Tony the Tiger picked us up at 5am and took us to the airport where we were sent to the fancy shmancy Global Services to check in. Those sweet United ladies were awesome and waved all our bag fees, gave us food vouchers and ushered us to the front of security. Before it was time to board our flight (which my friend Ann was on) two very nice United customer relations women invited us on the plane early. We met the whole crew, took pictures and the girls got to go in the cock pit! At our seats they had hung Mickey Mouse streamers from the ceiling and had gifts waiting including a bunch of snacks, a pillow and blanket. Besides Riley being terrified of the turbulence coming into Orlando the flight was quick and great!
Cute Mister Peter, who is one of the volunteers at the wish resort met us outside security with a great sign for Miss Riley. He escorted us to baggage claim and to get our rental car. Then we drove to literally the greatest hotel/resort I’ve ever been to! Give Kids the World is a resort only for wish families is Kissimmee, FL. It is bright, colorful, full of fun things, fun activities and incredibly nice people who are 90 percent volunteers. Miss Nancy took us to our really incredible two bedroom villa for the week, gave us the grand tour, some more gifts including a stuffed Mickey for Riley and all of our tickets and info. The girls were bouncing off the wall to go explore and have fun right in time for the rain to stop and the sun to come out! It’s still cold, but we are thankful it stopped raining!
There is so much to do at GKTW and all of it is completely free! I love that it is all wish families who ask where you’re from and who the wish kid is since we all share this special bond. There is a magic feeling here that I just can’t describe. It really is incredible but I have to admit we’ve really caught some people off guard when I tell them that Travis and I are divorced.
We had lunch in Nancy’s Kitchen where some LDS missionaries served us during their service hours for the week, rode the carousel, explored, went to Amberville where there is skeeball, air hockey (Keags was the champion), basketball, ride on cars, video games, arcade games, water boats to steer and more. We went to the train display, rode Tony’s Choo Choo Train 6 different times and Keagan and her dad rode Lori’s Magical Flight 3 times. We explored some more including a hilarious trip into what I thought was the library and Keagan and her dad tricking me into talking to a clown. We went to the most important place at GKTW the Ice Cream Palace. It is open from 7:30am to 9:30pm because they encourage you to have ice cream for breakfast and all day long! It was delicious. And finally we went to the Castle of Miracles (more later) and visited the big snoring tree.
Our visit to the Hall of Miracles will for sure be one of the highlights of our trip! It is a castle with a moat around it, a wishing well that burps, thrones, a small fairy playground and more! We went in with Riley’s gold shiny wish star. She put it on the magic tile and used the magic marker to write her name on it. Then she put it in the magic fairy chest. Once we closed it the chest shook and lit up because the wish fairy came to get her star! Then the fairy flew around telling us that she was going to take Riley’s star and hang it tonight in the Hall of Miracles with literally hundreds of thousands of other stars from wish kids! It was magical and so sweet! We then went to the talking tree where Buttons the squirrel asked the girls to do several things in order to make the tree happy including have a dance party, think of the things that make them happy and hug someone they love, which they hugged each other and melted my heart! Because they made the tree happy Buttons left a darling magical pillow for each girl in a tree stump! Riley loves her pillow so much that she won’t let anyone touch it and I can’t wait to go back to see where her star was hung!
The girls ended the day with a giggles filled epic bubble bath in the jetted tub and then we ordered the free Papa Johns pizza for dinner before going to bed early. Keagan was so cute and wanted to write in her journal before going to bed. I wonder where she gets the idea that documenting all these amazing things we dont want to forget is a good idea!
Today was just day one and I am already completely blown away by how incredible this trip is and what a gigantic blessing we have been given! I am feeling overwhelmingly blessed to have this magical experience with my girls and there is so much more to come in the next 6 days! I’m sure on all those days I will attempt to try to blog the highlights and will end up with a forever long post like this instead! I just never want to forget a thing that happened today! And I’m pretty sure I won’t since it has been engraved on my heart forever! Day one was exceptionally a dream, I can’t wait to see the rest!
I'm so glad yall are getting the royal treatment everywhere you go. You all deserve it. I must admit I'm so glad United rolled out the red carpet for yall. I've only worked one make a wish flight and it was great!
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