This morning we got up and headed to the airport at 4:00am for our 6am flight to Florida. We’re headed there to celebrate with Allison’s parents in their new house. We’ve never been to Florida for Christmas before and our Christmases with Allison’s parents have always been virtual. They send us a big box of gifts and we open them on Facetime or a Zoom meeting or something like that. This year we decided that we’d go down for a week and spend the holiday with them in person.
Our flight down was very smooth. Andy had some trouble with the pressure in his ears on the descent but luckily that wasn’t too long for him to go through. He can’t seem to pop his ears properly to get relief. He had some shows to watch on the flight so he kept busy.
When we landed we were greeted by Dan and Marcia. They picked us up and we headed to breakfast at Cracker Barrel before heading to Disney Springs to walk around.
When we got to Disney Springs we saw all the beautiful Christmas decorations and learned that there were 20 themed Christmas trees spread all over Disney Springs. Andy and I got special maps and we went searching for the trees. The maps were nice with stickers to put into the places where we would find each themed tree. Once we finished our maps we could turn them in for a special gift.
We spent a few hours in Disney Springs and then it was time to head to the hotel to get checked in. We were staying at the All-Star Music hotel on Disney property. The check in process went poorly and because of that we were each given the Genie + perk in the park for the next day. Genie + allowed us to register for Lightning passes at various rides. In addition to that it also gave us free parking at the park.
Allison has a Flat Stanley for school and she’s been taking photos with it all over. Our hotel had these giant boots and I got this silly photo of her and Andy with Flat Stanley under the boots. We got to our rooms and unpacked a bit and relaxed and then headed back to Disney Springs to have dinner and explore further.
We had our dinner form Earl of Sandwich and ate along side the pod that is in the middle of Disney Springs. Then we found the rest of the Christmas trees in Disney Springs and got our gifts. Andy and I each got a special pin for completing the task of finding each of the trees. They were all really fun and well decorated. As we were leaving to go back to the hotel the area where the main tree was located began to snow. It was fun to explore Disney Springs today and ease into the trip before hitting animal Kingdom tomorrow.
We got back to the hotel and Fitzy was waiting for Andy in Dan and Marcia’s room. He had made the trip with us as well.