Today was definitely an excellent day. Now before I start, let me tell you a little bit about our thinking behind this trip. This is the 4th time we’ve travelled in the period between Christmas and New Years, and we therefore knew how crowded it would be. We’d also all been poorly in the lead up to Christmas, and my broken body can not handle rope drop to park close days, so we decided to come up with a list of things we definitely wanted to do, and see any extras as a non-essential bonus. As the Christmas events tend to finish by New Years Eve, we decided to prioritise those for our first few days. We’d already ticked off the evening shows/ fireworks at Magic Kingdom last night, so today our aim was to see the parade, ride Jingle Cruise, see the gingerbread house at The Grand Floridian and go to Animal Kingdom to see the merry menagerie puppets.
The girls and Steve stayed asleep until 7.30, at which point I knew rope-drop was unlikely, so we made the decision to book Boma breakfast as a walk up and head to the park after that. I am not a huge breakfast lover, but know that the girls are always hungry in the morning and not the evening for the first few days, so thought a big fill might be just what everyone needed.
Breakfast was lovely (even though my double helping of ham, plantain, asparagus and spicy honey mustard followed by bread pudding and custard sauce wasn’t the most conventional ‘breakfast’ food) and we were suitably stuffed for the day.
By the time we’d finished and got to the park it was around 9.30. The queues for the turnstiles were big, but moved quickly.
The girls really wanted to do Carousel of Progress as their first ‘ride’, so that’s where we headed. Steve actually stayed awake and it was so funny seeing him realise things about it for the first time as he’s usually fast on by the second scene! We then headed over to Jingle Cruise to tick that off our list. I really like the fact that they add Christmas props, but wish the skippers included Christmas aspects too.
We knew a cavalcade had started about 5 minutes earlier, so dashed to the Olde Christmas Shop and just managed to catch it there. Donald was desperately trying to get Daisy’s attention but she wasn’t listening, so we did our classic ‘hot-foot it to Main Street’ and despite being literally shoved out of the way by a huge family who pushed in at the last minute, managed to see it again, with Daisy & Donald both seeing us this time (Daisy has a superb stamp to get Donald’s attention thing going!!)
Plaza ice cream parlour has just opened, so I took the girls there and Steve went for a coffee. Winnie had a cookies & cream cone, and Polly had a peppermint hot cocoa which she said was nice but went very cold very quickly due to the ice-cream. We then bought the traditional parade-viewing lollipops (as well as two Big Feet Toys the girls wanted with their Christmas money) before heading to grab a parade spot outside Hall of Presidents. We like it here as you never have to arrive to early and are not as squashed together as on Main Street. However, we made the mistake of choosing the sunny side as it hadn’t been overly hot this morning, but ended up melting slightly!!
The Christmas parade is really lovely, and I love the fact that they put it on in the day time between Christmas and New Year. The girls were so excited to see Donald and Daisy in their Christmas outfits, but as they do a dance routine with other characters, knew they likely wouldn’t be able to come over. As they approached one of the CMs who was on crowd control went over to them to point the girls out so they spent the whole dance gesturing to them and blowing kisses which they loved. As they moved past, still dancing, Pooh came and gave them a hug (Polly said it was because he knew Donald and Daisy couldn’t hug them and wanted to make them feel happy!) but then Dick-Burt (our name for Burt from Mary Poppins used because a special person who is no longer with us used to call him that) went up to Donald & Daisy and told them basically to run back to the girls, so they held hands, ran to them, gave them the biggest hugs, then ran back to to join the parade. It was the best moment ever as it was so unexpected. It honestly put the biggest smile on the girls’ faces all day (and made them immediately decide that they didn’t want to watch the 3pm parade as it would never live up to that!)
The rest of the parade was lovely. It’s very slow moving you get a lot of character interaction, which is really nice, and the Christmas costumes/ songs are perfect.
Once the parade was over we decided to head to Grand Floridian to see the gingerbread house. Polly wanted to go via the monorail for some reason, so it took forever, but we got there. A quick stop in Basin for some lip balm and bath bombs and a few photos with the Photopass photographer before joining the crazy long queue to buy some of the most expensive gingerbread in history! While we were waiting Steve went and sat on the harbour with a drink and we joined him afterwards. It’s so peaceful, and in the warm sunshine was just heavenly.
We decided to head back to the hotel as the girls really wanted a swim, so opted for an Uber for $10 rather than going back to the park to get a bus as we knew we didn’t have long if we were going to make Animal Kingdom this evening. The girls had a lovely hour playing in the water (I think they’d have stayed there all day) and I got a few bits ready for tomorrow (the value DVC rooms are brilliant for the points cost, but this one has practically no storage so we are living out of cases which isn’t a problem so long as I work a day ahead) before we set off to Animal Kingdom.
I took a few photos of the girls at the entrance (with Steve photobombing!) before I joined the queue for Nomad Lounge.
The estimated wait time was 30 minutes. This was perfect as it gave the girls time to see the Merry Menagerie puppets first. They really are lovely and the puppeteers are so clever. They had the girls giggling like mad.
We then headed to Nomad Lounge. This is one of my favourite places to eat in all the parks. The atmosphere is so relaxed and the food, which comes from the Tiffins kitchen, is superb. I had the tuna poke bowl which was amazing, the girls had steak skewers with Mac cheese and Steve had sliders (because Winnie wanted to try them!) plus we shared a bread service. Service was quite slow as they seemed very short staffed, but we had the best time playing games and laughing.
After tea we walked into Pandora to see it lit up. One of my favourite things about a winter trip is that it goes dark so early, so you get to see more of the parks at night. The girls found it hilarious that their teeth and eyeballs glowed in the dark, and giggled non-stop. The land itself is so beautiful at night, but crowds were crazy, and with it being so dark to show off the UV lighting effects it was quite hard to navigate through them.
We then headed to the Tree of Life to watch the show. We stood quite far back but still had a great view. It’s such a pretty show and fits in with the park perfectly.
A short trip back on an incredibly crowded bus and the girls were in bed for 7.30 after one of the loveliest days ever. Reading this back it doesn’t seem like we took it easy, but we really did and it meant we got to soak up every bit of happiness. Now it’s time to sleep to get ready to try and tick off all things festive at Epcot and Hollywood Studios tomorrow. If it’s half as good as today was, I’ll be very happy indeed.
Doodle & Peg Do Disney 