The Nelson Family: Post-Partum Disney Depression & Day 1 Recap.

We have been back from Disney one week today. And. It. Sucks.

We went last May for our "Familymoon", but this trip was completely different. For starters, we brought along P, our best friend and Braylen's godfather. And the weather, crowd level and price were all completely different. We are going to try to go to Disney World every year, and we have decided that we are going to aim for February every year. When we went in May, I was very distracted with my wedding and didn't plan as much as I probably should have. I didn't make the same mistake twice. We booked our dining reservations 6 months in advance and I followed several touring websites to try to get the most out of our trip.

Last year Braylen was pretty intimidated by the life-size characters. He also had a hard time recognizing the face characters, as they weren't in cartoon form. So during our preparation for the trip, I decided to make our autograph books, to help him put faces to names and to serve as a photo album later. I found a great forum on the disboards.com that had some great pre-made autograph pages. I researched the characters that were popping up in the parks (using My Disney Experience) and also made sure to include the characters from the dining reservations we had. I printed the pages on blank 5x8 index cards and had the pages bound at Office Max. I think they turned out awesome, they really helped Braylen, and the characters got a kick out of them too.

Day 1:

We had a 6:00 am flight out of DFW, which put us arriving in Orlando at 10:20 Florida time. I wanted to make sure that we didn't miss any park time due to travel, so we booked the earliest flight AA had. When we got to MCO, we took the Magical Express to All Star Music, had lunch in the hotel cafe and then headed to the Magic Kingdom!

First Picture!

Braylen is a pretty big Peter Pan nut. He likes to wear his Peter Pan costume everywhere that I'll let him, and we didn't get to see Pan the WHOLE 10 days that we were at Disney last May. This trip, meeting Peter was at the TOP of our To-Do list. When we got to Magic Kingdom, we saw Peter Pan and Wendy were out doing meet & greets, so we ran over to see him.

Both Peter & Wendy were amazing. Braylen was pretty much star-struck, and he kind of stood in front of them with his mouth open but they recognized that he was a Peter Pan fan (not sure if it was the dolls or his shirt) and were extremely nice and took their time with him.

We took FULL advantage of FastPass+, and the first ride we had scheduled was Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin. We probably rode Buzz a million times throughout the week. It's Braylen's ALL time favorite.

After we rode Buzz, we stepped out into Tomorrowland and saw Push! I couldn't believe it! I have been to Disney several times in my life, and I have never ever seen him. I was so excited! He is a talking trash can, controlled by a Disney Cast Member somewhere close by.

Push saw Braylen's birthday button on his shirt, and started talking to him. He even sang Drisella's and Anastacia's "Sing, Sweet Nightingale" song to him. It was hilarious, if I can ever figure out how to upload the video from my camcorder I will post it. Braylen loved Push, and asked if we could invite him to his birthday party later in the month.

Watching Dream Along with Mickey.

We also had a FastPass to meet Rapunzel and Snow White at Princess Fairytale Hall.

After wrapping up with the princesses, we had to hurry to Epcot for our diner reservation at Teppan Edo in the Japan Pavillion.

Getting his Birthday Ears from Main Street.

Eating at Teppan Edo was not originally in our itinerary, we were going to eat at Tony's in Magic Kingdom but I literally changed the reservation 5 days before our trip. We all agreed it was one of the best dining experiences we had. It's hibachi style food, the service was fantastic and the food was scrumptious.We will definitely make reservations here again.

After dinner, we headed back to the hotel to rest for a little while before heading back to the Magic Kingdom for extra magic hours from 10pm-12am. During EMH we met Ariel in her cove, rode Dumbo, the Teacups and Space Mountain.