It has been a super busy week with Kate's dance recital. But that is over and I am back! Fun Disney news this week. I got an email from Prize Fulfillment. I enter a fair amount of contests, but it was from The Disney Movie Rewards 101 Dalmatians London trip! I won.............. a free Dalmatian plush. Oh well, it's something! Anyway, back to Aulani.
This was our first real day and I had read a lot of people's kids have trouble with the time change. From Arizona, there was a 3 hour time difference. My kids generally wake up at 6:00 at home and I was NOT looking forward to the possibility of them waking up at 3:00. When Matt was a toddler, we went through a 6 month stint where he woke up at 4:30/4:45. Kate was a baby (they are 17 months apart- oh boy that is rough) and it was pretty brutal. Luckily, my DH is wonderful and got up woth him. After a while, he got older and we decided enough was enough and bought
this clock. The idea is at the pre-set time, bunny wakes up and the child knows it is okay to get up. We slowly set it back 5 minutes at a time, and that is how we now have the 6:00 wake up time. It worked well (although sometimes he comes in and complains that Bunny is not waking up). We have since got Kate one as well. As a last minute addition, I threw the bunny clock in the suitcase. The first morning I set it for 5:30 figuring we could live with that. Well, Kate cried out in her sleep at 12:30, 2:00 and 3:00 waking me up, but not DH of course. She does this at home and it is like a 20 second cry in her sleep, just enough to wake me up. At 4:30, I heard Matt go to the bathroom, but he went back to bed until bunny woke up at 5:30. Of course, I hardly slept after 4:30, but I laid in bed until 6:00. DH got up with the kids and turned on Disney Jr for them. I took my first shower in the rain shower. OMG, this was heavenly. I told DH we need one at home. He and I seem to have different definitions of "need." I sported the Aulani robe for a while and it is as nice as everyone says. This was the only day I wore it though. As soft as it was, I got really hot. We had 8:15AM reservations for Aunty's Breakfast Celebration today, so we had a snack to tide us over- Kate had an apple, Matt- yogurt, me and DH- cereal bar. Here is the Iwa for the day:
I went down to Aunty's at 7:00AM and was about 15th in line to sign up for the activities. I had heard great things about Stitch's Space Goo, so I knew I wanted to do that at 3:00 and I thought Kate would like the 12:30 Keiki Hula. I chatted in line with a few people and the time passed quickly. At 7:25, a few CMS came out and handed out clipboards and explained the process. One CM also went down the line with the paperwork if people had not signed their kids up for Aunty's yet. Basically, at 7:30, a CM comes down the line with a little case of tickets. You tell her what programs you want and she hands you the tickets. You fill out your child(ren)'s names and room number and hand them back in when they come back down the line a few minutes later. If you want dinner or lunch, you have to stay in the line until 8:00 to pay for the meals (they are $8). It was very Best Buy on a Black Friday without the pushing and trampling. It was pretty straight forward and I was done by 7:50 and got both programs. There were about 40 people behind me in line. I went back to the room and met up with everyone. We set down to breakfast, of course arguing about the elevator on the way.
We got to Aunty's right at 8:15 and checked in quickly. As we were checking in, I saw Aunty leading a parade and was worried we missed it. We seem to have bad luck with character meals (Minne and Friends, I am looking at you), so I was hoping this would be our day! We were led to a short line for Mickey and waited about 5 minutes to see him. My kids were super excited to see him and Matt was a little bit obnoxious with his jumping and rough hugging. They have Photopas people taking your pictures but these are aonly available to buy separately. They were using everyone's personal cameras too and I felt like the ones on our camera were good enough.
After this, we went in and rechecked in and were seated to wait for a table. This took five minutes or so and the kids were starting to melt down. It was 11:30 AZ time and they had hardly eaten. As we were seated (behind a pole- thinking, uh oh... character meal disaster impending) I was trying to settle Kate down promising her food quickly. The characters were nowhere near us, so I went to get the kids their food. I got them Mickey waffles, chocolate chip pancakes, strawberries, blueberries and sausage. I just went to the kids part and the fruit part and was frantically putting things on their plates! I liked that the kids part was in line with the main part so it wasn't a trek to get the kid friendly stuff like it often is. After I sprinted their food to them and frantically cut up Kate's waffles, I was able to return and get my own meal. On this first run, I got the Pork Hash (YUM!), pancakes, strawberries, portugese sausgae, pineapple and I figured while in Hawaii.... I got the Loco Moco, which was basically an egg on some meat. It was okay. It didn't taste bad, it just wasn't my style.
DH went up and got his food. I have no idea what he ate, but he was happy they had Guava juice and drank that stuff right up. We did comment later about how excellent all the food was. They had a large Asian selection as well. As we are eating, no characters are coming over and we are starting to get nervous that we are in a bad spot. I assured DH they probably purposely don't sit you right where the characters are so you can eat first. We are fast eaters, so we just need to slow down. The kids were obviously famished and ate all their food. We went back up and got them more berries and waffles. We decided the key to getting your money's worth at a Disney breakfast is starving your children to the point of mutiny ahead of time! Sure enough, the characters started coming. First Goofy tried to eat Kate
In the rush to eat... I forgot to talk to Matt about proper character etiquette. I remembered after this encounter.
Apparently, Goofy didn't mind and he remembered he and I have that "special" bond.
Aunty started to lead another parade and we didn't get picked. There was a large table with a ton of kids and it was basically just that table. But, when they got to the front, they did a little music dance and I saw they had extra instruments so I led Kate to the front. Matt wasn't interested. She clapped some coconut shells and danced with Minne and the kids, she loved this!
After the parade and show, which are about 10 minutes or so, Minne came over to our table. My Minnie loving girl was in heaven!
I took the kids to the bathroom while DH waited for the bill. In the bathroom, Kate wanted privacy, so I tried to help her with her shorts (under her dress) and she freaked out yelling I can do it myself. So, I shut the door and held it and she just screamed and cried. Every time I offered to help her, she insisted on doing it herself, yet she was doing NOTHING. It was super frustrating and embarrassing. I finally just pulled down her bottoms and plopped her on the toilet. Now she is all upset and won't go. Ugh!!! Finally she calmed down and went to the restroom and we washed up. I had a hard time with the sinks at Aulani. I am not sure if they didn't work well or I didn't have the magic touch, but all over the resort, I could not get sinks to turn on. We finally made our way back to DH to find out we just missed another parade. Boo. I guess the parade was not meant to be. I tried to get a picture of the kids before we left.In the end, we had a great time and thought we got our money's worth out of the breakfast.
Next up- Morning at the beach!