HELP! Any ideas for a Mommy & Daughter trip

[Callalily6]

Garden View Lounge Afternoon Tea
Grand Floridian Spa & Resort

"Mrs. Potts Tea - For the younger tea lover in your party, we offer a variety of tea sandwiches, tuna salad, ham and cheese, peanut butter and jelly on white bread. We serve our magical dark tea (chocolate milk), followed by a choice of 2 pastries $8.50 per guest" <--- This sounds cute and affordable!

I'm still digging around message boards looking for more ideas. So far we have the PSB DInner at Epcot, (Hopefully) dinner in the castle, pink pixie dust hair, matching shirts, a manicure with Mickey mouse on it, the tea party, and we are going to ride Pirates and Small World and giggle a lot! Any other cool stuff to do with a 5 year old (while she still thinks her Mom is cool! If she only knew! )

 

[gopherit]

I've done a special "Mom and me" day with my dd on the past 2 trips, much to her delight! (she has 2 older brothers, so they are frankly relieved to not have to do the girly stuff with her, LOL! So DH takes them to Disney Quest for the day! It's a win-win!)

Our dds must be close in age -- mine is now 5. One thing that might be fun -- give her the keys to the kigdom, so to speak! Let HER decide! On our most recent trip (last summer - she was 4), I let DD be the leader (that's a first for a real obsessive planner mom!) I gave her options : like breakfast with princesses or lunch with pooh - she actually chose Pooh! (She has done the CRT and Storybook, so maybe she thought this would be different -- but she loved it so much at CP, she told me that given the choice again, Pooh's in, princesses out!) Your dd may be a total princess nut -- or maybe her passion would be dinner with mickey, or maybe she would think Cape May and CHip and Dale were way cool -- the point here is to find out what HER love is. I found out that in some things, I had her pegged -- but in many ways, MAN -- was I in for a lesson on my daughter! Some things I planned (as in, I knew if she wanted to see Ariel, we should do that early). Some things, however, were TOTALLY at her discretion. WHo knew I'd be riding Splash Mountain 4 or 5 times in ONE day, LOL! (AGAIN, Mom! Again!) Same goes for the "painted ponies" (carousel). One thing we DIDN'T do (but I meant to, dash it all) is get those pics made over in Tomorrowland and have them turned into stickers? I think that would be cool -- having stickers with your 2 faces on them! Like the old photo booth shots. I was smart enough, at least, THIS time, to bring a change of clothes with us -- because, as I correctly guessed, anywhere she saw water, she wanted IN IT, and usually, we are in a rush to go from point A to Point B... but this time, it was all about HER, so I just let her get wet and enjoy herself, knowing I had a dry set of clothes waiting for her afterwards! She thought that was AWESOME!

You mentioned you didn't want to fall into the rut of doing "all adult things" -- you would be so very surprised how many opinions a 5 yr old has, and how many plans they can make! She loved being the "Map Keeper" (even if she couldn't read yet, she sure seemed to know those symbols!) and being decision maker for a day! She made some interesting choices -- sometimes, I had to really suppress the urge to "take over", LOL! Like when we came back to the villa that night and were all set to go back into the Magic Kingdom and watch the fireworks... except, she wanted to go noodle around the resort, check out community Hall (we were staying at SSR), and maybe swim a bit, get a DVD from the shop, and "snuggle on the couch with popcorn". I spent the evening following her lead... and people, she taught me that the real magic was in the time we spent together, not what was going on around us at the time. That's a lesson I've tried to keep here at home now, too -- every now and then, we just need some quality Mom and Me time (where I don't try to impose my schedule, my thoughts, my self -- over her.)

What a wonderful souvenir!

Good luck planning you trip -- I'm sure it will be a fantastic memory-maker for you both!

 

[Callalily6]

I also found out that our resort sells special Mickey Mouse Hot Cocoa in the gift shoppe. I think it would be nice to end the day - we can sit on the balcony and sip hot cocoa and look out at the water! This is going to be so fun!

 

[Callalily6]

MOMMY & DAUGHTER TRIP IN ONLY 3 DAYS!

 

[Callalily6]

We had TOO MUCH FUN!

A few more silly suggestions - since people seemed interested.

We rode Pirates about 5 times in a row (there was no line) before we bought Pirate hats in the store.

The 6th time through, we had pirtate hats on and the CM thought she was so cute (and he was just laughing at me) that he GAVE US OUR OWN BOAT! Wahooo! She was Capt'n Belle and I was 1st mate Mommy and we sailed away.

That was super fun! Improptu stuff rocks! Then I asked a CM to take our photo on the way out with our pirate hats!

We blew up the photo to a 5x7 and put it in a pretty frame to remind us of our special Mommy & daughter trip!

Have fun!

 

[tinkerbella1]

At the GF I think you can get your DD's portrait drawn. (Not the drawings in the parks of big cartoon heads, w/ matching bodies, but a really good sketched and colored portrait.)

We were passing by there and we saw a little girl in a pretty princess hat, w/ matching sparkle dress getting drawn. I was pretty interested in doing it for my DD but we didn't have a dress and we didn't get around to it.

I regret it now though! Oh well, there's always next time!