It Tastes Like Rainbows! 3 Generations of Princesses Trip Report! Update x2! 4/12/15

[Nals]

I'm packing an extra pair of shoes and your angry eyes just in case- Mrs. Potato Head

There were a few things on my list I wanted to do at Downtown Disney and I was totally looking forward to shopping! It's one of my favorite things to do! We took the ferry which was nice and leisurely. We were told we'd be the last boat load for a while as there were some ominous looking clouds all around us at this point in time.

Ella informed me that she was starving and going to waste away if we didn't find food soon. I knew where we were going and they weren't talking me out of it this time like Flame Tree the day before!

After it seemed like we walked forever there it was! Earl of Sandwich!!! I <3 this place. I eat here every time I go to Vegas. (It's a 24 hour restaurant in Planet Hollywood which is super convenient for late night after gambling eating). My favorite sandwich is the All American which is Turkey, Lettuce, Tomato, Ranch and a Cranberry spread. Of course the week before our trip I found out they changed the menu and removed my beloved All American. Say it aint so!

I'd made up my mind though and I was going to ask if they would still make me one. I knew they still had all the ingredients because the Holiday sandwich uses the same cranberry dressing. I asked with fingers crossed and they made it for me! My mom also ordered one and Ella had the kids pepperoni pizza sub. We each had a bag of chips and split a couple sodas.

This was the moment I had waited for and I took my first bite... It was just ok.... wah wah When they did the menu update they also changed the bread a bit and it wasn't as moist. It reminded me of Subway, which is totally ok if that's what you want but I was slightly disappointed.

After lunch we wondered over to Once Upon A Toy where I tried without success into getting a Mr. Potato Head fill your own box because the pieces were so cool but she wasn't having it. She did play at the table for a bit so my mom could find some gifts.

She told Ella she would buy her a special present today if she'd like. We looked around and the only thing she really showed interest in was a Princess Jasmine outfit. It was almost $70! I know I know it's Disney World but I frequent the Disney Store website and I knew I could get one for half that price so I gently let her down. (of course when I got home the costume has been sold out)

She walked around with my mom looking at stuffed animal and crowns and finally the Goofy Pillow Pet was the winner! She sleeps with it every night now along with Pluto

 

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If you are what you eat I only want to eat the good stuff- Ratatouille

Next we went to the Christmas store. I wanted to get a commemorative ornament so Ella helped me pick one for our tree, it's really pretty silver plated and says 2014. I think we are going to get one every time we go.

Mom was still browsing and Ella was getting antsy so we popped over to Goofy's candy for a small bag of goofy gummy's and sat down to eat a few while we waited.

We walked by Rainforest Café to look at the crocodile (Ella loves the crocodile from Peter Pan) while my mom picked up a few things from the gift shop. We decided at this point to start looking for a place to take cover a it was going to start raining any minute. We started walking towards World of Disney when I spotted the lefty cart!

My daughter and my boyfriend are both lefties so I picked up some notepads and pens for Ella for school and a coffee mug for my boyfriend. It started to drizzle at this point so we rushed into the best place we could find and it just happened to have snacks!

Ghiradelli! Right as we walked through the doors the sky opened up and it just dumped rain. We hurried inside to order and hopefully find a table as it was still fairly empty in the restaurant.

We ordered the Crissy Fields Cookie Bits Sundae (Vanilla ice cream nestled between cookies n cream ice cream and smothered with our freshly homemade hot fudge topped with whipped cream, colossal ghiradelli chocolate chip cookie crumbles and two ghiradelli sweet dark chocolate cookie bits minis) This. Was. Amazing. I'm not much of a sweets person but I love me some chocolate chip cookies. This is a stock photo:

We managed to get a table and just finished up our ice cream when the storm let up quite a bit.

 

[Nals]

Speed, I am speed- Lightning McQueen

It was only 3:30 pm and with no plans for the rest of the day we decided to keep going. The rain was light and steady but we threw on our ponchos and moved on.

World of Disney was close so we headed into the biggest Disney store in the world! Holy moly you need a map for this place! The interactive things and movies kept Ella occupied and my mom and I took turns shopping. She bought some jewelry and she got me the cutest wallet. I use it every day!

Ella got a couple of shirts and busied herself playing around with the magic mirror.

She also pressed a penny and got Cinderella! She was pretty excited about that. We snapped a picture of Captain Hook's crocodile and slowly found our way out of the store.

Ella was a little fed up with shopping at this point (I can't believe she's my child_ but I told her we would go to one more store and promised her a stop to see the Legos. She seemed satisfied and we rounded the corner and went into Basin.

I'd read a few things about this bath and body store and I really wanted some of their bath bombs. I filled a tube for $10 with some fantastically smelling goodies that I still have yet to use. I'm excited to try them whenever I get a chance to relax. This is a cool store I'd love to stock up again next time we're here.

Ella skipped excitedly to the Lego store and we were lucky we even got her past the front door after she saw the car building station. We dug and searched for the perfect wheels, windshield and driver for a good 20 minutes before she claimed it was good enough to go. She got in a good 4 races before the car came art at the finish line. She didn't win but she had fun!

We finally headed inside to check things out. Ella decided to use the last of her money on a Little Mermaid Lego set which I may or may not have kicked in a few dollars towards.

It was around 6pm by now and we were all getting a little hungry. My mom and I had talked about trying the build your own pasta station back at the hotel so we started towards the bus stop. We made a quick stop into Art of Disney where I picked up a princess frame to put Ella's BBB picture in and my mom got a few photo albums to put her pictures in wen we got home.

We were in the bus and back at the hotel by 7:30pm We had pretty long wait at the bus stop but we had nothing else to do so we were ok with it.

