Bambi and I had just checked in to the Animal Kingdom Lodge and were on our way via Disney Transportation to the Magic Kingdom. Madison and Evan were already there, having hitched a ride with Grandma & Grandpa right from the airport. Now that you're all caught up....
We entered the Magic Kingdom (without kids for the first time - that felt very weird) to see that they had a band playing in our honor! But for some reason, they were facing the wrong way. Oh well, it's the thought that counts!
Our first order of business - food. The snacks that Southwest gives you on the airplane are perfect if you're either a)not hungry to begin with, b)2 years old and have a stomach the size of a tennis ball, or c)some kind of model that survives on ice chips a Ritz cracker a day. However, we are none of the above and it was now almost 2 pm. Luckily, one of our favorite places to eat is also one of the closest to the entrance. We ordered our food but could not find a place to sit. We found a nice railing outside to lean on, which turned out to be a blessing in diguise, because it allowed me to take what has become to be known as
One of My Most Favoritest Pictures In the Known (And Most of the Unknown) Universe©
For those of you counting at home, that's 3 Levels of Awesome in this picture. Casey's Corn Dogs, My Lovely Wife, and Cinderella's Castle.*
*Levels of Awesome are listed in geographic order, starting at the camera and moving away. Nothing should be inferred about the relative importance of any level based on how they were listed in the description.
So, with some delicious deep fried goodness filling us up, we decided to do what any good parents would do - find our kids and give them the FastPasses to Buzz Lightyear.
Yeah, right! We sneaked over to Tomorrowland - commando crawling, hiding behind rocks and wearing fake glasses and mustaches so our kids wouldn't see us and demand/beg for the FastPasses.
I'm not sure this ride is as much about battling The Evil Emperor Zurg as it is battling the person next to you. And has been the case since the beginning of time, Bambi took me to the woodshed on this one.
(The glare is pretty bad, but the score is 229,900)
I still hate this ride.
We grabbed some Space Mountain FastPasses before starting to make our way over to Fantasyland, where Bambi's parents were about to take the kids on it's a small world. On the way, I noticed this wacky tourist guy enjoying PUSH the trash can do his bit
I walked around him a bit and glanced into his bag. I didn't want to make it obvious by taking a picture, but he had a pretty sweet looking remote in there.
Our travels took us up along the construction walls, where we saw a nice new castle taking shape.
(Impressive zoom, this camera has.
)
We enjoyed a few minutes in the air conditioning and shade of the exit to its a small world when we were finally reunited with our kids.
They wanted to ride the carpets, so we headed over to Adventureland. The sun was pretty brutal that day, so while the family was in line for the ride, I snuck over to gather up a little surprise.
It's not often you get to see a carpet-eye view back down off the ride...
The timing was perfect, as I returned with a little treat just as they were getting off the ride.
Being evolutionarily limited to only two hands, I only bought two Dole Whip Floats. (Come on, Darwin - let's see if we sprout a few more carrying appendages in the next couple of generations!) Between the 6 of us, they went pretty quick. And - it was the first Dole Whip Floats for both Grandma & Grandpa. Based on their reaction, however, they will not be the last.
As I mentioned, it was hot this day - and the kids were pretty tired from the plane ride and the excitement of the surprise. They wanted to go back and swim, but after one more ride...
It helped that Pirates was nearly a walk on. I say nearly, because we did have to stop once for that picture, and once about 30 feet later in the queue. I was carrying Evan and we were singing a jolly rendition of the Pirate's theme, when he punctuated the "ho" in "Yo Ho!" with a fist in the air. However, on the way to the air, the fist caught my glasses, knocking them clear off my face. I had a hard time finding them. Not because I'm blind without them, but because it's really, really dark in there.
However, glasses found, we jumped on our boat and set sail for the Caribbean!
We wants the red head!
After Pirates, the kids and grandparents went headed back to the hotel while we crossed the park to use up those Fast Passes to Space Mountain. I don't think there is a ride in Disney World when the Fast Pass users walk so fast by so many people in the standby line and get so many dirty looks. A good portion of the queue is long and straight. As we power walked/jogged by all of those people standing in line we commented on how cool some of those new interactive games looked. Not cool enough to stop, though - we had a mountain to climb! Or zoom around, as the case may be.
Why is Bambi smiling so big in this picture? Well, it could be that it was (finally) her first ride on Space Mountain since the refurb a few years ago. But more than likely it because she has a bumbling fool for a husband that occasionally is good for something. And this one of those times. We had given our FastPasses to the FastPass Gate Keeper, but the line to actually board the ride was still 50 or 75 people long. The person loading was looking for a party of two to fill out the train. Surely, there had to be a party of two somewhere in front of us. He called once and I said nothing. He called twice and I said nothing. Finally, after he called a third time for a party of two, I grabbed Bambi by the hand, started pulling her up past the line and called out "we're a party of two!"
So we FastPassed the FastPass line and jumped into our rocket with no waiting.
I was carrying the camera as we started the ride and as we entered the tunnel of the blue squares, I thought "Hmmm... I wonder." I kept the flash off, held the camera tight to my body to try to minimize the shake, and pushed the shutter release. The exposure ended up being 2.5 seconds and the picture turned out like this...
On our way out, I noticed the DJ stand at the Tomorrowland Stage and immediately added something to my "want!" list for my own MacBook.
We just caught Dale...
...and Chip....
...coming out for a dance party. But it was hot and we wanted to get over to Animal Kingdom in time to do some swimming with the kids.
And in pure Disney fashion, they arranged for the same band that played us in to serenade us on the way out.
Coming Up Next: Swimming! Eating! Shopping!
).
).
The current plan it to just enjoy the resorts and the general Bay Lake area for a couple of days after the cruise, so Ill likely be a bit more flexible on my end of the scheduling. Dolewhips at the Polly or a nosh at DTD or Boardwalk might be good posibilities.
Impressive. Most impressive. 
<--Them. Us -->
