Day 6: Switching Gears

So the whole reason we ended up booking a second Disney trip this year was because Dan's company, PWC, offers a choice in location for their Fall Partner Meeting, Disney World was one of the choices, and the dates just happened to fall on the girls' fall break from school! So we said how can we not take advantage of this opportunity and turned it into a family vacation! We're also able to do Disney pretty affordably: we drive down from GA, we use hotel points to stay for free, and we bring breakfast foods to eat in our hotel room and water/snacks to bring into the parks with us. We also don't do a park every day, or do the park hopper passes. We plan out what parks we want to do on what days, and we make sure to have some pool days in-between. Our girls still need/want their nap/rest time, and they're totally fine with just doing a few rides, meeting a few characters, and calling it a day (which Dan & I are also totally fine with!).

So on Thursday of our trip we were checking out of the Dolphin hotel, and into the Grand Floridian for the start of our PWC portion of the trip. We did kick the day off with breakfast at Ohana, at the Polynesian resort, with Lilo & Stitch! The girls just recently watched the movie Lilo & Stitch for the first time so they were pretty excited to meet the characters! I've also read so many positive reviews for the restaurant that we wanted to give it a try, and it did not disappoint! When you check in for your table you immediately get in a (short) line to meet & get a picture with Stitch (he does not come around to tables, but he does sign autographs). Then inside Mickey, Pluto & Lilo come around to sign autographs & take pictures at tables. The also did a dance line around the restaurant when the song Hawiian Rollercoaster came on, which was fun for the kids. The food is served family style, and they give you eggs, bacon, ham, Stitch waffles and biscuits. Oh and Stitch juice! Which is like a mango orange juice maybe? It's yummy!! 

After breakfast we drove back to the Dolphin to do a little laundry & pack up our things and then we headed over to the Grand Floridian. We checked in but our room wasn't ready, so we headed over to the Convention Center of the hotel to check into the PWC portion of the trip. There the girls were each given an autograph book and a stuffed Minnie doll! We had missed lunch but there was a hospitality suite set up with snacks and a TV playing Mickey cartoons and bean bag chairs to sit on. The girls were in heaven! Dan had to head off to his meetings, so the girls & I stayed & chilled for a little while before getting our room. Once the room was ready we headed back and of course Cams fell asleep on the literally 5 minute walk over to our room. I wasn't too worried about this, thinking I'd just let her nap in the stroller, until I realized the stroller doesn't fit through the hotel room door. So I moved her to the bed, and thankfully she stayed asleep! E relaxed with some shows while I unpacked our things. The room (well the whole hotel really) is very very nice! The room was a little bit bigger than our room at the Dolphin, and we appreciate the extra space. We also somehow ended up with a lake view room & we can even see Cinderella's Castle from our balcony!

After Dan's meetings were done there was a Pixar Welcome dinner/party for all of the PWC attendees. It was crazy! They had different craft stations set up for the kids: you could get a balloon animal (or crown in our case) made, make a Sheriff badge, make an Inside Out Memory Jar (made with gumballs), make a bead bracelet, decorate (and eat) your own cupcake, get airbrush tattoos (our girls each got 2!) and then they had some Pixar characters you could meet & take pictures with! Of course they had Joy & Sadness from Inside Out, who we had waited a while to meet the night before, Buzz & Woody, Jessie & Bulls eye from Toy Story, and Mike & Sully from Monsters Inc. Meanwhile there was a DJ playing music and there was tons of food & drinks for everyone! It was a really fun night, and one of the best parts for the girls was having some friends there to run around & play with!! One of Emmy's preschool friends' dad is a partner for PWC too, and they were very excited to see each other!