WDW, Part III: Magical Day

This is probably the last day that I'll go into tons of detail about our trip, so if I'm boring you to tears with all this, the end is in sight. But this day was too awesome to not tell you all the ins and outs of it.

We started out by splitting up, actually. Craig and Natalie and I took all the kids to Chef Mickey's first thing in the morning. For those of you unfamiliar with this, Chef Mickey's is a buffet breakfast in Disney's Contemporary Resort, where a bunch of the characters come around to your table and meet you while you eat. It's exactly perfect for little kids, and ours LOVED it. They got to meet Mickey and Minnie, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto. Plus the food was really good. Plus the chef made special milk-free waffles for my nephew Samuel. The whole experience was that perfect Disney magic that I just love.

Mickey wiped Kendra's face off with a napkin before hugging her.
I was impressed with his ability to be self-preserving AND adorable all at the same time!

Pluto balanced Bentley's binky on his nose. Bentley thought it was great.

Random side note that you probably didn't know: Craig's favorite character is Pluto.
He was totally excited to get to give Pluto a hug.

We LOVED Chef Mickey's.

While we were there, however, the rest of my family was also having some crazy adventures. My sister Leah apparently knows someone who is friends with someone and we ended up with our own private tour of the Animal Kingdom, led by one of it's founders, who has since been promoted to be in charge of ALL of Disney's environmental awareness activities. (Yes, you read that right-- ALL of it.) This very kind woman took my family to meet the tiger trainers and they got to feed the tigers. I had the time of my life at Chef Mickey's, but I have to admit that I was a tad jealous when I learned that this was what I'd been missing out on!

We quickly caught up with everyone, though, and were able to jump to the front of the line for the Safari ride (and watch as the cast members quickly offered to park our strollers for us when they saw who we were with). Then we got to go and speak with a bunch of the people working on Disney's conservation efforts, learning about elephant communication and turtle eggs and all kinds of things that made me sort of wish I'd stuck to my original major of conservation biology (until I remember with horror bio 130, and then I know that switching to English was a good idea...). At the end of all this, they allowed the kids to pet... (wait for it, wait for it...) a bunny rabbit! They were thrilled. And the bunny was very cute. (Her name was Ella, short for Cinderella.)

Next we got to go eat at the Tusker House. This was exciting mostly because Craig had tried to get us reservations there exactly ninety days ago, only to be told it was already booked solid. So it was kind of funny to be told they could fit all twelve of us in that afternoon! But we were happy to take it, and ate WAY too much food there.

Then we dashed away for VIP seats at the Lion King show. No waiting, and we got to sit in the front row. AND Craig got to be in the show. The audience is already divided into four sections, and each section is in charge of making an animal noise. You guessed it: Craig got to lead our section in making warthog noises!!! I was so proud. (He also had the singer flirting with him. One of those things that I might have been jealous of, if I hadn't been so in awe of her amazing voice....)

And as soon as the Lion King was done, we had to hurry for our VIP seats for Finding Nemo! Really! I think I need to start spending more time with Leah so I can live the charmed life that she leads...! Finding Nemo was fun-- the music wasn't spectacular, but I enjoyed the amazing puppets, and the look of wonder on Kendra's face was perfect. (Not that it takes much to impress her-- bubbles never failed to completely delight her!)

The final awesome thing was that we were given 24 fast passes for any ride at the Animal Kingdom, good for our entire stay. These are pretty much the Golden Tickets of Disney.

It was a truly magical day.