Continuing on, I can't remember if the Dapper Dans came out before or after we got our appetizers, but they filed out of the opposite side of the room carrying candlesticks and started singing on their way to the stage. They were awwweeeesome!! I've seen them many times before, but as we were right up in front of them, it was a whole new experience. They are so animated and well practiced in the delivery of their music. They sang probably 5 different songs before leaving. I remember the Nightmare before Christmas song, Grim Grinning Ghosts, and whatever that song is from the Icabod Crane cartoon. All fantastic.
We didn't get many pictures from here on, sadly. I wish we had, but we were having so much fun we totally forgot to take more!
Again, I don't remember if Dr. Facilier came out before or after we got our main course, but it was somewhere around there. He was pretty awesome too, doing a short musical skit with his Southern Belles (or Bayou Belles? Forget which) who were suitably dead looking and creepy. My 5 year old was really scared of them. Then Dr. Facilier welcomed us and let us know that throughout the dinner we would be seeing a couple Spirit Guests, before he left to go meet people, starting at the far back of the room.
The Spirit guests turned out to be the Haunted Mansion Bride and Trapeze girl! I wish I had gotten pictures. First the Bride came out. She was fantastic. She slowly wandered throughout the area to a creepy soundtrack eyeballing the crowd for a husband. Every now and then she would stop and point at a random person. My 12 year old son was VERY creeped out by her, surprisingly! He REALLY didn't want to be pointed at by her, haha!
The trapeze girl I actually missed, because my 10 month old decided NOW was the time to have mom change his diaper. But I did see her exit, and she was just as awesome as the bride.
Oh, and here are pics of our dinners. I got the chicken and my husband got the braised ribs. Both were delicious, though I could have eaten more than what they gave me.
After that came dessert, along with a great skit by pirates! They came out of the back, loud and energetic. They needed all of our help to open their treasure chest so they could return it and break the curse over them, so we all stood and took an oath. The chest opened and it was filled with candy! Not that we needed more, haha. But my kids loved it of course.
Here were our desserts, one of each of the brulee and the cheesecake. I liked the cheesecake the best, and the presentation was awesome in the Facilier chocolate hat!
After dessert Facilier came back us to bid is goodbye, and to have us follow the lanterns to our fireworks spot, but not before his Bayou Belles gave us his Calling Card, make of chocolate!
Now the whole lining up for fireworks was a bit nuts. Everyone went towards the door at once. Apparently it's first come, first serve when it comes to Fireworks spots, because by the time we gathered up our kids, and all our baby apparatuses we were in the very last group, and got sat behind the dang statue. We did get sat up front in the 'back of the statue area', but then the bushes were blocking the entire view of the sky over the castle, so we scooted forward a bit so we could see better. My 5 year old couldn't see Jack's face around the statue, so that really stunk, given the price we paid. There was room to the sides of the statue for chairs, and I wish we could have scooted our chairs there instead. But all in all, the fireworks were nice, and the kids liked them.
(view after we scoot forward, I'm guessing the people behind us also had the bushes obscuring their view)
I feel like I might do this again sometime, if we can afford it, but a lot of our great experience I feel had to do with being sat so close to the stage. I don't know if we wouldn't enjoyed it near as much if we were sitting in the back of the room. But still it worked out really well and we had a great time!
We're moving back to Maine next year, so this is probably our last Disney Halloween for a few years. I'll certainly miss it!
