Keepin' the Magic, Keepin' the Magic...An August 2014 trip report!

xlsm · Aug 14, 2014

Welcome Foolish Mortals...to the happiest cruise that ever sailed around the world to meet the Yeti in Tattooine...or something like that.

Hello everyone! :wave2:

Welcome to my FIRST EVER trip report on the DIS!

My family has just returned from an amazing week at Walt Disney World, and our home base was my favorite place in the world, The Wilderness Lodge! We stayed from August 5 thru August 12, 2014, and had a wonderful time.

So step away from the walls, keep your hands and arms inside the carpet, because the Yeti is on our tail, and we have so much to see and do :tink:

We'll begin with Intros. Our cast of characters include me, the "S" in xlsm:

I'm a lifelong Disney Kid. I was raised on the movies, the shows...you know, way back when the Disney Channel was a premium cable channel that you had to pay extra for, like HBO, and the best part of your life was the free preview weekends when you could binge on Mickey Mouse Club and Kids, Incorporated. I was down with Justin, Ryan, Britney, Christina, JC, Tony, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Keri Russell before their pop radio, movie, television, and The Voice careers. Rescue Rangers and Duck Tales were my afternoon snack entertainment.

I had a Little Mermaid lunchbox...and pants. Yes, pants. Beautiful late 80s/early 90s "jam" pants covered in pictures of Ariel and the gang. God,I loved those pants.

My favorites:
Princess - Snow White, Tiana, Rapunzel, Anna
Non-Princess Character - Don't make me choose, please
Movie - Princess and the Frog, Tangled, Lilo and Stitch, Beauty and the Beast
(Ugh...choosing is HARD folks. This is torturous and unfair!!)
Park - I used to say Epcot, but after this trip it's Magic Kingdom
Ride - Splash Mountain, Haunted Mansion, Tower of Terror, Everest, Star Tours

My co-stars, the X, L, and M of xlsm, my DH (M) and my two sons (oldest DS = X, youngest = L):

Aww...I love those three!!

They have some favorites, too!

X's faves -
Character - Stitch, Pluto(ast) Yes, he calls him Plutoast for fun. Why?? Because he's 11, and 11 year old boys are weird.
Movie - Dinosaur
Park - Epcot
Ride - Spaceship Earth

L's faves -
Character(s) - Chip and Dale
Show - Rescue Rangers (woohoo for the series on DVD)
Park - Animal Kingdom
Ride - Space Mountain

DH's favorites -
Park - Epcot, Magic Kingdom
Ride - Star Tours

Ok, there you go. That's us in a nutshell!

I hope you make like a hitchhiking ghost and ride along with us as I tell you about our truly magical trip to Walt Disney World. I'll try to be funny, and engaging and incredibly charming, but no promises!!

Stay tuned!!

xlsm · Aug 14, 2014

RESERVED FOR CHAPTER LINKS pixiedust:

xlsm · Aug 14, 2014

Our travel is split across two days. On travel day one we drive to Memphis and on travel day two/arrival day, we fly to Orlando.

When it came time to book our flights, we discovered it would be cheaper and faster to drive the 5 hours to Memphis, stay overnight, and take the direct 2 hour flight to Orlando than it would be to fly out of here, Kansas City, or Tulsa. The flight times were also better, giving us much more time actually in the parks and the resort.

Ok everyone...grab a snack, a cuddly blanket, and snuggle in. Here we go...

Our story begins on Sunday, August 3. What do normal people do the night before they leave for vacation? Relax? Finish packing? Clean house in preparation for an easier return?

That's cool.

We decide to install chair rail in the dining room. No stress there. Nope, none at all.

You see, about three weeks before our trip, we bought and moved into a new house. We moved from the 1200 sqft rental we found when we first moved to the area two years ago (having no idea about the area at all...we had two weeks to get here for DH's new job) into a 2800 sqft two story house. Talk about stress before a trip. I do not recommend moving so close to a huge vacation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (excessive exclamation points totally necessary here.)

After the chair rail, normal pre-vacation activity kicked in, packing and such. Then around 9:00pm, just before heading to bed, I decided I wanted to paint my magic band. What is up with my timing??

So I got out the nail polish and turned my pink band into this glorious purple, sparkly little gem:

One coat of a purple color by Sinful Colors, followed by purple glitter by ICE. No top or base coat. Yep, I like playing with fire and walking on dangerous ground.

