I have always loved Orlando at Christmas time, and I have wanted to go to the Magic Kingdom's Christmas party forever. So we finally did a trip to make it happen and I am so glad that we did!
This trip was a Friday to Friday trip, which was nice because it meant we had a couple days at home on the way back. I actually worked from home on the Friday that we traveled down, so I did a lot of my work in the airport, plane, and car ride as we were getting to our resort. It was tough, but nice to save a vacation day, and get to Orlando a day earlier. We got into Orlando around 10:30am-11am. Navigating the airport with all of our stuff is definitely hard, but we made it work. Once we got in, we went to Miller's Alehouse for lunch and got our zingers. Then we came to our resort to check in and unpack.
Here's our screened in porch. After getting everything settled here, we went to the grocery store to get some food for the week. Cody ended up making us burgers that night at our resort.
We didn't have a whole lot of time around the resort because it was starting to get late, but Kayla definitely wanted to check out the playground area.
And then we scouted out the pools. We were excited to get to come back the next day, and I was really excited that all the pools were heated! We ended up going to bed early that night because we were going to Epcot in the morning.
The next morning we were up bright and early to head to Epcot. We were waiting in line when they opened the park, and we ran to test track. We were outside in line for test track, and the cars zooming by were loud and they scared Kayla. She decided that she didn't want to wait for it anymore. I was really 50/50 on whether I wanted to let her try it anyway, so we got out of line. However, running there and not really knowing 100% where we were going caused us to lose some time. We got to the Elsa/Anna meet and greet around 9:30ish and they opened at 9:15. We ended up waiting in their line for about 40 mins to meet them. So it was definitely a slower start to our day.
Here we are in line making all of the different faces Kayla likes to make. This is our silly face.
Shy face...
Sad face...
The queue itself was pretty cool walking through their house. It had a lot of cool details.
Me and my girl!
Finally after the long wait we got to meet them! Kayla had an ornament that she made them, and then had them sign one for her.
Kayla and Anna.
Elsa getting the ornament from Kayla.
Signing one for her.
Picture with Elsa! Kayla was very excited to get to meet them, and Epcot is the only place where you can meet Elsa and Anna so their line was pretty long. I wish that we had came directly to them, but you live and learn.
Family picture in the Frozen area.
Afterwards, we hopped over to the Kringla Bakeri of Kafe. Cody got a viking coffee and we all got a big Mickey cinnamon roll.
Here's Kayla chopping down on her cinnamon roll.
I didn't take a picture of ours, but I ran back in to take a picture of the one in the window. This was a really yummy treat. Epcot is full of really yummy treats. We were there during the food and wine festival, so all the countries had booths with food in them. At first I was sad that we were a week early for Epcot's christmas festival, but the food and wine festival ended up being a lot of fun.
After this, we circled back to Mexico to ride the Grand Fiesta Tour. Kayla loved this ride and it was such a short wait.
When we got off, she actually wanted to go on it again. I didn't go on because we were right at our genie plus booking window, and I was counting down right to 11am... but the frozen ride sold out in seconds and I missed it. I was SO pissed off. Test track ended up selling out too. So I only got Ratatouille for our genie plus selections. I was so pissed off, and felt like it was such a waste of money. I was stomping mad, and I will never buy genie plus at Epcot again unless they change the system. It's bullshit that I wasn't able to get Frozen or Test Track before it sold out.
