Park Day One: Magic Kingdom (TP Predicted and Actual Crowd Level 6)
The excitement of our first theme park day had all of the ladies in the room up before 6:00am. Hubby and I tried a few times to shush the girls into resting quietly a little longer, but they were having none of it and, honestly, neither was I. We eventually gave up and put on Disney Jr so that Hubby could rest a bit more and the girls would at least sit quietly for a few more minutes. Holy moly, those TVs seem bright first thing in the morning! I tried to adjust the brightness, but Disney has locked out a lot of the controls on the remote. I get it, they don’t want someone completely screwing things up, but I wish I could have just dimmed it a bit. After a few seconds of temporary blindness, our eyes adjusted, Hubby rolled over, and I started getting ready for the day.
The forecast was a high of 73, right of the border between shorts and pants weather. Since we were planning on staying for the fireworks, I opted to put us in pants and risk being a bit warm at the height of the day to avoid being chilly later. Today would include lunch at CRT, so the girls and I all had lightweight princess dresses and Hubby had a prince t-shirt. I got myself dressed and headed down to the Boardwalk to wait for the bakery opening at 6:30am. Crescent Lake is so tranquil in the early morning hours. There were a few folks jogging while the sun was rising and it made for such a pleasant early coffee run. I ended up arriving at the bakery right as the CM was unlocking the door, got our two mugs filled up, and headed back to the room.
I had gone back and forth about whether to do Tinkerbell gifts on this trip. Our good friends had done them, and her kids had talked about them several times, but I didn’t think my girls heard enough to expect anything, so I was under no obligation to do them. While I was wavering, I saw a post on a local freecycle Facebook page giving away a couple dozen little Disney figures and was very kindly given them. Before leaving, I had sorted out the figures based on which characters and rides we’d encounter each day, wrote up daily notes from Tinkerbell, and had each set bagged together for easy access at night.
When I got back to the room, the girls were still glued to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, so they hadn’t seen their gifts on the bathroom counter. It wasn’t until we shut off the TV and insisted they start getting ready that they found the figures and they were thrilled. Since we had FPs for Peter Pan, Tink had welcomed them to the Magic Kingdom and told them to enjoy her favorite ride along with several friends from her movie. The girls were so excited to show us the gifts and made sure that we saved their special note. They seemed to think it would be a one-and-done welcome gift, so at least the next morning was going to be a surprise as well.
Because it was vacation, I left the girls have Nutella on their English muffins, instead of the normal peanut butter. I also poured them each a good glass of milk since I didn’t know how they’d do on dairy intake throughout the trip. Well, they all had a few bites, A started coughing, and she threw up into the toilet. Upon seeing her sister toss, B proceeded to do so as well. This did NOT seem like a good omen! Now, my girls have been known to be cough-vomiters, so I was hoping it was just that and not a real stomach bug. Since they seemed fine otherwise, I decided we’d just keep getting ready for the park and deal with it later if any further symptoms arose. We finished getting everyone ready, gave A and B some dry English muffin to get something in their stomachs, and headed down to the bus stop.
We arrived at the stop at 7:35 to see lots of folks waiting and no time listed for MK on the board. The CM there said that there had been some issue with dispatch for a few weeks wherein MK buses wouldn’t show up with times until they were 2 minutes out. AK and DS were fine, but the MK bus times just weren’t updating. This was disappointing, as it meant we wouldn’t be able to check wait times in the app, either. We had a short wait and were loading onto the bus at 7:39am.
Unfortunately, the bus was nearly full for our first attempt to load three kids, a behemoth double stroller, and an umbrella stroller. There were already a few strollers loaded when we got on, so I dragged the double up to the second level where the kids had snagged the last few seats and Hubby stood with the umbrella. Maneuvering the strollers through all of those folks made me much happier about our choice to book on Crescent Lake: at least we’d only be playing this game half of our trip, since we could walk to EP and HS.
We made it through security and the tapstiles quickly and headed into the park. Turning the corner and seeing the castle, it hit me: we’d really made it, we were in the Magic Kingdom! We started to walk up Main St, but then I saw the omnibus coming towards us. After quickly asking a CM where it picked, we doubled back and waited to board. Yes, our first ride of the trip, and the girls’ ever for Disney World, was the front of the 2nd level of the omnibus!
Fun fact: you can load your stroller(s) onto the omnibus. I had just assumed that you couldn’t as clearly those vehicles were not built with that intended purpose, so I put them to the side and planned to double back. As the driver was making his last call, there was still plenty of room, so I asked if there was any way they’d fit. He said they’d fit even full and proceeded load them into the space just under the stairs to the second story.
