Our plan to take a day off between our two days of Magic Kingdom seems to be working out well. We had a relaxing day yesterday just lounging by the pool, cooking in the Airstream and not doing much walking around. Today, the girls are fresh and ready to rock and roll again.
The game plan today is to hit a couple of the rides that we didn’t get to a couple of days ago, see the new Beauty and the Beast areas and hopefully some meet and greets with Princesses.
If you haven’t noticed, we take a lot of photos. Personally, I prefer the action shots than the posed photo ops. From time to time, I also like to get a little one-arm-extended, not-looking-through-the-viewfinder self portrait going with the whole family. Every time I do this in public, it never fails that some nice bystander will offer to take our picture for us. I always thank them for the offer, hand over the camera and pose for an awkward photo while thinking that our impromptu self-portrait is actually the look I was going for. As you can tell in this one, I only got half of Luka’s head. That’s because I didn’t get a chance to take another one before we got offer.
Well, we do ask the girls to pose, too. After all, we are in Disney World. The grandparents are going to want something more frame-able. This is becoming Mila’s go-to pose. I don’t know where she got it but it is her signature move now.
On our way to the new Fantasyland, we stopped briefly to visit with the Fairy God Mother by Cinderalla’s castle. This is a different cast member than the last time we were here but Ava doesn’t remember.
We have been hearing lots of good things about Belle’s Story Time. It is another new ride in Fantasyland. Well, technically, it isn’t really a ride, it is kind of a souped up meet-n-greet.
The first thing that happens is you get grouped into about 30 people when you enter.
The mirror in the room starts to light up and begins to transform into a door and we all walk through it.
The Wardrobe is in the room as well as another cast member who is interacting with The Wardrobe as she begins to talk. The movement of the face is very impressive. The texture looks wood or plastic yet it moves organically. The eyes and the eyelids also move in sync with the speech which is pretty cool, too.
The Story Time portion of the ride gets lots of people involved in the audience. Every character besides Belle is represented by a cutout and our girls got to participate. Ava got to be Chip the tea cup.
Mila got to be Philippe the horse. There were very excited.
As we all enter into the ballroom, Belle appears through a door and begins to act out the Beauty and the Beast story. As each characters’ part comes up, the person with the cutout comes up to her and acts out the scene with her.
Ava couldn’t believe that she got to be Chip and got to be in the story with Belle.
The cast member who played Belle during our tour was very convincing. They must have some kind of princess school that they put all these girls through so they are able to learn everything there is to know about their role.
Next door to Belle’s Story Time is the Be Our Guest Restaurant. This is also new to the park and we decided to have lunch here. Dinner here requires reservation but lunch is available as a walk-up.
The restaurant is also impressively done. The large windows at the end of the middle room look just like the ones in the movie.
You order from a touchscreen kiosk and you also get a little red box in the shape of the rose with your order. With some type of electronic tagging, they staff knows where you are and your food is delivered to your table. The food way better than anything else in the park that we had and priced similarly.
In one of the side rooms, the Enchanted Rose is also on display in its glass case. The rose is holographic and appears to be suspended in mid-air.
We did manage to get back on the Ariel ride again but I won’t bore you with animatronic photos again. However we did get to meet her for the first time. Our last trip here, she was the only princesses that Ava really wanted to meet but didn’t because this was closed.
Our last day here, we also didn’t get to Dumbo. When we got to it, there was a 40 minute wait and all of the Fast Passes were gone. What we didn’t know is that the 40 minute wait is actually a breeze because of the play area that you get to hangout in with the kids while you wait. They hand you a buzzer like you get at restaurants and each group gets called up as your turn approaches.
There are 2 sets of Dumbos now as well since it is such a popular ride.
We took a little ice cream break in the afternoon and got some scoops of Edy’s. Marlene has been looking forward to it because they have a couple of dairy-free flavors that are safe for her diet.
After our break, we headed over to Tomorrowland. Tomorrowland is ironically looking very dated nowadays. I suppose we are already in the future of when it was designed to resemble as it was built back in the day. The girls had fun shooting Zurg in the Buzz Lightyear ride so we got a Fast Pass and were able to get in there pretty quickly.
This is one of the dad’s that rode near us. They take pictures of you throughout the ride and he was caught chatting on the phone while his daughter is trying to save the world from the Galactic Evil Emperor.
One of our last rides today was the Country Bear Jamboree. The girls got a little scared of the roller coasters we took them on 2 days ago so we did mostly performances today. I love the Country Bear Jamboree. They don’t have this in the Anaheim Disneyland any more which I think it is such a shame.
During the holidays, the Magic Kingdom does a special night time holiday party. Instead of it replacing their usual parade, they charge a separate entrance fee and issue bracelets for anyone who ponies up the $60 a person. I don’t know what you get for that extra 60 bucks but it was not worth it for us to drag these tired girls around for another $240.
Instead, we took the girls to meet some more of their favorite princesses like Aurora from Sleeping Beauty.
For the first time, the girls also got to meet Rapunzel. It’s pretty cool that they have all of the new princesses represented now alongside the classic ones. Rapunzel was very spunky just like her character in the movie. The girls were really thrilled to be able to spend some time chatting with her.
And of course, Cinderella. After all, she has that big castle outside and we had to come meet her.
Even Luka got his first smooch on the forehead from a princess.
I don’t think this little dude knows what just hit him.
Check out Cinderella’s castle all lit up with lights for the holiday season. It is stunning in person. Each night’s lighting of the castle is done with a performance that invoices Cinderella, Mickey, Minnie and the Fairy Godmother.
We all had a great time here and will happily leave the happiest place on earth tomorrow.
over and out,
dan
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