We went over in Mexico to meet Donald Duck. And in line someone mentioned that the Frozen ride would drop more passes at 1pm. At that point, I had selected soaring at 11:02am, and was locked out of getting another genie plus until 1:02pm. So worrying about and looking at Genie Plus I really feel like it took away from my park day. It was an awful experience, and most of the rides in Epcot I didn't even need it for. I was worried about it all day. After meeting Donald, my virtual queue for Guardians of the Galaxy. I didn't know that I would have to wait long in line for it, but it took about a half an hour to get on the ride. It was a super cool ride, and I really enjoyed getting to ride it. I would love to go on it again, but Cody was irritated that I went on it, because he didn't know what to do with Kayla in the mean time while I was in line. And he didn't care about going it, and we were right up on our genie plus reservation for Ratatouille. I had never been on the ride and didn't know how to find it... it was on the complete opposite side of the park too... so we basically had to run there and past a whole bunch of stuff to get to it in time, and it was tucked all the way in the back of the France pavillion and I had no idea where it was so we were kind of blind heading towards it. It was a really cute ride, and we all enjoyed it a lot. Kayla really liked it. But it was turning 1pm right as we were getting ready to go on the ride, and I was worried about trying to get the genie plus reservation of frozen... so in a panic I dropped my soaring reservation so that I wouldn't miss the Frozen one... and it never repopulated!!! AH!! So now I had further messed up our window of when we could get another genie plus... so I went to the blue umbrella and pretended to be dumb and asked for help with unlocking my genie plus... and she granted us an anytime ride on the Frozen ride. Woohoo! That at least made me feel like maybe the genie plus was worth it.
At this point, it was definitely time to get some food. Dave and Erin met up with us for a few hours, and we walked around to the various food/beverage booths with them and got some food. We also grabbed a couple of HUGE pizza slices at the Pizzeria in Italy. It was a lot of fun going around with them and getting some things to eat/drink. Next time we go, I think that we would go to the Frozen stuff in the morning, and then meet up with them and spend a lot of time in the worlds area. I think I'd end the day walking into the Ratatouille line.
Kayla being cute in Italy.
Kayla loved Erin! Erin was playing with her a little bit and she took right to her. They were best friends.
Here we all are!
Family picture! It was a little bright out.
Cody and Dave went walking around/drinking a bit and I took Kayla to see Mulan.
Kayla and Mulan.
It was neat to the see the different countries. I feel like Epcot is a place you could come to every day and still find something new. They have so many restaurants and food booths. I would love to move down to Orlando when we're in our late 50s for part of the year and get to go to the parks all the time. I'd love to go to all the booths and see all the entertainment. I'd also love to do a tour of all of the resorts too. I'd love to have a Disney Food bucket list.
Kayla really loved the China pavilion. She thought it was so pretty.
She kept looking up and was amazed by it.
I love all of the history in Epcot.
This was Kayla's first trip to Epcot, and I think that Epcot is Cody's favorite park with all of the food/drink options. We especially had a nice time with his cousin leading us around. We all picked up some food and drinks, I got a blueberry bobba tea from the Japan stand and it was delicous and perfect for that time of day. It wasn't too sweet, but was flavorful. After this, we were getting close to our Soaring genie plus reservation, so we headed over to the land area. We went on Soaring which Kayla loved, and then we went on living with the land. This was my first time on it, and it was really neat to see everything. The beginning of the ride wasn't that great, but once you got out to their gardening areas it was pretty cool.
Next we went to the new Moana area.
It was such a fun area! Kayla and I really enjoyed it.
This is her look when she realized that the water was interactive and that it was playing with her. This area when you touched the water it made music.
Here she is playing with the water.
It lit up and made noise. she was thrilled.
It was also very picturesque and beautiful in the area.
Such imagination in this area! It was such a pretty area and it was great that there weren't any long waits to go on it. Here I am lifting my hand up and the water rose up to my hand.
Woohoo!!
Kayla's turn. It took so much creativity to make this area... very impressive Disney innovations.
The Tefiti statue was very pretty!
Just a picture of the statue.
Silly faces!
Happy faces! We really enjoyed getting to go around the area and seeing everything. It was very pretty and fun to interact with all of the water. Definitely a neat area to add. I really think that Epcot needs more and more attractions. I think eventually that every world pavilion really needs some type of ride. The Ratatouille ride is really a prime example of what Epcot could be. Adding the rides in would add a lot to the park I think. Although, I think it's more of a festival and learning about the world type of park.
Next we went to the Sea Pavillion and went on the finding nemo ride which was cute, and then we quickly looked at the aquarium. We didn't get to spend nearly enough time here, because we had to go to our dining reservation at Akershus Royal Banquet Hall in the Norway pavilion.
I have always wanted to do princess dining, and it was fun to see all the different princesses come into the room because they had royal music play to announce them coming in.
