Hope everyone is okay! We are at nearly the 60 day mark for our next trip in October, so I'm hoping to speed up the posting process for this in order to get it done before our next trip. It may be down to the wire if I make it at all!
Day 3, Part 2
We elected to head out to Magic Kingdom at about 6 pm. It does seem crazy that by this point, this was my uncle’s THIRD Disney park in two days. Taking a newbie to MK first seems like a no-brainer, but it’s just not how it worked out with park passes! Curse you, park passes!
On our way in, we got some Photopass pics.
I’d made a few more LL slots by this point, so we headed to Winnie the Pooh first, which is always a family favorite.
Next April saw the carousel and wanted to ride it. I may have mentioned in my last report that my dad tried to get her on the carousel but she was freaked out over it and we immediately got off before the ride started. So I was worried that would be the case here, but I was willing to try it anyway. Unfortunately, the line was super long, and I didn’t feel like it was a good use of our time to wait in a 30+ minute line for a ride she might not want to do. She had a mini tantrum, but after a few minutes we were able to distract her with a ride on Peter Pan’s Flight, which we also had a LL for.
After that, we took a moment to assess what we wanted to do. I had one more stacked LL for Haunted Mansion, but it wasn’t for another couple of hours and we couldn’t get another LL yet, and all the standby lines for things we wanted to ride were longer than we were willing to wait. I took a look at other return times and found out it’s a small world had a return time we could use immediately, so I elected to switch it to that, and then once we tapped in I made another HM return time for later.
This moment kind of represents a pattern I’ve noticed with LL. The demand for any individual attraction remained pretty consistent throughout the day. So if at 9 am you see a return time for a ride that’s just a few minutes in the future, you can be pretty assured that any time you want to get a return time for that ride, you’ll be able to. On the other hand, if the return time is several hours ahead by that point, you should snag it while you can if it’s important to you. Demand generally didn’t speed up or slow down for any attraction that I noticed.
After iasw, we were hungry and ready to get a spot for fireworks. I had a brilliant idea that I still maintain is brilliant despite some hiccups. We went over to Main Street and found a spot in the road in front of Casey’s, and while we were on our way over there I put in a mobile order for them. So we got to have a quick, delicious dinner without giving up our fireworks spot.
The hiccup in question came mostly when it was time to actually pick up the food. My dad took my phone because it had the order number on it, but it was apparently a madhouse in there, because I’m sure a lot of people had the same idea we did. So it took awhile for him to come back with the food, but when he did, it was great. I didn’t take pictures but I know we got a couple of hot dogs and corn dog nuggets, plus lots of fries and a couple of the mint lemonades. The lemonades were my absolute favorite thing of the meal, maybe one of my favorite things I’ve ever ate at Disney. I drank all of one by myself, and a significant portion of the other one.
Soon after we finished, the fireworks started. I have to say, I don’t love Enchantment. I had the pleasure of seeing Happily Ever After opening night and instantly fell in love with it. I thought the music was catchy, the projections and use of fireworks were great and memorable. I honestly struggle to remember the music for Enchantment and can’t tell you any visual moments that stood out for me, and by now I’ve seen it several times. I hate to sound like a curmudgeon but I do hope Happily Ever After comes back.
When the show was over, we decided we didn’t want to leave with the massive crowd and acted like salmon swimming upstream to get to Haunted Mansion for our fastpass. This is the kind of ride I think every Disney first-timer should experience. I love it.
Next we figured we had time for one more ride before we left, and we gave April the option of the carousel or the Tiki Room. She picked the carousel, so we headed over there, and by now there was no wait. Again, I was nervous about how she’d do on it since she would have to sit on a horse by herself, but she ended up loving it.
After that, the park entrance had cleared up enough that it finally felt like time to head back to the Wilderness Lodge. We got on a boat and then headed up to our room, where we all had a good night’s sleep.