{Disney} Day 4 - An Electrical Parade, perhaps?

I'm the type of person who has trouble waking up from a nap so after an hour or so of "relaxation" in our rooms, my energy level was still running fairly low. But I shoved my sore feet back into my flip flops and off we went.  The plan was to eat a quick service dinner in Magic Kingdom, claim our spots for the Electrical Parade and keep our fingers crossed that the storms stayed far, far away.  We were pleasantly surprised to see blue skies when we emerged from our rooms.







The boat from the Polynesian to Magic Kingdom was our preferred mode of transportation.





That's some of the construction underway at the Polynesian.

Rich chose Cosmic Ray's Starlight Cafe as our dinner location.  Here's the thing about Cosmic Ray's - it's actually a bit of a hidden gem.  The food is on the higher end for what you may find at some quick service restaurants.  When we ate there in 2012, I had their half chicken meal and it was pretty tasty.  This time, Emily and I shared the tortellini pasta salad, which is actually a cold tortellini pasta salad on top of a green spinach salad.  It was fresh and tasty and the serving size was decent.  Between the two of us, we couldn't finish it.  True that we aren't big eaters but still.

My only two complaints (and they are pretty minor considering food quality) regarding Cosmic Ray's are 1. the ordering stations and 2. the music.  The restaurant has three different ordering stations, each featuring different menus.  This isn't very convenient if you have one person ordering for multiple people (kids) who want items from different menus.  The first time we ate there, we made the mistake of sitting on the side that has the robot lounge singer.  Man, that thing is annoying after five minutes or so.  This time, we sat on the complete opposite end.  The piped-in music can best be described as "space age."  My complaint is more focused on the volume, both with the robot lounge singer and the piped-in space age music.  It needn't be that loud.

By the time we finished up eating, it was almost 6:30, which didn't give us enough time to do anything but find early spots for the 8:00 parade.  Yes, folks start claiming spots approximately 90 minutes prior to the start of the nighttime parade.  We found front row, on the curb spots along Main Street, near the entrance/exit and entertained ourselves with people watching and the like.









If you look at the clock in the above photo, you'll see that it's 7:15, 45 minutes before the parade.  See how crowded Main Street is, along with folks already lining the sidewalks.  





I wish I had taken advantage of the gorgeous blue hour but between escorting children to the restroom and the adults having to take turns holding our parade space, there really wasn't time to wander for photography purposes.  



Photographing the castle with our iPhones.



Look at that gorgeous blue sky up there!





The rain held off, there were no electrical storms in the area and the Main Street Electrical Parade, much to the girls' delight, ran as scheduled.  They were very happy campers.





We left Magic Kingdom immediately after the parade.  I didn't want to push our luck staying out late to see the fireworks.  We were all pretty tired.  The fireworks did begin as our boat pulled up to the Polynesian so we had a nice view on our walk to our rooms.

Coming up next - Epcot