The appetizer in here was really tasty! It was a thin potato bread and brown sugar butter. It was very good and we all ate quite a bit of it. The rest of the food was pretty good too, but Cody didn't feel that it was worth the price point that we paid. He would have rather walked around to the booths and got food from them instead of one long/big priced meal. Which I understand. It did take up quite a bit of time, and was expensive. The last character meal that I would really like to do in the future is eating at Cinderella's Castle at least once.
Kayla was super excited when Belle walked in!
Then came Princess Aurora.
Snow White!
Princess Tiana!
And they only guarantee 4 to 5 princesses that you meet and it took a while for the last princess to come, but Kayla was thrilled when she saw that it was Ariel. It was very fun to meet and see all the princesses. Kayla was very excited and happy to see them all. I think this was probably a one and done experience for us, but I'm glad that we did it once. There's so many places to eat at Epcot that we'll probably try something new next time. After our dinner, we went to use our genie plus pass on the Frozen ride, and it broke down for the night right as we got in line. Kayla was so disappointed and I was too honestly. I kept checking, but it never did come back up all night. We were sad to miss that one, but I'd hope to get to go back sometime in the future.
So instead, we headed towards the front of the park to ride spaceship earth. The big ball that it is in is SO beautiful at night. It changes all kind of colors and is so pretty. I really liked it a lot.
Next we checked out the Moana area at night. I've heard that it is better at night, and it is definitely very pretty.
Making music together. I loved the colors and how it glowed.
Fun, fun fun!
Raising the water up.
More of a view.
Parting the water so that she could walk through. I think this is such a neat picture, and such a fun thing that they added.
Tefiti was soooo pretty at night!!
More of the area.
Next we took some pictures around the park. Here we are with the main Christmas tree.
Love this picture!
We went to get a spot for the fireworks, and I had hoped that with noise cancelling headphones that Kayla would be ok with the fireworks. But we were pretty close to them at Epcot and she was definitely scared of them once they started going off. She was not a fan and wanted to leave.
We walked farther away from them hoping that would help... but no dice. She was not a happy kiddo.
Picture of the fireworks. It was a good thing that we brought her pajamas with us, because she fell asleep on our walk out of the park. Disney is tiring being there all day long. Overall though, I think that we really enjoyed Epcot. It feels like a place that you can come to over and over again and still not see and experience everything. I'd love to go there on all our future Disney trips.
On Sunday we spent most of our day in the pool area. Kayla really liked their water slides and we had a good time running around and swimming. We did a mid-day break for lunch in our room.
When we came back, Kayla played on the playground area and made a little friend. Her friend followed us to the pool area and we all played on the slides and around their volcano.
Sky was supposed to spend the day with us and watch football with Cody, but he never showed up. We decided to make the best of it, and headed to Disney Springs for the night.
We did the Christmas Tree Stroll. They had 19 trees scattered around the area.
Once you found a tree, you put the corresponding sticker on it's spot and if you found them all you got a button from one of the several distribution areas. Kayla was SUPER into finding the trees. She was lasered focused on looking for them while we walked around.
We went to a really yummy donut place!
Here is a view of some of their specialty donuts. I guess there is a cookie place that is SUPER popular too.
Zoomed out of the display
Zoomed in! They looked amazing!
Cody's donut! Yum!
We got a picture in front of the Lion King tree wearing our matching Lion King shirts. This was the first tree we found too. Kayla really loved going around looking at the trees.
I heard to see Santa that you needed to get in the virtual queue so I did, and it said a 40 minute wait at first, but then almost immediately it said that it was our turn in line! I was NOT expecting that at all. I wish that we had skipped Santa, because we had to race across the whole area to the opposite side of Disney Springs, and they had a bunch of live music going on and it was PACKED!! There were TONS of people at Disney Springs that night. We really had to battle through the crowd to get there, and then when we finally got there... Santa was leaving to go on break. So it interrupted the flow of our night, and our casual tree stroll. I wouldn't see Santa next time. But while we were waiting for him we found a few more trees in that area, and then we went to the Disney store.
