Penny's First Trip to Disney World - Trip Report COMPLETED

Thursday, December 10th

Today started off a little rocky. Penny woke up fine, ate breakfast, and had a big glass of tap water. As we were about to walk out the door she threw up all over again! On our last day! Karen pointed out that every time she had puked had been right after drinking the tap water and wondered if something in the Florida water was affecting her. We all agreed that this had to be it since she had been fine yesterday after drinking only bottled water, so we decided to risk the day anyways. We skipped her Elsa dress we had planned on her wearing in case she got sick again, crossed our fingers, and got in line for the bus. She laid with her head on me the entire bus ride and I silently prayed that she didn't puke all of everyone. Thankfully she made it through and had a relatively smooth day!

Once in the park we passed Cinderella's castle which continued to amaze Penny:

We then made our way back to Fantasyland for our Winnie the Pooh FastPass+. Penny loved this ride and was really bummed when we had to get off, but I bought her a new Pooh stuffed animal to take her mind off of it and to replace the one she had thrown up all over earlier in the trip. This one had Piglet with him which she was pretty stoked about.

We may have done another attraction or two here, but I can't really remember (sorry I waited too long to write up this day!) but I know we eventually used up our Anna & Elsa FastPass+. Penny was dying with excitement and we especially loved Anna. Penny got so excited to see Anna she started running in place and Anna came over and took her hand and started doing it with her. Adorable!

Again, we might have done a couple more rides after this, but Be Our Guest lunch is the next pictures I have so we'll go with that. I ordered the tuna nicoise salad, a couple of people ordered the braised pork, and a couple of people ordered sandwiches. I want to say Penny got the grilled cheese. We also ordered a variety of the desserts to try. I was pretty bummed with my tuna nicoise salad that I had been craving since our last trip here. I don't know if I had built the memory up in my head too much or if they were having an off day, but the egg was overcooked, the salad was under dressed, and the tuna was very bland. It was edible but nothing to write home about and this had been one of my favorite entrees the last trip. Everyone else greatly enjoyed their meal, however, and declared this one of the best restaurants we ate at. The lemon meringue cupcake was out of this world and I ended up eating all of mine and most of someone else's so the meal wasn't a total waste for me

Penny's nap was coming up quick but we squeezed in It's a Small World first.

Afterwards I fought with Penny to get her into her stroller and to lie down and then I walked around with her for a bit while the rest of the group did Monster's Inc. Laugh Floor. I decided it was a total waste for me to just sit on the curb, however, so I snagged myself a chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich with chocolate ice cream and peanut butter topping (which they did not charge me extra for on top of the snack credit....score!) to enjoy while I waited. Yummy!

Tom, Jon, and I went to use up our Seven Dwarfs Mine Train FastPass+ once they were done at the Laugh Floor. Tom claimed he didn't like it but his smile in the pictures prove otherwise!

As soon as we got off I ran over to the nearest kiosk to add a 4th FastPass+ for us which proved difficult since the system saw that Karen and Jimm still had Seven Dwarfs Mine Train FastPasses. With some finagling I was able to set us up with overlapping FastPasses for Jungle Cruise later that afternoon, but it was kind of a pain in the butt. I'm super excited to be able to do this all on the app going forward!

With some time to kill, we explored the Ye Olde Christmas Shoppe again and caught the end of the Festival of Fantasy parade which we then proceeded to follow down Main Street.

Penny woke up towards the end of our walk so we hopped in the short line to meet Mickey.

Tinkerbell also had a short line so we knocked that one out next. Penny liked playing in the oversized items in the cue.

On our way out through the store Tom picked up a new hat.

We then headed over to Adventureland to get in line to meet Aladdin and Jasmine. They were running very late for their scheduled time slot so we had to wait a long time. Then when they finally came out they paid more attention to each other than to the kids and they took FOREVER moving people through the line. We were one of the last people to get through so we were pretty annoyed by the time we got up there, but luckily the interaction Penny had with them totally made up for it. She sat up there whispering secrets to them for several minutes before they took pictures and then Aladdin snuck Jasmine a sticker to give to her which she thought was pretty much the coolest thing that has ever happened.

