Disney Arrival Day

After months of planning and dreaming our Disney vacation had finally begun. It was an easy drive to Orlando and we arrived at our hotel in the early afternoon. While we waited for our room we explored the hotel and shopped. The Grand Floridian is absolutely gorgeous. Total luxury and only one monorail stop away from the Magic Kingdom. Speaking of the monorail, we hopped on for a ride. This was my first Disney Momma moment, one that brought tears to my eyes and made me so unbelievably happy. Tessa spotted the castle and shouted "There it is! CINDERELLA'S CASTLE!!!" To see my baby so excited made my whole trip. After a roundtrip ride we left the boys to finish checking in. The girls continued on to the Magic Kingdom entrance and then, for fun, took the ferry boat back to the hotel. Our room was ready and our bags (all three luggage carts of them) were being delivered. And this was our view! A corner room with direct view of Cinderella's Castle, it was even better than I had hoped. While we were unpacking, the birthday boy had a special delivery - a solid chocolate Mickey Mouse with cookies. Pretty great way to start the birthday week. We had reservations for the princess dinner downstairs so it was time for our first dress-up occasion. We headed down to dine with Cinderella and Prince Charming. This was our first character dining experience and WOW! Almost as soon as you sit down characters migrate to your table. We whipped out cameras and started shooting, food could wait. For months Tessa has been toting around a photo book of Disney characters and she brought it to dinner that night. The pictures are a combination from my childhood, my mom's childhood and friends who have recently visited. The characters were hilarious flipping through the book looking for pictures of themselves. Prince Charming sat right down with us to get a better look and I thought he might hang out at our table all night. Everybody is totally in character and it's fun to talk to them. The more you know about each story the more interesting the conversation. When we asked Anastasia about the baker that she had fallen in love with she begged us not to mention him in front of her mother. Druzilla clued us in that the mother didn't think the baker was good enough for her daughter since he didn't have a castle. Ryan gets a huge kick out of the stepsisters, they are really funny. Cinderella and Tessa had a serious conversation about being home before midnight then they did a little bibbidy bobbidy boo together. Tessa was in awe of the characters and maybe a teensy bit overwhelmed, I was too! Then it was time for Prince Charming to waltz with Cinderella and everyone was invited to join the dancing.

Almost as an afterthought, we ate dinner. It was delicious. Our server brought Ryan his birthday cupcake and a HUGE ice cream sundae.

We headed back to the room where we watching the nightly fireworks right from our balcony. Pretty great start to our vacation.