Kayla was pumped the whole time to find the Jack Skellington tree. She saw it was on the list and it was nearly the last tree that we found. The tree stroll was more fun than I expected, and Kayla was way more into it than I thought she would have been. Disney Springs has definitely developed a lot throughout the years. There is so much there now, and it is a fun place to walk around and grab something to eat at. Poor little thing was exhausted after finding the last tree, and she fell asleep in her stroller before we could turn in our pages for our prize.
On Monday, we went to the Peppa Pig Theme Park. It was a cute theme park, but it was definitely a haul to get out there. It took us over an hour to get there and over an hour and a half to get back. The nice part of it being so far away is that not many people were at it, and the lines for everything weren't bad at all. But parking was awful, they only had 3 booths taking money and it took forever to get into the parking lot.
Kayla loved the maze area!
It had a fort with a frog inside.
She loved playing in here.
Madam Gazelle's path.
Mandy Mouse!
Kayla loved this playground area. She would have skipped all the rides and just played in this area all day long if I had let her.
Grandpa pig.
More of the playground. It was all Peppa Pig themed and Kayla loved it.
Grandpa Pig's green house area.
Peppa Pigs play house.
Mommy pig picnic area.
The queue to go on daddy pig's rollercoaster goes through Peppa's house. Kayla loved getting to go through the house, but I swear to god on a video we had watched we saw someone walk through Peppa and George's room.
Well we get to the house, and Kayla was just STUCK on that. It's the only thing she wanted was to see Peppa and George's room, but it apparently doesn't exist. We couldn't find it anywhere, and she through a fit for the longest time over it.
Playing in their kitchen.
The house was a really cute area though, with some thing for kids to play with during the wait in line.
Here we are going on the coaster.
Kayla choose to ride with Cody, and she enjoyed the coaster. But once we got off she was really having a melt down because we couldn't find Peppa/George's bedroom. She was hot and hungry and super grumpy. So we went into the Peppa Pig theater where they have big bean bag chairs and they play episodes of Peppa Pig. We sat in there for about a half an hour. It was dark, quiet and calming. So I gave her some food, and we decompressed. She was better after that.
She wanted to play in the sand for a little bit. They had a really fun splashpad/water area next to this that Kayla really wanted to go in, and she was grumpy to not get to go. I wanted her to meet the characters and ride some of the rides first before she got all wet. It was all I could do to convince her to go on every ride once. There weren't any waits for them, but she just wasn't that interested in riding the rides there.
Meeting mommy pig. They didn't tell us when characters were coming out, so we were lucky to meet Mommy Pig.
Family photo with Mommy Pig.
Kayla liked the ducks!
Next we watched the Peppa Pig show.
Peppa and George go on a treasure hunt.
Yay they found Mr. Dinosaur.
Finally got Kayla to go on the Peppa Pig air balloon ride. And she was very cute as we got to the top trying to wave to Peppa.
Pointing up to Peppa!
Hi Peppa!!!
They had a game where you could "Hook a duck"
She was so thrilled that she got one!
Her line of ducks.
Picture by the theme park sign.
Back to the playground we went! It was a very fun playground for her. Like I said... she would have stayed her al day.
More of the playground... It was a big area.
Finally!! Getting to meet Peppa!!
Yaaay!!
Look at that big smile!
Watching other people for a minute while they met Peppa.
She liked peddling on the little bicycles that they had.
Then finally it was time for the splash area! She was so pumped to get to jump in muddy puddles like Peppa.
Jumping in muddy puddles.
She really liked the slides. There was a big dump bucket... which she does not like... and it dumped on her. She was almost too scared to go back on it, but then I showed her a different way to walk that would avoid it... so she was happy then and played here for a long time.
Playing with Ms. Duck.
Hi Ms. Duck!
Running around the slides.
Weee!!!
Racing down one of the blue slides.
Happy in the water girl.
Striking a pose.
The big slide! She LOVED the water area so much. It was a lot of fun for her, and it definitely helped cool her down. I probably should have just let her go in it from the start, and maybe she would have been in a better mood throughout the day.
Back to the bicycle peddling. She thought she was hilarious driving past us a bunch of times, and she stayed on this bike for quite a while.
