Anywhere USA: Lots of family time

Hi all,
Holy cow, it's been a while since our last post so time to catch up.
Our son Nate and grandson Alex came down from Wisconsin for a few days. Alex is Amanda's son and has been here a few times but it was the first trip here for Nate so we planned a busy few days for them.
We took one day to relax out by the beach by Jacksonville, the boys enjoying the warm weather and cold ocean temp really showed they were northerners.

Wendy and Amanda took the boys on a kayak ride on the Ichetucknee River. They got a special surprise as manatee were cruising the river and they got some nice close up views.

We saw 12 manatee

We took a new venture to check out Cedar Key, a gulf coast town that had taken a good hit from hurricane Hermine September 2nd. They suffered a lot of damage but are working extremely hard to get things in order for the spring tourist they so rely on. The area is most noted for the abundance of clams although not in season at this time.

Watched a few dolphins

Backside of stores on the main street

Alex and Nate

We rented a pontoon boat and cruised around some of the nearby islands. We beached at Atsena Otie Key for a short walk, this small island is noted as a birthing site for horseshoe crabs.
Amanda said the boys needed a work day on the farm, have to earn your keep here you know.)
We had them dig and install the water line to the RV. A mere 200 feet, they did a great job and no leaks!

a cool day, good for working

Amanda had made the plan that they would fly out of Orlando early Wednesday, and as we were headed that way to meet up with our other daughter Colleen we would just go down early and enjoy some pool time at the hotel.
So the boys left out Wednesday and Amanda and Pat drove down that evening, Colleen, her hubby Goyo, and sons Lukas, and Isaiah arrived after midnight.
Amanda had laid out plans for four full days at Disney. Amanda takes after her mother in planning vacations, it is go, go, and go. But really she did a great job getting things figured out.
Day one had us touring Animal Kingdom, that was a good plan as we didn't have to arrive to early and that park closes early. I will let Wendy's pics tell about the parks.

Day two we got going early and hit Magic Kingdom. With the entry passes we had we were allowed to schedule 3 fast track passes allowing you to bypass some long waits. But you also had to schedule these in a one hour time frame so again the planning part was key.

That day we headed out of the park for supper, Wendy and I headed back to the hotel to relax but the kids returned to the park for more rides and the night closing show.
Up again early day 3 had at Epcot, we had planned on hitting one of the popular rides early before long lines formed. Bad luck as the ride was having issues and would not open til after 10.

We enjoyed Epcot and most notably the Soaring ride, although we learned you might not want to do this on a Saturday. Pre wedding parties and groups seemed to make drinking around the park quite the game.
Last day!! we still had Hollywood Park left. This day Amanda switched a early fast pass to allow a little sleep in. We had a nice time there and really enjoyed the Fantasmic closing ceremony there.

Trading Disney pins

Jedi training

Fantasmic show

One other nice feature we took in while at the parks was a Disney photo pass service, they have photographers placed at entrances and various locations. We could walk and easily get our whole group shots plus they had features for some fun shots adding images.