St. Augustine onto Orlando days 8/4-8/5

Alright, back to my trip report!! I left off on our drive back to Orlando from Daytona! So the super small world about d-cot is that Stephen ( @sej101 ) lives four houses down from my sister in Orlando! Dead serious! What are the odds!!!! He was going to be home on Saturday afternoon and we were going to do our best to meet up for a quick hug, hello and picture! Well, it worked out!!!! It was so awesome to finally meet him! He has become such a little brother to me. We spent about 10 minutes just chatting away and tons of squishy hugs!! He’s goofy, funny and sweet! I’m so glad that I can be a good role model and big sister to him. Such an awesome highlight of our trip!!!!! Ryan and I had dropped off our stuff in my sisters house before heading out to say hi to Stephen. When we got back, my niece (Kailey) and brother-in-law (also named Ryan) decided they were just going to rest and relax that evening. Kailey had been a trooper with all of the walking. So Teri, my Ryan and myself went to Disney Springs! Oh man, to have the problem of having Disney about 30 minutes away from your driveway! We walked all of Disney Springs and went into tons of shops. The World of Disney store has been going through a huge remodel over the last year or so. It’s about half complete! And it’s beautiful! It has an industrial warehouse feel with the brick walls. I love that they opened up the internal walls! It’s way easier to walk around now!! And you can see through a lot of the store, so it makes it easier to find someone! Lots of cute new merchandise too! Ryan was shopping for a new hat. He’s obsessed with baseball hats! I told him to browse but to wait until our October trip to buy anything. That way he could see all his options then. We had dinner at D-Luxe burger, it was great as usual! We also managed to snag an indoor table, which was nice on the hot evening. We browsed more shops. I stopped in Erin McKenna’s bakery for gluten free treats for later (a cupcake for later, and a donut for breakfast)! Ryan grabbed an M&M Rice Krispie treat in the Cauldron shop on our way back to the car. I was wearing my Incredibles/Princess Bride mashup shirt. A Cast Member asked if I was an Incredibles fan. I told him I was! He handed me a button for the Incredibles 2 movie! It matched my shirt perfectly! A little Disney magic at Disney Springs! We got home and went to bed. My sisters husband keeps their house so hot to try to save money. It was like 80-84* in the house most of the time! First thing in the morning it showed 78*. But it made it challenging to sleep since it’s so warm!

On Sunday morning, both Ryan’s met some friends and drove an hour out of town to go out target shooting. Us girls went to the Orlando Mall to do some back to school shopping for Kailey and her friend. Shopping with two 13 year old girls! Yikes!!! But they did good! I did reward myself with a coffee at Starbucks while walking the mall! We met the boys at the house in the early afternoon. Teri and her Ryan and involved in a church plant and getting a new church off the ground in Orlando, so they had a meeting that we attended that evening. Once that was done, we all went to Magic Kingdom! There was a special Annual Passholder event for after hours that was free! We registered for it a few weeks before our trip. So it was like extra magic hours, but just for pass holders that pre-registered. It was from 8pm-midnight! So we parked at the TTC, took the Monorail to Magical Kingdom and were home! Ryan and I had a fast pass for Space and Teri and her family had fast passes for Peter Pan and Little Mermaid. So we went our separate ways for the evening. We found that Space Mountain was down. We stopped for our event wrist bands in front of Stitch’s Great Escape. We saw that it was nearly time for Happily Ever After! We’ve only seen it once and it was raining, and there were umbrellas everywhere. So we feel we didn’t get to fully experience it. So we went ahead and found a spot on Main Street! We simply stood and enjoyed the show! We didn’t take any pics or videos until the end. That way we could just enjoy it! It’s such a great show. Space Mountain was back up again, so we went and used our fast passes from earlier. When we got off, it was getting close to regular closing hours. We booked it to get a Dole Whip because we didn’t think they would be open during the after hours event (and they weren’t). Ryan and I each got a pineapple/vanilla swirl! So yum! We ate them on our way to Thunder for our end of our fast pass. When we got off, we decided to stand by it again since the wait time was only like 10-15 minutes. When we got off that time, it was officially event hours! They were now checking for wrist bands and had us enter through the fast pass line. This is pretty much how all the rides were that night. So we got 3 rides on Thunder Mountain in less than 30 minutes! I texted my sister and they finished up their last ride. So we met them at Pirates! We almost got soaked by one of the cannon ball splashes! You have to watch out for those nowadays! Then over to Jungle Cruise for a super fun cruise down the Nile! We all then went and rode Buzz Lightyear! I scored 477,700! Not too shabby! I beat Ryan, but his gun stopped for an entire room. He wasn’t too happy. We then took advantage of some of the Incredibles photo ops in Tomorrowland! Those were fun to do! I honestly don’t remember if we got any other rides in! I don’t think so. We were all getting tired. It was getting close to midnight. We took some photo pass pics up on Main Street with the castle behind us. We then realized it was minutes until midnight! Ryan, Teri and I have yet to see the Kiss Goodnight!! Well, sure enough, it started right after our pics were done! It was so cool to see the castle change colors and hear the goodnight message! We rarely stay till park closing anymore, so this was likely our only realistic chance to see it. So it worked out just perfectly!!! There weren’t too many people on Main Street. So it made it nice to stroll out. It was cool to see no one in front of the planters at the train station! Got a picture of the plants being watered. We caught the Incredibles Monorail back to the TTC. Then walked to the car. We got back to their house around 1am or so. Asleep by 1:30am.