Sadly bringing a 2 year old and only 2 adults meant that someone had to stick behind while my husband went on that awesome tour. So...that was me. As he was learning all about trains we were waking up super slowly and packing our bags. Not only was it our last full WDW day, it was time to check out of Art of Animation.
We were packed by 9am and thanks to some leftovers had a light breakfast in the room while we waited for bell services to transfer our bags for us.
Once they arrived we headed down to the desk to see if they needed anything else from us. They didn't. So we went over to the bus stop and headed over to MK to meet up with my husband.
Once at MK I sent a text to my husband to let him know and that we'd meet in Starbucks as planned.
The tree was up!!
We walked down Main St rather slowly. Taking it all in and enjoying being there. I spotted the cart where they do the silhouettes and since there was no one there I stopped to see how long. Growing up we always had one done when we went to the CNE (Canadian National Exhibition, or EX if you're a local) in Toronto when we went each year. One of our walls was covered in the little portraits so I was determined to get one of my daughter. Not only for me, but for my mother as a special Christmas present.
I confirmed that it wouldn't take very long at all. I didn't get any pictures of the process because I had to entertain my daughter so she'd stay still. I ended up holding her chin up most of the time. But the end result was worth it.
I'm amazed that they just snip this out of a piece of paper. The person doing them, who was in her early 20's said that they trained her onsite and that it was just transferring drawing skills to scissors. I think she was over simplifying it because it's a true work of art.
It's also a truly affordable gift idea. Two of them framed were $22.
The whole process including mounting them and framing took about 15 minutes so by this time my husband was calling to find out where we were.
He was getting nervous because he was hungry and we had some lunch plans...
(this is the screenshot I took on the bus just in case the Fastpass+ didn't show up on our bands)
And it was getting close to our Fastpass window.
So off we went to New Fantasyland and the Beast's castle.
We checked in at the kiosk before the bridge and the CMs confirmed our lunch order. Which was nice because we wanted to make a change. Easy enough right? Then we skipped the line, and yes noticed quite a few hateful stares as we did and went right inside. The CM inside confirmed our order with the changes and gave us a printed receipt then directed us to stand in line. Now why the first CM couldn't have done this I don't know.
But we got in line. And waited. And waited.
Yes, they really do whisper!
The line was moving crazy slow. But eventually the line moved and we almost got to the end...
Or so we thought. By this time about 20 min had passed from the time we checked in outside and we still hadn't paid for our meal. In defense of the restaurant though it was packed. Every ordering kiosk had someone at it at all times and the CMs were doing a great job of making sure things were moving along, people were just taking a while to get things ordered. Finally we got to a register though and we had to confirm our meal again...which was good because it wasn't in the system correctly.
I love that this was on the screen next to the register.
I think we were handed our drink cups but I'm not sure. Either way we were told that our bands would help them locate us and sent off to find a table.
We wandered around a little bit trying to find a table. Vivien was a little sleepy by this point.
This is the drink station in the Ballroom. You can't really tell but at dinner service none of this is visible. They have little pocket doors on each side that pull out and conceal the area nicely. It's a nice touch. When we were having dinner a few days before both of us were trying to figure out what the changes would be for lunch and that's one thing we were wondering about, the drink station.
We ended up with a table in the West Wing, which was fun. Although I had to say I heard bunches of thunder and never once saw the portrait turn. So I guess I'll have to go back.
We settled in at a table and I went off for drinks.
I was really impressed with the theming on even the soda fountain. Nice touch!
We were seated against the wall. You can see here that there are a lot of people walking around to take pictures.
It wasn't too long before our food came, and I used the time to try to take a good picture of that rose.
I think I did better this time.
So what did we eat?
I had the Croque Monsieur:
Which was good. We ordered a side of green beans. Vivien and I split those, I added about half my fries and a half of my sandwich too.
Ben got the braised pork.
It was very good. But very different from the one served at dinner service.
When we ordered our dessert we knew Vivien would take a whole cream puff to herself so we just got three:
My favorite was the raspberry lemon one in the middle. Yum!
Vivien agreed!
Full of good food...we did a lap of the restaurant for one last look and we headed off for some more adventures.
And now to answer a question I see quite often...is dinner worth it at Be Our Guest when lunch offers similar quality of food?
