Tuesday 03/30 (yesterday) - Second park day: Magic Kingdom. This day was a lot more challenging crowds-wise than EPCOT the day before. We are not early morning people but we *really* tried hard to make it there as soon as they opened the park. Unfortunately, we had a 20 minute wait for a Lyft and then a 15 minute drive to the park, followed by TTC + Monorail. We were walking onto Main Street at 7:30. At that point SDMT was at 50 minutes so we decided to skip it and walk on to PPF instead. Next we got in line for Speedway at DS7's request: It is his favorite ride in Magic Kingdom. Still, I kind of wish we had gone to something else before this one because they were just gearing up for this and were only running like five cars, so we ended up waiting 20 minutes in line even though we were only about 10 parties back. But maybe it was worth it for my son's sigh of happiness as our car INCHED its way around the track and his exclamation "Walt Disney is the GREATEST for thinking up a ride like this"! But the extra wait at Speedway meant that the Space line was up to 45 minutes by the time we got done, so we did Carousel of Progress instead. It has been so many years since I've seen this! Very cute and kind of a nostalgia trip, but it smells SO weird in that theater. What is that smell?!?
At this point we headed across the park to Jungle Cruise, DS7's other favorite ride. The wait was about 25 minutes. We had a great skipper and we could actually hear him, always a plus
I mobile ordered a Dole Whip Float and a Kakamora Float just as we were getting on the ride and we were able to pick it up right away when we got done. I LOVE the mobile order and pick-up for the ability to do stuff like this. I've definitely spent 30 minutes in line for a Dole Whip before and it's nice not to have to do that, especially if I'm going to have to spend 45 minutes in line for Small World.
By now it was already about 11 o'clock and we had been in the park for 2 1/2 hours and done three attractions and eaten a Dole Whip. Partly this was due to my son and husband's slow pace of touring. One or the other of them is always requesting to take a break to drink coffee, use the bathroom, or just rest their feet. But partly it was due to the lines being long even for non-headliner attractions.
We decided to split up at this point so I could ride BTMRR with a 15 minute wait while my husband and son went to Tom Sawyer Island. After I was done I waited for them in the phone charging area next to the Rapunzel bathrooms because SOMEONE (*cough*husband*cough*) took my phone off the charger the night before and it was now at about 15%. A text from my husband reported that my son was fading. Apparently all he wanted to do on Tom Sawyer Island was take a nap! It was about 12pm and the 85 degree heat combined with our 6am wake-up was really starting to get to us, plus it was getting SO crowded in the park at this point. I placed a mobile order for pickup in about 30 minutes at Cosmic Ray's and then hopped in the line for Haunted Mansion, which had suddenly dropped from 45 minutes to 15! Score! I figured we could quickly eat lunch after that and then head out of the park during the most crowded / hottest hours.
Here's where things went sideways a little bit with mobile order and COVID protocols: We got to Cosmic Ray's and of course, you can't go in until your order is ready, and it took so long for them to prepare our order -- I think about 25 minutes. There are really very few places to sit out there that aren't in the hot sun and the area was very crowded with others waiting for their mobile orders. The crowding outside the restaurant seems to defeat the purpose of the mobile ordering system for preventing viral spread. I acknowledge that being outside in a crowd is safer than being inside in a crowd, but it still seems like this part of the system could use some tweaking to prevent that "crowd around outside the restaurant" moment.
Anyway, we got our food and took it outside since all the inside tables were full (I would have preferred the air conditioning). The food was honestly pretty terrible, but at least I was able to fulfill my son's request for a hot dog with a GIANT FOOT LONG hot dog, which he actually ate in its entirety. (He loves hot dogs.) Then we headed over to the Contemporary for our Lyft pick-up about 1:30pm.
After a glorious 2 hr long nap and some relaxing at the hotel, we were headed back to MK at about 5:30pm. Wow, WHAT a difference in crowd level. Parts of the park were nearly empty. I took my son on Buzz Lightyear to give my husband a chance to do at least one "adult" ride on this day: he did Space Mountain with about a 30 minute wait. Buzz Lightyear was only about 15 minutes, so my son and I went to Sleepy Hollow for a Nutella fruit waffle snack while we waited. It was super yummy! It was pretty quiet there, and as we were sitting there we watched a custodian CM doing broom art!: Mickey, Minnie, and Donald. My son asked me "Why's he doing that?" and I told him, "Just to bring a little joy to your day" and I think that tickled the CM because he just smiled and smiled.
Hubby met us at Sleepy Hollow and we headed over to Splash. My son had decided that he wanted to do Splash as his "try ride." I have a rule that he has to be brave and try one ride that scares him a little bit. Otherwise, my son would never do anything new, ever. Splash had a 65 minute wait at 7pm, and we definitely waited all 65 minutes of it despite Touring Plans saying it would only be 38. On a positive note, it got dark as we were waiting, and all the lanterns came on. I have never been in this ride line at night -- it is beautiful! My son HATED Splash and says he is never going on it again.
At this point, Pirates had a 20 minute wait. I figured we could make it on Pirates, mobile order at Pecos Bill's, and get off the ride just in time to pick up some dinner before the restaurant closed. The Pirates line did move quickly and we had a fun ride -- this is a great one to close out a Magic Kingdom day, for sure. RAN across to PB's and got there just as they were closing the doors to the food pick-up and they were happy to see us. A little pixie dust here because I asked for ice waters and the guy who gave us our food said he couldn't give us water because they had already shut the machine down, but then he said, "just a moment," and went to the fridges and grabbed us three bottles of Dasani. It was so nice of him to do that, especially when we were late picking up! We had a nice quiet meal at Pecos Bill's. I really like this place. The dining area is beautiful and you can get corn dog nuggets: 'nuff said.
6:15 am in bus line means waking up around 5:30 am - on vacation! - for even a chance to hit some preferred rides. By 10:30-11:00 am, you've either done what you wanted to do, or lines are too long to want to keep going. So many people leave, we did too, and try to fill the rest of the day before maybe coming back later. Hence very busy pools (per our experience and other reports, glad it wasn't that way for you) and Disney Springs. We've been a handful of times and just can't really get around this. Not saying you had a bad time!
