Disney 2017 (Extra Photos)

Here are some miscellaneous photos taken throughout our week at Disney.

We had two days off scheduled in our week.  We did two park days and took a day off.  We then did two more park days and took another day off.  We ended our time with the Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party that took place at night.  I liked having the down time scheduled into our week.  It gave us time to rest and relax in between the long, busy days in the parks.  It was especially good for the kids to have a little down time.

On one of those days off we had lunch reservations at T-Rex.  It is located at Disney Springs.  It is a dinosaur themed restaurant that I was really eager to take the boys too. 

ready for lunch at T-Rex

entering the restaurant

This was in the ice room.  The restaurant decorations are very cool.  The sound effects are just as cool but it is very loud in there. 

Grrrr....

lunch at T-Rex in Disney Springs

My boys love dinosaurs so this was a fun meal for them.

The kids spent one afternoon swimming.  Here they are in the hot tub.

They also enjoyed the lazy river.

Ben in the lazy river.

One evening our hotel had a luau.  It was just another fun thing we got to include in our trip.

Of course the boys favorite thing about it was the fire act.

the boys with the luau dancers

Before attending the Christmas Party we visited a few of the Disney hotels to see their Christmas decorations.  Our first stop was the Contemporary Resort.  We had brunch reservations there at Chef Mickey's.

The huge Christmas Tree outside the Contemporary Resort.

It was so pretty.

cool dudes

We took a ride on the monorail to see some other hotels.  The kids loved riding it.

visiting the Polynesian Resort

Cruz at the Polynesian

They showed Disney cartoons in the lobby.  This is where my crew landed and would have stayed for a while if we had not rushed them on to see other stuff.

The Polynesian gift shop.

Our next hotel to visit was the Grand Floridian.  It was my favorite of all.

It was so stunning!

I loved how formal and fancy it was there.  Everything was so gorgeous. 

our group at the Grand Floridian

One of the things we wanted to see there was this life sized gingerbread house. It was very cute.

Here are the ingredients it took to make it. 

We made our way over to the piano player to watch him play live.  My boys love Moana so getting to hear him play this song was a lot of fun for them.

Cruz with the pianist. 

We walked around outside to see more of the resort.

 Everything there is beautiful.  Just beautiful.

On the day we left Disney we had to check out of our condo by 10:00 a.m. but our flight did not leave until 6:00 p.m..  That gave us several hours to kill.  We drove over to Disney Springs for some last minute shopping and just to walk around there one last time.  A few of us did the hot air balloon lift there. It ascends 400 feet in the air and is the world's largest tethered helium balloon.  It was a lot of fun and the views from up above were amazing! 

a view from above

We visited the Star Wars store and let the boys build their own lightsabers.  They are so proud of those. 

We also saw the movie The Star while at Disney Springs.  It was a great movie and we all loved it.

We ate lunch at Chick fil A in Orlando and I smiled when I saw this displayed on the wall there.

David at the Sanford Airport that afternoon.  This was the shirt he wore on our last day.  He had been such a great sport all week we thought it was a fun way for him to wrap up the week.

The beautiful Florida sunset we saw before boarding our flight back home.

a group photo at the airport

This was supposed to be a photo of how we all felt about leaving Disney.  Notice we are all sad except for one.  Surely he was a little sad too, right?  In spite of that face he did have a great week.  He just likes to aggravate my friend Malinda and this was a great way for him to do it.

We arrived back home late and tired but oh so thankful for all we had seen and done.  I can't wait to do Disney again someday.  It was an awesome trip.