Sawyer’s Birthday Weekend – Disney’s Wilderness Lodge, Magic Kingdom, & More!

A weekend at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge and Magic Kingdom

As Sawyer’s birthday is a little over a week away, we wanted to take full advantage of the four day weekend that the schools provide in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on Monday.  We decided that it would be a great weekend for a birthday staycation at Disney.  Emily wanted to surprise the boys so after school on Thursday she set out a ton of different snacks with hand crafted bags to build their own trail mix, which was a hint to our ultimate destination.

When the boys asked where we would be taking this trail mix, we let them know that we would be staying a couple nights at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge Villas.  The boys (and the adults) were excited for a long weekend and a bit of relaxation after the very hectic holidays.  I took Friday and Monday off of work so we could all enjoy the time together.

Friday, January 15th – Disney’s Wilderness Lodge

After spending the morning getting our supplies ready and loaded into the car we were able to hit the road around 11:30 am after Emily’s meeting with Sawyer’s pre-school teacher.  We drove through some pretty crazy rain and wind as we were leaving home, but luckily the weather cleared just as we pulled into Disney’s Wilderness Lodge Resort.  We checked in at the front desk, got our MagicBands and a birthday button for Sawyer, and headed off to the Roaring Fork for some lunch.

The Roaring Fork is a great spot for a quick bite in a very cozy atmosphere.  We shared a Philly Steak Flatbread, Chili, and Cucumber Salad and the boys had their turkey sandwich and hotdog.  We all agreed to delay dessert for later in the afternoon so we could head to our room to explore and relax for a bit.

We booked a two bedroom villa in hopes that Emily’s parents would be joining us but due to Curly’s treatments, they regrettably had to cancel (and they were bummed to be missing out).  The Wilderness Lodge Resort is currently under quite a bit of construction, but what we thought was really cool is that they provided a “pardon our dust” card that had three construction trading pins for our “inconvenience.”

The boys had a blast exploring the room and playing spies as they tried to navigate the room without us seeing them.  We turned on the Must Do’s, which is always one of our favorite things to do when we stay at a Disney resort.  We unpacked our clothes and snacks and took a snack break with our homemade trail mix.  Just as the boys were getting a little stir crazy in the room we agreed some fresh air would do us good.

We grabbed the camera and set out to explore the Wilderness Lodge Resort.  The vast construction limited the amount of the resort that we could travel, but we managed to find a few places where we could grab some photos and sunshine.  Sawyer knew that there was a Mickey bar at the end of our travels so he felt it necessary to continuously remind us of his desire for the treat about 35 times.  We wound our way back to the Roaring Fork, snagged a few treats, and enjoyed them at the tables outside.

We cleaned up our chocolate covered boys and threw away 250 dirty napkins before heading to the store on our way back to the room.  Upon returning to the room, Emily and I agreed that it was happy hour, so we pulled up a couple chairs on the porch and enjoyed the absolutely perfect afternoon weather.

Being that we were relaxed and cozy at the Wilderness Lodge we wanted to stay close for dinner.  We headed over to the Territory Lounge which is the bar area located just outside the Artist’s Point Restaurant.  They had a limited menu which Emily and I ordered from and I ran back to the Roaring Fork to pick out food that was acceptable to the boys.  Our favorite part of dinner was the delicious Portobello Mushroom Soup.

On our way back to the room after dinner we passed by a sketch artist and decided that we needed to get Sawyer’s portrait drawn to complete the family set, since Hunter, Emily, and I all got ours done a few years back.  Michael was the artist and was really fun with Sawyer, drawing him as Hiro riding on Baymax (two of Sawyer’s favorites).

Back in the room Emily made us all some yummy oven toasted s’mores for a late night dessert while we watched the Must Do’s in our pajamas.  We tucked the boys in and called it a night so we could prepare for an early morning at Magic Kingdom.

