We woke up early the next morning, as I wanted Bill to see the opening show at the Magic Kingdom. We got a reply from Tom confirming that he and Jen would meet us there. We got ready for the day – I took off my ring before showering and putting gel in my hair or lotion on my face, since I was completely paranoid about damaging it in any way, haha. Not to worry, I calmed down a bit over the course of the two week vacation, and now perform all of my daily activities with the diamond on.
Bill showed me the special secret door magnets he made before we left home, and we hung them on the door before leaving for the day.
We also left our first envelope for Mousekeeping – I had printed out special envelopes, one for each day.
We walked to the bus stop and saw this guy:
To be honest I don’t remember how long we waited for busses on each particular day, but we never waited a memorably long time to get anywhere in the morning. We arrived at the Magic Kingdom in plenty of time for the opening ceremony, but when we went through the turnstiles there wasn’t much of a crowd in front of the train station – people were heading right in? There was a Photopass photographer out there, so I asked about the opening ceremony, and he said he was waiting for it as well. Tom and Jen came over to meet us and see the ring, and told us that there had been the morning opening in Fantasyland for the little kids, and that’s why there were people already in the park? Who knows. In any case, the opening show started, but it wasn’t … what I’ve seen in the past. There was some audio, and the train went by, but there was no confetti, no characters, no fanfare… just regular old guests on the train. Very strange, I felt sort of bad for making Bill get there that early for THAT.
As soon as we went into the park, Tom made us go to Guest Services at City Hall and get “Just Engaged” buttons. Well, the poor CM looked and looked, but couldn’t find “Just Engaged” buttons, nor even generic “Congratulations” ones. He made up for it by giving us every other button imaginable, but I think Disney is missing a pixie dust opportunity here.
Anyway, we headed in, and as I had promised Bill, we went right to the Main Street Bakery for breakfast. There was a pretty long line here, but the time passed quickly while we Tom and Jen and Bill and I were comparing vacation-so-far stories, especially about the engagement. I had a VERY good chocolate croissant and the other three each had breakfast sandwiches. Bill and I used a counter service (for his sandwich, my croissant, and his drink) and one snack (for my drink) credit.
Side note: Seriously, do people really eat the breakfast sandwich AND the croissant for breakfast? Maybe it’s just because I rarely eat breakfast, but I don’t get it.
Anyway, breakfast was tasty – we enjoyed it and then moved on towards Fantasyland. We took pictures by the wishing well:
We then hit a few of the Fantasyland attractions – Peter Pan, Philharmagic, Snow White’s Scary Adventures, and it’s a small world. We then moved on to Tomorrowland and went on Space Mountain, before meeting up with Tom’s cousin Sean and his wife and children. They live in Florida and had come to meet up with us for the day.
Sean and his family headed off to do some attraction (Peter Pan, I think) and we agreed to meet over in Liberty Square. Before going there, we let Bill experience the TTA. After browsing the Christmas shop for a few minutes, we met back up with the family. Bill and I had an ADR for Crystal Palace that afternoon, but Sean’s wife wanted to get lunch for their son right then, so we agreed to split up and meet back up later on.
Bill and I went off on our own and did some browsing on Main Street. We spent some time in Arriba Bros. and decided that we would return later in the week to have our glass slipper engraved.
We headed over to the Crystal Palace about 20 minutes before our ADR time, and … it. Was. A. Complete. Zoo. Seriously, I’ve been to the Crystal Palace many times and have never seen it this bad. There were masses of people everywhere, all over the porch, and someone told me that they were the end of the line simply to check in for an existing ADR. Fine, I thought, and got in “line”, except that in 10 minutes the line hadn’t moved at all. I knew something wasn’t right and after a bit of investigation realized that the “line” wasn’t a line at all, that people were basically just walking up to the CM to check in. After I did that we waited on the porch for maybe 15 minutes, and then were finally seated.
I just love the Crystal Palace; the atmosphere is just so bright and cheerful and pretty to me. The food is always pretty good too. I even tried some Ratatouille this time in honor of the movie.
We had a great server who made sure our sodas were never empty, and that our table was sprinkled with Mickey confetti and the staff brought us a Magical Moments certificate for our engagement. The characters were great (in spite of the parents who insist on chasing them around the restaurant rather than teaching their children about waiting their turn, but I digress).
Tigger helped me to show off my ring, and Pooh took a chance and proposed, but I decided to stay with my original fiancé.
On our way out, one of the servers offered to take our picture so we’d have one together.
We paid OOP for this meal; the total came to $44.71 before gratuity.
And the door magnets are very cool! I would love to make something like that, did you get instructions for them from the Dis?
Just had to point that out....now back to Amy's regular scheduled programming of "The Engagement Story" 