Finally onto some of the rides... she really wasn't that into them here.
Towards the end of the day, she made a little friend and they were running around playing with each other.
Running around the Peppa show.
Overall, I would say that Kayla enjoyed the Peppa Pig theme park. She is definitely the prime age to visit it. There wasn't a ton of stuff to do there, but she loved the playground so much that it made for a full day for us. I don't think that we would be going back to it just because of how far away it was. It was a nice little park though and I'm glad we made the trip out there. It was a long trip home, the traffic was pretty bad. We ended up ordering Miller's Alehouse to go, and ate at our room, got showers, and got ready for bed for the night.
The next day was my dream day!!! The Magic Kingdom's Christmas Party! I have ALWAYS wanted to go to this party! Basically for the past 20 years I have been wanting to go, so I was super excited to get to try it out. We all slept in that morning, and went to one of the smaller pools for an hour or so. Cody made us a bigger lunch of burgers and zingers, and went to the store to get some things for Thanksgiving at his cousins house.
We got to the Magic Kingdom around 3pm and got in line. We were in the first section of people to get in which was really nice.
They handed out maps as we waited to get in.
They started to let people in around 3:50pm. It was so exciting to hear the Whoop from the crowd as people started to get to go in!
We walked in and soaked up the Christmas atmosphere. They walked us in towards the right as that we could get our ornament. They also gave us a green band to wear for the night right as we walked in.
We ran right to the Enchanted Tales with Belle, because I knew she would be leaving by 5:30. It said a 20 minute wait, but we got right into the preshow. We first went into a room with a mirror that took us back in time to the day that Belle and the Beast fell in love. Then the mirror opened up into a door and we walked through it. Then we were in the wardrobes room where she talked to us and gave us parts for the story with Belle.
Lumiere called us into the main story room where we waited to get to meet Belle. I thought the whole area was so well done! I absolutely loved it. I never knew what this area was, and they just really did it well. I wish that more of the princess interactions were things like this!
Kayla meeting Belle.
She got a special book mark from her that she was very excited about.
They had a professional photographer taking pictures so I couldn't get a perfect angle. After Belle we went to try out some rides. The lines were CRAZY at this point in the night. After seeing Belle we went on the Little Mermaid Ride. It was about a half an hour line for it, which I thought was pretty long. Parties the weeks before Thanksgiving had much shorter wait times from 4pm-6pm, but oh well... that was the only time we could come. We waited almost 45 minutes for the barn stormer which I thought was crazy long. Kayla did make a little friend in line while we were waiting. I had my old cellphone for Kayla to watch videos while we were waiting in the line and it worked really well for the long wait. I think if we were doing the party again, I might change things up based on the wait times in the beginning. We might have been better off to have seen Belle, and then gone to Big Thunder Mountain, and then done some of the smaller rides later on in the night... but you live and learn!
After the barnstormer we made our way towards the castle for the Frozen show. Here we are in front of the castle. :)
Me and my girlie!
The Frozen show was really cute. It was super packed in the area though, and it was hard for us to see it because we were back farther and people had their kids on their shoulders which blocked our view a bit. But we were still able to hear and see for the most part. Afterwards, we battled the crowds to get back towards the circus area. It was SO packed because they were herding out all the day guest people, and people were trying to get to where they were going. However, it got MUCH better once we got past the hub/castle area.
We went to Dumbo and it was only a couple minute wait instead of the 40 minute wait that it was earlier that day. Hurray for good wait times at the party! From 6pm and on they don't let day guests get in line for rides anymore. They have an attendant look for your green wristband to let you in line. So the lines got MUCH better at 6pm. Kayla went on Dumbo with Cody and it was so cute because they both declared that Dumbo was "their" ride. I guess now it is becoming their ride.
She wanted a picture in the Dumbo.
