Living the Castle Life

I started our Fantasyland journey off with our voyage under the sea.  Again, it was amazing!!!  When I was at the movies this weekend there were previews for the New Fantasyland.  It was fun to say "saw that" or "been there" before anyone else could!  Yeah, I'm mean like that ;)

The next part of the Fantasyland expansion is the Beauty and the Beast portion.  This includes Gaston's Tavern, Enchanted Tales with Belle, and the Be Our Guest Restaurant in the Beast's Castle.  Now I've been waiting for the Beast's Castle from the moment I saw it and I'd been following the progress on Disney Food Blog for a while.  I kept reading reviews and seeing pics and it made me more and more excited.  Once we finished with Ariel, we headed towards Gaston's Tavern.  We stopped in the little shop there too.  It was awesome.  You could buy wine glasses, dishes, tons of Beauty and the Beast items that I've never seen before.  I was pining after a wine glass but didn't want to fork over the $15 price tag so I left empty handed.  Em was able to stop Gaston and snag a pic with him.

This cast member truly captured Gaston's arrogance!  He was awesome!

This is a new concept (I think) for Disney.  Gaston is a roaming character.  He doesn't have a particular location where people can line up to meet him.  The idea is that he roams the area, talking to (or poking fun at) guests and taking a few pics along the way.  When we went, they hadn't quite worked out that whole situation because there was always a line and the cast member working with Gaston kept getting frustrated with everyone.  But again, we were there during a preview and they were still working out the kinks.  We stopped by the tavern later in our day for a couple glasses of LeFou's Brew: a frozen apple juice drink with a hint of toasted marshmallow.  It was quite good in my opinion however it comes with a passion fruit-mango foam on top which was a little questionable.  I had to drink it off each glass and it wasn't too pleasant.  Next time we'll ask for it without the foam.  And of course, in true "we're suckers for all things Disney" fashion, we spent the $10/drink to get it in the fancy souvenir cups (which I love BTW)

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I didn't take too many pics inside for some reason.  The tavern is quite small but it's decorated to the max with antlers, animal heads mounted on the wall, and a huge fireplace with a portrait of Gaston hanging above.  It's definitely similar to the tavern he frequents in the actual movie.  The fountain in front is by far the focal piece of the area.

Now keep in mind that these pics are all taken on my cell phone so they're not the best.  Actually I'm really disappointed with them.  I still don't know what happened to my camera that day. I think the memory card was faulty because I swapped out cards and it's working like a charm.  Epic fail on my part.

We left Fantasyland after eating lunch at the Be Our Guest Restaurant (more on that later) and went on a few rides in other parts of Disney.  But the kids wanted to go back to Fantasyland so we went back in.  I wasn't sure if they'd let us because we had already left but we walked right back in, no problem. I'm pretty sure they were letting anyone with a wristband come in and out as much as they liked.  I will say there was no true organization for this event, which was surprising.

When we reentered, the only thing we hadn't experienced was Enchanted Tales with Belle so we headed there.  I highly recommend this for anyone with kids.  You enter through Maurice's house and eventually end up in his workshop.  There a cast member points out all of the things he's been working on.  There's also a large mirror in front, one that the Beast gave him so he could check in on Belle whenever Maurice wanted.  We all said a magic phrase and the mirror opened and we entered the castle.  We walked through and were greeted by another cast member and the Wardrobe.  She was talking up a storm.  Definitely brilliant work  by the Disney Imagineers.  We were told we were going to be telling a story to Belle about the night that she and the Beast fell in love.  They gave parts to all the kids and adults that wanted to participate and then we were led into the library.  Lumiere was there and led the story.  Belle came in and the story began. It was really cute and all the kids/adults got to have their picture taken with her.  It was definitely worth the wait!

Lumiere starting to tell the story

Belle joined us

Belle and Emmy (who has her tongue out for some reason)

I'm sorry if all my Disney talk bores some people but hey, we're Disney fans!  It's what our kids love and it's what we love.  There's only 1 more post left and it's all about food!  Then there will be a Disney break....I promise!!!