(By the way...it held up great during the week. Minimal cracking. And the CMs LOVED it. I had so many exclaim over it and stop me or come up to me asking about it. I didn't see any other decorated bands while I was there...and I was totally a creeper, staring at everyone's wrists during the trip. So if you saw a weirdo wrist starer-ater on your trip, that was ME.)

Finally I managed to go to bed. We were up early. I grabbed up my phone and saw this:

I zoomed in on that little owl and instagrammed that sucker. One day 'til Disney, baby!!!

We loaded the car and hit the road...after a stop at McD's for road fuel. We were headed toward our first stop of the day: Little Rock, AR for the Clinton Presidential Library and The Purple Cow for lunch.

Along the way this happened:

Blackmail!!

Ok, ok...here we are:

It's a beautiful place and we really enjoyed it...but we were also HUNGRY. It was time for food!! So off to The Purple Cow we trekked. They are known for their milkshakes, which are delicious. We got the purple vanilla. They are very large, so we ordered two and had them split between us.

Had to instagram it:

After this we headed on toward Memphis. We had booked our room on Hotwire waaaayyy back in December when we booked our flights. We always book mystery rooms on there and generally have good luck. The hotel we were put in was the Travelers Inn and Suites. The reviews on Trip Advisor seemed pretty good, so I sort of forgot about it until arrival day.

We pull up and it looks pretty cute! Pretty flowers, nicely upkept building, pristine swimming pool.

And that's where the good ends and the horrible begins.

DH went to check in. He comes out quickly and says, "Bad news. They have us booked in a smoking King room". Nope. Uh uh. Unacceptable. Our confirmation from Hotwire clearly says two queen, non-smoking. Well you see, this room was booked in December. It is now August. The hotel is now under new management. Every room is a smoking room except for four. Um, ok?? We call Hotwire, Hotwire calls the hotel, Hotwire tells us that the hotel will move us to a double queen room, but want to upcharge us $25. Hotwire will credit us that money to our account on a future booking. Ok, great. Sounds good.

We get our room assignment. We walk in. We look around. We walk out. Oh. My. Lord.

The room REEKED of smoke. I've never experienced anything like it. The room was disgusting and dirty. The light over the sink did not work. The air conditioner did not work. I wanted to cry.

We went back, had our $25 "upcharge" (upcharge for what? communicable diseases??) refunded, and called Hotwire back to help us find a room. Their customer service is top notch. They gave us another credit and booked us a new room at a La Quinta about 15 minutes away. It wasn't the nicest hotel I've ever been in, but at the moment we checked in, it looked like a palace.

DH ran to McD's for a desperate-too-tired-for-anything-more-complicated dinner, and we hit the pool.

After that, it was bedtime...we had big plans the next day. We were headed to Disney World!!

BudgieMama · Aug 14, 2014

Hello from the August group! Subbing to your trip report, as I have to run now and I don't want to forget it!

ariane37 · Aug 14, 2014

Came over from the August group, too :wave2:

We leave in 12 days so reading about your trip will get me in the Disney mood!!! :mickeyjum

xlsm · Aug 14, 2014

Woohoo!! I hope the two of you enjoy it! We had an awesome trip!!

Dwheels · Aug 14, 2014

Hello following you from august group! We leave in 8 days! Looking forward to reading about your trip

MissMaryQC · Aug 14, 2014

Following along! So sorry about your first hotel; I'm a reformed smoker and even to me the idea of a smoking room at a hotel is super yuck, so I can't imagine how grossed out you were with the kids and all! But I'm glad it all turned out ok.

Can't wait to see how the rest of your trip goes, amazingly I hope!

xlsm · Aug 14, 2014

...oh. You're still here. Hmm...Ok.

So I should keep writing then, huh? Sure.

When I left you last, we were headed to bed after a long travel day, a terrifying hotel that rivals any ride Disney could think up and a swim.

We'll pick up the next morning at the airport!!

Magic bands on and Starbucks in hand!! (one kid had a strawberry frap, the other had some orange thing that tasted like medicine. DH got one too. Both were tossed in the trash.)