At this point in the night it was about 6:50pm. The wait for the seven dwarfs mine ride was listed as a 55 min wait. I thought that Kayla would really like this ride so I wanted to do it earlier in the night and prioritize it so despite what the wait said, I figured we should just do it while we were there. The queue was really fun! They had all kinds of interactive areas, and they had one area at the end where they were 7 barrels and if you spun them fast enough it showed you one of the 7 dwarves. At one point, we had waited about 15 mins or so and I saw the loading area of the ride, but we had to go around a corner and I was like man... what a tease to show us the loading area when we still have over a half an hour to wait... But sure enough, we rounded that corner and there was someone there asking us how many in our party!! We got on the ride in about 15 minutes!!! Woohoo!!! We went on it, and at first she was a little bit nervous when we were getting on it, and decided that she wanted to ride with daddy. But she ended up ABSOLUTELY LOVING IT!! She got off and she was jumping up and down with two thumbs up saying, Do it again! Do it again!! And since the line was so short... we said... what the heck... let's go do it again!
Here is Kayla and Cody at the end of our second ride! She was SO cute when we were in the mine, as we were going up the hill I heard her yelling HEIGH HO! as loud as she could along with the seven dwarfs. It was sooo much fun!! And she loved the ride. Our little rollercoaster lover! I'm so glad that she had so much fun on it.
Next we went across the way to the Winnie the Pooh ride. Kayla was excited to go on this one. The line was also really fun here. They had all kinds of little things for kids to do in line.
Kayla was running around and playing with all the games. I'm so glad that they have some fun queues like this for kids to keep them entertained. They should have more and more queues like this. After the Winnie the Pooh ride, we had to start making our way for the 8:30pm parade. On our way, we made a cookie run. We were right next to Cosmic Rays, then we headed towards, Pinocchios Village, and on our way towards Frontierland, we actually ran into Columbia Harbor House. So we got hot chocolate and got 3 different cookies! Hurray!
We made it to the parade with about 5 minutes or so to spare, and we got a front row spot. Kayla adored the parade and had so much fun at it. Here is the look of wonder on her face as she saw the parade starting.
Here it comes!!
Mickey and Minnie!
Elsa!
Kayla held up a heart with her hands in the air to all of the characters. And several of them noticed her and blew her a kiss or gave her a hug back. She was ESTACTIC when they responded to her. She got a response from the first character (Vanellope) and then it was ON! She was dedicated to holding up her heart sign. Ariel and the Fairy Godmother were also a couple of noteable characters that gave her a heart back. And man, it just made her night. She light up and was so excited. We all had so much fun at the parade. Lots of people like to watch the parade on main street with the fake snow, but the parade was so much fun for us to just walk up to and enjoy.
After the parade, we made our critical mistake of the night. We ran right over to the jungle cruise, and it was a pretty long wait to get on it, and then it was a long slow boat ride... and while I got the jokes the skipper was telling.. Kayla didn't. So it was a dark slow boring boat ride to her, and it really drained her energy for the rest of the night. We tried going on the Aladdin's Carpet ride afterwards to get her excitement up, and it worked for a minute... but soon after she was ready to crawl up into her stroller and go to sleep for the night around 10pm. She was basically begging to sleep, so we let her. I ended up watching the fireworks from Frontierland, and Cody and Kayla sat in Tortuga Tavern because she was scared of the fireworks and that kept her away from them mostly. The fireworks weren't the same without seeing the castle but it was better than nothing. We did grab some cookies from Tortuga Tavern, they had the gingerbread cookies with buttercream frosting and they were my favorite of the night! SO good and SO tasty!!
At time point in the night, I wanted to get my Mickey popcorn bucket! He was SO cute and exclusive to the Christmas party (He's now sitting in my office at work). I was so excited to get him that I took a picture with him haha. I also wanted the Donald Duck sipper cup, but I never did end up getting to get him. I had a chance at the end of the party, but it didn't happen.
Next, we watched the stage show at the castle. I did wake Kayla up for it. She was a grump watching it, but she did watch it and was interested in it.
Love this picture of the end of the show. After the show, Kayla did lay down and go back to sleep. Before she went to sleep, I asked her if she wanted to meet Jack Skellington (he's her new favorite since Halloween and she made him a special ornament), and she said yes that she did want me to wake her up when it was time to meet him. So we hit up the last couple things at the party. We hit up the last cookie stop at the Lunching Pad, and Cody grabbed a bench while I went on Space Mountain and the Speedway to see their holiday overlays. The only holiday overlay that I missed that I wanted to see was the teacups, but we never made it to the teacups. Space Mountain was pretty cool with the Christmas music and lights. It's definitely a different experience with the lights on. I LOVED the speedway! It's overlay with the Christmas lights around was great!
