Disney World trip PART I

We just got back from Disney World in Orlando, Florida! Since I have so many fun pictures to "report" - I will try to post a little bit for the next few days when I have time.

Here's Part I - the Journey and our first day:
Participants: Ken, Vickie, Jennifer, Carey, Heather, Mitch, Lance, Me and Hayley
Travel: We left Great Falls on Saturday, Jan. 19 early in the morning. We had Samantha with us. First stop in Salt Lake City. Second stop in Atlanta. My parents and Dianne met us at the airport. We dropped Samantha off with them. It was a short, but fun, visit. And the drop off with Samantha couldn't have gone better. There were no tears from her (and only a few from me when I walked away from her).

We spent an extra 2 hours on the plane in Atlanta because it was snowing there and we had to get de-iced. Then when we landed in Orlando, we had to wait another 30 minutes or so because it was raining so hard and lightening so bad out that they didn't want us to deplane until the lightening passed. We finally got off, retrieved our luggage and boarded our bus to our resort (Beach Club Resort). We were excited to be there!
The bus:

On the bus:

We spent Sunday at Epcot - where Hayley discovered her favorite ride - Spaceship Earth. It's a slow-moving ride that takes you up inside the Epcot Ball where you learn about the story of human communication. From cavemen to the making of the first newspaper to the Internet, it's a fascinating experience.
Spaceship Earth is inside Epcot's landmark.
Inside this ride, (which Hayley rode on 3 times!), she was obsessed with this gal in the 'present-time' section of our communication travels...so we took a picture for her. :)

Epcot is one of Disney's theme parks where you can explore the world in one day. The World Showcase is several countries featuring sights, sounds and food from that country's culture. Some of the countries have small boat rides that were fun to explore. Behind us in this picture is the lake that is the center of the World Showcase:
At Japan (or was it China??) we saw Mulan and Mushu!

At Mexico, we saw El Donald Duck-o...hahaha j/k, just Donald Duck wearing a sombrero! :)
(Donald was actually the first character we saw - it was such a treat...check back to see all the many characters we had a chance to see and visit!)

Since Epcot was a 2 minute walk from our resort, we visited it often - enjoying it's countries, rides, food...pretty much the entire atmosphere!

Stay tuned...more to come...so much more! :)