Family vacation: Walt Disney World with small kids

Six months have been passed by and the beautiful memories of our Orlando trip still lingers in my mind. There were some not so good flashbacks during our stay in the awesome Animal Kingdom Lodge but I will only dwell on the good ones of course. Our first trip wasn't so bad. We did our homework and fairly enough we expected the events that were waiting for us at Disney World. We stayed there for 4 nights and 5 days with our little sweetlings ages 4 and 2.

Weather. From sunny California to sunny-rainy Florida, the weather reminded us so much of the tropical climate in the Philippines. It was beautiful! The trees are oh so green and the smell of nature is undeniably around. It's really warm and it actually feels good when it rains. Given the weather we packed the following items:

- raincoats for everyone (daddy, mommy, big sister, small sister)
- comfy clothes for warm weather (shorts, capri pants, shirts, sleeveless tops)
- extra shirts and bottoms for the girls
- face towels or small towels to fit inside the backpack
- extra shade for the double stroller
- raincoat for the double stroller
- enough diapers and wipes for the whole trip

Nice weather at Epcot.

It's also important to wear a very comfortable shoes as this trip will be full of walking activities. We took the red eye flight from LAX to Orlando because we do not want to waste the first day for the flight alone so the girls were still sleepy during the first hours of the day. Who wouldn't? We are three hours behind Florida time.

Just landed at Orlando airport. Excited much!

Our vacation package includes the convenience of Disney World taking care of our luggages from the airport to our hotel room so we didn't have to worry about carrying loads of stuffs to drop them off to our room instead they took us straight to the park. So before our trip we already have everything with us in the hand-carry.   Mistake number one: Packing the princess gowns of my little girls in our hand-carry completely slipped my mind. We were reserved for lunch buffet on our first day with the Disney princesses and we wanted it to be extra special  :( but nevertheless, they enjoyed the yummy breakfast with their favorite princess characters in their spring get-up :)

Lunch buffet and princess parade lead by Princess Aurora.

With Princess Ariel.

Food. We also have the Disney Dining Plan. It's an option we decided to include in our trip so we don't have to worry about where to eat and how much to spend on every meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks). There are many participating restaurants inside Disney World that accept the plan. We just present them our room key at the cash register and they deduct the points that will be reflected in the receipt. That way we'll know how many meals we have left at the end of the day. It's paid in advance. Was it worth it? Confusing sometimes but yes yes and yes!

Breakfast with Disney Junior characters.

Morning stroll at Magic Kingdom.

Character dining is the best but hold on! We noticed that breakfast style buffets have much lesser choices than lunch and dinner buffets so we reserved only one character dining during breakfast. If you decide to avail the Dining Plan, use it wisely. Buffet style and character dining are twice the points used in every meal than a regular dining restaurant. Use most of the dining food plan for lunch and dinner buffets or sit-down menu restaurants with menu that looks expensive because you'll never go wrong. (Best tip!) You can also talk to the chef about certain foods you want on your table. This specially goes to the group with any member of the family who has food allergies or someone on a special diet. By the way, they also gave us two medium-sized Disney character cups on the first day of our breakfast. I'm not sure how they decide how many cups to give to their guests but this is where we can enjoy free refills of any refreshment from the restaurant in the hotel. We fill them up after breakfast so we have drinks on our way to the park. How neat is that?

Asian-styled fried chicken.

First dessert of the day: a trio of sweetness!

Our room. It's gorgeous! Bienne and Cielo absolutely loved it! Every morning the girls would go out the balcony to see the wild animals just outside the yard. Zebras, Ostriches, Giraffes, Antelopes are some of the animals we hear at night. The idea of taking the girls to the most affordable African Safari trip entered our mind but of course it will take years for us to do that but who knows maybe someday it's gonna be a dream come true.

View from our balcony.

Hotel pool. We chose to soak in the hotel pool rather than going to the water theme parks. It takes a lot of energy to go there and go back the hotel all wet. It was spring time but it was unbelievably hot as a summer. The hotel pool is perfectly catered to family with small kids.  The kids can borrow life vest for free and towels were also provided as well at no cost but we brought our own life vests because we were not sure if there was a size that can fit our youngest toddler. There were also entertainment like dancing, contests, and surprise freebies beside the pool while the kids swim.

My girls swimming at the zero entry pool. In this picture they are soaking at 1 foot. There are at least four lifeguards in this family pool.

Transportation. Complimentary shuttle buses will take you to different parks such as Animal Kingdom, Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, Downtown Disney, and the water theme parks. They have schedule of drop offs and pick ups at designated locations. Make sure that you know where your bus point of pick-up is on your way back to the hotel. We made a couple of mistakes here because I'm telling you now there are many buses that will take you anywhere inside Disney World. This park is so huge its 1/3 land of Animal Kingdom is the size of our very own Disneyland Resort in California.

The view of Grand Floridian from the monorial.

Outside Disney World. The main reason of the event why we went to Disney World is to celebrate our 6th year anniversary. It was worth it and the girls were so thrilled even while we're still on the planning stage. They love Disneyland so much that when my eldest learned  that we are going to visit a bigger Disneyland she was extremely excited. We planned to visit the nearest church outside Disney World so we had to take a cab. This is our second tip shared by an insider. If you are staying inside Disney World hotels and plan to explore the area outside the park take the complimentary shuttle bus going to Downtown Disney. There are tons of taxi cabs outside Downtown Disney and it's much cheaper. So that's what we did.

Downtown Disney at night.

One of the challenges we expected to meet is the meal for our youngest toddler who has multiple food allergies. I mentioned this in my previous blogs that apart from seafood and eggs, our little girl is highly allergic to cow's milk so we made sure we packed enough milk for the trip - on the plane until the next day. According to my research there's a small grocery inside Animal Kingdom Lodge that has fresh milk and soy milk. Unfortunately, the soy milk they have is not the same soy milk our little girl is drinking she just can't take it. So hubee inquired at the lobby hotel on how they can help us. They gave him a complimentary transportation stub to buy what we need outside the park.

Pictures pictures and more pictures! Don't forget to charge your batteries and bring some extra ones as well. The best fun part of the trip is taking tons of pictures (and videos too!). You'll find photographers wearing Disney uniform in every corner of the park and they are located on the exact spot where they call it the winning background. Our mistake number 3: we failed to order the prints taken from their camera online. It only takes at least 30 days in their file and after that all the pictures in there will be deleted. So if there's a shot that you really like taken from their camera I suggest you order it right away.

Disney World is indeed the most magical place on earth. Hubee and I always feel young at heart when we enter the Disney parks. It was sad that our trip in Florida was short but we did have a great time. Would you believe after just three days of missing Disney World we went to Disneyland Resort? Only thing is our Sleeping Beauty castle now looks smaller than the Cinderella castle in Disney World. We are definitely going back there in the future. Our favorite part of the trip? I'll share it with you in my next blog. Happy travels =)