Magic Kingdom? I Think I Know My Way Around Magic Kingdom! WDW January 2023 TR **COMPLETE** 9/4 x4

[khertz]

Magic Kingdom? I Think I Know My Way Around Magic Kingdom!
WDW January 2023 TR

With a smile on your face and a song in your heart
This is where you’re meant to be
Make a wish upon a star
The magic is here
It’s here for you and me​

Hello, everyone, and welcome to our January 2023 TR! It’s been awhile since I’ve done a WDW trip report (since February 2020, just before the shutdown!), so hopefully I remember what to do.

Some of you may remember us from other TR boards as I have done many of them for our Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, Universal Orlando, and even Adventures by Disney trips! But in case you are joining for the first time, or need a refresher, here is our family of 4 Disney fans!

2023-01-25 - Disneys Hollywood Studios - Grand Avenue_2 by disneymom1024, on Flickr​

DH and I have been married for 15 years, and spent our honeymoon at WDW! Since then, we have been to the parks many times with and without the kids, and we absolutely love all the Disney things. He is going to be the major contributor of photos in this TR, while I do the note-taking and TR-writing.

DS is 12 years old, and he is my Disney kid at heart. He has been going since he was a year old, and has always loved the parks and the atmosphere. He developed a love of Figment this trip, which you will see grow before your very eyes as the TR progresses!

DD is 7 years old, and while she loves being in the parks, she is not as much into Disney when we are away from the parks. Last trip, she was 4 years old and around 41” so she could do a lot, but she has been wanting to do more. So this time around at 49”, there was nothing she couldn’t ride and she couldn’t WAIT to do all of the new thrill rides that were available to her!

But we were not the only people traveling this trip!

2023-01-26 - Epcot - UK at Epcot_6 by disneymom1024, on Flickr​

Also joining us were my parents, Nonni & Poppi, and my sister and her son.

Nonni & Poppi have been visiting WDW since the 70’s, and brought my sister and I many times as kids. They had not been to the parks since 2016, so a lot had changed for them. They were both excited to get to experience the Disney parks with all of their grandbabies.

My sister (I’ll call her Nanny since that’s what my kids call her) was visiting for the first time as a Mom! She was very excited for my nephew’s (DN) first trip to see Mickey. DN is 17 months old, and while he didn’t love all of the things we did, it was a successful first trip for him of hopefully many to come!

Since we had so many people, we banked and borrowed some of our DVC points to stay in a 2 bedroom at Bay Lake Tower! It was our first time staying there, and we chose it for several reasons. We knew we would be spending a lot of time at MK and the idea of being able to walk back and forth was very appealing. Plus, it was one of the DVC resorts that has a 3rd bathroom in their 2 bedroom units! For the size of our group, that was another great perk of staying there. We looked at the room views on Touring Plans, and sent in a request a couple of weeks before check in requesting a room in the North tower on a high floor with an even number in the hopes that we might be able to see MK from our balcony even though we had booked a Lake View Room. Our home resort is AKV, so we booked that first at 11 months out, and we didn’t have any trouble switching to BLT once we could book other resorts. We had chosen our dates using DVC Help’s availability charts and saw that we should have an easy time getting what we wanted.

Our travel dates were Saturday January 21st-Saturday January 28th. Our kids were missing a full week of school, but they are both good students so we were ok taking them out in order to hopefully have lower crowds and nice weather. We were very excited to be visiting during Festival of the Arts at Epcot! We had 6 day park hopper tickets, and we only planned on getting Genie+ for 3 of those days.

As we have returned from this trip and people asked how it was, I find myself saying, “It was honestly perfect!” We had a really amazing time and got to experience almost everything we wanted to, which had been one of my fears going into the trip that we would miss out on some of the headliners. But we got to do it all! I hope you’ll join in!

 

[khertz]

Day 1: Saturday January 21st
Day 1: Get us to the Mouse!

