Day Two. 'Ohana Means Family

While Day Two would eventually be one of the best days of the trip, it started with every moms favorite vacation activity, laundry!  Please note the sarcasm.  This was emergency laundry brought on by poor planning on my part.  I viewed having to do laundry on my vacation as proper punishment. 

Since we last stayed here, SoG switched to these fancy credit card operated machines.

Laundry done, we headed off to the Polynesian for something we've never done, breakfast at 'Ohana.  At night, 'Ohana is a Brazilian steakhouse style restaurant.  But for breakfast it is a character breakfast with Mickey, Pluto, Lilo and Stitch.  I've wanted to try this meal for a long time and the kids had just watched Lilo & Stitch, so we were all excited!  

Pluto was greeting guests out front.

Not a bad family photo!

The meal starts with this Hawaiian sweet bread. It was yummy! Much better than the cinnamon roll at The Garden Grill last year.

I love the theming of this restaurant. It was open without being too loud.

View of the volcano pool and the Magic Kingdom in the distance.

Who needs Mickey waffles when you can have Stitch waffles!

The breakfast skillet was just ok.

Lilo and the kids.

Stitch!

The main mouse!

Here is my review of 'Ohana for our family.  It's probably a one and done for us.  I'm glad we went and tried it.  For a non-park day, it was an awesome dose of Disney fun.  The character interactions were outstanding, the ambiance was great, and the pacing was perfect.  We were never waiting for food and the characters came around pretty quickly.  The restaurant was FREEZING and the kids had to use all the napkins as blankets.  The food was just ok.  I loved the POG juice and the bread, but the skillet was just ok.  They say these places are "all you care to eat" but after the initial skillet our server never came around to see if we wanted more, which we did want more biscuits.  Also, we had to ask for butter for our meal, and the server acted a bit like butter was a lot to ask for.  Overall I probably give it a B.  

PS- I'm thinking of doing a post on all the character meals we have tried so far... anyone interested in reading that?

After breakfast I found this tiny sticker of Cinderella's Castle in the restroom over the toilet paper roll. I'm sure a guest put it there, not Disney, but I thought it was a magical little find.

Now what?  Well, it was time to make Rob a happy man.  We rented a boat!! If you have a non-park day and you are at or near any of the resorts with boat rentals we highly recommend taking advantage of it.  They have several options for sizes.  This time we rented a pontoon boat.  You can take it on the Seven Seas Lagoon (area where Magic Kingdom is) and Bay Lake (where the campground it).  After a brief safety briefing we were on our way!

Has there ever been a picture of me walking with the kids?

What Rob is thinking during the safety briefing: I can fly very large airplanes, I think I can operate this boat.

A happy man!

Love.

Love.

Me: Let's stop the boat in front of the Magic Kingdom and take a family selfie! Rob: Great idea! Anne: I love Disney! Ryan: Hey guys, what's going on?

Daddy's girl loves boats, too.

One thing I love at Disney is saying yes to things when my family doesn't expect it.  Remember last year when the kids got their faces painted?  Anne was over the moon because I said she could get glitter paint, she thought I would say no. Well, there is a bar conveniently located next to the boat dock.  Rob said, "would you like a drink?" and was blown away when I said, "absolutely!"  Two lava flows, please!  I also got a smoothie for the kids and I asked the bartender to give me an extra cup.  She asked if the smoothie was for the kids to split, and I said yes. Well, she made me two smoothies and only charged me for one.  It was a nice gesture, but I wasn't being cheap I was trying to keep the sugar consumption in check!

Not as good as the ones at the Hale Koa, but they will do.

On our walk back to SoG, we saw this crane looking for his room. I guess the bellman is bringing his bags later?

The rest of our second day went like this: pool, pool, pool, eat dinner, pool, crash.