The girls were hamming it up the whole way up Main St, waiving to everyone below and having a blast. When we unloaded in front of the castle, I wanted to make sure we got family photos while we were still relatively put together. As I had read on the boards, the lines for photographers closer to the entrance were several families deep but those nearer to the hub had no one waiting. We hopped in line and quickly got our obligatory castle photos.
From there, we split up: Hubby and the girls explored around the hub while head back to Starbucks. The line to order wasn’t all that deep, and it was moving fast, but it took forever for the drinks to be made. My frap was done in a few minutes but hubby’s hot latte felt like it took forever. All in all, it was about 20 minutes to get our drinks, which I wasn’t so annoyed about because it wasn’t like we were missing ride time to do it. At least at MK you can do the Starbucks wait
before the rope drops.
We met back up at 8:40, I got my “coffee with the castle” picture, and we let the girls try to take a couple photo of Hubby and me.
Our plan for this day had deliberately not included making it in time for rope drop. I had no idea how we’d do with getting out of the room in the morning and I didn’t want to be rushing the girls up Main St when all they wanted to do was look around. However, since we were all up with the sun, we had all of our looking around done in time. While we found a spot for the welcome show, Hubby and I discussed the action plan for the morning. We were scheduled to start with Merida, then head into Fantasyland, but her greet wouldn’t open until 9:15. Instead, we decided to start with Buzz and Astro Orbiter in Tomorrowland, and then head up to Merida to fall back into the plan for the day.
The girls adored the welcome show. They were jumping up and down, cheering, clapping, and just generally in awe. Once we helped the Fairy Godmother with a little bit of magic, we were on our way back towards Tomorrowland. We were at Buzz at 9:04 and walked right on. Hubby rode with B and I rode with A and C.
You’d think a ride like this with no height requirement would have the pictures calibrated a little better for small kids, but oh well. Much more upsetting is that, with only two adults and three kids under 7, I had to take one for the team and not get my own laser! Neither of the girls was doing a particularly good job of aiming, so I kept switching back and forth to help them both, instead. We were off of Buzz at 9:12 and over to the Astro Orbiter line at 9:14. Unfortunately, despite it being so early, we still had to wait two elevator cycles to ride. Coincidentally, this was the ride the girls were most looking forward to because it was a spinner
on top of a building. I was thankful that my research had led me to ride this first thing in the morning, as I would have been much more frustrated by the slow loading and low capacity later in the day. We were on a rocket at 9:24 and, for a spinner, it is a fun little ride with a great view.
From there, Hubby doubled back to get the strollers we’d parked by Carousel of Progress and the rest of us headed toward Merida on foot. We bumped into Alice heading out toward her greet and walked a bit with her. Alice in Wonderland is one that the girls have no real knowledge of which lead to a pretty funny encounter. She was being sweet and said, “You girls are triplets, right? Do you know I have very good friends who are twins?” to which the girls replied, “Nope! We haven’t seen your movie.”
On that high note, Alice continued to her meet and we turned toward Merida. At this point it was 9:35 and there was a CM letting people know that her line was closed for now but that we could try lining up for her next scheduled meet at 10:25. We continued on the path towards the castle to our next stop: stroller parking by the Rapunzel bathrooms (thrilling, I know). Strollers successfully stowed, we got into the line for It’s a Small World at 9:44 and were boarding a boat at 9:55. The girls adored this ride and it ended up being one of their favorites. I loved seeing them having so much fun but, oh my goodness, the 5-year-old questions. “Mommy, what’s that? Mommy, where’s that from? What about that, Mommy?” I found myself wishing this ride had a skipper a la Jungle Cruise so that I didn’t have to keep up a running commentary.
After the ride, we were reaching the end of our first FP window but I needed a bathroom break after my giant coffee that morning. We actually used the famed Rapunzel bathrooms and had a quick dance break. If you ever want to hear some off-key but heartily performed Tangled songs, my girls have got you covered.
We tapped into our first FP for Peter Pan at 10:08 and were on a ship at 10:15. After our trip to Neverland, the kids were requesting a snack. We decided to but back to the Cheshire Café and potentially jump into Merida’s line. We passed right at 10:25, which was her next scheduled meet time, but her lines was already closed, again. The CMs said we could come back at 11:15 for her 11:25 greeting time, so I took a note and headed on. We had more luck with our snack, which was delicious. Plus, since we all split one, we had a nice treat without filling up too much before our big lunch. While we were snacking, I tried to jump into
MDE check wait times in Fantasyland but MDE wasn’t loading and the mobile site was giving me a 503 error. We weren’t trying to pick up extra FPs just yet, so I crossed my fingers that this was just a small hiccup and not one of the longer outages that makes MDE infamous.