We were cutting our Jingle Jungle Cruise FastPasses tight when we finally finished so we rushed over and hopped on. I always love this ride but Penny was getting tired and was unimpressed.

We had a little more time to kill before our dinner reservation at 'Ohana so we rode the carousel and Under the Sea one more time since those were Penny's favorite rides all trip.

We then decided to ride the train back up to the front of the park from the Fantasyland station. This turned out to be a mistake as Penny was really overtired by this point and threw a huge tantrum for most of the ride because we wouldn't let her climb all over the seats. Sigh.....it was the last night at least!

We got on the monorail over to the Poly where some more whining and tantruming ensued, but she calmed down once we let her play on one of our phones in the lobby area after we checked in. Mommy and daddy went and grabbed a drink from the bar

Dinner at 'Ohana was disappointing at best. Now to be fair we were all VERY tired at this point and so we may not have been in the best of moods, but the food was mediocre (besides the noodles and potstickers which are always awesome) and the service was horrible. We did get to see some of the castle lighting through the window, but that was pretty much the highlight of the evening. This is 2 for 2 on "meh at best" experiences at 'Ohana so we're checking this one off the list for awhile.

I had planned on us stopping at the Grand Floridian after dinner to see the decorations, but we were all so beat by this point that we called for an Uber instead and headed back to the hotel.

Friday, December 11th

This one is going to be super short and sweet because I really don't remember much at all and I was feeling like crap this day.

I woke up in the middle of the night and told Jon I wasn't feeling well. He grabbed me a trash can which I promptly threw up into. Uh oh. Maybe it wasn't just the water affecting Penny after all....

I decided in the morning however that it must have just been the two alcoholic beverages I'd had at dinner combined with the Benadryl I had taken that made me sick as I felt much better once I got up. We got mostly packed and then Penny, Jon, and I went to the pool for a bit. Penny LOVED the water slide and didn't want to leave.

Penny played in the room for a bit as we finished packing everything up and then we made the incredibly short walk over to Disney Springs. I really wish we would have utilized this location more, but all the nights I had planned on Jon and Tom and I going over there we were just too beat by the time we got back to the room.

We were all starving so we grabbed lunch at Wolfgang Puck Express which we all LOVED. I don't remember what everyone had but I know I got the Pesto and Goat Cheese pizza that was fabulous and Jon got the bacon wrapped meatloaf that he also greatly enjoyed. They also brought us out a full sized portion of the Chinois Chicken Salad for the table to share on the house which I highly recommend as it was super delicious. I felt bad wasting so much food but we were stuffed by the end of the meal and my stomach was starting to get upset again.

We hit up Disney's Days of Christmas store where Jon and I ended up buying a small pile of ornaments. Then we took some pictures, made our way all the down to the Cirque du Soliel theater, and then back over to the World of Disney, stopping at shops along the way. My stomach was really, really upset by this point and I was feeling so miserable that I even dropped a gasp worthy amount on a pair of sweatpants at World of Disney so that I could get out of the leggings that were feeling too tight on my tummy. I really had wanted to get a sundae at Ghirardelli but I could tell that wasn't happening so we stopped at Goofy's Candy Company to use up our remaining snack credits before we headed back to the resort to catch the Magical Express.

The ride to the airport was uneventful as far as I can remember and I ended up getting a veggie sub at Quiznos that made me feel a ton a better. A late plane ride meant most of us slept on the way home. Jon got pretty misty at the airport as he didn't want to go back, but luckily for us we are now 62 hours from our flight back to Orlando to have a much more relaxed trip this time around! And crossing our fingers for no more illness!

And finally, our little bonsai tree from the Japan pavilion setup at home. Notice the hidden Mickey...

Thanks, Lauren! My biggest advice is to plan 100% with your kiddo in mind and be ready to go with the flow. My biggest regret is trying to focus so much on keeping everyone in our group happy and hitting everything I thought they would like that I sometimes forglt that she was the #1 person that I needed to focus on. Hence our "redo" trip in two days where she is calling the shots and we're taking things super easy!

Thanks! She was a trooper!