Week #8 - A Visit From Family!

Welcome back for my 2nd to last post from my program! This week was one I had been looking forward to for awhile. On Sunday I had church and work. Then on Monday, I met up at Olive Garden with my Aunt Nancy and her sister-in-law Jeannie, who she was in Florida visiting for the week. It was so nice being able to see some familiar faces and visit with them over lunch! Right after that, I headed over to costuming because I had switched my shift that afternoon to work at the Main Street Emporium, the biggest shop in Magic Kingdom! It was a little bit overwhelming because it's a huge store and stays so busy, but I really loved working there and all of the cast members were super helpful.

Tuesday I had work, but on that night some of my family arrived for a visit. My mom, grandma, and great-aunt Margaret had decided to make a girls trip to come see me and have fun at the parks. Unfortunately, their flight to Orlando was delayed but they finally made it late Tuesday night to the Art of Animation resort. With my cast member discount, I was able to get a good deal on the Cars suite, which was really cute; plus, it was nice to have a bigger space instead of just a small regular room. This was such a neat resort, and we ended up being really happy with our stay there!

 

The next morning, we woke up bright and early to head to Magic Kingdom for our first park day. Our first stop was to meet Mickey Mouse which is always a lot of fun! We then went on a few rides, like Pirates of the Caribbean and It's a Small World before it was time to head over to our lunch reservation at the Grand Floridian. We rode the ferry boat over to the resort since it's just across the water from Magic Kingdom, and had such a great meal there at the Grand Floridian Cafe! The food was delicious and it was a really nice atmosphere eating lunch at this pretty resort.

Grand Floridian Cafe

Chicken & Waffles - delicious!

After lunch, we hopped on the monorail and rode back to Magic Kingdom. It was actually a pretty low crowd day, so we got to meet Snow White with no line before going to explore some more sections of the park and go on more rides. We did the Carousel of Progress, PeopleMover, Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor, Philharmagic, Peter Pan's Flight, Jungle Cruise, and Dumbo.

Riding the PeopleMover

Riding Dumbo

Then before the fireworks we went to Cosmic Ray's to get a quick dinner and of course we had to stop by for an ice cream treat at the Plaza Ice Cream Parlor. Then we went to go get a seat to watch Happily Ever After. That show really never gets old! After it ended, Mom and I ran over to ride Big Thunder Mountain which had basically no wait and then we all looked around the Emporium gift shop a little bit before leaving to go back to the resort and get some rest before our next park day!

Brownie sundae @ Plaza Ice Cream Parlor

Thursday morning we all got on the Skyliner, Disney's gondola system, to ride over from our resort to Epcot. We were able to ride Spaceship Earth, Living with the Land, and Soarin', along with meeting Daisy, in Future World in the first half of the day, all before going to eat lunch at Garden Grill. This is a fun restaurant because it's family style dining and characters come around while you're eating; we got to meet Mickey, Pluto, Chip, and Dale!

Riding the Skyliner to Epcot

Spaceship Earth

All of the yummy food Garden Grill

Once we got finished with lunch, we started making our way towards World Showcase. The day before, Epcot had just started its Flower and Garden Festival, which they have every spring, so there were lots of topiaries and flowers all around the park. We stopped at the butterfly garden which was fun to see before continuing onto the countries. We looked around at the food and gift shops at most of the countries, including stopping to see the amazingly talented Voices of Liberty acapella group in the America pavilion.

Another part of the Flower and Garden Festival is the many food booths set up around World Showcase that have limited time special foods and drinks. That day, I tried both the Arendelle Aqua lemonade and the very popular Violet Lemonade. Both of them were great, but my favorite was definitely the Violet Lemonade!

We got finished looking around World Showcase late afternoon, so we left Epcot and went back to the resort to get ready for our dinner reservation at the Polynesian resort. It was a lot of fun eating some great food and getting to watch the luau at the Spirit of Aloha dinner show!

The next morning, I had to go to work at Animal Kingdom but my family was actually planning to go there too that day, so they got to enjoy the first half of the day doing some rides and shows, and then they came to visit me while I was working. After I got done with work, I left and changed and re-entered the park as a guest so I could join them to go ride Flight of Passage, one of my favorite rides! 

 

When we left Animal Kingdom, I drove us all over to Cast Connection, which is a big warehouse full of discounted Disney merchandise. It's only open for cast members, but you're allowed to bring a few guests in. We enjoyed getting to look around there and found some good deals! Since we were getting pretty hungry at that point, we decided to go to Disney Springs to grab some dinner at Blaze Pizza and looked around a bit at some of the shops. The last stop of the night was trying some yummy edible cookie dough from one of the food trucks!

The next morning, on Saturday, we went over to Old Key West resort to eat brunch at Olivia's Cafe. I had never been to this restaurant before, but it definitely now  has become one of my new favorites at Disney! It was a really nice atmosphere, plus the buttermilk chicken meal was amazing. We all left full and happy! It was a little bittersweet, though, because after that I had to bring them back to the hotel and say bye before heading to work that afternoon. I had such a fun-filled memorable week with them, and I'm so thankful they were able to come visit me!

Stay tuned for my next (and final) blog post coming soon telling all about my last week of the Disney College Program. Thanks for reading and talk to you again real soon!