Our Surprise Day at Disney!!!

Several days into our trip Justin tells me he thinks a friend of his in Orlando may just be able to get us some free friend passes for Disney! Come to find out, we were able to get three adults into Animal Kingdom for free on New Year’s Eve. So Justin, Abbie, Tristan and I loaded up New Year’s Eve morning for a fun and full day at Disney. It truly is the happiest place on earth. We ALL had a great time riding rides, seeing all the characters, eating yummy funnel cake and seeing some amazing shows. I never thought I’d take Tristan there until he was older but he absolutely LOVED it all. Who wouldn’t? It’s all so nice and there is always so many cool things to look at no matter where in the park you are. So here’s how our day went down…

After grabbing some fast passes for some key rides and shows, we headed over to Dinoland for Tristan’s first amusement park ride! The Spinny Rhino ride. Being high up in the hair didn’t phase him at all, or going around and around, but the scary puffy noise the ride made was not his fave! It was so fun being able to actually take him on something though. We made sure to ride it a couple of times.

Who do you think is having more fun here? Tristan or Mom and Dad?

While we were in Dinoland we happened to pass by Goofy and Pluto taking pictures with kids. We had to get in line to get ours taken. We were actually AMAZED by how well Tristan acted around all the Disney characters. After our tear-filled Santa incident, I thought this would be a no-go for sure. But he didn’t seem to mind. Even gave Goofy a high-five and everything! Of course maybe it was that we stuffed him with snack while waiting and popped the paci in to ward off the tears this time.

Then it was off to use our first fast pass of the day. Got straight to the front of the line (twice) to ride Mt. Everest. I love this ride, just the perfect amount of scary! Oh, and for those who haven’t been, I won’t ruin it for you, but look at this mountain! That is the roller coaster! It’s so cool, it’s amazing how incredibly REAL this mountain looks right in the middle of the park.

That’s Abbie and I in the very last seat! Amazing to me that Justin was able to snap this picture of us! I look like I’m about to pass out scared too! So funny! We really did have a good time despite how our faces look!

After our adrenaline was pumping, we headed over to the Safari ride. On the way there, we looked down and saw this precious site…

Completely exhausted from all the excitement. He was a trooper though and took several little catnaps like this in his stroller throughout the day. And look at his little pudgy tummy sticking out of his shirt…priceless! Now that’s tired!

We took our napping boy and loaded onto our safari truck. This was also really cool. We got to see all kinds of cool African animals pretty close-up and learned lots of random trivia about the animals too.

After our safari, we headed off to look at some more animals. Fish, flamingoes, gorillas, you name it. Tristan was absolutely mesmerized by the fish!

We soon realized it was time to use our 2nd fast pass to go see Finding Nemo, the musical. It was really amazing! Huge characters, amazing costumes and effects. Enough to keep Tristan occupied and mostly entertained before lunch!

After some BBQ lunch, we walked around the park more to see what we could find. Ended up going on another safari and scuba diving!

We also found the “Tree of Life” and experienced a cool Bug’s Life 3D show underneath. Warning: if you go, do NOT take your one year old to this show. Poor guy screamed his little head off, so dad had to go escort him out!

Then, finally we ended the day with a visit to meet Mr. Mickey Mouse himself. Tristan did great yet again and gave Mickey some high five action too. I thought it was funny that Mickey was shorter than all of us! And a little weird that he was in a Christmas sweater while we were in shorts!

We topped off the day with a strawberry whipped cream funnel cake before heading back home. What a wonderfully fun day we had at Disney. Perfect for T’s first trip, and a really fun way to ring in the New Year. Thank you Rob for making it work to get us in, we appreciate it so much!