Afterwards, I hit up Cosmic Ray's for more cookies and it was about 11:50pm at this point. I had a choice... either we could make it to the front of the park to get in line in time for Jack Skellington or I could buy my Donald Sipper cup... I choose Jack Skellington for Kayla and we raced to the front of the park to get into his line. I picked her up and tried to wake her up, but she did NOT want to get up. And she was very upset to have been awoken and wanted nothing to do with him. :( In hindsight, I wish I had bought my sipper cup, and then slowly walked out of the magic kingdom and enjoyed the sights. But it is what it is. I wanted to do what I thought would make her the most happiest. Next time, once she falls asleep, I think I'll just let her sleep.
My lessons learned from the party: I would still do enchanted tales with Belle first, but then I would go to Big Thunder Mountain, and maybe Aladdin or the Tiki Room until 6pm. At 6pm, I'd head to the castle to watch the Frozen show.. then head to Dumbo and the Barn stormer, then to the seven dwarf mine ride, and Winnie the Pooh if possible. I'd do a cookie run, and head to Frontierland for the parade at 8:30pm but I would 100% SKIP the Jingle Cruise and ride the little mermaid, teacups, and the speedway instead, and then go from there. I'd probably send Cody/Kayla into Cosmic Ray's dance party during the fireworks and I'd watch them in front of the castle somewhere. And then I'd meet them up front for the castle show. I'd also try to get a few more pictures of us in. We really didn't take a whole lot while we were there. The time just went so fast.
The next morning, Kayla and I slept in until 10am. Cody woke up early like usual and went to the hot tub for a while. We decided to sign up for a Hilton timeshare presentation, because the prizes they gave out were great. They gave us 2 free round trip airline tickets, a free 4 night/5 day cruise, and a $75 giftcard for going to the presentation. I thought that was pretty darn good and worth going. We showed zero interest and really were out of their in about 2 hours as promised. So it wasn't too terrible.
Afterwards, we went to our pool for a few hours. Unfortuntaely, this is a stock picture of our resort area and not a picture that I took. The day we were there it was cloudy and rainy the whole time. There was a lit drizzle but still in the low 70s. It was ok in the water but it was kinda cold if you got out of the water... but we didn't have a lot of swimming days while we were there and wanted to make the best of it. Kayla had made a little friend the day before, and we were playing with her on the slides. We had a good couple hours of fun. The slides were a lot of fun! We all really enjoyed them.
Later that night we went to Chef Mickey's for dinner. This was our first time here for dinner. And of course, we got Goofy's section. Every half an hour or so they do a little dance/pump up the crowd time... and Kayla was scared of Goofy. Poor girl. She says that she likes the cartoon version of Goofy but she doesn't like him in real life. She says he's too tall and scares her. So she was kind of scared while the characters were going around because she was nervous about him. So if we do a character meal again, I think I'll make sure that it's at a place that doesn't include Goofy. It's too expensive for her to not enjoy herself.
She did love getting to meet Mickey though.
She was super excited to pass out her ornaments to all the characters.
She was excited to show Minnie her light up Minnie Mouse shoes that she had on.
Happy girl!
Happy girl with Pluto!
Happy girl with Donald. I was worried we were going to miss Donald for a second. We were the last table in the area that characters visited, and the half an hour dance time happened right before he visited our table. But luckily he remembered us and came back.
No happy girl with Goofy. She wanted daddy to take a picture with him instead of her.
Here are her signed ornaments from characters that she got. I can't wait to make them all up! I'm going to add a picture with her and each character on the other side. I think they will be fun keepsakes. Becky gave me this idea right before we left, and I thought it was a neat way to get autographs.
After dinner, we met up with Cody's cousins to do a resort hopping tour. I have always wanted to see Disney resorts at Christmas time. This was the Contemporary's gingerbread house.