Saturday, January 16th – Magic Kingdom Park

We awoke early to a beautiful morning at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge as we got dressed and ready and headed out to catch the bus to the Magic Kingdom.  Since we were staying at the Villas, the bus stop was literally right outside of our room which was really convenient.  It turns out we were looking at the wrong day as we were anticipating the park would open at 9 am but it actually opened at 8.  We got a bus right away and ended up getting to the park just before 9.  After a little snag with our tickets (don’t get Emily started on this topic) we were clear to enter the park.

The first stop of the morning was Sleepy Hollow as our mouths were watering just thinking about the powdered sugar waffles with strawberries and whipped cream.  Hunter and Sawyer are a bit simpler in that they just like their waffles with the powdered sugar, but needless to say we enjoyed them immensely.  I would highly recommend the Sleepy Hollow snack area if you need a sweet treat with a ton of calories at the Magic Kingdom.

Since we were celebrating Sawyer’s birthday he was in charge for the day and his first demand request was to blast Zurg at Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin in Tomorrowland.  This is always a must do when we come to the Magic Kingdom with Sawyer.  It’s not that he actually uses his blaster all that much when we ride, I just think he likes seeing all of the characters and things inside.  Dad dominated the scoring as usual.

After we saved the universe from the evil Emperor Zurg it was time for the Astro Orbiter which is the attraction above the People Mover in Tomorrowland.  This was Sawyer’s first ride on the Astro Orbiter, a ride that Dad is not too fond of.  I decided to explore Tomorrowland and capture some photos while Emily, Hunter, and Sawyer went on the ride.

Sawyer’s next request was to head over to the Tomorrowland Speedway and rev up our engines for a lap around the track.  The boys have really enjoyed both the Autopia attraction at Disneyland as well the Tomorrowland Speedway right here in our backyard.  I think the experience is a lot more fun for the boys than for the parents, who basically get jostled back and forth as the cars hit the tracks due to the boys’ lack of concern over steering.  I am convinced that they should have a chiropractor on staff at the exit of that attraction for necessary spinal adjustments.  The best part of this particular experience was that the steering went out in Sawyer and Emily’s car.  Hunter and I thought that Sawyer was just trying to be a bad driver, but it turns out the steering wheel broke midway through.  It was really funny to watch, but I am sure it was not quite as fun to experience.

After our experience at the Speedway we wanted to slow things down a bit on the People Mover followed by the Under the Sea – Journey of the Little Mermaid attraction.  Sawyer has been a big fan of Ariel’s new ride ever since it opened with the New Fantasyland section of the Magic Kingdom.  One of the things I would suggest is to experience this ride through the stand-by queue.  There is so much to see in queue that it truly is worth the extra few minutes of your day, and the stand by line is rarely long enough to warrant using a precious FastPass, anyway.

After the Little Mermaid attraction, Sawyer had hit his quota of attractions for the morning.  We were all getting a bit hungry as well so we grabbed a few snacks from Big Top Souvenirs shop to take back to the room, hopped the train from Fantasyland to Frontierland, and made our way to Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn & Cafe.  This isn’t a spot that we normally frequent at Magic Kingdom, but they have recently changed their menu and added more of a Mexican offering to the menu that we wanted to try out.  Although they didn’t have a ton of options for the kids, the chicken and steak fajitas were actually really good.  The food was plentiful and the condiment bar had a lot of different offerings in the way of toppings (numerous salsas and even lime wedges).  I would highly recommend giving this place a try, although I would suggest going at off-peak hours as the seating was pretty tight.

We had our fill of food and excitement for the morning at the Magic Kingdom, and a bit of relaxing was in order.  One of my favorite things about staying at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge is being able to take the boat transportation around the lagoon.  It was an absolutely perfect day for doing just that, so we hitched a boat ride back to the resort and enjoyed the beautiful afternoon air.  Back at the room we enjoyed a bit of downtime before we took on dinner and round two at the Magic Kingdom.

We wanted a relaxing outdoor location for dinner so we agreed to head over to the Polynesian and eat at Trader Sam’s Grog Grotto where we ate back in July on our summer staycation.  It is a beautiful place to sit, listen to some smooth Hawaiian music, and enjoy some delicious appetizers.  We learned last time that we could just grab some kids’ food from the quick service location and bring it out to our table so we could all enjoy dinner together.  Emily and I kicked back a HippopotoMai-Tai and enjoyed the Hawaiian Poke Tuna and some other fun apps.  Can’t say enough great stuff about this location.

