christmas at disney day 3

day 2 was shorter and more laid back because we knew day 3 would start bright and early and would be a long day.

day 3: tuesday, epcot

this was our first time to go to epcot. we started the day with the princess breakfast at akershus royal banquet hall in norway.

this year, after spending too much money on halloween costumes, i decided to make their princess dresses. also, my ridiculous desire for costumes to be true to the movie is never met when buying from the store. so, this year, carter chose rapunzel and spencer chose snow white (surprised? i didn't think so.) there is something i must say about our princess breakfast experiences-my idea of what they should look like and their idea is much different. and, because it is really all about them, i let them make the choices. carter did not want all her hair braided even though that is how rapunzel's is in the movie, so between her chosen hair style, recent self-inflicted bang trim and the florida humidity, her hair was a little on the wild side.

 at the breakfast, we saw belle,

 sleeping beauty, 

jasmine,

and alice in wonderland. uhhh . . . am i the only one who doesn't think alice is a princess?? we didn't much care after miller showed extreme interest in her. in fact, he was enamored. he was willing to have his picture taken, asked her to sign his book and held her hand when they paraded around the room. he later refused to acknowledge any of this ever occurred, but we remember.

after breakfast, we decided to start at future world west because that is where all the kid-friendly stuff is. our first stop was the seas with nemo and friends followed by turtle talk with crush. as it turns out, crush was quite amusing even for those of us over the age of ten.

next we went to journey into imagination with figment. while everyone enjoyed the ride and the activities afterward, the early morning was taking its tole on our entire family and we weren't sure we were going to make it much longer. by the way, it wasn't even eleven o'clock, yet. after a short break, a snack, and a trip on the ferry, we headed to our featured destination. you might have thought the princess breakfast was our most important event of the day, but it wasn't . . .

we were headed to see snow white! the snow white character spot at the wishing well in germany was the one event spencer had looked forward to all along. in fact, it was such an event, it has it's own post.

immediately after meeting her favorite princess, spencer said she needed to go to the potty. um, okay. (maybe snow white should just move in with us and we could knock this whole potty training thing out in no time.) the bathroom was by the american adventure. while everyone waited on us, they were able to watch the spirit of america fife and drum corp and, then we decided to go inside to see the voices of liberty sing christmas carols. the kids were invited to play dreidel, dreidel. the storyteller teaching the game was impressed that carter knew how to play (thank you public school education) and thought spencer was too funny. spencer kept hoarding all the gold coins and, of course, the storyteller didn't want to take them away from her.

after the american adventure show, we were starting to get hungry so we headed to mexico to find some lunch. of course, another character spot was enroute so we had to have a picture taken with mexican donald duck.

afterward, we grabbed a quick lunch at la catina. i have to say that every food venue at epcot was upsetting to me because of a variety of extremely comfortable birds that wanted to make sure they didn't miss a single dropped crumb. it was way worse than the crazy squirrels at the other parks.

after lunch, we headed to the gran fiesta tour starring the three caballeros. then, we spent some time wandering around the indoor market where carter found a cute leather purse she bought with her own money.

it was here that we discovered stamp collecting with duffy. i had read about this disney created attempt to entertain children at epcot, but i didn't really understand it all. after coloring duffy and collecting their first stamp, carter and miller were on a mission which meant the adults were on a mission to find the secluded locations in each country where disney hid the employee with the country's stamp. it was kind of like a one day version of the amazing race.

luckily, the character spot with mary poppins was nestled in the united kingdom between two countries whose stamp they wanted, so we waited in line while they ran around collecting stamps.

oh my goodness! could she be more beautiful?!? mary poppins was one of everyone's favorite characters of this trip.

and, of course, we ran into another character spot on our way to the bathroom. this one was marie of aristocats. carter had to have her picture taken with her because she was in france.

we decided since we had filled duffy's stick with various stamps and had been at the park way longer than we thought would happen that morning that our day was done. as we exited the park, we decided to ride spaceship earth. it was interesting especially when we discussed each group's results. while it isn't the typical park experience, epcot was definitely worth spending the day.

favorites:
carter: princess breakfast
miller: spaceship earth
spencer: "snow white gave me a kiss"