Soon we boarded our flight and we were off!
Kid one:

Kid two:

And a bonus shot of Kid two, b/c he's cute, playing Super Digestive Moose on my Nook (what is super digestive moose you ask?? LOL. Download it and find out. Life changing.):

Bonus shot of Kid one, b/c he's also cute...chowing on free in-flight pretzels:

Clouds:

I love flying. After my customary take-off prayer, I can totally relax. It's the one place where I feel zero stress, b/c I know that I have absolutely no control over the situation, and I have to let go (Let it gooooo...oh yeah. I went there. It's like a law or something now). Normally I am uptight and high strung, so I like being able to hand it over and chill out for once!

The flight was uneventful, and we landed in about an hour and a half after takeoff...With our time travel complete (time zone change!), we left the plane, had some nervousness about not having control over the luggage (see?? uptight! high strung! control freak!!), boarded the fake-o-rail

and went downstairs to find the Magical Express. Luckily our Delta terminal is on side B, so we didn't have to look far, since we were already on the correct side.
We were already wearing our Magic Bands, which made the attendants happy! We were able to buzz right through with all green lights and were the first family on the bus (because we're WINNERS!)

In a short while we were HERE:

Our ME bus made three stops: Polynesian, Grand Floridian, and Wilderness Lodge (Our home away from home!!).

We booked a woods view room with the summer discount that came out in late March/early April-ish. I had done online check-in 60 days out, with my only request being a high floor. I was PRAYING for a north facing room.

Prayer answered.

Check in was quick and easy and (BONUS TIME) our room was ready :cool1:

Our room was 5030 and it was amazing!!
We were greeted by this:

Grazing freakin' deer. Right outside. What a welcome!! Disney magic strikes again!
Here's the view toward the lake:

Lounging lazy kids:

The straight ahead view through the trees featured the Contemporary, the tip top of the castle, and space mountain. We could see Wishes every night. I'm sure the higher floors would have an even better view, but we thought it was magnificent. The room was perfectly located, right beside the elevator...the laundry room and Roaring Forks was a 10 second elevator ride away. It doesn't get much better than that.

Day two continued in the next post...

xlsm · Aug 14, 2014

After drooling over our room, it was time to do some drooling of another sort...over some food. My male companions were hungry!! So downstairs to Roaring Forks we went for sustenance.

We ordered and went outside to wait for them to bring us our food.

Kid one got a bacon burger, kid two got nuggets and fries (i planned to share these with him...didn't think I was hungry. I was wrong. I binged on everyone's fries!)

DH got the Wilderness Chicken, which had ham and some kind of pinkish sauce on it. That sauce was good on my fries

This was not our best meal at Roaring Forks. We had some stellar food from there later in the week, and I don't think I have a single picture of any of it. But I will describe it when we get to that point!

After eating, we headed to the bus stop. It was time to torture my kids! They have never done any major thrill rides, and our first two Fast Passes were for Tower of Terror and Rockin' Rollercoaster. **Insert maniacal laugh here** :rotfl:

On an empty bus to DHS

We had ordered our Memory Maker about two or three weeks before our trip. I was afraid of cutting it too close on time if they mailed it, so I chose to pick it up at will call. That meant our first stop after getting off the bus was to the ticketing window. Turns out that was a huge waste of time, b/c it was already linked to our magic bands. Better safe than sorry though!! So I take back the comment about the waste of time. She did give us a card "just in case". We never needed it.

After four green lights, we were inside Hollywood Studios and THIS

was looming in the distance.

I have some fun photopass pictures that I'll share at the end of the full report!

I love Disney details:

We all survived our journey to the Twilight Zone.

After this we went to R'n'R. We were a touch early for our FP+ window, so we waited and then scanned on through. I believe my youngest son's words, as he hurtled through space were, "I am going. to. diiiieee!!"

He didn't.

Then we hit up Muppets and our final FP+ for the day, Star Tours. Then this happened:

Those ears though!! How cute are they? Chip on one side, Dale on the other. He had them sign them at Epcot a couple days later. Adorable.

We were tired, so back to the resort we went and hit the pool!

Speaking of being tired...this one was TIRED of me taking photos.

Ooooh buddy. It's only just begun...

Wait, hold up!
Geyser break!!

We had dinner at Roaring Forks after this. No pictures

I guess we were too hungry and inhaled our food like neanderthals. Sorry.

But I remember what we had!

