Jingle Bells....AKL....Disney for 10 Whole Days! ** Updated June 2015: Videos Added**

[thornton0511]

Welcome to the Magic Kingdom…well Thank you!

Our morning started bright and early this day as the excitement of our first day to the Magic Kingdom was finally here! Due to our arrival date and the taping of the Christmas parade we had opted to not visit MK until today. Since it would be the in laws first time ever we wanted it to be just right. But I gotta tell you being in the World for three days now I was itching to get there. Obviously I had decided to wear my new Dumbo shirt. We had our breakfast which mainly consisted of the chocolate donuts that we had purchased downstairs the night before. We also opened the drapes to see if we had any visitors this morning. This was our view for breakfast. It never did get old either….

People we have giraffes! Once we had finished we headed down to the lobby to meet the in laws. The plan was to be on a bus to MK by 8am for the 9am opening. The Welcome Show is not to be missed on your very first morning to the Magic Kingdom after all!

We took a quick pic of the kiddos while waiting for their grandparents to meet us downstairs. Then we headed down to the bus stop. At exactly 8:06 we were on a bus headed to MK. Not too shabby. We arrived at 8:23am.

We opted for the right tunnel and found a spot on the side by the entrance to wait for the show to start. Sydney was having a hard time seeing so I held her. She is 7. Holding a seven year old for the entire welcome show is hard. I need to lift some weights before our next trip lol. But I wanted to make sure that my little one could see and that was all that mattered. My DH could not hold her because he has a bad back and had pulled something about a week before the trip that no chiropractor could seem to fix in time so he had to be very careful as to what he did. Anyways the show started right on time at 8:45.

Oh how I love this welcome show so much! The first time we saw it was in 2011 on our first trip as a family and it was not only our first Disney day but also Mother's Day (you know I had a hand in planning that one right?) It was one of the most magical moments of my life and I cried like a big old baby all the way into the park and down Main Street USA. I love Disney…did you know that? The moment when you hear the train whistle and they start to sing that Casey Jr is coming down the track with a smoky stack…..I get goosies just thinking about it. Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah indeed. Today's show did not disappoint and soon enough the countdown was done and yes I still cried like a baby….all the way down Main Street.

Speaking of Main Street I had almost forgotten that it was decorated for Christmas. Oh…my…goodness oh my goodness!

Hi there! I love you little Disney soldier guy!

Once I got over my shock and awe of the decorations I caught up with my family and we happily skipped down Main Street toward the most awesome castle IN THE WHOLE WORLD!

We stopped only for a moment to take a few of those famous I am in Disney standing in front of Cinderella's Castle life is perfect pictures and then headed toward Fantasyland. What ride would we be start our day with…hmmmmm.
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[DisneyKid4Life]

You're so right. I would never tire of waking up and seeing giraffes.

That is truly awesome that you cried upon seeing the Good Morning show. It really is special especially now that it's the only one of its kind left anywhere, east or west coast. Truly special.

 

[thornton0511]

You're so right. I would never tire of waking up and seeing giraffes.

That is truly awesome that you cried upon seeing the Good Morning show. It really is special especially now that it's the only one of its kind left anywhere, east or west coast. Truly special.

Yeah I'm a big baby lol. I hope they never get rid of the show because it is truly magical!

 

[thornton0511]

A Morning in Fantasyland
I know that a lot of people head to PP right off the bat (and it is my favs) but for some reason we always start off with Winnie the Pooh. Don’t' know why we just do it. And it’s a walk on first thing in the morning despite the 5 minute posted time. Do they ever say 0?

DH and I decided to sit in the front hunny pot and let the kids and their grandparents have the one behind us. I was on video recording duty most of this morning so not a whole lot of pics during the rides. Sorry. DH did try to get a few of his parents with the kids behind us and everytime we would hit a straight away the track would turn just before we could snap a picture lol.

He they come…quick! Dang track turned, its fuzzy. LOL! We finally gave up and just enjoyed the rest of the ride.

After Pooh bear we skipped on over to the spinning tea cups. Three trips now and DH had still yet to ride this. Even after talking him into Primeval Whirl….which he ended up loving, he still would not get on.

DFIL also decided to sit this one out. This was not going to stop the rest of us though! Another walk on and soon we were spinning out of control and laughing the entire time!

DMIL was having the time of her life! The fact that I was able to capture moments like this are priceless.
After Mad Tea Party (gotta plug the "official" name in there) we scooted on over to Tomorrowland Speedway for a quick ride because this can have a brutal line in the afternoon.

