Our alarm went off the next morning at 6am and I actually popped right up. On this trip we had high hopes of making rope drop to combat the higher summer crowds. When we lived and worked at Disney, we didn’t often make it into the parks until around 9 or 10am. It’s hard to get up at the crack of dawn when you just worked a Magic Kingdom shift until 1am!
I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I will just tell you right now that this morning was my best Disney morning ever and probably the best morning of my life!
I’ll go ahead and give you a run down of our plans for the day, and then let you know how they worked out.
Magic Kingdom opened at 8am and we wanted to be there for rope drop and hopefully the Welcome Show.
Our Fastpass+ Reservations were:
Space Mountain: 9:30 – 10:30
Splash Mountain: 10:30 – 11:30
Big Thunder Mountain: 11:30 – 12:30
Park hop that night to Hollywood Studios for evening extra magic hours and Fantasmic!
We didn’t have any plans for food, other than a list of things we wanted to try and favorites we wanted to have again.
We got to the Pop Century Magic Kingdom bus stop around 6:45am and there wasn’t anyone in line.
(Yep, I had wet hair and I'm eating some trail mix on the way. My blouse is one of the tops from Lauren Conrad's Minnie Mouse line at Kohl's that I mentioned earlier.)
I took this to mean that a Magic Kingdom bus had probably just come and we’d be waiting for a while. Even though we planned to drive to the other parks, we figured it would be easier to just ride the bus to Magic Kingdom. A bus pulled up just a minute later and we were seated and on our way to the Magic Kingdom by 7am!
I absolutely love driving under the Magic Kingdom gates, it floods me with so many memories: memories from the trip my family took after I graduated and we stayed at the Polynesian, memories from surprising my mom by going to Afternoon Tea at the Grand Floridian the day before I started my college program, and memories of getting to work in my absolute dream location.
We pulled up to the park and hopped right off. Our suspicions were correct, riding the bus to the Magic Kingdom was way easier than driving and parking at the TTC to wait in line for the Monorail.
We walked up to the bag check, moved through quickly, and then got in a turnstile line. From what we remember, they were already letting people in to the entrance courtyard area in front of the train station. We waited a few minutes in line and then it was our turn to scan. If you remember my issues with my Magic Band the previous day, I was a little worried that the problem had been fixed with the hotel room door, but not with everything. I scanned my band, pressed my finger down, and the circle flashed blue. The horror! The Cast Member started to say something to me but before they even got a word out, the Mickey quickly changed to green and I was good to go!
Guests were already gathered under each tunnel, but we wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to take people-free pictures by the train station! When you come in after opening, there just always seems to be families camped out there, sitting on the wall, creating an undesirable backdrop. We were content to take individual pictures but a family offered to take our picture if we would take their picture.
After the photo op, it came time to decide which tunnel way we would choose. If you’ve read our previous posts, you know that we didn’t get a Fastpass for Seven Dwarves Mine Train because all of the daytime slots were filled. We had never ridden 7DMT, and it was our priority. However, we also didn’t want to waste the entire first hour of the day, the most valuable park time, on riding one attraction that might have a long line. We decided that we would line up under the right tunnel, head to 7DMT to see how long the line was, and if we didn’t feel like waiting that long right away, we’d be able to head to the other Fantasyland attractions infamous for their wait times.
As we stood with the crowd under the tunnel I couldn’t resist listening to the many conversations going on around us. It’s easy as avid Disney planners and visitors to forget that there are constantly people in the parks around us seeing these attractions for the very first time. I heard families discussing whether or not they’d try out Big Thunder Mountain first, or if they’d rather head somewhere else. It was such a special time and the anticipation in the air was palpable. After a few more minutes of waiting, we heard the train warming up and heading our way! It was all starting!
The train pulled up, full of smiling faces, and the Welcome Show was such a good way to start our day! Of course, we were over to the right, so our view wasn’t perfect. I felt like we were still able to take in the whole show from where we were.
The song wrapped up, and I was very glad to be wearing my sunglasses at this point. Because my eyes, no matter how hard I tried, were far from dry.
The ropes were rolled away, and slowly we began to enter the most magical of kingdoms. As people who are active on the Disboards, I know many of you have probably heard a lot of what we will discuss before, but I just want to include some tidbits along the way. The tunnels entering the Magic Kingdom are one of my very favorite places in the park. A lot of Disney trivia books, and the tour you (get paid!) to go on if you work in the Magic Kingdom, will impart to you that the tunnels have a specific purpose. As you walk through them, they are lined with attraction posters for things you will see inside the park, much like a movie theater has posters for upcoming films. This helps to “set the scene” and build anticipation for the wonderful things you will do. Once you get out of the tunnel, there are popcorn carts right there, providing you with the perfect aroma. Walt was very insistent that this was the illusion he wanted to enter the park, to enter “the show.” We are taught that all of the Magic Kingdom, every last cast member, shop, attraction, etc. is all a part of “the show” that guests are there to enjoy.
The nostalgia of it all was almost too much for me.
There is absolutely nothing in the world quite like entering the Magic Kingdom. We walked in passing the Town Square Theater and rounded the corner to see the glorious view of Cinderella’s Castle. Main Street was lined with the happy, smiling faces of cast members waving at us, welcoming us home.
