Magic Kingdom day came—the day I had been waiting for for
years! And it started on a bit of a sour
note. After getting settled back in the
room after being at Epcot the night before, I called the front desk to ask
about bus transportation for early breakfast reservations. We had breakfast reservations for the Buffet with
Character at Crystal Palace with Pooh and friends at 8:15 which is 45 minutes
before the park opens. I knew we needed
to be there early. According to the
front desk, the first bus would leave at 7:00 a.m. So at 6:56 a.m. we were walking up the bus
stop . . . just in time to watch the 7:00 Magic Kingdom bus drive away. I was completely shocked and honestly,
utterly furious. I could not believe the
first bus would leave early!!! So that
left us in a crunch. We SHOULD have just
waited 20 minutes for the next bus, but we didn’t know for sure when the next
bus would arrive, so we decided to drive.
What we didn’t know was that the Magic Kingdom parking lot is not
actually at the Magic Kingdom. So after
parking, we roamed around for a while until a cast member told us to take the
resort monorail to MK. So in an effort
to stay positive, I told myself yay, the kids get to ride the monorail.
the kids riding the monorail
We got into the Magic Kingdom early, and I believe we were
the third family to check in at Crystal Palace.
We had just enough time to snap some family pictures in front of the
castle, and then we were called to be seated.
The restaurant was gorgeous, and the food was good. But by far the best part was the character
interaction. Within 10 minutes of being
seated and getting our food, Eeyore started making his rounds. I was a little nervous about how eating with
the characters would work. I was afraid
of being up getting food and having a character come to the table while I was
gone. But my fears were completely
alleviated. A character-handling cast
member would come to the table a few minutes before their character would visit
you just to let you know not to get up and to get your camera and autograph
books ready. It was absolutely
fabulous!! I wish you all could have
seen the looks on my sweet babies' faces when they saw each new character walk
in the room. Absolutely precious! C’s squeals of delight are something I will
never forget. And Tigger was happy to oblige
when B asked if they could bounce together.
Be still my heart. DISNEY TIP #5: Do at least one character meal. Eating with the characters is TOTALLY worth it!
We were done eating and seeing all four Pooh characters by
ten minutes before 9:00. But of course,
we have been having glitches, so their computer system went down right as we
were ready to pay. But once they got
started up again, we paid and were headed to Fantasyland at 9:00. The FastPass machines for Pooh and The Little
Mermaid are by Mickey’s Philharmagic and I knew I wanted to FastPass Pooh right
away. DISNEY TIP #6: Take advantage of the FastPass system. We literally walked right on to every single ride we FastPassed--with the exception of one which I will get to on Day 4. But back to the Magic Kingdom. Everyone else was FastPassing The
Little Mermaid like crazy, and I walked right up to scan for Pooh. And as was par for the course with us this
trip, another glitch—B’s ticket had not been properly scanned when we entered
the park. So when I inserted it in the
FastPass machine, it gave me a ticket stating the ticket I had inserted was
invalid because it had not been used to enter the park that day. WHAT?
Long story short, either I did not scan his ticket at all or the
admission machine did not read it accurately.
Another glitch, but I am still trying to be positive. So we went straight to Peter Pan’s Flight and
got in the stand by line. After riding
Peter Pan, we headed to the new Fantasyland and rode Under the Sea—Journey of
the Little Mermaid and then hopped over to get FastPasses for Dumbo and
Barnstormer. It was there that the cast
member could actually tell me why B’s ticket would not give me a FastPass. She very kindly gave me a card that would
give me a FastPass for Dumbo and Barnstormer and I was on my way. We got in the FastPass line for The Many
Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and I really got to see how great the FastPass
system is. The line was pretty long (at
least 45 minutes or more), but we breezed thru in about 5. After Pooh, we rode the Mad Tea Party tea
cups and got in line to meet Alice and the White Rabbit—but never fear another
glitch popped up. Alice was going on
break. So we went back and rode
Barnstormer (hands down B’s favorite ride of the trip) and Dumbo.
We walked over to it’s a small world and stood in a pretty
short and quickly moving stand-by line for it.
But as I was getting off the ride, my bag slipped and fell to the ground—shattering
the lens of my camera. At this point, I was
having serious second thoughts about planning this trip. But once again, I was trying to stay
positive. We headed to Frontierland to
scan FastPasses for Splash Mountain which B had been dying to ride, but the
return time was not good for us and the crowd level was really starting to
peak, so we decided to head back to the room for a rest. As we were walking out, C fell asleep in the
stroller, so we hit the McDonald’s inside ‘the world.’ It took us forever to find it, and the drive
thru line was out into the street. At
this point the hubs and I are both at our limit for frustration, and I am about
to meltdown. And then I was reminded of
why I love that man in the first place—we started to laugh. We laughed about all the little things that
had happened that were putting a bit of a wet blanket on the trip. We got back to the room with our food and
ate. I showed the kids the glow-in-the-dark
items that I had gotten them for our evening in the Magic Kingdom and kind of
made a comment under my breath to the hubs about how they probably won’t work
considering how things had gone so far.
The hubs reply: “Well, if all
goes as planned, they will work. But if
it follows the norm, . . .” and he made
a face. It was a turning point in the
trip. For whatever reason, that comment
and the face he made struck me as extremely hilarious. I started laughing so hard I could hardly
breathe and had tears running down my face.
And from then on, every time we hit a glitch—and believe me, we had many
more coming our way—we just chalked it up to “the norm” and laughed. (And for those of you who are still devastated about my camera lens, I was able to check it out in the room. What had shattered into a million pieces was actually a protective lens that was screwed into the real lens. So I was able to just unscrew it, brush out the tiny shards of broken glass from the actual camera lens, and continue taking some great pictures.)
So B took a nap in the room, and C (who was wide awake and
ready to go by the time we got back to the room) went to the pool with the
hubs. We returned to Magic Kingdom
around 5:30 and headed to scan FastPasses for Splash Mountain and went to get
on The Magic Carpets of Aladdin. We were
loaded on our carpet and strapped in when ‘the norm’ struck again. They closed the ride due to lightening in the
area. So we disembarked our carpet and
headed to Tomorrowland. We stood in an
hour long line for Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin (which is not ideal, but
with half of the rides closed due to lightening, people were flocking to the
open rides) and then went to Pecos Bill’s Tall Tale Café for some dinner.
With fear of more lightening closing rides again, B and I
got in the stand by line for Splash Mountain before our FastPass time came up
and had a blast on the ride. While we
were riding, the hubs and C watched the Electric Parade and saw us come down
the big hill. We got back on the Magic
Carpets just in time to watch the Wishes fireworks show from our carpet and then
head out. We were among the masses
headed down Main Street U.S.A. after the fireworks which was a bit
nerve-wracking, but the wait for the bus was not bad. C once again was asleep in the stroller, and B
was fast on his way. We got them in bed
and got ourselves ready for another early morning the next day.
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