Disneyworld Vacation 2011 - Part 2

Friday, January 28, 2011

Happy Birthday Joan!!!  It's my mom's friend's birthday today!

We made our way across the Florida State Line and into Disneyworld today!  Oh the excitement of the kids!  We stayed at one of the value resorts - Pop Century!  It was fabulous!  Tip #1: If going for a value resort, stay at Pop Century!  While the other value resorts seem nice and even more fun, Pop has it's own bus system, so it makes it easier to get to and from places and not worry about other buses being filled up. It also has been refurbished more recently than the others. Tip #2: If you're trying to pinch pennies, get one of the standard rooms and then spring for the fridge.  A preferred room isn't always better located, but an in-room fridge is so helpful!  It's one of the small box fridges - not an upright rectangular, but it still has enough space for what you'll need it for.

Yay!  We're here!!!

Unless you have unlimited time and tickets, Tip #3 is to not waste a park ticket for the first day you get there.  Instead, attend one of the character meals. For the little ones, big stuffed characters can be scary!  So, to acclimate Monkey into seeing them a little more, we chose to do Chef Mickey the evening we got there.  So fun!  We took the bus from the hotel to Magic Kingdom and then hopped on the monorail to the Contemporary Resort.  They LOVED the monorail!

Chef Mickey's for Dinner

Monkey not so sure about the big Pluto, but she slowly got into the characters

Sweet Pea loving each new "friend"

Getting into the swing of the characters.  Maybe she just likes the female ones.

Nope! No excitement here!!!  ha ha!

The dinner at Chef Mickey's was really good.  Since I have a gluten allergy (no wheat, rye or barley), one of the chef's came to our table and brought me through my options at the buffet line.  I was pleased that there was quite a bit I could choose from.  They even had chicken without breading on it.  It was a little dry, but delicious!  The mashed potatoes were to die for! Normally, I like chunky potatoes, but with all the butter and cheese and 1000 calories per bite, it was so good!  Other fruit and salad options were good and The Hubster enjoyed some carved meats.

The dessert section looked heavenly, but of course I couldn't have any of it.  All of these bite sized treats of key lime tart, brownies, cheesecakes, cookies.  Oh, yum!!

One gripe is that most places we went, the kids had to choose from the kids menu, which mostly consisted of mac n cheese, pizza, chicken nuggets or something else equally fried and not so good for them.  Don't they know my kids like to eat salads and veggies???

As we were finishing up, we heard the fireworks from "Wishes" at the Magic Kingdom.  We could barely see them, but the kids liked what they could see, all the same!