An Incredible Meal

Grandma bought Lydia this baby Pooh. She adores it.

On Friday we went back to Epcot to walk around and have lunch.

Some of you know that I hardly ever give Wesley juice; he usually just has milk or water. I did let him sample a fruit soda at the Coke place in Epcot. You can get free samples of sodas from around the world. I even let Lydia have a little. It was a cultural experience. Ha Ha. At least I remembered how much I dislike the soda from Italy so I avoided it. The rest were pretty good. We enjoyed seeing the fife and drum band. Our kids have no idea who these characters are but they liked posing with them.

The kids napped as we made our way over to Magic Kingdom. When Wesley woke up he immediately requested his favorite ride, Pirates of the Caribbean; his choice surprised me. After riding Pirates we went over to Tom Sawyer Island which is a fun place to explore if you have extra time. At first Lydia had trouble walking across the Barrel Bridge but then she got the hang of it.

At Magic Kingdom certain nights in September and October are Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party. The park closes early for the party. This is an additional fee but people rave about it. The kids get some candy from certain places throughout the park. All the rides remain open and we heard that all of them were "walk right on" and the characters wear their Halloween costumes. I would like to go one year. If we ever do go, I want our whole family to dress up. We saw a few families, including some grandparents, dressed as pirates. We sat beside of this Incredible family at dinner on Friday night. I think half the restaurant came by to take a picture of them. The manager and the chef also came out to meet them.

We met with Wayne and Dianna and the Powells for dinner at Ohana's in the Polynesian. This is one of our favorite places to eat at Disney. The food is served family style at Ohana’s and I love eating family style on vacation with friends and family . The meal started with pineapple coconut bread (so very yummy), salad, chicken wings, and pork dumplings. The side dishes were green beans and snow peas and fried noodles. The beef, pork, turkey and shrimp were served directly from skewers. They were well seasoned and cooked to perfection over an open flame. Dessert was bread pudding a la mode with Bananas Foster Sauce.

Did I mention that we got the dinning plan for free? It took about $500 off the cost of our trip. September is typically a very slow month at Disney World so free dinning is one way they entice people to come after school starts. The free dinning includes one snack a day (up to $3.99), once counter service (quick service) meal that includes drink, entrée, and dessert, and one table service meal that includes a drink (non-alcoholic of course), entrée, and dessert. We ate very well. For the snack credits we often got iced cappuccinos, or even cappuccino floats, or fruit smoothies. Finally on our last day at the park, we found a roasted nut cart and used a couple of snack credits there. We love sugar coated roasted nuts!

After dinner we went to Downtown Disney, or Downtown Mickey as Welsey called it, with Wayne and Dianna while the Powells went back for a late night at Epcot. We were all pretty exhausted when we got back to the hotel room. Only one more day at the parks remained.