[LSUtigerfan]

Okay, while I'm on a roll I'll try to add day 2. It will probably come in 2 parts because this was an exceptionally magical day! But hopefully I can finish it tonight. So without further adieu, here is
Day 2: Princess Face's Royal Birthday Celebration at CRT and Epcot!

6:57am...ring...ring...I turn over and hit the speaker phone button (I familiarized myself with it's location last night!) It's Mickey...he says, "Up and at 'em!" they can't wait to see us! Princess Face opens her eyes & says, "Was that Mickey? What did he say?" All the while I'm staring at pink & purple streamers hanging above my bed, wondering how long could it possibly take for the birthday girl to notice. She says, "Hey! Who did this to our room?" We told her Mickey must have come in last night while we were asleep...only little white lies. She was so excited! We knocked on our connecting door & woke the grandparents. They loved the new decor. The balloons kept Grumpette very busy while we dressed Princess Face in her Minnie "get-up." She looked adorable, but I just knew the outfit (especially the shoes) wouldn't last the entire day, so I packed a change of clothes in the backpack. Boy, was I wrong about that! We all finished dressing and we opened our door to a beautiful partly cloudy, and rather balmy day. I made sure the backpack contained our $ 0.87 Wal-Mart rain ponchos... To the bus stop and beyond!

Our PSR at CRT was at 9:45 am...I was rather bummed out about the late seating, but hey, who's complaining? This late seating would prove to be the best time! So, we walk to our bus stop and I find myself humming "Zip a Dee Do Dah" as I envision walking down Main Street, busy with people, & a CM off in the distance in front of Casey's Corner selling balloons (are y'all there yet? Can you see it too?) Quit daydreaming!!! Here comes our bus! We hop on the bus to MK, and it was a nice ride. I'm looking out of the window and I tell my family, "It's amazing how much WDW has grown since 1996, there's so much to see. I'm actually noticing things I didn't see on our ride (to MK) yesterday." Then I have this feeling of warmth come over me and my stomach drops (no, we didn't hit a bump) [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img] Do my ears deceive me? Did our bus driver say we were at Animal Kingdom? No way! We stop & 2 couples get off of the bus and 3 other parties (including us) sit there in amazement! Animal Kingdom? We thought the sign said Magic Kingdom..."No Ma'am, this bus is for Animal Kingdom." Everyone looked confused. Dh went to talk to the driver, along with another man, and our driver said he'd take us to MK. Whew, I did not want to miss our PSR for CRT! I still think we were right! Anyone else have a similar experience?

Thank goodness we left our resort a little early, we made it to CRT with 5 minutes to spare. When we were checking in there was a family in front of us who had extra family members with them. Being the nosy (but helpful) person that I am, I heard the Dad of the family tell the Mom that he & the grandpa & someone else would stay behind while they ate in the castle. Well we had ressies for 10, and our friends declined on the b'fast (they ate there in Dec.) so we had a table for 4 that wasn't being used. (When I made the ressie the CM said we would have 2 tables, one for 6 & one for 4 people.) Well, the Mother looked so relieved and thanked me graciously, but old Cruella behind the podium announced that we could not give them the table for 4..."It doesn't work like that!" I felt so sorry for that family...not sure what they eventually did. We went inside and waited at least 30 minutes to be seated. Princess Face visited with the Fairy Godmother while Grumpette showed her true colors. All she wanted to do was go up & down the stairs, so I let her...until people started coming down from the restaurant. She almost wore herself out, I think she really worked up an appetite, because by the time we were seated she was fit to be tied! She fussed & cried until the food arrived. I'm jumping ahead of myself...the table was beautiful. We were seated right in the middle of the restaurant, but still had a view out of the windows. Our table was decorated with that metallic Mickey shaped confetti again! Our server was Gustavo, he was phenomenal, when it came time to sing Happy Birthday, he had the whole restaurant join in! No other server did this. Many, many thanks to him. He called Princess Face his "Boss" throughout the entire meal because she was dressed like Minnie Mouse. He brought us our delicious breakfast. We had eggs, bacon, sausage links, potato casserole (yummy!), stuffed french toast with blueberries, fresh muffins & croissants, yogurt with granola, french toast sticks for our dd's and last but certainly not least, the freshest most delicious fruit (even fresh, sweet blueberries). Grumpette & I just love fresh fruit. The honeydew melon was so tasty, it kept her busy for awhile, then she hit the bacon. I loved (and ate) everything but the yogurt, it was too soupy for my taste. My dh was in heaven, pretty women & b'fast food at the same time...what more could he ask for? I'm talking about me, our dd's & his mother, of course [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img] !!! Our Princesses of the day were Cinderella, Belle, Aurora, Mary Poppins and Snow White. My review of the princesses:
Cinderella: She was wonderful, a very close second to Mary Poppins. She was beautiful and very loving toward my dd's. She told Princess Face that her castle was the only place she could stand on the furniture & prompted her to stand in her chair for the ultimate photo op!
Belle: Was very sweet, I saw her sitting on the floor behind me playing with the b-day boy next to us, she did this for about 5 minutes. Gotta love that last seating...lots of extra time & attention! [img]graemlins/pout.gif[/img] Why don't they let her wear her beautiful yellow ball gown?
Aurora/Sleeping Beauty: My least favorite, although she was good and left a great impression on the b-day girl, I thought she was a little reserved. Her wig didn't look right either.
Mary Poppins: She was the best. You can tell that she has done her homework on this character. She was very witty and answered all of Princess Faces questions beautifully. Like when she asked her, "Why don't my toys go in the toy box when I snap my fingers like you do?" She told her she, "Mustn't be doing it properly" all with her British accent. By the time we left Princess Face was singing Just a Spoon Full of Sugar and was telling me, "I sure hope the wind changes soon, so she can come to my house!" Mary Poppins was "most delightful" in our book.
Snow White: She was very bubbly and very true to the character. She paid lots of special attention to Grumpette, since she is nicknamed after one of the dwarfs. She also got to see one of Grumpette's nasty little faces she makes at all strangers [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img] ! Poor Snow White.
We never felt rushed, which is probably the most common complaint I've heard about CRT. In retrospect, this was by far our favorite character meal. There wasn't a negative to be found and was worth every penny--except Cruella who checked us in. CRT lived up to every expectation that I had, & scored a perfect 10 by everyone in our party of 6.

We finally exited the castle and was on our way to Fantasyland when we noticed Cinderella was out on the balcony waving to the crowd. We stopped to wave at her & she waved, blew kisses to our dd's, and even remembered Princess Face's name & wished her a Happy Birthday from the balcony! [img]graemlins/love.gif[/img] This was so special for our dd on her 5th birthday! She proceeded to tell Cinderella how she rode on her horse yesterday, and Cinderella said, "Oh! Did you find him? The one with the golden bow on it's tail?" Wow! It's true, that is her horse...uh oh, the secret's out! Did any of y'all know about it, or am I the last one on the planet to hear about this?

We decided to go to Epcot, because Princess Face wanted to see China.

Next: Day 2 continued...Our trip around the world (showcase, that is) and our encounter with Beverly...she's not very nice!