Make-A-Wish Trip, Day 5: Breakfast with the Princesses

I'm determined to finish with the last few days of our trip. I'm using this as a record so we can look back and have a little bit of verbiage to go with the pictures, but I understand if you've gotten enough of it already.

Thursday morning at Give Kids the World we started off again with some characters. Goofy and pre-princess Belle were hanging out on the streets to greet the kids.

Goofy got a hold of Finn's plastic sword and poked around with it.

Julia was really fond of Mayor Clayton's house that was located near the middle of the village near the koi pond and the garden. It was almost big enough for me to stand up in, which meant it allowed for some fun pictures of Julia.

We headed for our second stop at Epcot for our scheduled breakfast with the princesses. Because of our trip to the park a few days earlier, we had most of the attractions out of the way that we were interested in. That didn't stop us from running into a few characters that the kids hadn't seen. This time it was Daisy and Stitch.

Before we were seated at the table, we got to see the post-princess Belle.

The breakfast consisted of a buffet of appetizers and then a platter filled with heaps of hot food. The kids were a little disturbed by the amount of bacon I ate. Julia waited patiently for things to get going after having eaten her fill.

When the princesses came out, they first did a processional through the dining area. Each princess gathered a line of kids and paraded around while the parents looked on with flashing and recording cameras. Cinderella had Julia follow right behind her and gave Julia her bouquet of flowers to hold.

Afterward, the princesses walked from table to table, chatting, signing things, and posing for pictures. We were impressed when Cinderella clearly remembered Julia from three days earlier (and how many hundreds of kids?) and Julia was pretty thrilled about it too.

Aurora, Snow White, and Ariel followed next.

After that experience was finished, we wandered back around the big pond and stopped to see some interesting looking exhibits at some of the countries. We walked by some drums and I encouraged the kids to run over and start beating them (we had walked past them a few nights earlier and kids were playing them, so I was reasonably sure it was allowed). Soon after, other kids were joining in too.

Amanda wanted to stop in the Germany store to pick up something for herself. We all voted on the hat, but she chose a t-shirt of the mice in lederhosen instead.

We timed our walk to come across Jasmine and Aladdin and then shortly after came across Alice.

We turned down a hardly traveled alley and came upon a hedge maze. The kids and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves! It was fun to find things that people who hurried by might have missed.

A building on that same side street had a little shop with Pooh and Tigger in the back.

Instead of driving or taking the monorail from Epcot to Magic Kingdom (to go through the one section we didn't get to on Monday), we took the ferry.

Adventureland was the portion we needed to walk through yet, so we headed right there. Julia really wanted to see Tink, so we went straight for another character meeting. Besides the famous fairy, one of her friends was there too. Vidia plays a sort of antagonist to the spunky Tinker Bell and it was great seeing how true to the character she was. She was sarcastic and referred to her fairy partner as "Stinker Bell" and "Tinker Smell". She was still friendly, but not overly so and wasn't interested in hugging the kids.

Tinker Bell told Julia that she looked familiar, but we hadn't met her before. After we left, I told Julia it was probably because their hair looked the same and so Tinker Bell was reminded of herself. Julia burst my feel-good bubble by letting me know that Tink's hair really isn't short, it was just up.

The Swiss Family Robinson tree house was closed for some reason, so we were disappointed not to be able to see that. We did see the Enchanted Tiki Room and ride on the the Jungle Cruise and Pirates and the Caribbean. Don't ask Julia about the last one, she kept her head down with her hands over it the entire ride. Finn was brave enough to watch tentatively and just hide when needed. Like I said before, it's hard to get decent pictures on the rides and still enjoy them, so you're stuck with more characters.

Tiana and Naveen are probably the two newest characters at the parks. They verbally played well off of each other.

And definitely not a new one, Peter Pan drew a line of people to meet him.

As we headed for the exit, we veered over toward the castle and watched a play on the stage. Another example of getting pulled in to something unexpected but magical.

Meanwhile, that evening at GKTW...
It was their weekly Christmas party! The place was decorated and Santa was there. Each kid go tot pick out a toy - Julia chose a Rubki's cube and Finn picked a transformer. The kids got to meet Ms. Merry (Mayor Clayton's wife) and the big bunny mayor himself.

We topped off this long day with snow cones and ice cream. Friday we planned on putting the theme parks aside to head for the ocean.