We were fueled up and ready for our nighttime Magic Kingdom visit.  Emily had a booked a few Fastpasses which allowed us to enjoy a nighttime Jungle Cruise ride and a second round at the Tomorrowland Speedway.  This time we switched driver/passenger combinations to allow Emily’s whiplash to heal from the morning.

After the race we navigated our way back to Fantasyland for a meet & greet with Goofy and Donald. There is a really neat character location in Storybook Circus where Goofy is dressed up as a stuntman and Donald is a snake charmer.  The wait wasn’t bad at all (ten minutes) and we got some great photos, although Sawyer gets really shy around the characters.  He was fine as long as his posse (us) went with him.  As we were about to call it a day at Magic Kingdom, we stopped on our way out of Storybook Circus to get a couple churros to share.  We ate them on our way back through the park and to the busses back to the resort.

Back at the Wilderness Lodge we got our pajamas on, shared some popcorn and watched the Packers play the Arizona Cardinals in quite possibly the most amazing playoff game I have ever watched, although unfortunately the Packers lost in overtime.

Sunday, January 17th – Wilderness Lodge Breakfast, Disney Springs, and Port Orleans Resort

This morning we had breakfast reservations at the Whispering Canyon Restaurant which is located right in the lobby of Disney’s Wilderness Lodge Resort.  The boys just enjoyed chilling in their beds, eating their snack mixes, and watching the Mickey cartoons on the in-room TV.  For those with kids, I would highly recommend finding the Mickey cartoon channel when you stay at Disney (channel 17) because the kids will watch (and enjoy) it for hours.  It was a truly beautiful and relaxing morning after our busy day on Saturday.

After we packed our stuff up in the car and bade farewell to our room, we made our way to the Whispering Canyon for a fantastic breakfast.  This was Sawyer’s first visit to the Whispering Canyon, and he and Hunter had a blast.  They have a few dining experiences that the servers do that the kids really get a kick out of.  When Emily asked for some ketchup, our server Kendra hollered across the restaurant, “We need some ketchup over here!!!” at which point a half dozen Guests brought over the ketchup from their table leaving us with a dozen bottles.  About five minutes later, another table needed ketchup, and we were happy to oblige their request and bring ALL the bottles to them.  There is also a fun stick pony ride that the kids do around the restaurant which was cute.  Our meal ended with Sawyer getting a birthday cupcake and getting sung to.  You know it is a super fun breakfast when the kids are raving about it!

After finishing our meal we decided to explore a few more areas of the lobby that we hadn’t visited.  We captured some of our last remaining photos and headed to Disney Springs.  Disney Springs was a quick visit to our favorite spots like the Lego store, the Co-Op, Once Upon a Toy, and a few more.  It is really awesome how Disney Springs has changed over the recent months and we can’t wait to see what happens in the upcoming year!  We got a couple Lego projects for the boys to celebrate Sawyer’s birthdayfest.

We weren’t quite ready for Sawyer’s birthday weekend celebration to be over so we pointed to the car to Disney’s Port Orleans Resort French Quarter.  The resort provided a perfect opportunity for the boys to play, Emily and I to relax with a drink (a hurricane – themed to the resort, of course… and see the upside down “blown” umbrellas?), and for us to capture a few more fun photos to complete our weekend portfolio.  We finished up with an early dinner at the quick service location which served up the perfect ending to our meal, beignets!

We had a great weekend celebrating with our little buddy Sawyer, who isn’t so little anymore.  His official birthday is next Saturday, but we were happy to have a long weekend to dedicate to spending time together.  If you would like to put a birthday wish in the archives for Sawyer, please feel free to leave one in the comment section below!

Sawyer’s Birthdayfest Photos – Disney’s Wilderness Lodge, Magic Kingdom, Disney Springs, and Port Orleans Resort

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