It was so fun getting to go with Dave and Erin. They really know the resorts very well, and have been resort hopping many times. They knew a lot of the good bars and restaurants in the area. I wish we had even more time to have met up with them.
The decorations at the Polynesian hotel were really cute. I was just excited to see the Deluxe Disney resorts themselves.
Kayla and Minnie.
We went outside on their beach for a little while, and Kayla played in the sand and we had a view of the magic kingdom.
Here is one of the Christmas trees.
I would say that the decorations at the Polynesian and Contemporary weren't overly impressive, and weren't quite what I was thinking they would be. However, it was really neat getting to go on the monorail loop. I didn't realize that the monorail did a loop and didn't take the resort guests directly to the Magic Kingdom. I thought that you could hop on at the Contemporary and that they had a monorail that took you to the Magic Kingdom. I didn't realize that it was about a 20 minute ride to stop at the other resorts first before you got there.
My favorite resort by far was the Grand Floridian. I would LOVE to stay at the Grand Floridian some day... just one time. It was absolutely beautiful at Christmas time.
This was the giant gingerbread house display. It was so big that they had people inside selling treats.
The grand staircase.
More of the gingerbread house. I loved the fiber optic village on the outside of it.
Here is the line for the treat stand.
Here are all the ingredients it took to make this giant gingerbread house. It made the whole hotel smell so good.
This castle was amazing! And made out of chocolate.
A closer up of it. I can't imagine how much it would cost to have this made, and the skill it would take to make this out of chocolate.
We grabbed a drink at the Enchanted Rose. It was Beauty and the Beast themed and really neat.
A picture of the bar area.
A picture of the giant tree in the lobby. I would love love love to stay here someday. I added this onto my bucket list. If I ever win a lot of money, this is what I would do.
The highlight of the night was getting to go back onto the top of the Contemporary to watch the Christmas fireworks. Dave and Erin ate at the California Grill for dinner and if you ate there you could show your receipt and get to go back up to watch the fireworks. It was a really neat view, and they played the sound track along with the show so that you could follow along.
Family shot getting ready for the fireworks.
Group shot. We were so thankful for them to have invited us to watch with them, and take us around for the night. It was a lot more fun going with people who knew what they were doing. The fireworks were amazing from there. I was espeically excited because I didn't get to see them in front of the castle when we were at the park, so it was really neat to get to. Kayla even enjoyed it because we were far enough away. We had her headphones and she enjoyed popping them on to block out the noise. We put them on her and she was like ahhhh that's perfect!
Pictures outside in front of the giant Contemporary tree.
We had such a fun night with Dave and Erin. And they were so nice to invite us over to their house the next day for Thanksgiving. We went to their house and spent the day with them. Cody and Dave got to drink and watch football together, and we all just hung out and enjoyed each others company.
Kayla and Jordy became quick best friends. They played and played and played all night long. Jordy took her to the park and out looking at Christmas lights, and they played in her room... and Kayla was in love with her. She was so sad when she had to leave to go to her moms house.
Jordy was so sweet to Kayla. We all had such a great time at their house. It was a nice way to end our vacation, because the next morning we got up early to leave and head to the airport. Doing a Friday to Friday trip was pretty nice because we had lots of time at home. I was able to get all my Christmas decorations up, and still have time to relax.
Overall, I thought this was a great trip to Orlando. Kayla really enjoyed our time at Disney this year, and we had lots of fun. I LOVED getting to go to Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party. It is something that I have always wanted to do, and I'm so glad that we got a chance to do it. I also really liked getting to do the tree hunt at Disney Springs, and going around with Dave and Erin at Epcot and then the resorts was really a highlight. We liked Liki Tiki for their fun pool/slide area. Kayla had a great time swimming there. We also were very fortunate for good weather during our trip. I'm an Orlando junkie and already can't wait for our next trip back. I'm hoping that we'll be able to sneak in a couple days at Disney in November next year. If everything goes well, we'll be able to go to Epcot with Dave and Erin for a day again, and we'll be able to do Mickey's Christmas party. :) I feel like I learned a lot from this trip and can't wait for future trips.