We dropped off our bags in our room and walked over to the food court for dinner. It was fairly busy at 8pm and we could hear the piano music from the Yeha Bob show which I had really wanted to do but it didn't pan out for us this trip.

Ella chose the kids chicken nuggets with French fries and a cookie for desert. My mom and I both chose the build your own pasta. I chose mushrooms, tomatoes, peas, alfredo sauce, penne and chicken. Mom had shrimp, mushrooms, spaghetti noodles and peas. We both agreed we should have shared. This portion is massive! Definitely enough for two, maybe three people. The food was good and we were stuffed.

We were back in our room by 9:30pm. Ella got a bath while we started to pack up a few things that we wouldn't need for the reminder of the trip. This was our halfway point and it made me sad thinking we only had a couple days left. We all went to bed fairly early which was nice since we had been going non-stop all week.

 

[Nals]

I was a girl in the village doing all right- Sofia

We slept in this morning due to the fact Mousekeeping accidently shut off my power strip and it died overnight! We woke up in a hurry, got dressed, ate some granola bars and were out the door in 30 min.

We were headed to Hollywood Studios today for their 25th anniversary! We weren't sure of any special events they were planning but we figured it would be worth checking out.

Thankfully I had a portable charger so I plugged my phone in and off we went. We only missed rope drop by about ten min so not too shabby at all. We entered the gates, got our special anniversary pins and headed with the masses to Toy Story Mania.

It wasn't as busy as I thought it would be yet so we only waited in line about 15 minutes.

I loved the line here! So many things to see that it made the wait easy. Ella sat in one car with me and my mom sat in the other. We agreed when we came back later we'd switch. We really enjoyed this ride, I wish it was longer!

We wondered over to Disney Jr and got in the standby line. We were about 20 minutes early for the next show but we were first in line. Ella settled in and watched a couple cartoons while we waited, the cm's even let her past the rope so she could see the tv better. They let the fast pass + people through and us shortly after. We had a great seat right in the middle about 6 rows of people back from the front. You do sit on the ground though fair warning.

The show is super cute! If you have little ones or have seen any of the Disney Jr shows I highly recommend this. It's really interactive and we loved singing along with the songs! Plus you can see all your favorite characters you can't see in any of the other parks.

My mom really wanted to ride Rockin Roller coaster so she headed off on her own the first time the whole trip to try and do single rider for that. Ella and I chatted and she was interested in checking out the Little Mermaid show but the standby line was pretty long. We wouldn't have been able to see the next show and we'd be cutting it close for the one after that so we passed due to our lunch reservation at 11:45am at Hollywood and Vine.

Ella was bound and determined to go on Tower of Terror despite me trying to talk her out of it all morning. We got in line and waited about 5 minutes but realized we may miss our reservation waiting for this also so we left with promises that we'd be back.

We started mosying back down the street with a quick stop in the Villain's shop which is a pretty awesome place.

I saw starring rolls and thought a cupcake at 11 before lunch was a fantastic idea! Ella and I split a peanut butter and dark chocolate. Amazing! I thought I wanted one of the special 25th anniversary ones but the flavor didn't appeal to us so we went with this.

With no sign of my mother still we walked over to Hollywood and Vine and checked in about 10 min early. They weren't ready to seat us yet so we sat down and munched on our pre lunch I was starting to get worried about where she was. She's not the greatest at directions and I had no clue how long the standby line had been.

 

[Nals]

The doc is in and she'll fix you up- Doc Mcstuffins

Right at 12 my mom showed up! We were also called into the restaurant at that moment. We were seated just as the characters were wrapping up going around the room. My mom got out her camera to get ready for the photo ops that would be here soon but it wouldn't turn on! Now my mom is slightly technologicaly challenged. I love her but we just bought her her first digital camera and smart pone for the trip. (I had told her to read the manual on both, this would have come in handy later.) We did everything we could but nothing was happening. I taught her how to take pictures with her phone and Ella graciously let her use her hello kitty camera that she hadn't taken one picture with yet.

There weren't too many memorable dishes here, the food was ok. Pretty standard buffet food except for the banana cream puffs OMG swoon!! My favorite thing here hands down. Ella participated in all the dances and character parade (she was becoming a pro at these)

We met Jake, Handy Manny, Sofia and Doc. Ella hadn't seen Handy Manny but she loved the other three. We had to track Doc down as we missed her the first time taking a trip to the ladies room. A CM was super nice and had us wait by the door for her to come by. She even signed an extra page in her autograph book for Ella's stepsister who LOVES Doc but unfortunately couldn't be with us on the trip.

This was a fun experience. I don't know if we'd repeat it though as our next planned Disney World trip Ella will be 10 and may be too old for Disney Jr. Sad to think about!

No fastpasses or plans were to be had at this point at least for a few hours so my mom requested to see Indiana Jones. I remember seeing it when I was little and it was pretty close to where we had just eaten so we went over to the standby line. It wasn't a long wait, maybe 10 minutes and we got good seats right in the middle.

Ella was so sad that you had to be an adult to volunteer for the show! Didn't stop her from putting her hand up though

If you've never seen the show you should go at least once. It was entertaining and the people they picked from the audience were funny and got into it more then I thought they would!

Ella I didn't think was too enthralled with this, I think she was having a problem following the story line and I had to keep reminding her that no one was getting hurt. She just recently asked to do this next time so maybe she enjoyed it more than I thought.

We checked our times guide after the show and with the rest of the plans for the day pretty much set I wanted to get over to see Beauty and the Beast. The crowds were getting a little worse at this point but still not as bad as I had anticipated with the anniversary. It took us a bit to get up the road and of course we had to stop for pictures! This CM was awesome! She was just standing there and people kept walking around her. She did some magic shots and moved us around the street to different areas.