A Fantasyland for sure

I teased a little yesterday when I said I was going to preview the new Fantasyland expansion at Disney.  It definitely was nothing short of amazing.  Maybe because I think everything Disney does is amazing.  Who knows.  But the bottom line is, I loved the time we spent there.

We got to Magic Kingdom right before the park opened but by the time we got off the monorail, we had already missed the big opening number. If you haven't been there when the park opens, you definitely should. The train pulls up to the station, right at Main St, and Mickey, Minnie, and tons of other characters get off to welcome everyone to the Magic Kingdom.  It's a big hit with our kids and something we accidentally stumbled upon.  We try to see it every time we go.  We headed into the park and went straight to the Fantasyland entrance to confirm whether or not we could get our wristbands once we were all in the park.  They said yes so we weren't worried about trying to keep track of time to meet the rest of my family at the entrance of Magic Kingdom.  We hopped on Buzz Lightyear, the People Mover, Tea Cups (cue Mommy getting nauseous), Winnie the Pooh, and Small World, before heading to Adventureland.  Em didn't want to go on Jungle Cruise so I took her to ride the Magic Carpets while the Hubs took Noah on the cruise.  Well we saw Jasmine and Aladdin so Em wanted to meet them. They have been 2 characters that we haven't met yet.  Well this is where I started to get frustrated.  My camera would take pictures, show me that it was saving, yet not be seen when I went to review them.  I don't know what's up with it and when I went to dump the pictures onto the computer tonight, I still can't find them.  So the rest of the day was documented with my cell phone.

We caught up with the rest of my family and we headed to get our wristbands.  We had a scheduled preview time of 1230-4 but they let us in early (as in like 1130).  Instantly I felt like I was transported into fairy tales.  Right now the expansion is limited to the Beast's Castle (Be Our Guest Restaurant), Enchanted Tales with Belle, Ariel's Grotto, and Under the Sea with The Little Mermaid.  The first part of the expansion already opened with a new and improved Dumbo ride, Barnstormer roller coaster, and water play area, and a new character meet and greet area.  That's been open for a few months now.  This was phase 2 with the last phase to open later in 2013 (I think).  It's going to be a Snow White roller coaster through the diamond mines and a new royal area to meet the Princesses.  It will be totally awesome once it's all open.  But for the most part, this phase of the expansion was geared towards the princess loving people.

What a grand entrance!!!  Construction is the Snow White roller coaster

We went in and headed towards The Little Mermaid.  The kiddos were really excited to ride this one. Em's a big Ariel fan.  She's one of my favorites too.  The exterior of the ride looks like Prince Eric's castle.  It's pretty cool.  The nice thing about the line is that most of it is in the shade.  It might get hot with a million people there but at least you won't be in the blazing sun.  There's also interactive elements so waiting in line with young kiddos (or impatient adults) will be a little easier.  With this being the preview and only a handful of people in the area at a time, we didn't really get a chance to play with the interactive portions.  Oh well though because we rode it 4 times. It's along the lines of the Finding Nemo ride at Epcot.  You ride in a seashell and journey under the sea into the story of the Little Mermaid.  It was a really great ride.  The "Under the Sea" party was awesome and the way they made it feel like you were going under water was nothing I'd seen before.  All in all, I give this a perfect 10.  The kids loved it as much as I did.

Horrible cell phone pics of the ride

Once we got off the ride the first time, we headed to Ariel's Grotto to meet her.  We have met Ariel before but she was dressed in her human outfit.  In Ariel's Grotto, you go under the sea and meet her as a mermaid! Em was so excited!  I had a great video of her interacting with Ariel (who was by far the best Ariel we have ever seen) but again, my camera is on the fritz and it's lost.  The Disney PhotoPass photographer grabbed a bunch of pics so I'm sure I'll be ordering them and posting them.  We ended up meeting her again later in the day and it was a different Ariel.  The kids didn't notice, which is awesome and the Hubs snagged some pics on my phone.

She was cute but no the best Ariel we've seen

I think it's about time that Disney brought back a ride honoring the Little Mermaid.  I know there used to be a ride years ago and it closed for some reason.  The Disney Imagineers have really captured the fantasy that surrounds the Little Mermaid with this ride.

Next up.....Entering the Beast's Castle!!!