I think we did actually wait 5 minutes for this one. DFIL rode with Cory, DH with Sydney, and I rode with DMIL. I refuse to ride with my DD. I know that sounds awful but this girl is a manic when she drives this thing and it is too much for me. And she has a maniacal laugh to go with her out of control driving. DH seemed to survive the ride and we were soon headed for our first FP+ of the day.

We were in line for PP by 9:30am with three other rides under our belt. Today was a good day.

We hopped into our ships and sailed off to Neverland by twos. I love every aspect of this ride so I get why the lines are so dreadfully long for standby. This ride is the epitome of Walt's idea of a ride that takes you into a world filled with imagination IMO.

Once we safely landed back on the ground we headed over to the Carrousel….because it was right there. It was 9:45 and it had a 5 min wait which means wait for the next cycle.

We all picked our horsey's and made our way around and around Fantasyland in a circle….wheeee……I'm five.

Never too old for a horsey ride I always say.
After this we decided to grab a FP for PP. But we did not just double dip. Nope. We went for the triple. Judge me if you will. I don’t care. Makes no difference now seeing how no one will ever get paper FP's from a machine again. Sigh. Since we had our KTTWC and our original Disney tickets we were able to make this happen. So we had PP and Little Mermaid. I will tell you now though that yes even though we did this a lot during our stay we almost always gave our second set to people waiting in the standby line for rides. Just trying to spread a little Disney love with some pixie dust and fastpasses.

Since IASW was still under rehab we decided at this point to head out of Fantasyland towards Liberty Square, but first we had to make a detour through a highly anticipated new restroom area. I was so excited!!!!!
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[DisneyKid4Life]

Ugh, I have a very depressing story about 0 wait times. And you're gonna get an advance. Picture it... PP showing 5 minutes during night EMH. No line. CM's tried to change the time for me so I could photograph it at 0, but they needed the wait time card to go through to do it, so do that and come back after riding for the photo. So we took the card through, rode, AND... I TOTALLY FORGOT TO GO BACK FOR THE PHOTO!!! Yeah... depressing.

Aww such great photos on the Tea Cups. Look at all those smiles.

 

[thornton0511]

Ugh, I have a very depressing story about 0 wait times. And you're gonna get an advance. Picture it... PP showing 5 minutes during night EMH. No line. CM's tried to change the time for me so I could photograph it at 0, but they needed the wait time card to go through to do it, so do that and come back after riding for the photo. So we took the card through, rode, AND... I TOTALLY FORGOT TO GO BACK FOR THE PHOTO!!! Yeah... depressing.

Aww such great photos on the Tea Cups. Look at all those smiles.

Oh my goodness that is awful! When we get a ride card we usually forget that we have it until after we are through riding and then we are like....whoops...um here's your card back...sorry about that. Dang that stinks that you did not get your photo though.
We always get so many interesting photos and videos from the teacups. It is one of my favorite rides to film. Thank you!

 

[thornton0511]

From Frontierland to New Fantasyland

After we had grabbed some a few FPs we headed in the direction of the new Tangled rest area. Apparently we stopped first outside Pinocchio's Village Haus for a photo and for some odd reason no one was wearing their sunglasses despite the obviously blinding sun.

I like to take you on a photo journey through the best themed rest area in all the land….

Words cannot even begin to describe the awesomeness of this place. I could literally live here, and as a bonus have somewhere to go when I need to go lol. Seriously though if I could find a way to have Disney build this exact replica in my backyard I would spend all of my time there. It is sooo cool! As much as I hated to not spend the entire day there I knew that we had to forge ahead and so I left. After all we had another FP+ to get to.

Big Thunder Mountain. A family favorite. This is Cory's favorite ride of all time. He will literally stay on and ride all day long if the CMs would allow it. Poor Sydney has to be talked in to getting on this ride every time but always enjoys it afterward. Everyone enjoyed the ride although my DFIL was not sure if he would want to ride again. Once we got off the ride we noticed that one of our times was open for getting another set of FP so we grabbed some for BTMRR.

It was now 10:30am and we were in our window for using our Little Mermaid FP (10:10-11:10). Since we were not sure if we were going to be back in this part of the park to use our BTMRR FP we gave them away and headed towards New Fantasyland for the first time ever…eekkk!

Wow the attention to detail in this area is just as wonderful as the new tangled area is! I can only imagine how awesome the mine train will be if and when it ever opens lol.

Soon enough we had made our way over to Prince Eric's castle and turned in our FPs. WARNING I took quite a few pics in this ride so prepare yourself.

