Day Three - Downtown Disney, Cinderella's Royal Table, Halloween Party!!!

Happy Thanksgiving to those back home!

We started our day with another character breakfast - the Supercalifragilistic breakfast with Mary Poppins and friends at 1900 Park Fare at the Grand Floridian hotel. Wow, what a beautiful hotel! So the breakfast obviously featured Mary Poppins, as well as Pooh, Tigger, Alice in Wonderland, and the Mad Hatter. When I booked the trip and was making dining reservations, I had mentioned to some that this trip was a birthday present for Erin, albeit a few weeks late. Well, it appeared to show up on a couple of the reservations, including this one! Erin was given a 'Happy Birthday' crown and a cute cupcake with a candle and of course the staff came over to sing to her. She loves this kind of thing and just lapped it up!! The characters were awesome! I think the best thing we could have gotten Erin was the autograph book. She just loved meeting the characters and asking them for their autograph. It really made the trip special. The breakfast buffet was awesome. Erin's favourite once again were the Mickey waffles! I don't know what they put in them, but man are they ever tasty! I'm impressed too that they even use real maple syrup! We Canadians know the difference!

After breakfast we took a bit of a stroll around the hotel. Again, just beautiful. I can't believe that with all the kids around the place they actually keep a magnificantly polished Steinway grand piano in the lobby!
The Mad Hatter was great! I have to admit though that his eyes were freaking me and Gord out!

After touring the hotel, we hopped on a bus to Downtown Disney for a bit of shopping. With all of the thousands of people staying at the resort, wouldn't you know we would run into Jo, Chris and company on the same bus heading there too?!!! We got the kids together for a few pictures then parted ways, making plans to meet later that day for Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party.

We picked up a few goodies to bring home and Gord had a Rawlings baseball bat made for himself. It was pretty neat with his name laser-etched on and everything! We only stayed there for a couple of hours, then decided to head back to the hotel for a bit of a rest and then to get into costume, well Erin did anyway!!

This display is all made from legos! Thre were a few very cool ones. This was our favourite!!

We had lunch reservations at Cinderella's Royal Table (I still can't believe I got them!!). So Erin wore her Cinderella dress for the occasion! By the way, you will see in the pictures that her hair is still in from her boutique visit yesterday. Yes, she slept on it and it was ready to go in the morning without any fuss! They put some really strong stuff in those hair do's!!!

We caught the boat to Magic Kingdom and got there in plenty of time. It rained lightly on and off while we were there but it didn't amount to anything. We had some time before lunch so we decided to take a ride on Cinderella's carousel. It was closed for refurbishment when Erin and I and Grampa were there in May, so I'm glad it was open for this trip. The carousel is gorgeous and one of my favourites. It has horses, so it became one of Erin's favourites too!

Our reservation time came and we entered the Castle. How cool is it to be able to eat in the Castle? You get a short visit with Cinderella and a picture taken with her, and the staff bring a photo package to your table during your meal. Erin was very excited to meet Cinderella! Once your picture is taken, you wait until your name is called. Ours was and we went up an elegant winding staircase up to the amazing dining room!

The staff brought us a yummy appetizer plate. Erin got a wishing star and a magic wand. Yes, she's in princess heaven again!! Gord and I had the most amazing entrees - Major Domo's Pie. It's like a beef stew in a puff pastry. My mouth is watering thinking about it!! For dessert they bring you a yummy chocolate cake. Erin had a hot dog and a royal sundae, topped off with a chocolate crown. During the meal, more characters arrived, much to Erin's delight - 4 more princesses! She got to meet Princess Jasmine, Belle, Snow White, and Princess Aurora. She loved every second of it. The place was amazing and I'm so glad we went.

After lunch we took a stroll around to walk off some lunch before meeting up with Jo, Chris and the boys. We found a spot where we could take our Halloween Party tickets to and get wristbands for the night. We also go our trick or treat bags!

Can't you just feel the excitement on Erin's face as we sat down at Cinderella's Royal Table?!!!

Here is Erin making a wish at the special 'wishing star' moment the princesses led at lunch!

We met up with the gang at 5:00pm and headed off to do some rides. Almost everything was walk on except the Jungle Cruise. We got a fast pass for that ride then hit a couple of others while we waited. Erin and Gord sat our Pirates of the Caribbean, but I went with Jo and Cole. Then I took Erin and Cole on Aladdin's Magic Carpets again. As soon as we got off, it started to POUR rain so we ducked in for the final show of the Enchanted Tiki Room to watch the silly birds and stay dry for a bit!

It was time for our Jungle Cruise so we made our way there. It was raining really hard while we were on the ride, but it stopped shortly after we were finished. In fact, this was the only rain we had for the entire week! We decided to make our way over to Tomorrowland. Jo, Chris and the boys went on the Stitch ride, but we decided to sit it out. I guess Jo said we made the right decision, but Aidan loved the ride! We just looked around at some of the Halloween stuff while we waited for them to come off the ride.

By this time, it was 7:00pm and time for the party, so we hit a few of the trick or treat spots for some candy - man do they ever put a lot of candy in your bags! Our bags were full after only stopping at a few spots! We then made our way to the castle to find a spot to watch the Boo To You parade. It was awesome! The characters were all dressed up and the villans looked amazing! It was too wet for the headless horseman, so we missed that, but the rest of the parade was great. After it was over, we asked Erin what she wanted to do. She was pooped and just wanted to go back to the hotel and go to bed. Truth be told, so did we! Erin actually fell asleep on the boat ride back, and almost right away again when her little head hit the pillow in our room! Jo, Chris and the boys did a marathon though and didn't get back until just before midnight! Lots of trick or treating for them!

It was off to bed for us too. We were heading to Epcot on Tuesday!