We slept in a bit, but we were still up by 9:30 or so. We got ready for the day, and headed towards the main building to call an Uber to take us to the Grand Floridian.
As soon as we walked in the door, I spotted Richard! For those who don’t know, Richard is a long-time cast member at the Grand who was still working a few days each week as a greeter, despite being in his early 90’s. He’s a bit of a celebrity among the Disney Wedding groups, so of course I had to stop to talk to him, and get a picture with him!
He was so adorable, and so friendly! I mentioned that we were getting married at Disney, but he was sad we were holding our ceremony at Sea Breeze Point and not the Wedding Pavilion. He’s known for helping Wedding Pavilion brides with the train on their dress while pictures are being taken on the staircase in the Grand Floridian. He unfortunately passed away in June 2018, so I am very glad I stopped to talk to him for a few minutes during this trip <3
The Christmas decorations were all still up at the Grand, and I naturally had to take pictures of the tree (and of course, the lobby itself)!
The entire lobby smelled like gingerbread, I’m sure partly thanks to the giant gingerbread house they had set up there, which was so adorable! I’m fairly certain they were pumping the smell of gingerbread into the lobby as well.
We were starting to get close to our dining reservation, so we headed outside and made our way over to Narcoossee’s for their brunch.
While we were eating, we received a push-notification that Magic Kingdom had reached capacity- no thank you to being in those crowds! This was as close to the castle as I wanted to be on this day:
Once we finished our meal, we thought we had lots of time, so we decided to go for a walk around the resort. We followed the pathway all the way over to the Wedding Pavilion- even though it was not the location of our wedding ceremony, I thought it was a beautiful venue and I wanted to see Picture Point (located just outside it). They’ve since restructured the pricing, but at the time when we signed our contract for our wedding, it was an extra $2000 to use the Wedding Pavilion for an Escape wedding – I just couldn’t justify that, since that was enough to cover our reception at Homecomin’…
I had to take a picture of the Franck’s door, even though I never got to go through it. Disney offers three packages for weddings – Memories (basically an elopement – for the couple and 4 guests, cost was $2500 when we signed our contract), Escape (the couple plus 18 guests, cost was $5000 for Sea Breeze Point when we signed our contract) and Wishes (started at $12,000 and could go as high as you’re willing to spend). I initially was looking at Memories, and just having parents there, but Luke really wanted more so we jumped up to Escape. With the two lower tier packages, all correspondence is completed through email/phone calls – however if you are having a Wishes wedding you actually have an in-person planning session which is held at Franck’s (including cake tasting!).
Picture Point is so perfect with Cinderella’s Castle perfectly framed behind it <3
We called an Uber as we walked back towards the main entrance. We sat down on a bench, and watched as the estimated time of arrival kept changing – we had forgot about all the traffic trying to head to Magic Kingdom! We were heading to Give Kids the World for a volunteer shift from 3-6:30, but we were supposed to be there at 2:30 to sign in, get trained, etc. We had gave ourselves plenty of time to get there on a normal day, but not New Years Eve! What a rookie mistake, we should have known better! We eventually realized we were not going to make it there by 2:30, so we called the GKTW Village but they didn’t seem too upset by it. Our Uber finally showed up – no fault of the driver for taking so long, the lines of cars we passed as we drove away from the Magic Kingdom area was insane!
We finally arrived at GKTW around 2:50, so at least we weren’t late for our shift to start. It had taken almost 45 minutes for our Uber to reach us at the Grand Floridian, so we would have been there early if it wasn’t for NYE traffic.
For those who don’t know, GKTW Village is a non-profit resort in Kissimmee which provides week long vacations for the families of children with life-threatening illnesses. They work with groups around the world like Make-A-Wish to make theme park dreams come true. I believe I heard that about 60% of wishes involve the Orlando area (Disney, Universal, etc), so this is where they stay. Everything on site is free for the families – they receive meal credits to use throughout the week, theme park tickets, etc. There are a few little rides on site – a train, Merry-go-Round, etc, and lot of organized activities. A lot of the day-to-day operations of the entire resort are run by volunteers, so we had decided it was a good way to spend NYE since we didn’t want to go to a park.
We checked in and were led to the Ice Cream Palace where a supervisor gave us a quick run-down of what we needed to do. Our shift began at 3, and lasted until 6:30pm.
There were eight kinds of ice cream available, plus non-dairy options were kept in a freezer in the back room to avoid cross-contamination. The families staying at the Village had no limit on what/how much they could order – or when! The ice cream palace opened every day for breakfast! There was hot fudge and hot caramel for sundaes, bananas for banana splits, milk and mixers for milkshakes, sprinkles, Oreo bits, etc for toppings and a Coke freestyle machine for drinks (or floats!).
The ice cream shop itself was decorated with a CandyLand theme, and was very bright, colourful and fun!
Our 3.5 hour shift wasn’t overly busy, but it did stay steady. Even when we had downtime, we kept busy by wiping down tables, restocking ice cream, making sure the napkin dispensers were full, etc. Creativity was encouraged, and I made some crazy concoctions during our time there! A banana split with hot fudge and Oreo crumbs and a dozen cherries on top? Done! A milkshake with cherries and sprinkles blended into it? Done!
It was a really fun way to spend an afternoon, and all too soon our shift was over. It was dark out by this point, and we took our time walking through the village and seeing it all lit up. They actually celebrate Christmas one day every week, Halloween one day a week and have a birthday party for the children once a week, so I believe it stays decorated year round.
I’ve been asked a few times already how we went about even setting up this volunteer shift. It was actually very easy, you just need to fill out an application on their website, http://www.gktw.org/volunteer/
After we signed out, we called an Uber to take us back to Disney property. We were dropped off at Disney Springs and the driver dropped us off on the east side. I believe they are supposed to do drop offs on the west side by the old Cirque du Solieil building now, so I don’t know if this driver didn’t know that or if it was just easier with the NYE traffic. I prefer being dropped off on the east side, and it worked out perfectly for checking out the Christmas Tree Trail. Enjoy my million pictures from this!
We had lots of time before our supper reservation so we took our time looking at each tree, before walking around a very crowded World of Disney. We also stopped in Amorettes to see their Christmas display, but we decided not to buy anything at that point (which I now regret, as I never made it back there on this trip – Luke did, but he didn’t take pictures).
We were still a bit early, but we decided to go check in for our reservation at Homecomin’. We only had to wait a few minutes before they had a table ready for us!
Once we finished eating, we were tired and headed back to Pop Century. We packed up our stuff in preparation for our hotel move the following day, and were both asleep before midnight- we both woke up when we heard the fireworks and sleepily said “Happy New Year” before rolling over and going back to sleep. We are such party animals haha.
Total Fitbit Steps: 11,675