Hoarding, I Mean Collecting, At Disneyworld

The Lovely Wife and I took the kids to Disneyworld two weeks ago, and I'm just now recovering enough to write about it.  Wow, was it fun, and wow, was it exhausting.  We hit all four major parks (Magic Kingdom-twice, Epcot-twice, Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios).  I'll spare you a recap of the trip other than to say: yes it was expensive, but Disney vacations are of such high quality and the kids (and parents) had such a blast that it was worth every penny.  Speaking of pennies...I was able to lay off cards for a week, but thanks to my son, my collecting hunger didn't go unsatisfied.

About two years ago, we took my son to the Tulsa, OK zoo, where he got a pressed penny as a memento.    He's since picked up a few more here and there, and has sort of started a collection.  Disneyworld was a prime place to blow up this collection, as there were pressed penny machines everywhere.  We got as many as we could find:

The scanner picked these up better than I thought it would, and you can get an idea of all the places we went.  Sadly, (or more like thankfully) my son does not seem to have inherited my collecting gene.  After we had made about 15 of these pennies, he lost some enthusiasm for them.  "I think it will be ok if we don't get anymore," were his exact words.

"I think it will be ok if we don't get anymore."

"I think it will be ok if we don't get anymore."

No, young man, it will not be ok.  Don't you understand that we must get them all and fill up a pressed penny album and then look for more and more and more?  Don't you understand that???  What do you have, perspective or something???

Thankfully, he wound up deciding he needed a few more and we managed to come home with over 20 pennies.

My kids also picked up a couple of other things I thought were cool enough to share with you:

The Star Wars ride at Hollywood Studios was awesome, but we had even more fun in the gift shop.  Unfortunately, there was no pressed penny machine (no license from Lucas) but there was a cool table where kids could custom build their own R2D2s and get them packaged.  My boy made one for himself, and one for his little sister, both R2s complete with Mickey Mouse ears.

Downtown Disney had a Lego store that could have kept us for hours if we'd had the time.  The kids were able to fill up some large cups with whatever Lego pieces they wanted, and then they were able to make their own Lego figures.  Nachos Grande would be proud:

 Yet again, I can't get my iPhone pictures to show up turned correctly.  If you could see this better, you would notice the firefighter my son built in the middle is wearing makeup, and the guy on the right has handcuffs.  Not sure what's going on with the guy on the left that my two year old built, but I like the helmet.