Our first official friend to come and visit us was the love of our life, Sam Groom. Sam is one of our best friends, Mary’s college roommate, and her high school best friend as well, and one of the people we’ve missed the most since being here. Shortly before Sam’s visit, Mary got hired as a Fairy Frostmother (which she will post about soon) so she was in training for a good bit of Sam’s visit which was sad but exciting for her new job.
Sam surprised Mary by bringing along their other high school best friend, Eric. I was aware of the surprise and helped Sam set it all up, and there was only one hiccup where Mary saw that I had made a reservation for a breakfast for three instead of just two, since she thought it would only be Sam and I. Luckily I played it off, but when she saw Eric her first act was to melt into his arms and hug him and the second thought was, “Brooke knew!” We all had a good laugh.
Their first evening here we went to the Polynesian Resort and watched Wishes!, the Magic Kingdom fireworks. The next day was our 3 Park whirlwind. We started the day with breakfast at Be Our Guest and then wandered over to Pete’s Circus to meet Goofy, Donald, Mickey, and Minnie, who were all precious characters and because no one else was in line to see them, were happy to spend quite a bit of time with us. Goofy was our favorite. We then rode Peter Pan’s flight, met Peter Pan, watched the Dapper Dans sing, rode It’s a Small World (never again), met Mary Poppins and her penguin friend, rode Haunted Mansion, rode the teacups, got dole whips, ate at Casey’s Corner for lunch, and generally had an excellent time. We were excellent at hitting the rides just before the lines got crazy long. We did run into some rain, but were still able to see Festival of Fantasy which is the best parade.
Around 4:30, we took a bus over to Hollywood Studios to meet up with Mary and our wonderful roommate Ashley, where we rode Star Tours and ate at our favorite family diner, the 50′s Prime Time Cafe, where they tell you to keep your elbows off the table, no texting at the table, and you get a “I’m a member of the clean plate club!” if you finish your whole meal. We then hopped on a boat over to Epcot where our glorious friend Michelle who works on the fireworks team got us dock seating (the docks that go out into the lagoon where the fireworks are launched from and where the fireworks team operates from) for Illuminations, which I think might be my favorite show. And it really is just so much better being closer. We then took a boat back to Hollywood Studios to ride Tower of Terror before it closed and then watched Fantasmic! which is the incredible stage show in Hollywood Studios.
Total, we walked 28,000 steps and were exhausted by the end of the night.
The next morning, we had breakfast at 1900 Park Fare, which is a character dining buffet in the Grand Floridian Resort. After a perfectly British morning with characters from Mary Poppins, Winnie the Pooh, and Alice in Wonderland, we took a cab to Universal and explored the Wizarding World of Harry Potter which is every bit as magical as you expected it to be. We rode the Hogwarts Express, we cried. We went into Ollivanders, we cried. The wand chose me, I didn’t choose it, and I cried. Riding the rides there was also one of the most magical experiences I’ve ever had. Getting off of Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey (the ride inside Hogwarts), all four of us were speechless. We couldn’t figure out how they managed to make such an incredible ride or really understand how it worked, and we were content with that being the end to a magical visit.