This year we started a new Thanksgiving tradition of having Thanksgiving at Disney World! We love having our Disney Rental House and wanted to really use it for a family tradition each year. Thanksgiving is the perfect week for it since we typically go down to Disney during the week anyway, now we just get to stay for a full week instead of part of it 🙂
Every year on Thanksgiving morning our Elf on the Shelf (Hermey…along with his sister Snowflake) arrives with special muffins! Typically our elves do NOT travel with us but being that this is a new tradition and all, Santa has made an exception for the “no travel rule” and will allow them to visit us at our Disney House during Thanksgiving!
The kids did NOT expect their arrival and were SO thrilled!
We talked a lot about what we wanted our Thanksgiving tradition to look like and agreed we wanted down time at the house with plenty of time to cook a large meal for our family. For this year we decided to kick off the day with a special breakfast (that also counted as a birthday surprise for Britt).
We booked breakfast at Trattoria Al Forno for the Bon Voyage Adventure Breakfast! It’s located at Boardwalk Resort which was a first visit for us all!
You park at Disney’s Boardwalk Resort then walk down the Boardwalk to reach the restaurant. It’s an area I’d love to explore more but WHEW it was CHILLY that morning so we basically ran as fast as we could to get inside and warm up!
The restaurant is very beautiful with lots of details however it’s DARK and pretty cramped which made it difficult for both pictures as well as character interactions. It’s just not the most conducive area for a character meal!
Mini Rapunzel and her frying pan!
The pastries arrived in a frying pan which was super cute! There was the symbol from Rapunzel, her “braid”, and a claim from Ariel!
This meal was phenomenal. I cannot recommend it enough. It wasn’t a buffet but was an all you care to eat dining. The server we had was awesome and kept making sure we knew we could eat WHATEVER we wanted and that really the menu wasn’t limited at all to what it had printed on it. We could add anything we wanted, get extra of anything, etc. Maybe he was just a cool waiter and hooked us up but it made it super fun for the kids (and Zach and I too!) to know we could literally get anything!
The characters at this meal are: Ariel, Prince Eric, Flynn Rider/Eugene, and Rapunzel.
The interactions at this meal were right up there with 1900 Park Fare at dinner. SO. FUN. Flynn though was THE BEST. He stayed at our table for a long time and made connections with every single one of us. I mean who doesn’t love him in Tangled? He’s got that swag fo’ sho’ and it showed in real life too. We all adored him!
I love her smile and excitement!
Flynn sharing his dream with us 🙂
Daddy had his frying pan ready 😉
We had to ask what’s in his satchel! He said if anyone asks us what he showed us that we’re supposed to say it’s carrots for Maximus. He was also SO SWEET about the way he talked about Rapunzel. Constantly bringing her up in his conversations with us and always complimenting her…it’s clear he’s smitten 😉
Totes cartoon crush come to life!
Duh Zach was already a smolder pro…how else do you think he landed me? 😉
He was also the only character we met that really went out of his way to spend time with Spear too!
They had a fun parade around the restaurant and each of us had to call out our dreams while everyone sang “I’ve Got a Dream”
Britt called out that she wants to visit Hawaii. Tess said she wants a baby kitten as her dream 😉
Rapunzel!
Both of the girls dresses, by the way, are from Ali Express. I ordered up two sizes. One size to make sure it fit, a second size up to make sure it fits for awhile 😉 Here’s Britt’s and Here’s Tess’s!
They had a cute birthday celebration song!
Prince Eric!!! My very first cartoon crush (I had his Barbie doll and everything!)
I struggled with deciding what to order and just asked the waiter what was most popular/best dish and he said hands down this:
King Triton’s Shipwreck al Forno
fish pancakes 🙂
And flounder waffles
First Disney waffle!
I love Ariel’s blue dress
Kye especially loved being able to get as much food as he wanted…kid can GRUB
The bathrooms were even cute!
Tess loves getting to be the leader 😉
Our Little Prince!
The Boardwalk area was so beautiful and our reservation was so early that even after we finished it was still very quiet and not yet crowded on the Boardwalk area. We had to hurry a bit to get back for Spear’s nap but we for sure plan to go back!
Every year for Thanksgiving the kids and I make Turkey Cookies! Had to keep the tradition going!
As Kye gets older it’s more of him handling my part of things and me just getting to sit back and observe!
Britt loves to bake and plans to be a baker when she grows up so she and Daddy had big plans to make a pie for our dessert!
Kye helped me in making the cream corn in the crock pot!
Some swim time before naps!
On Thanksgiving Day Lowe’s was running a big sale on appliances with an additional rebate offer if you ordered on that day. With the purchase of the rental house we’ve been slowly updating things in our house (which is needed after living here for 8 years now!) and passing things down to the rental house to give it updates. It’s all worked out really well!
The Disney House could really use new appliances and our black appliances in our house will look so great in the kitchen down there instead of the white stuff there now. And in our kitchen at home we’d like to upgrade stuff to that slate gray appliances. It made sense to go ahead and order it all on Thanksgiving to take advantage of the deal.
But y’all. Zach and I are CLUELESS about appliances. It was so overwhelming and frustrating trying to decide what to get! So thankful for everyone who chimed in on my IG Stories to help me out 🙂
Sweet napping girl!
This cutie’s last first holiday!
While Zach finished up dinner I took all the kids outside to keep ’em busy and out of the way. I LOVE the location of our Disney House. It’s a beautiful corner lot with a HUGE yard.
The big kids all played football which was so cute to watch and I chased Spear…can’t have Thanksgiving without football!
So thankful for this crew!
Finished the puzzle!
Yay for Turkey Cookies!
Feast Time!!!
We always invite Zach’s mom to join us for our kids’ birthday Disney trips. She actually got an annual pass this year since she’s coming so often! We invited her to come at any part of the week but I just assumed she’d come either late night of Thanksgiving or early morning day after so it was SUCH a great surprise when she was able to come day of Thanksgiving and made it in time to enjoy dinner with us!!! It really couldn’t have worked out better and we had such a great dinner together!
We have the best G-Mama!
Yay for new traditions! It was a great family day together and very relaxed and chill which Zach loved and we were able to get the appliances ordered too 🙂
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