By Tuesday we were exhausted from the early wake-ups for airport and two days of Rise of the Resistance, so we made an exception to our usual up early rules and slept in and didn't go anywhere until we walked to Boardwalk for our brunch with Rapunzel and Ariel and their princes. This character breakfast is not a buffet and the food is delicious. I got the same breakfast calzone that I got last year. It's so big that I took the second half home and ate it for dinner another night. William isn't really into meeting the characters anymore (except Chip, Dale, and Stitch), but we love a late brunch after rope drop so character meals is usually what we end up doing.
We walked back to the hotel to drop off our leftovers and autograph book, so did some Christmas photos. The shirts we had this particular day were my favorite of the week. I love the designs and they were soft t-shirts.
Our FastPasses and plans were at Animal Kingdom. When we got there, William ran to the birds in the first exhibit and gave them all names! We enjoyed seeing them fed later in the evening. For rides we did the safari (where I was very concerned there would be no giraffes, but we found them!), then Everest with FastPass and as single riders, then Flight of Passage (everyone's favorite!). It was a cold day but we got Mickey bar and a frozen drink, because....Disney!
New for the holidays is the Merry Menagerie animal puppets, which was on my list of "must sees" for Animal Kingdom. Thankfully we encountered them on our way out in the main gift shop area outside the Tree of Life. They were so cool in the ways they interacted with people! So many smiles and laughs! My favorite was a set of two small penguins on the same pole that chased a preschooler holding a snack as if trying to get the snack from him.
Our Christmas Eve dinner was at Biergarten as part of the Candlelight Processional. I was nervous we wouldn't like the food or the communal dining and I'll admit it was not our favorite. But we all enjoyed the desserts and the fact that we got our tickets to the show.
The Candlelight Processional is a reading of the Christmas story from the Bible by a celebrity narrator and augmented with carols sung by choirs. Our narrator was Christian singer Stephen Curtis Chapman, who does this same spot every year because he loves it so much. If you can't make it to Christmas Eve midnight mass, this is an interesting surrogate!
