I had planned on doing a very helpful and informative post about making travel arrangements for your Disney trip, including airline choices and use of Disney’s Magical Express, but it’s been a long couple of days and I’m tired – and we’re going to the Museum of Science and Industry in the morning to see You-Know-Who.
Really, we are. There’s a big Harry Potter exhibit currently at the museum, I think it will be a lot of fun. Once we get past the whole driving into the city and parking thing.
So back to today’s Disney post – I also planned to talk about packing – what I found to be the most useful, what never ended up getting unpacked, space saving ideas – etc. But again, I’m tired, and I have 2/3 of a book left that I need to finish before Monday night’s book club meeting.
So I just want to say 1 thing.
If you are packing for a trip to Disney World, and are fretting over whether or not to pack the costumes – let me make this easy for you…
DO IT.
It is so worth it, and if you’re like me and bought a lot of the princess and fairy costumes at clearance prices, the money saved vs. buying them at one of the shops at the resort could take you on a whole ‘nother vacation.
I do want to spend some more time talking about the whole packing costumes thing – but for now, I just want to say thank you to a special friend who let me borrow her daughter’s Mary Poppins’ costume. When she first offered, I was skeptical because I had planned on taking quite a plethora of costumes with already – and really, Mary Poppins is nice – but she ain’t Cinderella. Plus, the costume was huge, with layers upon layers of white silk and a big red sash. But it fit in Miss A’s suitcase (remember, you saw a picture?) so I took it with.
Thanks to the handy dandy dining reservations my travel agent made – we had breakfast on our first full day of vacation at 1900 Park Fare in the Grand Floridian.
While having breakfast, Tigger, Pooh, Alice and the Mad Hatter visit you – and so does Mary Poppins. The dining hall was filled with girls dressed as Belle, Aurora, Jasmine, and there were even quite a few Alices.
But only Miss A looked like this:
What you can’t see in this pic are her sandals…it was hella-hot during our trip (this is freakin’ Florida after all) and there was no way Miss A was going to suffer through wearing that hot costume all day – so we made Miss A’s Dada suffer instead by stuffing it into his backpack. Miss A had on a cute little sundress that we threw the costume right over while waiting for our reservation in the air conditioned heaven of the hotel. And then I ended up making Miss A suffer anyway while I forced her to pose for pictures (hey, this was my vacation too).
When Mary arrived at our table, she was so excited to see a mini-Mary!
She spent a great deal of time with us, and Miss A glowed from all the attention.
I think it’s fun for the performers too (I mean “cast members”), it can be kind of depressing to feel like you’re always 2nd fiddle to a girl who cleans house for 7 short dudes.
The whole dining room watched and smiled along with us as Mary and Miss A chatted and posed.
Despite my initial misgivings, taking that costume along was totally worth it. It kicked our first full day of Disney off to a truly magical start, and made for some wonderful memories.
So there’s the Drama Mama Disney advice for this week: find costumes for some of the “lesser known” Disney characters that your children enjoy (Miss A does really like Mary Poppins alot, especially when she sings that “Super-Pickle-ishish” song) it is likely to score your little ones some great extra time and attention.
Thanks again to my wonderful friend who let us borrow the costume in the first place!
Melonie Johnson 