I had pasta of the day, a veggie filled, pesto dressed pasta. It was pretty good. Old kid had pepperoni flat bread, young kid had kids cheese pizza, DH had what was one of the best foods of the trip - The roast beef and blue cheese sandwich. It was so good! I had it the next time we ate there. It was on herbed focaccia (sp??) bread. Yum! We also shared a strawberry lemonade cupcake (double yum!) and old kid had a sugar cookie. I became obsessed with those sugar cookies during the trip. I'm craving one right now.

Back to the room we went...and on this note, we ended our day:

nadira36 · Aug 15, 2014

From the August 2014 group.

Love your writing style! Can hardly wait to hear more about your trip!

Cando86 · Aug 15, 2014

I'm in! Your boys are adorable! Looking forward to hearing more about your trip :thumbsup2

maryj11 · Aug 15, 2014

Joining in ! Great trip report so far :thumbsup2

xlsm · Aug 15, 2014

hooray! More friends to drag along on our adventures! I'm happy to have you all here! Working on the next installment...our first full day at the Magic Kingdom!!

xlsm · Aug 15, 2014

Hello again!! Welcome back!!

Chapter three might be a looooong one. I have 66 pictures ready for this update alone.

We rope drop, we use a lunch Fast Pass for Be Our Guest, leave, come back, etc...

8/6 was our first FULL park day. I used EasyWDW and the Wisdom of Josh to determine the best days for each park, but even if he'd said today was the worst day ever on the planet in the history of earth to visit the Magic Kingdom, I'd have gone anyway. You have to start the trip at the Magic Kingdom, right?? It's just what you do!

Our day started with some resort pics on the way to the bus...

Aw, look at him...doubled over with excitement.

That's a lie. The sun was in his face and he was probably silently cursing my existence for forcing him to smile.

Behold the beauty of the grounds at the Lodge:

We were hitting rope drop this morning. It ended up solidifying my husband's trust in my Disney planning prowess, as he was completely impressed by how much we got done in the first two hours. I will share the list in a moment. First, here's me and the old kid on the bus! This is what I instagrammed:

We got there a little after 8:00am, and I still had to get creative to get this people-less (kind of) shot:

One last picture with my hair down:

NOT the most flattering, but they get worse as the day goes on!

Soon, we were joined by this guy:

and some of his friends

Wait...I hear something...what's that coming around the corner??? What is it?? WHAT IS IT??????

Oh. It's a train. Woo. What's so great about a dumb ol' train? I mean, trains run through town all the time. I'm supposed to be excit- Wait. WHAT IS HAPPENING???

(This is the family of the day, the Johnson family. Do you know them? Are YOU them?)

And this is the part where I stopped holding it together and almost lost it in a fit of sobs. If you remember from the intros, L's favorite characters are Chip and Dale. He even has the hat. So when he sees them, and begins waving and cheering and holding up his hat hoping they'll notice, I start tearing up like you wouldn't believe. Or maybe you would, since you're all my people :grouphug:

After this, we were able to enter (all green! we had ZERO issues with MBs during our trip). This is what we did during our first hour:
Stopped for some photopass pictures (again,I'll share these later in a separate chapter), walked on Buzz, met Stitch with NO ONE else around. Seriously, empty streets

walked on Space Mountain, took the "secret path" to Storybook Circus and walked on Dumbo

(HAHA...looks like the water is pouring out of his nose!! We're soooo mature!)

met Ariel in her Grotto with minimal wait, used our Fast Pass for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train (return time of 9:30 -10:30am), rode it's a small world with minimal wait

and got to carry the red card of awesomeness

(Eh, this is out of order...this is when X carried the red card for the FP line at SDMT. DH carried the red card for Small World.)

and used our second Fast Pass for Peter Pan (return time of 10:40-11:40am)

After this, it was lunch time at the Beast's castle, which I will talk about in the next installment!!

Chapter three part two, coming right up!

xlsm · Aug 15, 2014

So about 28ish days before our trip I received "The Email". You know what I'm talking about...our invite to make a lunch Fast Pass at Be Our Guest!

I was so excited!! I clicked the link, I signed in...and was disappointed b/c they gave me really crappy times to choose from. Ugh. I decided we didn't HAVE to have lunch there, because we had a dinner there planned for our last evening. No big deal.

But I kept thinking about it. It kept eating at me. Then one day, about a week later, someone on my August trip Facebook group mentioned it. So I decided to try again and see if the times had changed. SUCCESS!! An 11:00 - 11:30am time slot was available! I snagged it and made our food choices, feeling quite pleased with myself.