I have to say......
Yes. Yes, dinner is totally worth the expense, the time involved and the effort needed right now to get a reservation. Not only was the food a higher quality in my experience, over all the restaurant seemed a little more refined for dinner. I loved that during dinner the CMs referred to the castle as "My Master's home." and the Beast was only "My Master." I loved that in addition to being encouraged to walk around and see the castle they offered up some fun details on the castle. The rose napkins, the food coming around in big old fashioned glass carts. Everything seemed just a little more magical at dinner there.
Having said that...if they keep up with the Fastpass+ system I'll certainly be back for lunch. I'd also really like to have this option at other restaurants in WDW. I think, even though we had to wait a bit that it helped get us through a little faster.
Once we had our fill of the sights we left the Beast's castle and headed over to see what the wait time was on the Little Mermaid or to see Ariel.
We decided that both we're a little too long for our tastes since we'd done both-although when we saw Ariel she was in human form. So we headed back over to Storybook circus and took another flight with Dumbo. Then headed into the sideshow.
We hadn't yet met any of these characters since we skipped the Cape May ADR we had on Saturday. We were surprised to see it's actually two lines, and both had a 20 min wait. We decided to pick one and headed to see Goofy and Donald.
We got about half a dozen great shots with Goofy.
But not that many with Donald. For this one I had to zoom and crop quite a bit. It was like the Photopass guy was standing off center and too far back.
But we met Donald and Vivien was happy.
We waved at Minnie and Daisy on the other side as we left and headed into the store where I picked up this little treat:
To forever remind me of my favorite WDW snack. The chocolate dipped rice krispy treat. And for the record it's the bigger ones that need to be refrigerated and not the small versions.
We decided that Vivien was getting too sleepy to do much else. Since Ben had been up since 5 am, and we didn't get to bed until after 1 he didn't argue too much when I said it was time to head over to All Star Movies and take a break.
I stalled a bit on the way out and we stopped for a few pictures.
One last shot of Main St.
And one or two with the tree:
And then we had to say good bye to the Magic Kingdom.
It's always a little sad when you leave Magic Kingdom and don't know when exactly you'll be back. I swear I could just visit this one park for a whole week and never feel bad about not seeing any of the other ones.
It's just Magical.
We were packed by 9am and thanks to some leftovers had a light breakfast in the room while we waited for bell services to transfer our bags for us.
Once they arrived we headed down to the desk to see if they needed anything else from us. They didn't. So we went over to the bus stop and headed over to MK to meet up with my husband.
Once at MK I sent a text to my husband to let him know and that we'd meet in Starbucks as planned.
The tree was up!!
We walked down Main St rather slowly. Taking it all in and enjoying being there. I spotted the cart where they do the silhouettes and since there was no one there I stopped to see how long. Growing up we always had one done when we went to the CNE (Canadian National Exhibition, or EX if you're a local) in Toronto when we went each year. One of our walls was covered in the little portraits so I was determined to get one of my daughter. Not only for me, but for my mother as a special Christmas present.
I confirmed that it wouldn't take very long at all. I didn't get any pictures of the process because I had to entertain my daughter so she'd stay still. I ended up holding her chin up most of the time. But the end result was worth it.
I'm amazed that they just snip this out of a piece of paper. The person doing them, who was in her early 20's said that they trained her onsite and that it was just transferring drawing skills to scissors. I think she was over simplifying it because it's a true work of art.
It's also a truly affordable gift idea. Two of them framed were $22.
The whole process including mounting them and framing took about 15 minutes so by this time my husband was calling to find out where we were.
He was getting nervous because he was hungry and we had some lunch plans...
(this is the screenshot I took on the bus just in case the Fastpass+ didn't show up on our bands)
And it was getting close to our Fastpass window.
So off we went to New Fantasyland and the Beast's castle.
We checked in at the kiosk before the bridge and the CMs confirmed our lunch order. Which was nice because we wanted to make a change. Easy enough right? Then we skipped the line, and yes noticed quite a few hateful stares as we did and went right inside. The CM inside confirmed our order with the changes and gave us a printed receipt then directed us to stand in line. Now why the first CM couldn't have done this I don't know.
But we got in line. And waited. And waited.
Yes, they really do whisper!
