Part 6: A day off from the parks - Chef Mickey's and Splitsville bowling

 I scheduled us one more character meal on this trip because Chef Mickey's was in our hotel, and I knew this would be a great experience for Emma.  Katie had done this one for dinner when she was 3, but Emma had never experienced this meal.  Its one of the best in "the World".  We did this for breakfast, and we had a great time.  Yummy food choices as well.  We got to meet all of Mickey's friends at this meal.

Emma meets Goofy:

Meeting the Chef himself!

Getting to meet Donald duck:

Pluto:

Mama's most favorite - Minnie!

So we took a break from the parks that day, and headed to Downtown Disney for some fun and shopping.  My girls have really taken to the pin collecting and trading when we go on these trips.  Emma LOVES trading with cast members when we are there, and its kinda neat.  We visited the biggest pin store in Disney and looked around for a while.

World of Disney Store - biggest store on property (with the spitting Stich outside):

So World of Disney had this new thing where you could stand in front of a mirror, and it would magically dress you in all of the princess outfits.  I took a video of it, and it is so cool to watch ( may try uploading some videos after I finish all these blogs), but here are 2 shots of Emma in her princess outfits:

The Lego store (thank goodness the girls aren't into Legos - can you say, expensive??!)

So one of our new adventures this year was Splitsville in Downtown Disney - the new bowling alley - Wow!  This might be in our top 2 of favorite things on the trip.  It was so much fun.  They have the music playing (non Disney dance stuff) and we had a waiter serving us while we bowled.  The food was amazing (as were the margaritas!).  The girls and Mark and I had a super fun time here.  Katie and I found out that we aren't that good when the bummers are down!  They put the bummers up only for Emma, so Emma and Mark ended up kicking our butts!  Tons of  fun.

Our groovy bowling shoes:

 I wanted to steal one of these bowling balls:

 Little lefty:

Lastly, before we left Downtown Disney we had to go to our favorite candy store: the Candy Cauldron - where we all picked a treat.  Katie filled a mixed bag of candy, while Emma and I decided to split a Perry the Platypus caramel apple - it was awesome.  Mark decided to get something at the cigar store instead of the candy store.

Another cool thing we did for the first time was visit the Make-your-own-tshirt place, and the girls made some new sleep shirts for themselves.  They came out really cute.

All in all we had a great time on our day off from the parks.  Downtown Disney was really fun, and I think the Carrolls will definitely do Splitsville again next trip.