Gotta love a Disney vacation

I am starting day 2 of my vacation in Disney today, and it is MUCH needed!  We arrived yesterday morning and finally made it to our resort around 1pm.  We absolutely LOVE our home resort - Bay Lake Tower at the Contemporary.  It really does feel like coming home every time we arrive.  For this trip, we are starting with a standard view studio for the first 3 nights and then, once we are joined by a few friends, we will be moving to a 1-bedroom villa.  This will be the first time we've stayed in one of the 1-bedrooms.  The biggest difference - it has a full kitchen!  (The studio just has a microwave, mini-fridge and coffee pot.)

Yesterday upon arrival at the resort, we met up with two awesome friends and spent the afternoon at Magic Kingdom.  We enjoyed a sweet & spice chicken waffle for lunch.

Photo from the Disney Food Blog, link above.

After that, we hit up a few of our favorite Magic Kingdom classic rides (Pirates of the Caribbean, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and Haunted Mansion) before heading back to the resort to unpack and get ready for dinner.  It was a great day to be at the Magic Kingdom - we were able to walk on to all of the rides with no wait at all. 

Our end of September trip to Walt Disney World is always a special one... it is the celebration of our wedding anniversary.  This year, we celebrated our 4th anniversary.  We have spent each of our anniversaries in Disney and plan to continue the tradition.  (Next year, however, it won't be in the parks, it will be aboard the Disney Fantasy on an Eastern Caribbean cruise.)  The other part of this tradition is a fancy dinner.  We have taken to splurging on a really nice meal at Narcoossee's each year.  We have never had better steak than what we have been served there.  We were seated ahead of schedule and offered a complimentary glass of champagne to add to our celebration.  The champagne was amazing - Chateau St. Michelle.  Hubby always gets the steak and lobster (served with green beans and garlic mashed potatoes) and I'm a sucker for the filet (served with a tomato risotto and wilted spinach - which I replaced with green beans since I'm not a cooked spinach fan).  As always, we were not disappointed!  Although hubby's suggest wine for his meal was a merlot, and my suggested wine was a malbec, we opted to split a bottle of Zen of Zin Old Vine Zinfandel (2009) instead.  A great choice! This might be one of the best zinfandels we have had... so smooth and with great all-around flavor.  For dessert, we went with the  Narcoossee's classic - almond crusted cheesecake.  It is served with a cherry compote, house-made whipped cream, and both white and dark chocolate accents.  This cheesecake is the absolute best we have ever had and nothing can compare!  Since we were celebrating our anniversary, they added a Happy Anniversary white chocolate accent as well.  I love that everything on the plate is edible! 

Dinner was phenomenal, as always, from start to finish, and the evening was capped off with fireworks.  We always plan our Narcoossee's reservations in accord with the Wishes Nighttime Spectacular fireworks show at the Magic Kingdom.  From the dock at Narcoossee's, you have a perfect view of the show.

Today, we are taking the morning easy - started off with a ~3.5 mile run, followed by coffee on our balcony.  Later, we'll be off to enjoy a relaxing late morning at one of the parks, followed by scoping out the soft opening of the International Food & Wine Festival at Epcot.  And the best part about today - more of our friends start arriving, with even more coming tomorrow!