BigTex71
DIS Dad #536...... Fort Worth, Texas
- Joined
- Jun 16, 2009
- Messages
- 1,516
February 2, 2011 – Day 6 (Magic Kingdom Day)
Since we did not stay out too late the night before, getting up early to make our 8:05am ADR at Crystal Palace wasn’t too painful. We drove to the TTC and were parked and walking towards the monorail by 7:40am. We made it to the gates by 8:00am.
We quickly made our way towards the Crystal Palace, but stopped for the obligatory PhotoPass picture of the family in front of the castle. They also got a special picture with Tinkerbell.
So we were a little behind for check-in and had to wait about 10 minutes for our table. This is one of my favorite places to eat breakfast – mainly because it is well within the Magic Kingdom and you can get ADRs for an hour before the park opens. The fact that they have good food and characters for the kids makes it that much better.
I also like the fact that you can eat your breakfast and be out of there and waiting in the ‘hub’ for the ropes to drop to the different lands when the park officially opens. For those of you who have never done this (or an early CRT breakfast) – you are actually inside the park before rope drop, but you cannot get beyond the hub area by the castle, because they have actual rope barriers to keep you from going into the different lands (ie. Adventureland, Fantasyland, etc.) The trick to eating and being out at the ropes before they drop is to ask for your check as soon as your server brings out your drinks. This gets the process started to get your bill paid for. Since it is a buffet, it is easy for your server to get that for you – and they know the way it works (they know you are no Doofenshmirtz if you request this early.) Pay it immediately when they bring it out and then you can finish up eating and meeting characters and then casually stroll out the door just before 9am. Most people eat and then ask for the check, and then by the time it gets settled it is past 9am. And now you know… and knowing is half the battle. Goooooooo Joe! (obscure reference from my childhood.)
Well, we didn’t quite make it out the door before 9am, because we had to wait for Piglet to make his way to our table for DD before we left. This would not cause any problems, since this was predicted to be a low crowd day. Normally we are able to see all the characters before 9am, but we were not seated until close to 8:25 this time. So we finished up and left to go to Fantasyland.
We rode Dumbo first, then we walked straight on to Peter Pan’s flight.
On the way over towards Snow White’s Scary Adventures, DD had to stop and see her favorite character: Mary Poppins. If this was summer time, I would have tried to talk her into waiting until after we rode a few more rides to see Mary. Since we were nearly the only guests in Fantasyland (minus the lines starting to form at Dumbo) this wasn’t an issue. Since no one else was waiting to see Ms. Poppins, DD got several minutes of great interactivity with Mary. Priceless.
Next, we walked on to the Snow White ride with no wait - how great is Fantasyland when you do the early ADR for breakfast? The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh was next. The sign stated a 10 minute wait time, but it was walk-on. This meant we didn’t have time to play with some of the new interactive queue items, since people were starting to come in behind us. Well, we could have… but then it would have caused that awkward situation where the people behind you are not sure if they should be nice and wait behind you, or go around you while you play – thus creating another awkward moment as they pass you wondering if we would say anything to them for ‘cutting’ (which we wouldn’t.) So I decided to avoid that whole situation by motoring past the interactive stuff to get to the meat and potatoes of the attraction.
The Mad Tea Party was next, followed by an Alice and the White Rabbit meet.
We made our way over to ride the carousel and then It’s a Small World. At this point we were done with Fantasyland (minus Mickey’s Philharmagic – which we would ride later.) The time was now 10:58am – we completed all of this in an hour and 45 minutes. Sweet niblets! Love that early ADR!
Now it was time to go to Toontown so DD could ride her favorite thrill ride: Goofy’s Barnstormer. She had to do the Princesses Meet n Greet next and then we all went over to Pirates of the Caribbean. After that, we were getting hungry. We took the monorail over to the Contemporary resort so we could use Disney transportation to Downtown Disney. This sure beats going back to the TTC, driving to DTD, then driving back to TTC to get back to MK ASAP. OK?
We relax on the bus ride to DTD and get there around 2pm. Earl of Sandwich was then invaded by my crew. I LOVE that place – they have such great sandwiches! I always have to eat there when we go to Walt Disney World – it is on my cannot-miss-this-place-before-you-leave list. Here is the Hawaiian BBQ sandwich I had:
After eating our scrumptious sandwiches, we walked through some stores and had sundaes at the Ghirardelli Ice Cream Shop. After a while DS started complaining about his inner thighs hurting due to chafing (is that TMI?) So we caught a bus back to the Contemporary, then the monorail to the TTC so we could drive to Walgreen’s to get him some powder to relieve his burning thighs. In hindsight, it may have been better to drive the van to DTD this time. But, if we had (knowing my luck), he wouldn’t have had chafing and something would have occurred to require us to go back to the Magic Kingdom – making the plan of driving the van a whipping. Murphy’s Law, right? Heck, they should just call it BigTex’s Law – since stuff like that always seems to happen to me.
While driving to Walgreen’s, DD fell asleep in the van. We decided to go back to the condo so DS could go clean up and apply his stuff to his area (you know what I mean) and the girls would drive around and let DD sleep in the van. We then drove over to the Polynesian Resort to check in for our ‘Ohana ADR.
In hindsight, it may have been better to skip lunch. ‘Ohana should be renamed to O’ My Gawd That’s a Lot of Food. Actually, I think that is what it translates to in English. I will soon have my take on ‘Ohana posted as a review on the DIS Dads Club website (www.disdads.com). Speaking of shameless plugs for my other stuff on other sites – please check out our new DIS Dads PodCast. We have done our first podcast and should have the second one posted soon. It can be found here: http://disdads.com/?feed=podcast . (I hope this is allowed here… if not I will remove these links.)
This about sums up how we felt after ‘Ohana:
Notice the one hand on the belly, and slouched back in the seat. We were nearly miserable from all the food. But it was so good, we just couldn't stop eating it! (Oops - so much for tempting you to read the review, huh?)
After we stuffed ourselves silly, we slowly waddled our way to the van to drive back to the condo. I literally had to move the seat back to fit my now even more humongous self-contained food storage compartment behind the steering wheel. - aka my Buddha Belly. Disney transportation to a resort would have been really nice in this situation. I was barely able to stay awake on the drive to the condo, as my digestive system was putting in some major overtime.
Up next: the next chapter (I am still thinking of a name for it.)
Marking my spot!