We checked in right at 11:00, were handed a rose, and sent right in...to the most insane room ever. Slight exaggeration, but it seemed kind of like an unorganized disaster. This turned out to be because one of the ordering kiosks was down, and people were more clumped up than normal.

They did not have the food choices saved that I had made, but after a bit of initial irritation, I got over it, b/c it takes about 3 seconds to make new choices. So. Easy.

We took our rose inside and looked for a place to sit. It was pretty crowded, I'm not going to lie (a far cry from our dinner a week later). We found some people leaving in the West Wing and got their table.

L got the kid's Mickey meatloaf with fries and a chocolate chip cookie:

(It's dark in there, sorry!)
He ate his applesauce, fries and cookie. The meatloaf was not good. I know, I tried it. It is turkey meatloaf and oddly seasoned.

X got the braised pork:

and it was DELICIOUS!!

DH got the steak sandwich

and it was so good. This is what I will order when we go back. (Yes, we'll go back! Everyone liked it!)

I had the croque monsieur

Sorry to gross you out with my chew marks. I was a little excited to dive in. It was really good, but very buttery and heavy. I did not finish it. I think I ate maybe half?? L helped me out a little. I would not order this again, but I'm glad I tried it!

We also shared two cupcakes, the master's cupcake:

and the strawberry cupcake:

Both were delicious!

Overall, we enjoyed this meal. The castle is AH-mazing (please say this in a Sue Heck voice for full effect). The steak sandwich and braised pork were both really, really, super delicious. The cupcakes were yummy too. The gray stuff really IS delicious.

I will leave you with a few pictures...the inside ones are kind of grainy. The whole place is dimly lit, so pictures were hard to take.

And now...Who Wore it Best??

OR

Part Three coming up soon!!

ariane37 · Aug 15, 2014

The strawberry cupcake at BOG is my favorite :thumbsup2

I had the Croque Monsieur for lunch there also and while it wasn't bad, I didn't think it was great. Honestly we prefer dinner at BOG, so I'm anxious to see which you preferred!

nadira36 · Aug 16, 2014

You managed to get a lot done in the AM! That gives me so much hope!

xlsm · Aug 16, 2014

nadira36 said:
You managed to get a lot done in the AM! That gives me so much hope!

Yes we did! Tomorrowland was EMPTY both mornings that we were at MK. We could have walked on Space Mountain over and over if we'd wanted!

The crowds picked up around 11, but we got so much done in the first two hours that it was ok! The lines for 7 dwarfs was really long by 10:45ish, but before then you could get on with maybe a 40 minute wait. I know that seems like a long time, but after that it jumped to over an hour, and some of that wait is outside b/c it overflows from the inside portion of the queue. The fast pass line for it moves speedy quick though!

xlsm · Aug 16, 2014

We're baa-aack!!

Here we are, finally! The last post for chapter 3 and the ending of our first day at the Magic Kingdom.

When I left you, we had just finished a great lunch at Be Our Guest. We all enjoyed this meal, and we will go back again.

We had a big morning! Did you see how much we accomplished? It takes a toll on us after our travel day, and we decide to slow it down a bit.

We decided to extend our time inside in air conditioning and went to see Philharmagic

I adore the posters hanging up in here! Philharmagic makes me tear up. It's one of the most special experiences at Magic Kingdom, in my opinion. Luckily, my family felt the same way!

Afterward, we started making our way across the park. On the way I ran into this little lady:

She was so sweet

She hangs out around here

Isn't it so sweet of ol' Cindy to take care of the place for me while I'm gone? I mean, what a peach. Thanks, Cinderella. I appreciate it.

Then we decided to wait in a line. We hadn't had to do that yet, and my men were S-P-O-I-L-E-D by the easiness of the morning. The line for Haunted Mansion was 35 minutes long, and it felt every second of that length of time. I was HOT at this point. But the kids had fun exploring the line

One of my favorites:

And of course, the Master of the house himself:

The line was sooo hot, that we needed a little pick me up in the form of...

DOLE WHIPS!!

We ate these yummy little frozen bits of heaven, then headed toward our third Fast Pass for the day, Splash Mountain. Our return time was for 1:55-2:55pm.

