We've just returned from our 2nd Disney World trip of 2011 and had a total blast! (as usual)  This was the first time we were able to visit twice in a year as a family vacation and we learned some new things this time that made this trip even better than before.

We stayed the first night off property at the Orlando Vista Hotel, which wasn't bad...but wasn't great either...then headed to POP Century around 7am the next morning.  Check-in isn't until 3pm but they gave us our room anyway...unfortunately they hadn't considered our room requests.  Though it was in a 70's building, it didn't face the water and wasn't on the 4th floor.  As a matter of fact, it was a single king bed with a handicap restroom!  So I called the front desk and they said to come back up for new accommodations.  I was kinda freaked out at this point because we had a Crystal Palace reservation in about 40 mins and was cutting it close.

Because of the mix-up they actually moved us into a preferred room in the 60's building right next to the pool...but facing the lake on the 3rd floor.  This was also very close to the main building where we ate a lot of meals and caught the buses so we were super pleased.  Actually, we've decided that we want to stay in a preferred room from now on at POP and will pay the extra for it.

We are now fully in favor of taking an afternoon break at least every other day for a nap.  The afternoon heat was blistering and it was not only great to get out of the heat for a few hours, but also getting a nice nap in helped us feel better the entire trip.  On our way home, we felt like we actually had a vacation instead of feeling like we needed to recover.  The longer summer hours meant that we still go to see everything we wanted to even though we were gone during the afternoons.  There are also plans at touringplans.com that have an afternoon break built right in!

We decided to skip Animal Kingdom entirely in favor of a second day at Disney Studios.  While I was a bit bummed by this, but my wife has never been a huge fan of the park and I would prefer a park with more air conditioning anyway :) This did give us plenty of time to let for Kian to visit Phineas and Ferb as well as doing Jedi Training Academy again.

Having the kid stroller makes life easier even though our son is seven years old now.  Being able to move swiftly around the park when necessary and letting him rest his legs is still beneficial.  Though, we did end up leaving it in the room a couple of times on the last half of a day so he could walk off some energy :)


Carrying my new Canon Rebel T3i around the parks every day was easier than I feared it might be and having the EH19-L Semi Hard Case made life easier.  It allowed me easy access to the camera but also kept it safe from the elements and any scratches while walking around.  It fits snug so I was able to put it easily under the stroller when I needed a break.  I had a lot of fun learning to use the new camera and got some pretty good shots along the way.