Mouse ears for Thanksgiving: Visiting Marissa in Disney, Pt. 1

Mickey Mouse ears to be exact, and man, they were tasty.  And when I say "they were tasty" I mean the food at Disney world was really, really amazing!  For goodness sakes, I've already talked about food.  Nobody should be surprised here.  However, there was much more than food during this trip, so here is the Adventure of Angela, Mom, and Anthony visiting her Marissa in Disney World for Thanksgiving holiday.

When we arrived, Marissa had Thanksgiving/Christmas set up in our room at Port Orleans Riverside.  There was a itty-bitty pumpkin, Christmas tree, presents, and Thanksgiving dinner including dinner rolls, Italian filling, stuffing, and, of course, turkey.  It was a really nice surprise and start to the visit.  Not to mention, the Port Orleans Riverside resort is gorgeous, as was our room!  My family is used to staying at the more inexpensive places in Ocean City, New Jersey (which we love and adore,) but WOW, this place was stunning and very nice.  We had a great room too!

 

Our room was up the staircase and first door on the left!

 

 The view from our room!

 Ferry boat to Downtown Disney!

 A faraway look at our building - Oak Manor.

The pretty fountain outside our room!

 Outside the lobby.

Anthony and me sitting in the lobby waiting for Mom and Marissa. Oh, and a pretty tree!

Enough about our resort, first stop, we went to Disney's Animal Kingdom.  We did the right thing, got there early (yay extra magic hours!) and got a FASTPASS for "Expedition Everest," then we went right to the Safari where I played with my new camera (a Panasonic Lumix) and it's fun settings.  

 Saw the "Finding Nemo" musical.  It was AWESOME! I cried.  Well... we all cried, except for Anthony.   We also went to "The Festival of the Lion King" show which is one of our favorites!  We had to ride on the dinosaur ride.  When we went as a family we got an awesome family photo out of it: Marissa, Mom, and me looking terrified, Anthony is like "Woah," and my dad's just sitting there chilling with the dinosaurs.  This time we got another lovely picture from that ride.  I was going into major sensory overload, so I was covering my ears, Marissa didn't want to scream so she covered her mouth, and my mom dug her head into my arm so she couldn't see.  So basically it was an unplanned hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil picture.  Yes, my family is that good.  (Or just that scared of animatronic dinosaurs.)

After our Animal Kingdom adventures, we then spiffied up to go to the Cape May Cafe in Disney's Beach Club Resort.

All you can eat SEAFOOD buffet.  It does not get much better than that!  Crab legs and clams galore!  Just YUM.  Soo good!  Did I mention yum?

We walked around the BoardWalk a bit, then Marissa and I ventured to Jellyrolls which was such a blast!  The performers were awesome!  We requested "Sweet Caroline" and "Total Eclipse of the Heart."  The pianists actually took some time from their break to learn TEotH!  Haha!  Such an amazing moment!  As well as them singing "Red Solo Cup" and Marissa and I just sat there like "What is this song?"  If you watch Glee, we looked exactly like Kurt when they sang that song.  (I lost it when I saw that scene! Brilliant!)  They also had some group dance numbers to get us patrons on our feet and moving to songs like "Green Grass Grows All Around," "The Unicorn Song," and "Land of a Thousand Dances."  It was an awesome ending to a fun day!  (Including getting lost in the Swan.. haha)

For Thanksgiving Day we decided to take it easy.  We woke up at a not-too-early hour to eat breakfast at our resort, and then took a surrey ride.  My family, being my family, decided it would be great to serenade the other guests with an acapella  rendition of "Down by the Riverside" (since we were at the Port Orleans: Riverside Resort.)  We have video footage to prove it... although I won't share it here.  After that, we took a ferry to Downtown Disney and shopped away the afternoon and had Thanksgiving dinner at the Earl of Sandwich - a very cheap and yummy choice.  We then ventured to Hollywood Studio's to see the Osburne Family Lights; AMAZING!  It could put anyone in a holiday spirit. 

We also saw Fantasmic that evening.  There's no way I would let my family skip that show.

Our night continues on as we traveled to Disney's Polynesian Resort to watch the "Wishes" firework show across the water.

We were far away... and freezing on the beach, but it was still a great show.  Since the Polynesian is so close to the Grand Floridian we decided to check out the huge gingerbread house - which was amazing!

Overall - 2 very successful Disney Days.  I'll highlight the rest of the vacation in another post, since this one is way too long and has taken me about 3 weeks to write.