"Ohana" Means Family.

ALOHA!

 We woke up bright and early today to go have lunch with the boss at Ohana in Disney's Polynesian Resort. 

The Polynesian is completely island themed complete with always-lit tiki torches, waterfalls, and a canopy of tropical plants.

Everything about breakfast was too perfect. The view over the water was absolutely amazing (and if you were at the right table, you could see Cinderella's Castle). 

Ohana is family-style dining, so they start you off with cinnamon-raisin and pineapple-coconut bread, and bring around a passion fruit juice.  Then, you're served a giant skillet with eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, and biscuits that you pass around the table, and everyone serves themselves.  Also, a cast member always walking around with a basket full of fresh Mickey waffles.

But, of course, the whole reason to go to Ohana are the characters! Island Mickey and Pluto, and Lilo and Stitch come around to all the tables for meet and greets, and then they do a parade once every hour.

Ohana Parade

Sasha, Brandy, Lilo, Me, and Aliison

Allison and Mickey

Pluto! He was a big hugger.

Stitch! The cutest alien ever.

After breakfast, we went for a walk downstairs and around the outside courtyard of the resort. It was absolutely beautiful! We felt like such tourists awing over everything and asking everyone to take our pictures.

View of the Contemporary across the lagoon.

The Grand Floridan, my favorite resort.

View of the Polynesian from the beach.

They even give you a lei before breakfast.

From the dock where you can catch a boat to Magic Kingdom or to the Contemporary.

My new Ohana.
Inside the resort.

 

A Character-Filled Day

It's nice to spend days off just being a regular guest in the parks and doing guest-type things, such as: riding attractions, eating in the park restaurants, asking questions that we should already know the answer to, and just generally being in the way of everybody.

Today, we started out at Hollywood Studios, probably just so my roommates could get me to shut up about meeting my favorite Mouse, Sorcerer Mickey.

Me and the boss man.

I'm not going to lie, I wanted to cry a little when I met him, but then I remembered that I could potentially know that person, so I refrained. 

After we had such a good time with Mickey, we decided to meet the rest of the characters at Animation.

Wreck it Ralph

Minnie Mouse

The Incredibles

After we left Animation, Dior had to leave for work and Allison met up with us at Pixar.  Here we met Buzz and Woody who were, hands down, the most fun characters we met all day... and we met a lot of characters.

I walked up and Woody kissed my hand, and we danced and he pretended to propose, and we had a little wedding ceremony that Buzz performed. The character attendant kept telling them to hurry up because they had other guests and they just kept shaking their heads.  We probably spent, no joke, ten minutes with Buzz and Woody.  If you're ever in Hollywood Studios, I recommend going to meet them, definitely worth it.

After some lunch at the Backlot Express, Allison and I left Studios for an afternoon at the Magic Kingdom, so we could go see Adventureland and the new Fantasyland.

But first, Mickey was kind enough, to magic himself over, so Allison could meet him, too.

The new portion of Fantasyland is nothing short of amazing.  We rode the new Little Mermaid attraction, which is easily one of my favorite rides now. 

The Little Mermaid Attraction

Be Our Guest restaurant 

Prince Eric's Castle

Gaston's Tavern

Sunset behind The Grand Floridian
and the Seven Seas Lagoon