I thought this ride was adorable. Ariel was my favorite growing up (I had the soundtrack with every song memorized…..still do) and she is also Sydney's favorite so we loved the ride. The animatronics are amazing and so real life feeling.
So after our journey under the sea we decided to leave the princess area and head in another direction. Where would the path take us?
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[thornton0511]

Circus Fun and Smoothies

We continued straight past the Little Mermaid area into Storybook Circus. On our last trip parts of this area were open including one of the Dumbos and Barnstormer, but that was it. It was neat to finally see firsthand how it all came together.

The first thing we did was get in line for Barnstormer. The SB was about 10 minutes, which never feels long when the weather is great and there are so many things to look at do while you are in line.

Soon enough we had boarded our very small plastic kids plane (the seats on this ride can be hard on one's back and we have learned when to lean up to keep your back from slamming into the plastic seat) and we were off. We wanted to make sure on this trip that the kids enjoyed as many of the rides with their grandparents by riding with them so this allowed DH and I to ride a lot together (which never ever happens) and it made the rides really fun….we are now both five when we ride together, so it was a win win for everyone.

After the ride we absolutely had to go ride Dumbo….my Dumbo. It also had a posted wait time of 10 minutes.

One thing I could not really understand is how the new queue works with the play area for the kids. My understanding is that its included with your wait time but yet every time we were in line we were told that you hop out to play and then get back in just whenever you are done….I don't know why that is so hard for me to grasp but it is lol. Regardless it really is a neat idea and the kids really seem to enjoy running around especially the little ones. Almost so that I could see getting them out of there to ride Dumbo might be a challenge.

While we were waiting I decided to have my pic taken, since I had my baby elephant friend on my shirt it only made sense. I do really love you Dumbo….

Soon enough it was our turn to fly in the air. Did you ever see an elephant fly?

After we had landed it was just after 11am and we had about 30 min to kill before our PP fastpasses.

So we decided to make a detour for my DH so he could get his favorite snack in all of WDW from here

He has an obsession with the smoothies from here. This is where most of his snack credits go when we are on the dining plan.

And I will give it to him they are really good, and very refreshing in May when we visit and it's like 95 degrees out and 150 percent humidity lol.

Soon enough it was time for us to take flight with Peter Pan again.

DH was sad when I told him that he could not take his beloved smoothie on the ride with him and he decided to suck it down while we were waiting in line brain freeze or not he was going to finish that smoothie before boarding his ship.

Here we go….off to Neverland!

After this we had a little bit of time to kill before our final FP+ of the day so we decided that this would be a good choice.

The wait time must not have been long because I do not have it written down how long we waited. We all picked up our 3D glasses and waiting for the door to magically open.

Then we found our seats and waited for the fun to start. Man it felt good to just sit down for a spell. We love this show so very much and it was indeed a good change of pass for our extremely accomplished morning. The time was now 11:45 and we had one last FP+ to get to before a very special lunch…..

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[thornton0511]

Amazon Cruises and Shake You Groove Thing….oh My!
It was now at little after 12:00pm and we were headed into Adventureland to use our last scheduled FP+

Jungle….I mean Jingle Cruise.

I loved the holiday overlays and thought that the change they made was really neat.

Soon we were boarding our boat and our captain was taking us on a cruise down the amazon.

The ever famous "backside of water" ….never gets old…..ever!
I am always a sucker for vintage Disney rides and Jungle Cruise is one of my favorites. I enjoy the animatronic animals and the corny jokes. I was happy to see that they had new holiday ones to match the new décor. I was happy to have gotten to experience this on our trip.

The in laws seem to enjoy the ride too.
After the ride we had a very special ADR planned for 1:05pm and were going to try and check in early since we were getting kind of close but then we heard a familiar sound coming from the hub….

Yes it was Move It! Shake It! So much for checking in early it was time for us to get our groove on! Well sort of anyways. I am always the one filming and taking pictures from the sidelines while DH tries to get our kids to dance. They just sort of stand there lol. This year was no different but that was not going to stop DMIL and DH from shaking it this way and moving it like that.

And this guy had no problem getting his groove thing on obviously.