With Merida’s meet changing our morning plans, we headed back past the castle to use our next FP before her line would reopen. I had built our morning to avoid backtracking, but it really wasn’t that bad. I assume I’m in the minority, but MK felt much more compact than I expected. On the maps, I didn’t want us walking “all the way” from the Rapunzel bathrooms to, for instance, Winnie the Pooh but it felt very close in person. Plus, we could move much faster on the little path between Merida’s meet and the castle because everyone there was just trying to get somewhere. No one was stopping to look around, cutting across to get to a ride on the other side, or hopping into a food line. We were all moving quickly from point A to point B.
Our point B was Princess Fairytale Hall. Despite the sheer volume of character meals we had scheduled for this trip, I wanted this FP because Rapunzel is B’s favorite and this would be the only opportunity to meet Tiana. We tapped in at 10:50am and ushered straight into the meet.
Tiana asked the girls about their wishes and, while I couldn’t hear everyone’s answers, I heard A say she wished for all princesses to be happy. That girl sure knows how to turn on the charm when she wants to.
When they visited with Rapunzel, the girls told her how the flowers in her hair had all of their favorite colors, and how she was B’s favorite princess.
We came out just as the Royal Majesty Makers were starting their 10:55 show. We stopped to watch and Hubby was invited in to try to pull the sword from the stone. The kids got a kick out of the show (apparently Hubby shares his name with an evil sorcerer) and he played along and hammed it up.
This was the first of many times where I was happy that we booked such a long trip. If we only had two days in MK, I’d have been rushing us through our plans. With double that time stretching before us, we had room to go with the flow and enjoy the little moments, too. Our next little moment was a trip into Castle Couture to get Pixie Dusted.
I have a fractious relationship with glitter. If given the chance, I would ban it from my home, but I have very artistic little girls who live and die by it. My house is infested to the point that I am no longer surprised to find it on a carpet, cat, or spouse’s forehead. If you have managed to exist without this infection, then I would certainly skip this experience. If you, too, are resigned to the fact that it has taken up a semi-permanent place in your life, then the pixie dusting is adorable and the fact that there’s still glitter in your child’s hairbrush a month later unsurprising.
We headed back out at 11:10, determined to be in line early for Merida’s next meet and greet opportunity. On the way, we were spotted by the members of Cinderella’s court from the earlier show, who came over to make sure the girls were save from Evil Sorcerer Hubby and gave them a business card should they need to get in touch.
From there, we bumped into the Fairy Godmother heading to her greet. She held out her hands to the girls and invited them to walk over with her.
When we got to her spot, there was quite a line and I tried to usher the girls away since we obviously hadn’t waited our turn like those families. The Godmother was having none of my polite refusal and insisted that the girls pose for pictures and invited Hubby and me in for a family shot as well.
While this was a lovely little surprise for us, I would have been less than thrilled had I been camping out to meet her for who-knows-how-long and some family just cut the line. Sorry, other families, I promise it was unintentional!
With our two surprise meets out of the way, we continued on and hopped into Merida’s line at 11:15, right when the CMs had suggested. It was already backed up a ways but I confirmed with the CM in charge of crowd control that, if we were in line there, we’d make it in to her next slot. When they opened her garden at 11:25, only about half the line went in and the rest of us were still waiting along the wall outside. It seemed like they were only letting in a family every few minutes from there and, based on my mental math, there was no way we were going to meet her, use our next FP, and make it to a 12:05 lunch reservation. I headed back to the CM in charge and asked for her best guess as to how long the line would be from where we were. It was 11:35 and she thought we would be waiting at least 30 minutes more, given our spot. Hubby and I quickly decided to cut bait. We had done our planned MK rope drop rides already this morning, so we’d just rope drop Merida on that other day, instead. There was simply no way we were waiting an hour to visit her and risk being late to our lunch.
So, if anyone reading this is planning on visiting Merida, don’t listen to the CMs who tell you to get there 10 minutes before her next scheduled time! Get there 20-30 minutes early with snack/lunch in hand and then your waiting time can double as meal time. Or, go ahead and rope drop her even though her greet won’t open for 15 minutes, as the line will build up quickly before she ever gets going.
Having essentially wasted 20 minutes on Merida, our 3rd FP window was open. We headed around the corner and got in line for Winnie the Pooh. My goodness, that section of Fantasyland needs stoplights! Or, perhaps, there should be stroller parking on the same side of the walkway as the ride designed for young children. I felt like I was playing Frogger trying to drop the kids at the ride, walk the stroller across to park it by mine train, and walk back to get in line. As soon as we tapped in, I started refreshing and was able to pull Jungle Cruise for 3:35pm. I had hoped to make it closer to 2:00pm but the line was moving quickly and I wanted to stop fiddling with my phone. We were in a honeypot and on our way through the Hundred Acre Woods at 11:54am. I know this ride doesn’t get a lot of love, but my girls had a blast. They laughed out loud every time Tigger bounced out and surprised them. We were off just in time to fight our way across the crowds to our stroller and head toward lunch.