Disney World, Day Four: Kingdoms of Animals and Magic

After a 30 minute bus ride Saturday morning, we arrived at Rainforest Café. Because we don’t rush to wake everyone up we got there around lunch time. Since the park closes at 5, it didn’t leave us much time to explore the entire park, especially since there was a parade…a must see according to the girls. Right inside the entrance we got to meet Lilo. We saw Stitch at Epcot and the girls had been asking where Lilo was. So we had a good start to the morning.

This girls had picked out matching shirts for all the adults prior to leaving. Here is a couple pictures of the matchiness. The last shot with all the adults was taken by Brady with the Tree of Life in the background. I thought she did a pretty good good.

One things I remember about people’s pictures of Animal Kingdom when it first opened was AMAZING full face paintings. So the first station we saw we were there…again no line. Andi and I decided to jump in on the fun too.

The past part about Animal Kingdom (of the few things we did) was the safari ride. WE got to see lots of animals. Brady was given a camera (as you can see in the third picture) and loved snapping pictures of all the animals.

Then off to more character meetings (I told you this is their favorite part of the vacation) and the Animal Kingdom parade. This parade was much different then the MK parades and fun to see.

I would always causally mention to Minnie Mouse that she is Brady’s favorite character, so she would give her extra special attention. This made Brady very happy, and she left the vacation saying “I’m Minnie’s favorite”… LOVE IT!!!!

Here is a rare moment captured on film… Karl and I , kidless and enjoying each other.

Having fun with my face painting, but I love this picture because of Reese peeking under…

The camera setting were messed up when we met Jiminy Cricket, but I had to post this picture because look at the background. Silly Daniel popped up in the picture behind that glass…made me laugh.

 

Enjoyed dinner at Rainforest Café and ordered the classis dessert….VVVVOOOOLLLLCANO!

Just a little bit of randomness to end this post!

Off to the Magic Kingdom for the evening shows!

Disney World, Day Three: 1900 Park Fare

On day three, our ‘relaxation’ day, we had another character dining meal. This one was at the Grand Floridian, another Magic Kingdom area resort. I would have to say it is also the most beautiful resort at Disney. The girls had new princess gowns (thanks Grandma) to wear, however Reese choose to wear Brady’s old one. Also Grandma brought both of the girls tiaras, Brady wore hers with pride, Reese wanted it with her but wouldn’t wear it (this comes up again later). I did my best to replicate Cinderella’s hair style for Brady and Reese, well, she wanted her hair to look like Sleeping Beauty, which is just down…check!

There was a great buffet at this Cinderella themed dinner. I loved the plates they had for the kids.

Our first character to greet us was Prince Charming, both girls became shy though. So I grabbed Reese’s tiara and got my picture with him.

Boy were the girls happy to meet Cinderella (again). The funny thing is tonight Cinderella looked eerily similar to Rapunzel

They had a waltz with the characters. Kids could go up to any character and ask to dance with them. The girls were being shy (since the evil step mother was there) and we decided to dance as a family.

The Evil Step Mother looked just like the cartoon draw of her. My girls wanted NOTHING to do with her. She was in our section of the restaurant visiting table for about 20 minutes and Karl and I stood with the girls far away. Here is where the tiara comes into play. The stepmother saw the “unmanned tiara” and called over one of her daughters. She said her daughter could finally become a princess they have dreamed of. The daughter, Anatasia, put it on and started dancing around. Very cute!

Here the girls are acting like sisters normally do, and they sang the knightingale song from the movie. They did a great job showing their true personalities.

After our dinner, we changed the girls out of their dresses so we could head to Downtown Disney…MISTAKE! It was way way way too busy. I made me nervous about how the park was going to be over the weekend.

 

Next up…Animal Kingdom

Disney World, day three: ‘relaxation’ Day

We started the day with Chef Mickey breakfast. Chef Mickey’s is a restaurant in our hotel that has Pluto, Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy. The girls were very excited that Mickey would be cooking for us, so much so that Brady wanted to make sure Mickey went to bed early the night before so that he could wake up early to cook for us.

 

Yummy mickey waffles and breakfast pizza!

If you are wondering, getting the dining plan and doing bunches of character meals is WELL worth it. The girls enjoyed themselves at all of them and it didn’t get old. Using the dining plan allowed us to save hundreds of dollars. And 3 of the 5 character meals brought me a cupcake since we were celebrating my birthday.

We decided to have a day in the middle of our vacation that was low key. We wanted to just stay at the resort and enjoy ourselves. Well the kid pool at our hotel was having maintenance done of it so we had to go to the Grand Floridian resort to go to the pool. By this time Grandma, Auntie Andi and Uncle Danny arrived. 

They had poolside games. We played name that tune and WON!!! Our prize we picked was Princess Memory game

Grandma gets cuddle time with a worn out Reesey Poo.

My sister got this awesome photo of Brady swimming with her underwater camera! I love it!

This random photo makes me laugh. Disney is SO into looking prefect that this landscaper outside our hotel room was removing vines on the bushes. She would go down into the bushes crawl to another spot and pop up. It is hard work being this magical!

More about our dinner on Day three later….