Day 1: Arrival Day, Travel and O'hana

We left DSM on a Friday morning with a flight time of 11:30. It gave us plenty of time to get going in the morning and get to the airport. Michael liked watching the planes take off and it seemed like everyone in the terminal was also headed to sunny Walt Disney World! Our flight put us in Orlando around 3:30p.m. which wasn't too bad. 

Michael did very well on the flight and kept busy with some magic color books and movies on the ipad. He was a good boy! 

Once we landed we picked up our rental car (we flew into Orlando Sanford, about an hour away from the resort) and stopped for some groceries for the weekend. We then picked up my sister at her apartment and checked into the Art of Animation resort. We got settled and then headed out to our 8:00 dinner reservation at O'hana. 

We're here! 

At the beautiful Polynesian resort.

Scott enjoyed his pina co-lava drink while we browsed some shops while waiting. 

We enjoyed an awesome dinner and knew from experience to pace ourselves through the whole meal to save room for dessert. It was really good and we had great service! 

After dinner we hopped onto the monorail for a quick jaunt over to the Contemporary for some fireworks viewing. We were the only people in the front car and Michael got to collect all the monorail transportation cards from a driver who made sure he got all of them! Pretty neat! 

Michael was so excited about those cards and played with them the entire trip...sometimes it really is the little things! 

Anyway, we hopped off at the Contemporary with a few minutes to spare before fireworks. We watched them from the 4th floor observation deck and it was a neat perspective. There was only a small crowd of people there (maybe 20?) and it was a good, free way to end the evening. 

We got back to the resort around 11pm, ready to get tucked into our cozy cone for the night. We had a big day two coming up that I can't wait to share with you so stay tuned!