{Disney} Magic Kingdom

(Day 2)

The girls slept in and I knew we were in for a slow-paced morning.  We've established ourselves as late park arrivers.  To me, it's not worth waking the kids early, rushing through showers and breakfast to make it to the parks before the official open if the kids (and possibly adults) are going to end up grumpy.  It's part of my Disney Without Tears program.





As with dinner the night before, we ate breakfast at the Contempo Cafe.  Grammy and I shared a grilled breakfast sandwich, which was tasty, and then picked at whatever the kids didn't eat.







It was finally time to head to our favorite park, Magic Kingdom.  From the Contemporary, you can either walk to Magic Kingdom or take the monorail.  I didn't want to burn the girls out early so we rode the monorail.  





Our first stop was the princess meet and greet for Rapunzel and Princess Tiana.







Prior to this trip, the girls had said that they wanted to do more rides versus character meets.  But as you can see, it turns out they still love meeting the characters.





The wait time for Small World was a bit longer than I would have liked but we waited and rode it because we were in the area and sometimes fitting in rides and attractions around FastPasses is like piecing together a puzzle.



Next up was Splash Mountain.  It was steamy outside and the girls pleaded to ride this.  Grammy doesn't do rides like Splash Mountain so I was on my own with the three kids, which is fine now that they are older.  Two of them sat right in front of me in the log and all was good.  We then headed over to Pirates of the Caribbean and then decided to grab some snack items from Casey's for lunch.  The fries were good.  Meh on the other items.  After snacking, the kids wanted to watch (ride?) the Carousel of Progress.  If you need a place to cool down, head to the Carousel of Progress.  It's 20 minutes in duration and I doubt the theater ever fills to capacity.

At this point, Rich was on the Magical Express so we headed back to the resort to meet him and give the girls a little bit of time to swim.  The walk from Magic Kingdom to the Contemporary took us 11 minutes.  We had somewhat early dinner reservations at 1900 Park Fare, which I'll review in another post to keep this one from becoming too lengthy, and then we headed back to Magic Kingdom just in time to use our FastPasses for the Haunted Mansion.

The Main Street Electrical Parade, which Disney plans to retire this coming fall, was scheduled for 9:00 that night with fireworks at 10:00.  We found front row spots along Main Street near the bathrooms (important) to watch the parade.















We had the girls decide if they wanted to watch the fireworks or not and they voted no because of the crowds.  We opted to take advantage of the low (and in some cases, nonexistent) wait times and met Ariel and then rode Under the Sea - Journey of The Little Mermaid.


(I feel like the lighting in many character meet and greets has been upgraded over the years but this one was certainly funky.  I suppose it went with the whole underwater theme.  I left it as is.  So while the color in the PhotoPass photos may have looked better because of the flash, Ariel had her eyes closed in every single one.  Ha!)



Before we headed back to the resort, we rode Splash Mountain. Again.  At the girls' request.  This time we were completely soaked.  Near the end, our log stopped due to a traffic jam and there was a little waterfall right next to us, which sprayed Anna until we moved.  She just looked at me and calmly said, "I'm getting soaked here."  Even though we didn't stake out a spot to watch the fireworks, we were able to see some of the show as we walked between rides.

It was so nice to be able to exit the park and walk back to the resort.  No crowds.  No waiting for a monorail.  No waiting for a boat.  No waiting for a bus.  We could move at our own pace.  I was extremely happy with how much we were able to fit in considering we hadn't spend the entire day in the park.
  
Next up:  Another magical day!