We were practically skipping, and headed towards Fantasyland. In that moment, I didn’t care if we rode 7DMT, I didn’t care if we did anything! Just being there was enough. We made our way into Fantasyland and finally, after so long, we got to see the 7DMT walls down! Beautiful!
We made our way to the entrance and the wait time was around twenty minutes, awesome!
We knew it wouldn’t even take that long because the guests in the queue were all moving. We started to enter the line and we were immediately asked to carry a Flik Card. Ha! We totally expected to get many Flik Cards on this trip. If you aren’t familiar, those are the red cards that Cast Members will ask guests to carry through the line. These cards are scanned before and after they are handed to you, providing information about how long you waited in line. As former attractions Cast Members, we know the struggles of passing Flik Cards. Many guests either don’t want to carry the card, or have no idea what to do with it and don’t give it back to anyone. Also, many times I would scan a Flik Card and hand it to a party and then the guests behind them would ask “Why do they get a Fastpass and not us?!” To which I could only think, “Oh you poor souls, you really have NO clue what a Fastpass is, do you?”
Anyway, we are always targeted to carry Fliks, and today was no exception. We made our way through the queue quickly, which honestly was pretty non-existent. The only places that people were crowded around were around the various interactive elements of the queue. The funny part of that is that all of the interactive games etc. were turned off. The gem screens and all of the other things to play with weren’t on yet, which I would guess is to keep people moving through the line. We made our way to the merge point and into our seats within the next few minutes! AHHH! A whole brand new Disney attraction! We are both firmly anti-spoiler, so we hadn’t even watched a video of the ride up to this point. We really enjoyed the attraction, and Scott experienced one of the “high points of his life” (his words, not mine). When we were going up the hill and the “High Ho” music began to play, Scott started to clap in time to the music. Then, everyone in our train started to clap along with him! He was so proud to have started “a clap.” It was one of the moments you only experience at Disney, where so many people are coming together to enjoy something.
We enjoyed the ride a lot. I loved the sweet shadows on the walls, and the animatronics of the animals. Later that night we checked out the pictures and video on our
MDE app, which would’ve been absolutely PERFECT…if it wasn’t for the raised arms in front of us.
Sigh. Let’s start a plea right now, if the ride has a photo, and you aren’t in the back row, try to keep your arms down!
As we exited 7DMT, we looked at our phones and realized it was only 8:08am! The park was supposed to open at 8am, but we think we HAD to have been let in early. Wow, we still had so much of the early morning time left!
We decided that we would stay in Fantasyland to make the best use of our time and headed to another attraction infamous for its long standby wait: Peter Pan’s Flight!
This was a very high priority attraction for us because we really wanted to see the new interactive queue that had been opened since we left. There was absolutely no line at all, so to be honest, we didn’t really explore that much of the queue this time around. We could tell that there were some things that weren’t operational yet, namely the window screens. I had already heard that there was a really cool “shadow” wall in the queue and that there was an opportunity for pixie dust. As we were walking through, I watched a little boy stand in front of the shadow wall. Peter appeared and placed John’s top hat on the little boy’s shadow’s head, it was so cool! I wondered what else that wall could do, but we moved on knowing we’d come back and ride it again later. Then, in the last section of the queue we walked through a new little hallway and that’s when I stopped Scott and shouted “I SAW IT!” I saw pixie dust on Scott’s back! Gold animated pixie dust that looked exactly like the dust from the movie! I was so amazed and I’ve rarely experienced more magic in my life. However, because the dust was on Scott’s back, he didn’t get to see anything. We kept trying to walk back through and trigger the effect again, but it didn’t work again that time. We went ahead and got on the ride. I love the story of Peter Pan, and we have lots of silly and fun memories from this ride.
After Peter Pan’s Flight it was about 8:15am and we decided to ride it’s a small world.
It’s a slightly longer ride, so if you’re trying to pack in the most you can in an MK opening hour, I might save this one for later. There were four or five empty boats behind us.
We love riding this and playing our favorite game, which involves picking out one thing in each room and claiming it as our favorite. We try to pick different things every time.
After it’s a small world, we headed to The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. We received another Flik Card here. I love, love, love the world of Winnie the Pooh, specifically the classic original artwork, because that’s what I grew up reading. This is another ride that I just love. It’s not worth the 45 minute standby line it usually has in the middle of the day, but it’s definitely worth the fifteen or so minutes we waited for it this morning.
Upon exiting the ride, I really missed the Hundred Acre Woods shop that they have in
Disneyland! It’s themed so perfectly and they have a bakery shop there with a popular treat called the Tigger Tail that we absolutely loved. However, I stopped to look around the Winnie the Pooh shop and I was very excited to find the particular Winnie the Pooh book I grew up reading.
It’s a collection of A.A. Milne’s stories with the classic artwork. I used to check it out from the library and then renew it as many times as I was allowed. The book is heavy and costs around $40, so I decided against buying it. But Scott surprised me with it on my birthday a few weeks later, aww!
It goes without saying, we had an absolutely incredible morning in the Magic Kingdom. We were able to quickly get on ride after ride, the heat wasn’t too bad yet, and we were filled with a very special sort of energy.
If you don’t normally get to the park for rope drop, I suggest trying it once and seeing how you like it. It’s hard to sacrifice rest on any vacation, and specifically a Disney one, but it set you up to have the perfect day. All of that was just the first hour of the first morning!
Thanks for reading and we’ll see ya real soon!