Our family was so excited about out family's summer vacation this year. This was the first time in 5 years that Ryan hasn't been in Alaska at the beginning of July, so we decided to add some family time to our annual New Smyrna Beach vacation. Looking through all the options, we decided on a cruise out of Fort Lauderdale. We knew we would drive, but man, that was going to be a long trip, so we started thinking of ways to break up the trip. As luck would have it, in one of Lily's Lego sets there was a reference to LEGOLAND in Winter Haven, Florida. That was more than halfway there, and we were certain the girls would love it. They both have a great time with Legos these days, so we thought we would give it a try. We didn't tell the girls about our idea though. Central Florida in early July is known for its rain (and blazing heat if it's not raining). So, we decided we would head on down, not buy our tickets in advance and make a day-of decision on if it made sense to go. Well, we got up that morning, and even though we knew it would be hot, it looked like it would be a nice day so off we went. The girls didn't have a clue until we pulled in and they saw the big welcome sign. I love surprising them like this!
First up on our agenda was the double decker carousel. Of course, we had to sit on top.
Next up was the kid's animal safari ride. I gave Lily my phone to take pictures while Mia "drove" the car. Really, it was pretty impressive to see all the cool animals made out of Legos. Not quite the same as the Animal Kingdom safari, but still neat.
They enjoyed it.
After that was boating school. The girls actually drove us around; it wasn't on a track. That was interesting. Thankfully (and kind of miraculously) no one got sea sick even though those boats were rocking and bumping! The girls were quite proud of themselves for their captain skills.
Right next to the boating school is the driving school. They have one for kids 6 to 12 but Lily became really nervous and refused to give it a try. Mia however was super excited to try out the small track for kids 3-5. I have to be honest, she showed some pretty nice driving skills here. She started in the back of the pack since she was the last one in, but ended up driving around others in tight spaces to come out in first place. She was thrilled to be given her "driver's license" when it was over.
Some of the neatest things to see were all the Lego structures they had created. Some were really impressive! Here's Cape Canaveral and San Francisco.
Mia and I also rode a neat little ride where we pulled ourselves up pretty high then released the ropes to drift back down.
One of the day's highlights was meeting Emmett and Wildstyle from The Lego Movie. Lily currently says this is her favorite movie while Mia says it is in her top 5.
The girls were excited to ride this medieval looking ride. They rode something similar at Hershey last year and loved it. They thoroughly enjoyed this one which spins them around pretty quickly. I was able to snap one not-too-blurry picture as they sped by.
Here are they are looking upset to be in the stockade. They were mad that we had said it was time to go. It was mid-afternoon so we had been there for quite awhile, and we were all burning up. We could see rain clouds moving in, and we knew we had another 3-4 hour ride ahead of us to Fort Lauderdale. We had seen and done just about everything we were interested in (they didn't want to do any roller coasters and we weren't going to the water park because we didn't want to be soaked in the car), so it just made sense to go on and head out. Regardless, this was their reaction, but to me, what better faces to have in the stockade!
Of course, they cheered up pretty quickly when they remembered we told them at the beginning of the day that we would go to the gift shop on our way out. They both picked out their souvenir (Cinderella's castle set for Lily, a sword and shield for Mia), and we picked up a couple of little surprises for them and our Christmas tree ornament. It was a very fun day, and I'm so glad we added this to the front of our vacation.
We made it to Fort Lauderdale a few hours later. We were all taking showers and relaxing and decided going out to dinner just didn't sound right, so we ended the day with room service, our favorite!
What a great way to start our vacation!
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