As much as I hated to tear everyone apart from this it was now time for us to check in for lunch. You will have to wait for the next post to find out where though!
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[Poohbear77]

Table of Contents Who Are We? Life Lesson Number 1:There is no such thing as a "foolproof plan" Disney Ninja Skills Adventures In DFW Day 0: Here We Go! A Day With No Plans and Oh Those Magic Bands! Lunch at Downtown Disney An Afternoon in Downtown Disney Sharing Our First Vacation Day with a Very Important Person Life Lesson #2: Never resort hop using Disney transportation to new places if you are experiencing sleep deprivation Beaches and Cream For Dinner&&Yes Please! Detour to Yacht Club It's an Animal Kingdom Kind of Day A Green Mickey is a Happy Mickey Checking in and What the Heck is a Kudu? The Long Trek....to Our Room Lunch....FINALLY The One Where I Make A Wrong Turn Braving Expedition Everest Dinner at Boma An Early Morning with EMH Fun Revisiting Some Old Favorites and Making Some New Memories Lunch at Sci-Fi Finishing an Afternoon at the Studios Life Lesson #3.... The Park Hopping Drama Comes to an End…… An Evening at Epcot Dinner at Biergarten A Perfect Way to Finish a Day Welcome to the Magic Kingdom…well Thank you! A Morning in Fantasyland From Frontierland to New Fantasyland Circus Fun and Smoothies Amazon Cruises and Shake You Groove Thing….oh My!

Enjoying your report

 

[SimplyGoofy]

What an absolute debacle adding the park hoppers! I'm glad you thought ahead and brought all of the magic bands with you.

You got a lot accomplished in Magic Kingdom that morning! I'm totally with you on stacking the Fastpasses - if I was in Disney when that was an option, I would've done the same thing!

I can't wait to see where you went for lunch!

 

[DisneyKid4Life]

Haha, the "facing the sun" photos are some of my favourites... when it's other people, lol.

Haha, yeah my thoughts exactly on the Mine Train Jenn... IF it ever opens. Oy.

Ahh the Jungle Cruise. I remember when this was first announced I was expecting this massive overlay with animals in Santa Hats and such. Thankfully I heard a little about it before I went so I was able to lower my expectations substantially and then I quite enjoyed it. No matter what, it is a true classic.

Move It Shake It

 

[thornton0511]

There's a Rumbly in my Tumbly

When I left off we were just about to check in for our lunch ADR that was scheduled at 1:05pm. This was one of the first ADR's that I had scheduled, and kept, at the 180 day mark…that's kind of a big deal for me. It was a first and a must for this trip…..we had a date with…..pooh bear and his friends!

We checked in at the podium at 12:50 and found a place to sit on the veranda while we waited.

I love saying that. This place was so beautiful and I could not wait to see inside! At some point while waiting we realized that we were missing a member of our family….DFIL. We found him soon enough at the complimentary ice water jug filling up his water bottles …plural…..bottles. Did you catch that? Good grief. Sometimes you just have to laugh about things. While we waited I just sat there and staring at the castle along the way and just thinking about how perfect life was at this very moment….love Disney….did you know that?

Anyways at some point our buzzer went off and we were escorted inside…..so excited so excited!

Oh….my….goodness are you kidding me with this place?
I took a few of these guys….

And then you get to that point where you always remember to look up….

Oh my goodness!!!!

And to top it off apparently it was Friendship Day! Surprises around every corner people. So happy.
We were then taken to our table. This was our view across the way to my left….

And this was located behind me on my right….

And life was good.
We had taken the kids to Chef Mickey's last year and it was so loud and chaotic. This character buffet was very much relaxed and quiet to me. It was great. Before we left to fill our first plates Pooh himself made an appearance.

After getting our bear hugs we were off to get some grub. I loved the selections here. Alas once again I do not have pics of the food. Whomp Whomp Whomp. Sorry.
Before too long our second friend surprised us….and apparently tried to take a selfie.

Silly donkey! Eeyore has always held a special place in my heart. He is my favorite and I love him so very much. I get excited when I get reunited with my friend. He is always losing his tail due to his sawdust stuffing. Top that off with you house of sticks always falling down and having to eat thistles….I hear ya Eeyore life can really suck sometimes. But I love his little donkey face.

Soon enough Tigger decided to bounce his way over…..

And then I finally got to meet the little piglet that I have waited my whole life to meet…and I am pretty sure I knocked down my own children to get to him

Just kidding. Sheesh what kind of mother do you think I am? I was really happy though. And he was so stinking cute…and pink…and he made kissy noises. My new bestie.

Oh yeah and the kids got their chance to hug on him too.

Now earlier during lunch the parade song came on and all of the children lined up with the characters and marched through the restaurant. Sydney definitely was up for this. Not so much with my 12 year old…obviously. Well apparently my DH had some sort of bet with DS and he lost so guess what he had to do…..

Yup. March in the next parade. I don't recall what the bet was but DS was none too happy that he lost. All I have to say is you have to know when to hold em and know when to fold em son. Lol.

