Disney 2012 - Day 2

Happy 5th Birthday Joel! 
After opening presents at the hotel, we headed off to our first character breakfast of this trip at Disney's Hollywood Studios at Hollywood and Vine "Play 'n Dine" with characters from Disney Junior.  The birthday boy was VERY excited to get to meet Jake from Jake and the Neverland Pirates!

 

 

 

Of course, no character breakfast is complete without Mickey shaped waffles!  Yum!

As you can see we were one of about 4 families eating breakfast there that morning (hooray for vacationing during the "off" season!).  The breakfast characters (Jake, Special Agent Oso, Handy Manny and June from Little Einsteins) each came to our table at least 3 times.  Which was pretty special.  And pretty awkward by the 3rd time around.  The kids were encouraged to get up and sing and dance to Disney Junior songs with the characters and our special castmember Lindsay.  We suspect that Joel had a crush on  Lindsay ~ she was pretty cute!

Our first stop after breakfast was at Toy Story's Midway Mania ride, which is one of the most popular rides at Hollywood Studios.  We had to stand in line for quite a while, but there was lot to look at while we winded our way into the ride, which made the wait go faster.

 

Next up was the Muppets 3D show and then we were off to meet Phineas and Ferb!  While we were waiting to talk with the "boys of summer" there would pick kids out of the line to perform to various songs from the TV show and be "filmed".  Alyssa got picked to play tambourine for one of the music videos, which she thought was pretty cool.

After meeting P&F, we headed off to Lightening McQueen's race headquarters to meet the boy of Radiator Springs.

No birthday lunch can be complete without pizza from Toy Story's own Pizza Planet with a souvenir Agent P!
 

After lunch we headed off to the Magic Kindgom to continue on with Joel's magical birthday.  Alyssa's goal was to visit the Haunted Mansion and ride the Carousel.  Done and Done!

 

We also rode past favorites such as Aladdin's Magic Carpet, Pirates of the Caribbean and the Mad Tea Party.  Unfortunately, Alyssa was still fighting a virus, so by 7pm she had a fever of 101+ and was ready to go back to the hotel to go to bed.
 

We did sneak in a performance by the Disney Characters in front of the castle and got to glimpse a few fireworks before the BIG display that we missed.

And we did get to see Main Street all lit up at night. Not a bad way to celebrate 5 years with our VERY special boy!