A Surprise Vacation for Charlotte: Simpsons, Suess, and a Parade Edition

While looking for lunch, we ended up in the Springfield area.

Char hadn't seen the cartoon before, and she became enamored with the Simpsons while watching the TV clips they show while you wait in the restaurants' lines.

We rode the Simpsons Ride at Char's request. They showed cartoon clips in that line, too. Char was so hooked. She watched the first season of the Simpsons on YouTube back in our hotel room, and now she's almost done with season two. I think it is safe to say that she's officially a Simpsons fan.

I had a Krusty Burger just before we got on the Simpsons Ride. I wouldn't do that again...

After the ride, we chilled out by the lake. They have a water show that reminds me of the Fountains of Bellagio in Las Vegas.

The Beat Builders also put on a good show.

We celebrated New Year's Eve in the parks by watching the 5:30 Macy's parade.

Insert the sounds of paper horns tooting here:

We were back in our hotel room by 8:30 p.m. Char insisted on watching the Simpsons until it was "at least midnight", but we negotiated the time to 10 p.m. We all laid on the same bed watching YouTube on my old laptop. It wasn't the most exciting New Year's Eve, but it was one of our nicer ones.

Not surprisingly, we were up early on New Year's Day. The parks felt almost empty until noon when they swelled back to capacity again. With the extra space in the morning, we were able to cross off the last items on our to-do lists.

Char might turn ten this year, but she still enjoys checking out playgrounds and other "little kid" attractions. 

One of her last to-do items was to eat green eggs and ham in Seuss Landing.

I wasn't expecting tots, but I never say no to them. This was a great snack for the three of us.

Well, that's our trip. We arrived at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday afternoon, and we had to meet our airport shuttle at 5:55 a.m. on Thursday. In between, we were either in the parks or in our beds.

After each park day my watch looked like this:

FYI: 25, 416 steps is a bit over 10.5 miles... I'll admit that sometimes this was one of the most welcoming signs for me to see. 

Charlotte told us last night that if she could repeat our vacation in Florida, she would want to do it every day for a year. I'm pretty sure my body couldn't handle that. Places like Universal can really beat a guy up. But if Char wants to do it again, that's a sure sign that our vacation was a success.