Disney Tea Adventures--Magic Kingdom (Part 1)

Last Friday we went to the Magic Kingdom--my favorite of the parks. 

It was a great time to be there, they had a special event going on during which the park was open 24 hours--Rock your Disney Side.  The Magic Kingdom does this once a year, and this year's theme was "Heroes and Villains."  As one of the festivities, the Villains infiltrated one of the "Let's Celebrate" Parades that happened every few hours during the day.

After watching the Villains parade down main street, we happened upon a show in front of the castle.

In the show, the princesses and other popular Disney characters (the Heroes) battled Maleficent.

 

After the show finished, we continued on our way to Fantasyland.  I had to get a picture of the quintessential tea moment in the park:

 

 

Anyone for a Mad Tea Party?

 

 Below are some of my favorite pictures from that day.

 

 

 

We had dinner at Cinderella's Royal Table, in the castle.  This was my first time eating in the castle, and it was a lot of fun.  The restaurant is located on the second level where all the windows are below.

 

 

Various princesses show up during dinner.

 

 

 

 

I had iced tea with my meal...so I will share the offerings :).

 

I started dinner with a delicious strawberry salad.

 

For dinner I had a pork loin,

 

 

but the real star was the desserts.  Below was my dad's choice--the clock strike's twelve--with dark and white chocolate.

 

 

I got the dessert sampler:  raspberry cheesecake, pistachio mousse with a biscotti, and chocolate cake.   

 

 

Our waiter even brought my sister a special cupcake to celebrate her graduation.

 



 

The windows in the restaurant look out over Fantasyland.

 

Disney has a wonderful nighttime parade--the Electrical Parade.

 

 

 

After the parade, the Castle lights up in a show:

 

(this was Frozen based!)

 

 

The night ended with fireworks.



 



Disney Tea Adventures--Animal Kingdom

After Epcot, my family went to Animal Kingdom.  There are four lands in Animal Kingdom:  Africa, Asia, Dinoland, and Discovery Island.

First, Africa.

 

We started the day by going on the Kilimanjaro Safari; a drive through the African savannah.

 

Here are some of my favorites of the animals we saw:

From Africa, we walked to Asia, where my sister peer pressured me into going on Expedition Everest, a roller coaster.

 



 I'm a bit of a wimp so it was totally not my thing.  To console myself afterwards, I stopped at this fun little stand:

An "exporter of specialty teas!"  We ended up getting three different types of iced tea to share:

Cranberry Pomegrante

 Green Apple Iced Tea (my Father's favorite, and a very interesting tea--it did taste like sour apple) and a Peach Iced Tea with passion fruit, pomegranate, and hibiscus (everyone else's favorite). 

 

 



After the recuperative tea break, we went to the Maharajah jungle trek, where we saw tigers

 

 

komodo dragons

 

and exotic birds, to name a few of the animals along that walking trek.

 

 

From Asia we walked to Dino-land, U.S.A

 

 

Before walking back through Discovery Island, where the symbol of the park, the huge Tree of Life.

 

Before leaving the park, I stopped and got us a Mickey Mouse shaped pretzel.  I loved finding Mickey themed things everywhere!