So after we got to that point where everyone is on their tenth bowl of soft serve ice cream and others are playing with the ice cube rings in their soda…

we decided that friendship day had come to an end and it was time to go. It was a wonderful experience and I would definitely eat here again in a heartbeat! We no longer had a rumbly in our tumbly, but were we up to more park touring? Wait and see….
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[thornton0511]

Enjoying your report

Thank you so much!

 

[thornton0511]

What an absolute debacle adding the park hoppers! I'm glad you thought ahead and brought all of the magic bands with you.

You got a lot accomplished in Magic Kingdom that morning! I'm totally with you on stacking the Fastpasses - if I was in Disney when that was an option, I would've done the same thing!

I can't wait to see where you went for lunch!

Yes the upgrade fiasco was a bit ridiculous and we were happy to put that behind us for sure! We LOVE getting to a park at rope drop. You can just get so much done and its a great feeling. Ahhh Faspasses.....I will miss them so much. But we will adapt and embrace the new changes....right? Meh....maybe not so much. BTW I love your Mickey Mouse Rizzo Avatar! That is awesome!!

 

[thornton0511]

Haha, the "facing the sun" photos are some of my favourites... when it's other people, lol.

Haha, yeah my thoughts exactly on the Mine Train Jenn... IF it ever opens. Oy.

Ahh the Jungle Cruise. I remember when this was first announced I was expecting this massive overlay with animals in Santa Hats and such. Thankfully I heard a little about it before I went so I was able to lower my expectations substantially and then I quite enjoyed it. No matter what, it is a true classic.

Move It Shake It

Lol blinding sun pics seem to follow me on all of my vacations hence:

Gah! And they're on my stupid head in this one lol!

Oh the mine train....and to think some of us here on the disboards really and truly believed that we would have a soft opening in Decmeber.....bahahahaha not even close!

Oh my goodness I thought the same thing with Jingle Cruise! I really thought that the elephants would have on Santa hats. Good grief. I really do wish that I could have gotten one of those limited time magic posters for the Jingle Cruise overlay. Stupid LTM. I think the week we were there it was something like "Donate your money to our cause and we will give all the children Duffy bears" or something. Which I think is great and I am for all the children in the world having a Duffy cause he is AWESOME, but that was a stupid idea for LTM...just sayin

I thought you might like the move it shake it part lol!

 

[emmysmommy]

Hi Jenn! I'm still reading through all the updates but what a time getting to Florida! Wow! Talk about stressful. We ended up arriving at WDW on the same day. Emily and I were there from 12/5 through 12/15. I'll be interested to follow along and see if our paths would have crossed.

 

[DisneyKid4Life]

I don't hear a lot about lunch at Crystal Palace. It's mostly breakfasts, so cool to hear about something different.

But... I'm kind of shocked to confess I have never even set foot in here before.

Awwww, how sweet of you to let your kids in on the character hugs though, lol.

 

[thornton0511]

Hi Jenn! I'm still reading through all the updates but what a time getting to Florida! Wow! Talk about stressful. We ended up arriving at WDW on the same day. Emily and I were there from 12/5 through 12/15. I'll be interested to follow along and see if our paths would have crossed.

Hey Brenda I am so happy to have you read along! I have enjoyed reading your TR's (especially your current one with the Cinderella suite tour....how amazing is that?!) I think it is so neat that you and Emily get to take special trips to Disney just the two of you. I am hoping to get to do the same with my Sydney when she is a bit older. Mother/daughter trips sound like so much fun! I am following Rob along in his TR and saw that we were apparently all there in December. How funny to see so many of us there at the same time! It will be interesting to see if any of our paths met while there for sure

 

[thornton0511]

I don't hear a lot about lunch at Crystal Palace. It's mostly breakfasts, so cool to hear about something different.

But... I'm kind of shocked to confess I have never even set foot in here before.

Awwww, how sweet of you to let your kids in on the character hugs though, lol.

The only reason we did lunch is because we paid for the dining plan and I just can't justify using a TS credit for a breakfast. We used 2 for Cinderella's castle last year, and while it was an amazing memory, I am still have regrets using those 2 credits for a breakfast! lol. Lunch was really yummy though and the selections were quite good. I would like to try breakfast and pay oop at some point for sure! This was our 3rd trip and the first time we have done crystal palace so you will get no judgements from me on not stepping foot in the place yet. It really is breathtaking though.

Yeah yeah what's a mom to do...had to share the characters with them I suppose....lol