Is this deju vu or what??? I just took my 9 y/o niece in November. We stayed for 9 days and at the BCV!!! Having two grown boys, we went Princess crazy. We'd only do the parks for the morning, and then she'd want to go in the pool. She actually liked the vacation club pool better than SAB!!! She said it was too crowded.
Well, we went to SS Spa and I got a WONDERFUL pedicure, and she got "My First Manicure" and "My First Pedicure". Her and I went to the "My Disney Girl Princess Tea.". She'd eaten at the castle a year ago, so we did the Cinderella dinner at 1900 Park Fair. We also did the Alice In Wonderland breakfast there. We did the Princess Lunch at Epcot. We did some fun meals too, she liked Whispering Canyon at WL, and Sci Fi at MGM. The character breakfast at Cape May Cafe was nice and it was nice to just be able to walk down there in the AM. Also, we did Liberty Tree Tavern, after trying most of the character meals now, I still think you can't beat Chef Mickey for the Mickey characters. She did the Albatross Treasure Cruise which leaves from the Yacht Club dock. That was nice and then DH and myself had a nice breakfast at Yacht Club Galley while she did that.
We only did whatever she wanted to do. It worked out great!!! LOL I didn't "push" going on any rides that she didn't want to and she actually enjoyed doing her favorite rides over and over again, (most of the time there were no lines), then going on a whole bunch of rides she didn't care about. I had all my ADR's made, I planned what parks what day, and because we had 9 days, we didn't do EMH, we hit the parks upon opening, on the days in between EMH days, it worked out really well, and we got that extra hour sleep. One day we did Typhoon Lagoon. We did do the night time EMH at AK and that really worked out well, too. If you get there about 3:00 - 3:30, you can do that Safari and Kali River before 5 when those areas close and they have the rest of the night to do the other things. It wasn't crowded at all.
She did get cranky by lunch, but once she was back at the villa, had a little drink and snack and pool time, she was a new little girl. She really LOVED the pool and some days we'd spend 2-3 hours just hanging out there.
Of course we did the night time things too. I think what also helped is that we kind of had a night time "routine". We'd get back anywhere between 7-8 depending on what we did that night. She'd go in the jacuzzi, write in her journal, and then we'd sit out on the deck and watch the Epcot fireworks with some popcorn.
We were fortunate enough to be there the week-end of the Festival of the Masters Art Show and she liked doing those activities and it was also the last week-end of the Food and Wine Festival and she really liked going around Epcot and eating at all the different places.
Now the 4 year age difference is going to change some of the things you can do, but like I said, I still had a "basic plan", with ressies made, park days planned, night time stuff planned (for least busy days at that park), but for the most part, within that planning we just let her do and ride what she wanted. We had a WONDERFUL time.