Day 3: Be Our Guest

After an hour or two back at the hotel after leaving the Animal Kingdom, we got ourselves back together and headed over to the Magic Kingdom for dinner at Be Our Guest and Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween party.

 

(As always, if you want to see bigger pictures, just click on the pictures!) 

As you can see, the park is completely decked-out in fall/Halloween decor, with carved pumpkins and scarecrow pumpkin people everywhere. 

 



 

 

We headed over to Fantasy Land and checked out the newest addition, Beauty and the Beast town.  Ok ,I'm sure that's not the official name, but you get the point....it's a re-creation of the French town in which Belle (and Gaston) lived and then a beautiful castle high on a hill where the Beast resides.  Above is the fountain of Gaston in front of his tavern. 

 

 

 

A little gift shop in the town square...everything is so quaint!

 

And here is a glimpse of the Beasts' castle...where we had much-anticipated (and very hard-to-get) reservations for dinner.

 



Be Our Guest is the name of the restaurant and has been open a little less than a year.  We called exactly 180 days before our trip, which is the soonest you can make a reservation, and still barely managed to secure a table, and then not on the day we originally planned.  Either way, I think this is the place I was most excited to see and it didn't disappoint.

 



 

 

Some of the scenery on the way up to the castle.  Disney really does a great job of immersing you in whatever you are doing.  I mean, those mountains look real...don't they?

 

 

The details here are fantastic.  Each lamppost had a gargoyle.

 



Here is the entrance to the castle.  No idea who those people are!

 



Once inside the castle, there are two dining rooms.  The first is very large and is the royal ball room that you see in the picture above.  This picture doesn't even come close to doing it justice....it is truly beautiful and there will be better pictures to come.

 



The second dining room is themed as the Beasts' study.  It is, how shall we say?  A little more beastly and ripped to shreds.  It is also much smaller, and probably more dramatic as there are things that happen as you dine. 

 

Allow me to explain....

If you've seen the movie, you know that the Beast has a magic rose in his study.  When the last petal falls from the rose, if the Beast hasn't learned to truly love, he will remain a Beast forever.  Here's the rose.  In person, you can see the petals slowly falling.

 



This is not a great picture, but notice the picture over the fireplace.  It's a portrait of the Beast when he was just a normal prince.

 



Several times throughout the dinner, the lights would flicker and it would thunder and the portrait would change..from a prince to the Beast.  (You have no idea how many times I tried to catch this super fast transformation for documenting purposes....but I succeeded!)

 



And here are your's truly and Emily.  Ignore the princess crown on my head.  It was going to be my Halloween "costume" for later.  Emily and Ethan had headware of their own and Andrew was going to buy something to wear, but in the end, the only one who even tried was me.  It's ok, it was helping to keep my bangs out of my face!

 



 

And here are my two favorite guys....Andrew and Ethan, who apparently was showing us the beast with his face!

 

I have a ton more pictures from our dinner, but since I've already posted around 30+ today alone, I think I'll save some for tomorrow.  Check back and scroll down so you don't miss anything!