Disney! Day 6!!

When I had planned this trip, I had wanted to plan for a couple of character meals so as to avoid our kiddos wanting to wait in long lines to get a picture/spend time with the characters. I am SO glad that I did that! We had a great time at BOTH of our character meals (Chef Mickey breakfast on day 2 and this one today...)

I had booked the Princess Breakfast (Cinderella's Royal Table) for our LAST day in hopes of ending things on a high note. I would say that was a good plan! We had something to look forward to all week!

Our reservation was for 8:30am and I made sure that we got there early for some pics in front of the castle and just in case they could seat us a little early (which they did!). It was so strange getting into the park before they even opened! It was pretty surreal walking down main street with maybe 10 other people!!

When we got close to the castle we hooked up with one of the staff photographers for a photo op! Again, I'll post all of our memory maker pics in one post, but one thing i LOVE about the photographers there is that they most often offer to use your camera for pics, as well!

Mack was in his typical "no pictures" mood. Oh well, you get what you get with a 2 year old, right?!

Rhyan was SO excited to get to go IN the castle, upstairs and everything! But first up was pictures with Cinderella herself! Mack, again, refused to take a picture with her but really, this particular experience was more for Rhyan so that was fine.

One cool thing about this princess meal is that you get an 8x10 and two 5x7 pictures with the meal. I mean, the meal is mega expensive so it SHOULD come with some perks, but still, its nice ;-)

On the way up the spiral royal staircase, Rhyan and I made a pit stop in the ladies room, which was nice! When we got to the table, the waiter had already brought their little gifts; a sword for prince Mack and a wand for princess Rhyan :-) We also found some yummy pastries to get us started! The ballroom was beautiful and the windows really were just lovely!

We placed our orders for our breakfast and before it even came out, the princesses started making their rounds! There are a total of 4 princesses who make an appearance at this meal, Cinderella being the first you meet (downstairs). The other 3 are on rotations and so you never know who you'll get! We were realllllly hoping for Ariel and didnt really care too much who the others were. Ariel is hands down Rhyan's favorite!

First out was Snow White! She was so pretty :-) And very sweet!

Surprisingly enough, Mack was really excited to meet Snow White and wanted a pic taken with her!

Next up... ARIEL!!! Woohoo!! Rhyan was so excited when she saw her visiting with the other tables!

Ariel tried to visit with Mack, but he was just not having it! She was sweet to try! Of course, later in the meal he decided he wanted a pic with her, but it was too late. Sad!

And surprisingly one of our favorites that we didnt not anticipate being so excited about was JASMINE! She was beautiful, of course, and spent the most time chatting with the kids :-)

She was also the only one who got down to their level to talk with the kids! I thought it was very thoughtful of her and Rhyan really, really liked her because of that! Again, Mack liked her, from his seat!

Ok... so the drama I mentioned in the last post...

When our meal was over, Jeff asked where our giftcard was so we could pay our tip on it. I couldnt find it. I searched frantically but couldnt find it anywhere. And he was a little more than irritated. I'll be honest, he overreacted. If we had to tip and couldnt use our gift card, it's easy enough to put the tip on our room tab (using our magic bands!) and then just pay our tab at checkout with our GIFTCARD. But Jeff saw it as me being irresponsible. So it became a big issue all morning. Because, honestly, yes! I forget stuff! I'm fairly organized but when you're the only person planning all the details of the trip and "in charge" of EVERYTHING while you're there, you're bound to forget something at some point! And this was the first time all week that we had not had something we needed! So Idk what the issue was, but it hurt my feelings (because i'm a total "words of affirmation" kind of girl and so if jeff gets upset about something i've worked so hard to plan then it really hurts!).

He calmed down significantly when our waiter assured us that actually the tip is included in the cost of the meal! SCORE! But still, i was hurt and he was annoyed. So we had to just try to put our feelings aside and enjoy our last day... which I was really proud of the fact that we did!

We headed immediately to Adventureland to get to ride everything over in that area! Our first stop was Aladdin Magic Carpet (the Aladdin version of, yet again, dumbo!).

 I was pretty pumped because we got out of the breakfast by 9:30 and the park was still pretty empty! We had fast passes for the Alladin ride scheduled but changed that to something we wanted to ride in the evening! Awesome! We pretty much walked right onto it!

Next up was the Jungle Cruise... which was just too funny. All the animals are fake but the commentary (and kids reactions b/c they thought they were real!) were just too funny! We cracked up!

After the Jungle Cruise, we hopped on over to Pirates of the Carribean! Honestly, I thought it was great! But Rhyan was a little scared! She's all about thrill ride stuff, but anything thats dark and a little scary is NOT her favorite!

 We walked around and Jeff and Rhyan rode the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad while Mack and I walked over to see the Country Bear Jamboree. Mack liked it and it gave us a chance to rest in some air conditioning ;-). Plus, we took potty breaks while they rode! So it was a good use of time for us both!

