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On Friday, after Connor was done with school, we drove to Orlando to celebrate his birthday at Disney World. We arrived at the Coronado Springs resort and checked in Friday night, we walked around a little bit, then went to bed pretty early. The resort was beautiful, with great landscaping and neat decorations. There were squirrels everywhere, and the kids loved chasing them around. We we had a decent sized room and were very comfortable.

Our room was cozy and very nice.
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We took a few short videos of the resort grounds, they were huge, and the pool.


On Saturday, we woke up with great expectations and high hopes for our adventures. We were planning to go to the Animal Kingdom first and then play it by ear and see how we were feeling for the afternoon. We got a pretty early start, but then it took a long time at the ticket counter to get our passes. We bought 1 years season passes and it took between 20 and 30 minutes to purchase them. I guess we should have mentally prepared ourselves for long waits, but the kids are not super patient people. They were already getting off on the wrong foot.

The kids were pretty bored while we're buying tickets.
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Once we got into the Animal Kingdom, we rode the African Safari ride first. The park wasn't too busy and the waits weren't too long throughout the day. Paige really liked the animals on the ride and loved spotting them and pointing them out. Connor liked the ride too and I have been talking to him about all kinds of animals lately so it was nice for him to see them all in person. After the Safari ride, it was a bit of a struggle to find something that was age appropriate and height appropriate for the kids. We rode a little dino ride and watched the "Finding Nemo" show, but there weren't a lot of things to do with the kids at the park.

Connor and Mommy sat together on the Safari Ride.
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Sissy sat with Daddy.

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Connor and Mommy sat in the front on the dino ride. Paige was throwing a fit right before the ride started, so we didn't take a picture together.
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There were some neat roller coasters but Connor was still too short to ride them. There were some shows we could have watched, but after the "Finding Nemo" show, we didn't think the kids would want to just sit and watch something again. We were barely at the park three hours when we decided to try a different park.

We took a quick family pic before we left Animal Kingdom.
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Our next decision was to try the Hollywood Studios park. It's also a fairly small park, and we hadn't been there before with kids. We were trying to remember an we're pretty sure it's been 6 or 7 years since we'd been there. The Hollowood Studios park had a couple little rides for the kids, but overall was pretty disappointing. Again, many of the rides required Connor to be taller, and it wasn't geared for little kids. We knew that the Magic Kingdom was the best park for little kids, but didn't realize how bad the other parks would be. The kids enjoyed climbing on a play area and a few rides, but overall we did a lot of walking between the few attractions that were suited for small kids.
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[Image] After an exhausting day of running around, we got back to the resort and went swimming. It was definitely the highlight of the trip for the kids and they had a blast. There was a small pool with 5 splashdown jets that was perfect for Paige, and Daddy and Connor did a lot of swimming in the big pool. I was so impressed with how well he swam and he was very impressive without his swim vest. We've officially retired the swim vest and we're guessing that he'll be swimming like a fish by mid-summer.
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We ate a poolside dinner after we were done swimming.
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Paige also swam in the big pool a while and she had so much fun. She was an absolute angel on the trip and was in such a great mood and so fun. We all had a good time and although the parks weren't perfect for the kids, we did all the fun stuff that they offered. On Sunday, there was a big storm coming through and it cooled off quite a bit. There were alerts about severe weather and lightning, so we didn't chance going to the park and drove home after we got up. The weather actually cleared up quite a bit and we have been second guessing our choice, but we were pretty exhausted anyways.