Disney

parade-22, originally uploaded by MNicoleM.

Boy am I exhausted!!
This past weekend was the Autism Society of America conference - one of two national conferences I attend each year (the other being the Council for Exceptional Children). And this year, the ASA conference was in Orlando! Being a child at heart, I decided I would make it into a Disney trip, going down on the Monday before the conference and staying until the Monday after. Now my husband a)hates crowds b) hates riding rollercoasters and other rides c) hates standing in line and d) isn't a big Disney fan. Additionally, the client where he is currently working is going live in July and he couldn't get a week off of work. So my mom and I took a mother/daughter trip and had SO much fun.
We arrived Monday afternoon and went to Downtown Disney for the evening. We had dinner there at Cap'n Jack's and watched an improv show at the comedy club on Pleasure Island.

Tuesday we spent the day at Animal Kingdom which was awesome. I'm very glad we did it at the beginning of the week because there was a LOT of walking there. We got SOAKED on the Kali River Rapid ride

, then when we had started to dry, it started raining lol. We were able to ride everything there though! We had dinner that night at the Rainforest Cafe there at Animal Kingdom, went back to the hotel that evening and rested.
Wednesday we spent 14 straight hours at the Magic Kindgom and rode everything there except the kiddie rides.

Thursday after the conference, we went to Typhoon Lagoon, a Disney water park and rode everything there. Then we took a shower and headed back to the Magic Kingdom because I didn't take my tripod on Wed and wanted to get good pictures of the fireworks

and the SpectroMagic parade

Friday for lunch we went by the Wide World of Sports (I skipped a session of the conference for that ... shhhh) to see where the Braves have Spring Training

then after the rest of the conference we went BACK to the Magic Kingdom - where it rained and rained and rained lol.

We rode a few rides again and got my picture made with lots o' characters

Then we watched the beginning of the fireworks so I could get a better picture of Tinkerbell flying

Saturday after the conference we went to Epcot, got more character pictures made
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mnicolem/2662266991/sizes/m/
and rode everything in the Future World part of the park. We didn't have time to do much in the World Showcase part before IllumiNations though - but I got some pretty pictures of IllumiNations!

Finally, on Sunday we spent the day at Disney's Hollywood Studios. We were in the right place at the right time to be chosen to get Dream Fastpasses

so we got to ride the "good rides" twice (Rockin Roller Coaster and Tower of Terror) and were able to ride *almost* everything else.
We were even chosen as "extras" to participate in one of the shows - mama was the captain and I was the deckhand and we were attacked by enemy fire

Unfortunately, due to inclement weather, Fantasmic was cancelled so we didn't get to see that :(


It was an exhausting but wonderful trip, and we were happy to come home yesterday. I got home in time to spend a couple of hours with Chris before he left for Colorado last night. Today I should be unpacking and doing laundry, but I haven't started that yet lol.

Tonight I have another (hopefully the last) sleep test and tomorrow I need to go up to school to work on some stuff in my classroom.