Magic Kingdom

The kids slept great and everyone woke up in a good mood for our adventure to Magic Kingdom. We had breakfast reservations at Cinderella's Royal Table. I figured with the girls being 9, 7 and 5 my time for them to want to have breakfast with princesses is really dwindling and I really wanted Julia to remember seeing them. We didn't tell the kids where we were eating just that we were going to the MK for breakfast. Luckily our reservations were at a time that we got in early to MK but didn't have to get up too early!

I just love walking into Magic Kingdom early in the morning! I don't know..I'm such a Disney nerd that just walking in takes me to a happy place. It was great to get pictures of the kids in front of the castle without a gazillion people behind us. We get to the castle to check in and were a few minutes early and since it was right when the park opened we sent Paul on the first Fast Pass mission of the day: Space Mountain. We got in line for pictures with Cinderella (advantage to being a family of 6? Two photo packages! Score!). We got one with the girls and Cinderella (Jacob refused to participate) and then we did a whole family one. Then we promptly got to go upstairs for our meal. We at there before for lunch but this was our first breakfast. The food was very good and I especially loved how our served called me "Queen." Julia was in heaven - she loved, loved seeing all the princesses and even my "we're over princesses" older girls were pretty excited to get autographs and have their pictures taken with them! Jacob was pretty entertained too - I think it was the plastic sword that sold him on the experience. He took pictures with some of the princesses but not all. Snow White was pretty smitten with him and left a huge lipstick mark on his forehead where she kissed him. Pretty cute.

After breakfast we headed to Space Mountain. I rode first with Lily and Paul was going to ride with Julia. However, after I did it I thought it might be a little too much for Julia so Lily got to ride twice. She loved it. Meanwhile we got to see Stitch who tried to eat Jacob's pen. Which freaked Jacob out and he then refused to get his picture with him. Every time we saw Stitch Jacob said he had too many teeth and was going to bite him. We also had a another surprise - Gagi and Grampy joined us for the day! They had also come to FL early and decided to come with us. We were grateful for the help since it was a super crowded day and that brought our adult to kid ratio up to 1:1. Even though the park was super crowded we were still able to do quite a bit of rides without waiting in too many lines. Thank goodness for Fastpasses! We did Peter Pan, Small World, Buzz Lightyear (Jacob loved, loved this), Jungle Cruise, rode the train and saw some favorite characters. We did sucked into waiting forever to see Fairies. The girls really really wanted to see the fairies - when we got to the meet & greet the line was 20 min - it was hot and it was in the shade so we decided to wait. Well turns out the 20 minutes was about 50 minutes..a family of 20, yes 20 had one person wait in line then they all came when it was time to see the fairies. Really, really annoying. Turns out the 2 fairies we saw were Tinkerbell and Terrence. While it was a good meet & greet - the characters were fun and interactive - I'd have not preferred to spend an hour out of my day there! Oh well..the girls were thrilled! We also got to spend some time shopping which made Lily pretty happy. That girl loves to shop. We had some fun snacks at the Main St. Bakery and then said goodbye to Gagi and Grampy.

We had plans to meet up with some great friends for dinner at the Wilderness Lodge. We met them on our cruise last year and they were spending a couple days at Disney after their family cruise so the timing was great. We rode the boat over to the Lodge - Jacob loved this - funny how the monorail, train and boat were some of his favorites. Our friends have 3 kids, including a girl who is the same age as Lily. It took the girls a bit to get to know each other but then they had a great time together. We ate at Whispering Canyon which we loved! It's a fun place to eat and the kids meals included milkshakes to drink which they really enjoyed. It's one of those restaurants where the servers are entertaining and it's very loud..so it was perfect for our families! The food was good too. After dinner we hung out in the lobby catching up with our friends for a long time. We'd considered going back to MK for the fireworks (or at least me & the girls) but we ended up going back to Animal Kingdom Lodge where our friends were staying to see the resort and hang out some more. By the way Animal Kingdom Lodge is gorgeous! We walked out the back deck where there was a cast member handing out binoculars. You could see some giraffes hanging out. So cool! We really enjoyed hanging out with the Cohens - good food and great company!!

Our friends had a car so they drove us back to our resort which was nice. And of course the kids were beyond exhausted but what a great day!