David was actually up and moving at 730, so we were in the parking lot just before 9am. We met up with Illinoisboy just inside the park and immediately made our way over to
Space Mountain for FastPasses. While waiting for our FP time, we hit up the rest of Tomorrowland (we missed
Carousel of Progress, and deliberately gave the
Monsters Inc Laugh Floor a miss). When we went back to Space Mountain, it was down, so we moved on to Fantasyland. (Did you know most people will walk the park clockwise? Adventureland is always most crowded in the morning, while Tomorrowland can be nearly empty. Tour the park in a counter-clockwise fashion to minimize crowd impact.)
We FPed
Winnie the Pooh (why is the FP distro all the way over at
Philharmagic?). When we got the
Pooh FPs, it popped out "surprise" FPs for
Philharmagic for that very minute, so we bypassed the queue and went inside. I'm using the Lines app for the iPhone, so when I saw SM was running again, we went back, then popped into
Pooh on the return loop. We did
Snow White and
Peter Pan, then had lunch at Pinocchio Village Haus; I was very pleased to note that the Chicken Parm was a piece of real chicken breast, and the tomato sauce on the penne was rather fresh, with large slices of garlic, rather than a generic marinara. Disney food is much better than it used to be!
We walked on to
Haunted Mansion; the new "scenic route" adds a 5-7 minute stroll through an interactive cemetery, with more joke-headstones, and a variety of cute things to look it. It
is optional; you can still do the direct route into the attraction, but the new area is cute. We hit the
Hall of Presidents, where I promptly napped out (does ANYONE manage to stay awake in there for the whole 22 minutes in the summertime?).
Big Thunder Mountain had almost no wait, so we jumped right on it, then got on line for
Splash Mountain - which was apparently down for service. We stood in line for 20-30 minutes and moved precisely nowhere, so we ducked out, got FastPasses (for 630pm!) and moved on. We got blocked by the tail end of the parade at the bridge over to Adventureland, so we watched them pass by, and crossed as soon as they were gone.
We got on
Pirates of the Caribbean - the right-hand line was nearly deserted until the final turn down to the loading dock (just like most people will walk clockwise, most people, presented with two queues where neither is obviously slower, will choose the one on the left). When we got out, we headed over to what I
thought was the Dole Whips stand - we went to the one behind Aladdin's Carpets, next to the Tiki Room, which was, of course, the wrong stand. We had a nice refreshment, though. At that point, we needed to head out, as David and I had brought wet wipes and clean shirts to go to dinner at Narcoosee's, and needed to hit the car. We bypassed the Jungle Cruise (so that's only 3 major rides we missed). We moved the car to the Grand Floridian and met Glenn and Mark for dinner; Narcoosee's was fabulous.
Since we ultimately had some time to kill (none of us wanted to get wet after dinner, so we forwent
Splash Mountain), David begged me to go back to the room to get the battery for the camera - I bought him a nice one with a specialized Fireworks mode, and he wanted pics. My feet were hurting and I wanted a change of footwear, so I indulged him; we got back to MK about 830 and reconnected with Glenn and Mark. They had two FPs for
Space Mountain, so Mark and I had a nice sitdown while Glenn and David did the ride again. We strolled the Main Street shops; I bought a few pins and David bought Mickey-shaped pasta for my mother and my sister, then we headed up to the corner by Edy's Ice Cream for the Memories & Me video show (how amazing is that?) and Wishes. (We did get some great photos of the fireworks -
http://s253.photobucket.com/albums/hh48/DrGaellon/Disney%20June%202011/June%204%20Magic%20Kingdom/Wishes/). After the second Memories & Me show (we sat and had a rest on the Tomorrowland Terrace seating area, with a perfect view of the castle), we headed across the bridge to Liberty Square. We got another sweet treat at Sleepy Hollow (Coke floats, mmmm), then had a seat on the wall outside the Christmas shop for the
Main Street Electrical Parade. After the parade, we two very tired boys headed back to our place to hit the sack...