The line was moving crazy slow. But eventually the line moved and we almost got to the end...
Or so we thought. By this time about 20 min had passed from the time we checked in outside and we still hadn't paid for our meal. In defense of the restaurant though it was packed. Every ordering kiosk had someone at it at all times and the CMs were doing a great job of making sure things were moving along, people were just taking a while to get things ordered. Finally we got to a register though and we had to confirm our meal again...which was good because it wasn't in the system correctly.
I love that this was on the screen next to the register.
I think we were handed our drink cups but I'm not sure. Either way we were told that our bands would help them locate us and sent off to find a table.
We wandered around a little bit trying to find a table. Vivien was a little sleepy by this point.
This is the drink station in the Ballroom. You can't really tell but at dinner service none of this is visible. They have little pocket doors on each side that pull out and conceal the area nicely. It's a nice touch. When we were having dinner a few days before both of us were trying to figure out what the changes would be for lunch and that's one thing we were wondering about, the drink station.
We ended up with a table in the West Wing, which was fun. Although I had to say I heard bunches of thunder and never once saw the portrait turn. So I guess I'll have to go back.
We settled in at a table and I went off for drinks.
I was really impressed with the theming on even the soda fountain. Nice touch!
We were seated against the wall. You can see here that there are a lot of people walking around to take pictures.
It wasn't too long before our food came, and I used the time to try to take a good picture of that rose.
I think I did better this time.
So what did we eat?
I had the Croque Monsieur:
Which was good. We ordered a side of green beans. Vivien and I split those, I added about half my fries and a half of my sandwich too.
Ben got the braised pork.
It was very good. But very different from the one served at dinner service.
When we ordered our dessert we knew Vivien would take a whole cream puff to herself so we just got three:
My favorite was the raspberry lemon one in the middle. Yum!
Vivien agreed!
Full of good food...we did a lap of the restaurant for one last look and we headed off for some more adventures.
And now to answer a question I see quite often...is dinner worth it at Be Our Guest when lunch offers similar quality of food?
I have to say......
Yes. Yes, dinner is totally worth the expense, the time involved and the effort needed right now to get a reservation. Not only was the food a higher quality in my experience, over all the restaurant seemed a little more refined for dinner. I loved that during dinner the CMs referred to the castle as "My Master's home." and the Beast was only "My Master." I loved that in addition to being encouraged to walk around and see the castle they offered up some fun details on the castle. The rose napkins, the food coming around in big old fashioned glass carts. Everything seemed just a little more magical at dinner there.
Having said that...if they keep up with the Fastpass+ system I'll certainly be back for lunch. I'd also really like to have this option at other restaurants in WDW. I think, even though we had to wait a bit that it helped get us through a little faster.
Once we had our fill of the sights we left the Beast's castle and headed over to see what the wait time was on the Little Mermaid or to see Ariel.
We decided that both we're a little too long for our tastes since we'd done both-although when we saw Ariel she was in human form. So we headed back over to Storybook circus and took another flight with Dumbo. Then headed into the sideshow.
We hadn't yet met any of these characters since we skipped the Cape May ADR we had on Saturday. We were surprised to see it's actually two lines, and both had a 20 min wait. We decided to pick one and headed to see Goofy and Donald.
We got about half a dozen great shots with Goofy.
But not that many with Donald. For this one I had to zoom and crop quite a bit. It was like the Photopass guy was standing off center and too far back.
But we met Donald and Vivien was happy.
We waved at Minnie and Daisy on the other side as we left and headed into the store where I picked up this little treat:
To forever remind me of my favorite WDW snack. The chocolate dipped rice krispy treat. And for the record it's the bigger ones that need to be refrigerated and not the small versions.
We decided that Vivien was getting too sleepy to do much else. Since Ben had been up since 5 am, and we didn't get to bed until after 1 he didn't argue too much when I said it was time to head over to All Star Movies and take a break.
I stalled a bit on the way out and we stopped for a few pictures.
One last shot of Main St.
And one or two with the tree:
And then we had to say good bye to the Magic Kingdom.
It's always a little sad when you leave Magic Kingdom and don't know when exactly you'll be back. I swear I could just visit this one park for a whole week and never feel bad about not seeing any of the other ones.
It's just Magical.