See? The wall confirms it. It's the truth.

Guess what? We were finished just in time for the Festival of Fantasy Parade. I was soooo excited. I couldn't wait to see these floats in person. I hadn't planned to watch it today, but we walked off Splash just in time.

And here is where the title of my trip comes into play.

****imagine those wavy lines that cross a tv screen when a character goes back in time****

Backstory time!

Remember when I told you I can be a little uptight, high strung and a control freak? Yeah. You should hear me in the car. I can make any non-swear word into a swear word (because I don't curse unless I stub my toe...I have kids around me all the time! But when I yell "Marshmallow FLUFF!!!" in a certain tone, you KNOW it's a stand in for something much, much worse.)

The boys' grandpa has this little stress doll thing that says in a sing-songy voice, "Don't stress! Take it eeeeasy!!" And they say that to me when I start getting worked up. It's funny and makes me laugh. So, every time someone would annoy the PANCAKE SYRUP out of me on our vacation, I would say, "Keepin' the Magic, Keepin' the Magic" to remind me to chill out.

I almost lost all faith in humanity during this parade and "Keepin' the Magic" was really hard to do. I cannot believe how RUDE grown adults can be. And not even be remorseful. That's the worse part to me. This woman with an iPad (For the love of all that is holy, leave your iPad in the hotel room. They do not belong in the theme park!!) shoved oldest DS out of the way to get into his spot so she could hold her iPad UP IN THE AIR to take pictures. Number one, do not shove my kid. Number two, hey Dumbo, you're taller than said kid of mine...hold it up over his head, don't knock him down.
I'm not sure I've ever felt so much rage!!

But my amazing child, being who he is, looked up at her and said, "Excuse me ma'am, but you just stepped in front of me, could you please move?"

And the witch gave him a dirty look and shoved past him and blocked in another family. Is there Disney Parade Police? Is there Disney jail? There should be.

Anyway, I managed to "Keepin' the Magic" myself into a calm zen state and took a few pictures.

Ok, are you ready for this??

I can't hear you. I said, are you ready for this??

I took what will go down as the best picture ever taken EVER at Disney World. None can compare. I got the dragon's fire in a picture!! Look!!

*insert audience laughter here b/c they get that i made a joke*

Luckily we had a much nicer parade experience on our last park day.

We decided to find a kiosk and make our 4th fast pass for the evening. After that we were headed back to the resort for pool time and relaxing. We liked using the kiosk by the Jungle Cruise. The lines were usually pretty short and moved quickly. We had a CM helping us (sometimes you had to go to a CM, sometimes you could just do it on your own), and I told her I wanted pirates between 7 or 8. We got our 4th Fast Pass of the day for Pirates of the Caribbean with a return time of 7:25 - 8:25. PERFECT!

We got back to the resort around 4:00, swam, showered, relaxed, then headed to the Wilderness Lodge boat dock at 6:00 and made our way across the lake and back to the Magic Kingdom.

We stopped for a few photopass pictures, got some magic shots (don't forget, I'll share later on!), and went to eat some dinner. I got to pick, so I chose Columbia Harbour House.

I had the lobster roll:

and it was sooooooooooo good.

L had the fish and broccoli, X had vegetarian chili (b/c he will eat any chili, anywhere, anytime):

DH had the seafood mac and cheese. It was ok. We both liked my lobster roll better.

After dinner, we used our Fast Pass for Pirates, waited in a 30 minute standby line for Jungle Cruise, then made our 5th Fast Pass for the Little Mermaid ride.
They were having technical difficulties. About 5 times during the ride we stopped and heard Sebastian say "that sea witch Ursula must be causing trouble"...stupid sea witch.

Here's where we decided we'd stay for fireworks....but then we realized how tired we were, and how we didn't want to deal with the crowds leaving. So we were herded like cattle toward the front of the park, where we change our minds for a second, watch a little bit, then walk out toward the ferries. We see more of the fireworks in the ferry line. So pretty.

Once on the ferry we really realized we were EX-HAUS-TED. Then the ferry had to stop for the electrical water pageant, making our trip even longer. I think we all passed out as soon as our heads hit the pillow.

I leave you with a few nighttime shots of the Magic Kingdom:

Keep a look out for Chapter Four and thanks for joining me so far

Keepin' the Magic, Keepin' the Magic...An August 2014 trip report!

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