Rhyan really liked the ride and Jeff said that pretty much as soon as it started, her hands went UP! She is such a little dare devil!

It was getting pretty late by that point and for our last day we had planned to get there early for breakfast, ride as much as we could till around 1pm and then head back to the room for naps so that we could stay out late that evening! So we made our way to get a "snack" of a dole whip icecream... and oh my! it was YUM! I got pineapple, the kids each got vanilla and Jeff got the orange cream. ALL were good, although I'll admit that the pineapple was a tad tart so I made a deal with Rhyan and we mixed some of mine and hers and shared. Perfection :-)

We also shared crackers on the way back to the hotel. Nothing nutritious, but something to sustain so that we could make it to our rockin dinner that I had planned!

On the way out, we saw a PARADE! We just happened to walk up and find a great spot right on the street at the corner/end of main street. It was serious dumb luck and was AWESOME! We just ate our treat and enjoyed the show!

 Back at the hotel, Rhyan INSISTED that I take a pic of Zazu, which we had forgotten the night before!

We got to our rooms and the kids took some nice long naps to get prepped for our wild evening ;-).
And while they napped, I searched for the GIFT CARD!!!

Here is where i give MASSIVE props to Disney. I called customer service who told me they would be glad to replace our missing card... IF i could give them the gift card number. Well, who keeps up with that? Word to the wise: if you have a gift card, keep the cust service phone number and card number in your phone or something. Just take a dang pic of the thing if nothing else!

So, of course I didnt have the number! They suggested we find it on a receipt. Wellllll... me being the clean freak that I am had cleaned out our whole room the night before. Thrown away every receipt we had. And housekeeping had already come! So I did the only thing I knew to do... I went to the housekeeping manager and begged for help.

Would you believe that the manager AND two other guys donned gloves and helped me dig through trash for about 45 min till I found OUR trash and got a receipt!?! Im telling you, ONLY Disney would do that! They were amazing. I kept apologizing and telling them I could do it alone but they didnt even want me helping. They told me to sit down and they would show me each bag and I could yay or nay each one. Um, I did NOT follow their directions and dug in with them, but how incredibly nice?!

So, thank goodness! We found a receipt! And I took it to the resort gift shop where the manager promptly called the guest services and issued us a new card! WOW! I was floored. And so grateful. And Jeff and I were all smiles with each other again :-)

So...When i was planning this whole thing, I got SO many mixed reviews about a restaurant I was hoping to try... Ohanas! My friend Rachael always raves about it so I was thinking it must be great and then some other people said that it wasnt nearly as good as it used to be. Well, in the end I went for it for two reasons: 1. I trust Rachael ;-) and 2. I knew Jeff would be in heaven with all you can eat meat! HA!

It was also pretty exciting that we could catch our bus to Magic Kingdom and then take the MONORAIL over to the Polynesian Resort! The kids (and Jeff) had been wanting to try it and seriously thought it was like a ride at Disney! 

We had early reservations for 5:30pm for dinner which turned out to be perfect! We had plenty of time for naps, to get there and eat and still be at the park in time to do a few things!

Ohanna's is a polynesian themed restaurant and the whole place is just window after window looking out onto the lush gardens of the resort! It was beautiful!!! And we all got a little token take home gift!

So, we pretty much loved loved the food! I wasnt sure if we would like the noodle thing but YUM! And the food in general was pretty much amazing! The meats were NOT fatty like I had heard and they all had a fantastic flavor! Rhyan loved the chicken and steak and my favorite was the pork and shrimp!  But it was all super yummy!

After dinner, we made our way on over to Magic Kingdom to do a few things again. We were sure to revisit the Barn Stormer (one of Rhyan's FAVORITES!!! She rode it at least 3 times!), went to the Laugh Factory (cute!), went back to the classic tea cups, carousel, the little mermaid ride, jumped on the cars (man those are hard to drive!!), and went back to BUZZ! Man, my kids love that ride!!!

Poor Mack! You cant see him cause he's so short!! BUt he loved it, too!!

We also hit up Peter Pan one more time (with our fast pass!) and then started back to the hotel. My hope was that I could talk Jeff into staying for the electrical parade, but he is so NOT into parades and the crowds annoy him. So I told him that I really wanted to plan to stay till 9pm (the start time of the parade) and be on our way out around the time of the parade. The plan was for each of us to carry a kid on our shoulders on the way out so they could watch it as we were leaving. Honestly, it worked out PERFECTLY!!! The kids got to see it and Jeff even let us stop at the entrance/exit and watch a good bit of it! And as soon as it was over, we were OUT! :-) Jeff was happy. I was happy. The kids were happy (and tired). Woohoo!

What a perfect ending to our trip! Seriously! Friday was AWESOME!!! I'm sure part of it was that we were already familiar with the park by that point and we knew where to go/what to do... but seriously, Jeff and i BOTH talked about how much we loved our last day there and how much fun it was!!!

We got back to the hotel around 10 and got ready for bed... and all slept soundly. A perfect ending :-)