfew going into effect soon. They strongly recommended we not leave at this time. They felt we had waited to long and would be sitting in traffic just as the storm hit. They assured us that they had a generator, two restaurants that would be providing food, and that the hotel would be completely safe. We ended up having us move us from our room on the top floor and deciding to stay put.
That night the hotel had a big room set up for the kids to run & watch movies. They had a blast playing in there. I just sat there watching them and wondering if we had made the right call. I had never been in a hurricane and I kept picturing us all huddled in a room as the wind howled and trees shattered through the windows. I was so nervous. As we went up to bed the news starting saying that the bad winds wouldn't hit us until morning. I'm not saying I slept well - I had the TV on all night but I wasn't as nervous. I watched out the window all throughout the night and only saw rain and some slight wind.
- Cinderella Glass Slipper Hat c/o Hatopia
- Silver Sparkle Floral Ears c/o Luby & Lola
- I Woke Up Like This Travel Cup c/o Magical Monograms
- Cinderella Charm Bracelet c/o Birdicatt
- Tsum Tsum Backpack from Qiqi Couture
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