Disney Marketplace

We were planning to take Joshua to the big Lego store in Disney Marketplace for his birthday to purchase some new Legos for his new room. However, we are closing on our house the week before his birthday and with scheduling deliveries of our belongings that are in storage, a new washer and dryer and some other much needed furniture, a day trip out shopping just might not be do-able. So this weekend, while Keith is still in town with us, we loaded up the mini-van and went out to Disney Marketplace. Disney Marketplace has all the shopping and glamour of a Disney park - but no admission price.
We gave ourselves just a few hours to look around and have lunch. We didn't even both to get out the stroller, since it's hard check out little shops with it.
Megan was thrilled to see some princesses. These character statues are through-out the marketplace.

After checking out a few princess, it was time to head to the Lego store.
The statues are all made out of Legos. There was a Lego racecar building competition going on in the front of the store, as well as bins to play with other Legos.
All of the kids enjoyed playing with the little Legos.

Daniel even got in on the Lego action. Notice his upside-down sunglasses, that's how he likes to wear them.

Inside the Lego store, Daniel was doing some serious looking at the Indiana Jones sets. We ended up purchasing a space set for Joshua, a small mixed bucket of Legos for Megan and a small box that had a quad bike and little Lego guy in it for Daniel. Daniel's set is from the Coast Guard line of Legos.
For lunch, we made reservations at the Rain Forest Cafe.
We ate in among the elephants. Keith and I shared an amazing salad.
Every 25 minutes in the Rainforest Cafe, the sky darkens and huge crashes of thunder and lightening strikes begin. Daniel was not so thrilled with the faux thunderstorms.
After lunch, we walked around a bit. The kids were excited about the merry-go-round.

Daniel and I were singing to the music going around and around. He wasn't really interested in sitting on a horse, so we rode together on a bench.
Daniel was pretty excited to see Buzz Lightyear.
In one of the shops, there was a make-your-own-lightsaber stand. Joshua thoroughly investigated it.
On the way home we had a few sleepyheads.

The next day, Joshua went to Goal camp and told everyone he had been to Disney World. I laughed to myself knowing that this is about as close to Disney World as these guys will get in a long, long time. Going as just adults a couple of weeks ago, Keith and I realized how easy it is to be too excited about the whole Disney thing and rush into it with the kids. We know for us, our kids aren't ready for anything like that. We can only handle outings for a few hours at a time. I think the kids were on excitement overload by the time our little few hour tour of Disney Marketplace was over, I shudder to think of the meltdowns that would occur at an all-day Disney theme park.