Plan a Terrific Themed Day at Disney World
Knights and Princesses Galore!
by Sandy Symianick, PassPorter Guest ContributorLast modified 10-20-2016
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- Walt Disney World
- Plan a Terrific Themed Day at Disney World
One of the lovely aspects of a Disney vacation, are the numerous themes you can build into your touring plans.
On our last trip, we planned a ‘Knights & Princesses Day’ in order to cater to our four year old daughter’s love of everything princess; but also made it a day of adventure and pretend for our six year old son.
Knights Princesses
Plan Your Themed Park Day
One of the first things to plan is dining for your themed park day. Most Table Service restaurants need to be reserved 180 days in advance. In our case, the rough plan was to spend the majority of the day in Fantasyland. We chose to dine for breakfast and lunch at Be Our Guest Restaurant, and at Cinderella’s Royal Table for dinner.
As we were on the Disney Dining Plan -- what better way to use our quick service dining credits than starting the day off feeling like a real royal at Be Our Guest Restaurant. The food was delicious for both breakfast and lunch, and the atmosphere of the restaurant is magical, although the kids were too scared to sit in the Beast area. One of the other perks, is that you can pre-order your meals through My Disney Experience, and then after you’re seated at a table with your RFID rose; your food appears with a server as if by magic!
For dinner, we were lucky to snag a reservation at Cinderella’s Royal Table. Although it is two table service dining credits on the dining plan, we love the experience of dining in the castle! The design of the space and welcome by Cinderella, makes anyone feel like royalty. Our server Christopher was exceptional, and really made the children feel like a knight and princess. The little princesses are given magical wands and the little Knights are given swords. Both little boys and girls are given wishing stars for the ‘wishing ceremony’ held hourly. And the princesses! We had Snow White, Rapunzel, Aurora, and Jasmine visit us at our table during the meal. Our party ended up ordering a variety of different options, and everyone thoroughly enjoyed their meal.
Picking Activities for Your Themed Park Day
Once dining was booked, we started looking at other activities. There’s the Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boutique that both girls and boys can partake in. Kids are given a princess or knight makeover. We found the add-on experience a bit pricey, so instead, we made prepping for princess day a mommy-daughter planning exercise.
First, we needed the munchkin to decide on which princess dress out of her collection she wanted to wear for our Princess & Knights Day. She was torn between Snow White or Rapunzel for a long while, so I started You-Tubing princess hairstyles for both characters. A wonderful resource for this is the You-tube channel Cute Girls Hairstyles. Using their videos as a starting point, I was able to come up with a Snow White hair-do and a Rapunzel hair-do that I could actually do myself. It was also important that it didn’t take too much time to prep in the morning before we left, and would last for the whole day, or was at least easy enough to re-do if it started looking scraggly. By mid-day however, the parks got very hot, and we changed our princess into a princess t-shirt.
For our son I started researching knights’ costumes. Most that I came across were very bulky, and in the hot Florida sun, I didn’t think he would wear them for very long. We needed something for him that he could feel comfortable in. In the end we went with having a Knight t-shirt made through a vendor on Etsy. The t-shirt did the trick and was perfect for touring Fantasyland, and keeping him cool running around from attraction to attraction.
On a side bar, the grown-ups also had fun Disney-bounding; my sister loosely drew from Ariel’s sheet-out-of-the-ocean look; and I went with loosely-inspired Alice tea-party kind of thing. The guys gallantly dressed to coordinate with their spouses! My hubby wore a coral colored polo which went with the roses on my blouse, and my sister’s hubby wore a pale blue t-shirt and navy shorts to go with her more nautical themed outfit. Along with the kids all dolled up, our pictures turned out great!
A Princess at the Castle
Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique brings out the princess!
Next was to plan out our must-do attractions for the day. We booked FastPasses for a visit to Princess Fairytale Hall with Anna & Elsa, along with the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. Having started our touring early in the morning with a pre-park open breakfast at Be Our Guest Restaurant; we were also able to ride Journey of the Little Mermaid, Peter Pan’s Flight, it’s a small world, The Barnstormer, Winnie the Pooh, and the Mad Hatter’s Tea Cups with hardly any wait times.
Our last FastPass Plus reservation was for Enchanted Tales with Belle. I can’t say enough good things about this attraction. The Imagineering magic that goes on at the entrance is just amazing, and the kids love becoming a part of the story. Our son was selected to be the Beast, our daughter was a dinner plate, and my brother in-law and husband were the suits of Amour. Even grown men, get in the spirit of things when asked to pose for a photo with Belle herself! This was our second time seeing this attraction and both times, our son has been chosen as the Beast. A quick tip for this, is to have your kids practice their loudest, most growly, longest roars. On both occasions, our little guy out-roared the bunch, leading to his being chosen to be the Beast!
In addition were plans to visit with Tiana, as well as watching the Festival of Fantasy Parade, but these were shelved in favor of returning to the resort in the afternoon for a swim and a rest. The kids were so exhausted after dinner at Cinderella’s Royal Table, that they slept in the stroller during the Main Street Electrical Parade, and all the way back to the hotel… (Thank goodness for the stroller!)
More Ideas for Your Themed Park Day
Other options for a Princess and Knights themed day could include activities throughout Epcot such as dining with the Princesses at Akershus; visiting with Anna & Elsa at their Royal Sommerhus; riding China, Aurora and Belle in France, Snow White in Germany, and Aladdin and Jasmine in Morocco.
Alternately, the Grand Floridian Resort and Spa offers a few options. 1900 Park Fare offers Cinderella’s Happily Ever After Dinner where you can dine with Cinderella herself, as well as Prince Charming, Drizella, Anastasia and Lady Tremaine. In the Garden View Tea Room, little princes and princesses can partake in a Perfectly Princess Tea . Hosted by one of Aurora’s roses that has magically come to life, little ones and their companions at this tea party are treated to music, dancing, and a number of other surprises. Lastly, there’s also the free Princess Promenade that is held afternoons at the main staircase in the Lobby of the Grand Floridian.
Planning a themed park day or days, is an excellent way to add even more magic to an already magical vacation.
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Updated 10-20-2016 - Article #1336
by PassPorter Travel Press, an imprint of MediaMarx, Inc.
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