Disney Trip - Day 2 (Sun. Dec 11) Part I

After a good night’s sleep on Saturday night (11 hours!) we were ready for our first full day...and we do mean FULL! What better way to begin then dining with the Princesses? Rebecca donned her Jasmine outfit (thanks Jasmine B!) and we were ready to begin!
If you haven’t dined Disney style then it’s something you might want to do if you ever get the chance! We arrived at the Norway Pavilion in Epcot about 20 mins early for our 10:10 reservation. Soon after leaving our name we were summoned to the dining room...,’Announcing the Royal reservation of Ryan - Party of 2.’ Oh what fun! We were assigned a personal hostess who stayed with us, answered any questions we might have, offered to take pictures and introduced us to Belle who was wearing her golden ball gown. She signed autographs and posed for pictures with a wide-eyed, excited 6yo! We’d never seen Belle in her ball gown before!
During our breakfast of fresh fruit, Florida orange juice (yumm!), fresh baked goods, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage and hash browns we were visited by Mulan, Mary Poppins, Princess Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) and Snow White! Talk about dining with Royalty! Each princess visited the table, signed Rebecca’s autograph album, talked with her and posed for pictures. Such fun!

After breakfast we headed over to ‘The Land’ and took in Epcot’s new hit attraction, ‘Soarin’...WOW!!! It’s a must see if you’re at Disney. We’d picked up Fast Passes before going for breakfast so didn’t have to wait in the hour+ line to get in. Gotta like that! Soarin’ is a ride where you feel like you’re hang gliding over California - the orange groves (complete with the smell of oranges), beautiful rivers surrounded by fir trees, the ocean and of course, Disneyland. Rebecca didn’t like this ride but I think she kinda freaked herself out before we even got in line. She did peak a little at the end but quickly decided it was not a ride she wanted to do twice. Oh well, there’s always next trip...whenever that may be.

Soarin’ was followed by a cookie baking opportunity for Boo, hosted by Nestle. Figured since she’d ridden Soarin’ for me it was my turn to do something for her. We also rode, ‘The Land’ and saw some really neat things. Imagine...plants growing without soil, pumpkins shaped like Mickey Mouse and 1 tomato plant that had thousands and thousands of little tomatoes on it! We also had an opportunity to meet a few characters at the new, ‘Character Connection’ at Epcot. Boo was still pretty timid but did meet Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Donald plus Chip and Dale. She didn’t always want them to touch her but they always complied and took pictures near her, rather than touching her. A ride on ‘Spaceship Earth’ was our last adventure at Epcot that day.

Next, we did some shopping at Downtown Disney and found cute matching Minnie Mouse Christmas hats that we would wear for the majority of the week. Well....I wore it most of the week but after a few day’s Rebecca changed alliances and her hat was worn backwards as a Mickey hat! After shopping we headed back to the room for a bit of a rest. It was about 4:30 by this point but we still had much fun in store for us! ‘Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party’ was on tap for the evening...but that’s another entry at another time.