Narrowing down favorite memories from our Walt Disney World vacations is almost impossible. It’s sort of like being asking which of my 3 children is my favorite. I guess it wouldn’t make for very interesting reading for me to say “I love the all the same but for different reasons” like I tell my sons though, would it?

There are a couple of standout memories for me. We’ll skip over the story about how I was struggling to get the sharp “spear” out of my then 2 year old son’s hand from when Ohana used to serve pineapple with caramel sauce to dip it in. Lets just say it ends with the chunk of pineapple flying off of his spear and hitting a nearby diner… the lady in a couple with no kids in tow…in the head and my mortification lasting well past the trip as I just KNEW I would read about some unruly toddler randomly flinging fruit and ruining their lovely dinner in someone’s trip report (fortunately I didn’t!).

I’d have to say that my favorite dining memory is one I have mentioned in the past. It happened on our very first trip to Disney World with children. To set the scene I will tell you that we were traveling Christmas week and our travel party consisted of my parents, Grammy and Poppy, my husband and I and our sons who were 3 1/2 and 21 months at the time. The trip was a surprise for our sons. They knew we were planning a trip for later that Spring but Poppy had bought an RV and wanted to have some upgrades done to it. One of the few places he could have it done was in Kissimmee so shortly after Thanksgiving he offered to take us all to Disney World the day after Christmas as a present (nothing like planning a last minute for the busiest week of the year!). Our 3 year old was very excited about our trip planned for May. Both the boys were huge fans of Pooh and friends. They watched both the sing-a-long videos and the Disney World vacation planning video (which they started calling “Magic Lives”) over and over ad nauseum. The one thing our 3 year old wanted to do was to “have eggs and sausage with Pooh and Tigger.” Fortunately, the dining deity smiled upon us and we were able to get a reservation for a late breakfast at Crystal Palace for the first day of our trip.  It worked out perfectly as  we dropped of the RV and headed to the Magic Kingdom so our first stop was at the Crystal Palace.

Our reservation was for the very end of breakfast service and the restaurant was almost empty. Our 21 month old son didn’t understand he was about to meet his buddies. He went nuts just seeing the character topiary at the front of the restaurant but, surprisingly, when we walked in to be seated, none of the characters were around so he still had no idea. We were seated and put him in his high chair. Not long after, Pooh came out from “back stage” and started walking to our table. I swear, he nearly knocked the high chair over he was so excited to see Pooh heading towards us!

We were just about the only family on our side of the restaurant (this is still a bit shocking to me given that it was Christmas week!). My husband took him out of the high chair and set him down. He took of running towards Pooh.  Pooh stopped, knelt down and held out his arms. Connor just ran right in to his arms and collapsed on him in a big huge hug. He just kept saying “my Pooh!  Love my Pooh!” over and over. I don’t think we have any pictures of him with Pooh where he is actually facing the camera because he was not going to look away from his buddy for anything (a theme that was repeated with the Toy Story characters when we returned in May).

Pooh, and later Tigger, ended up sitting there and playing peek-a-boo and tickling both of our sons for quite some time as my parents, my husband and I sat back and watched. 

That was our very first stop, on our sons very first trip and if you had told me that I had to turn around and leave without going any further in to the park that day, I still would have had my fill of magic for the trip! Both of the boys talked about that, and asked to watch the video over and over for years.  I still get teary just thinking about it and it has been almost 7 years, and many happy memories, since that trip. The Crystal Palace will always have a special place in my heart because that is where the real magic of Disney came alive for my children for the very first time and where “the magic of Disney” took on a whole new meaning for me as I experienced it for the first time as a mother. I think it is also where that magic creeped in to my husband’s heart. He went from quietly grumbling about having 2 trips planned to the same place inside of a year to saying he believed the vacation brought him closer to our sons. Now he asks when the next trip is planned almost (but not quite) as much as the kids do!

So, tell me, what is your favorite dining memory?  If your least favorite dining memory is getting hit in the head with a chunk of pineapple at Ohana sometime in October of 2004, once again, I am SO sorry about that!