Day 2: Sunday January 22nd
Day 2 Part 1: Can We Do That Again?!
Day 2 Part 2: Dino-Rama!
Day 2 Part 3: Tigers Are Frequently Encountered In The Ruins Ahead
Day 2 Part 4: Chipmunk-o-Saurus
Day 2 Part 5: In the Circle of Life
Day 2 Part 6: And Absolutely Nothing Will Go Wrong!
Day 2 Part 7: Slinky, Snacks & Smugglers
Day 2 Part 8: Join the Resistance
Day 2 Part 9: Some Imagination, Huh?

Day 3: Monday January 23rd
Day 3 Part 1: I Think I Know My Way Around Magic Kingdom!
Day 3 Part 2: The Wildest Ride in the Wilderness
Day 3 Part 3: Breakfast in the Hundred Acre Wood
Day 3 Part 4: Boat Ride, Boat Ride, Boat Ride
Day 3 Part 5: Beware of Hitchhiking Ghosts!
Day 3 Part 6: Soarin' Over the Land
Day 3 Part 7: Figment & Frozen
Day 3 Part 8: Epcottians & Little Chefs

Day 4: Tuesday January 24th
Day 4 Part 1: The One Where My Son Calls Me An Alcoholic
Day 4 Part 2: FARTS Fun
Day 4 Part 3: No Way Jose
Day 4 Part 4: America, Spread Your Golden Wings
Day 4 Part 5: For the First Time in Forever
Day 4 Part 6: It's a Fiesta!
Day 4 Part 7: An Enchantment Surprise

Day 5: Wednesday January 25th
Day 5 Part 1: "Daddy Got Caught Again"
Day 5 Part 2: Runaway Railway & Midway Mania
Day 5 Part 3: A Salute to All Nations But Mostly America
Day 5 Part 4: I Like Warm Hugs
Day 5 Part 5: Hoop Dee Doo
Day 5 Part 6: A Free Fireworks Cruise!
Day 5 Part 7: Magic Kingdom After Dark
Day 5 Part 8: Rain Rain Go Away!

Day 6: Thursday January 26th
Day 6 Part 1: Molto Bene!
Day 6 Part 2: Tasting Germany
Day 6 Part 3: Farewell, Epcot
Day 6 Part 4: Enchantment

Day 7: Friday January 27th
Day 7 Part 1: Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique
Day 7 Part 2: Princess Meets Princess!
Day 7 Part 3: We're All Mad Here
Day 7 Part 4: Great Goofini & Astounding Donaldo
Day 7 Part 5: Deep in the Hundred Acre Wood
Day 7 Part 6: It's a Festival of Fantasy!
Day 7 Part 7: Popcorn, Pirates & Pineapple
Day 7 Part 8: There's A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow
Day 7 Part 9: A Magical Mine Train Ride
Day 7 Part 10: See Ya Real Soon

Day 8: Saturday January 28th
Day 8: So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Good Bye

Final Thoughts

Bonus Posts:
Mardi Gras 2023​

 

[khertz]

Day 1: Saturday January 21st

Both DH and I had Friday off, which made it very easy to get all of our packing done. DD has tumbling classes Friday evenings, so we did not go to New Orleans the night before our flight like we sometimes choose to do. Since our flight was at 10:40 am and we wanted to get to the airport around 8:30, we left our home at 6 am to make the 2 hour drive to the New Orleans area. So that we didn’t have to park our car at the airport, the plan was that DH would drop the 3 of us off, and my dad would drop off my mom, sister & DN and then they would bring their cars to my grandmother’s house which is just a few minutes away from the airport to leave the vehicles and have my uncle bring them back to the airport.

While we were waiting for DH to come back, I was able to check in at the kiosk and leave our checked bag. Once all of us were together, we headed through security and then to our gate. We shared a Chick Fil A breakfast since we’d be flying through lunchtime, and DD did a majority of her homework.

Because we booked our flights all separately, we got different boarding positions (we were flying Southwest), so we had to get creative to make sure we’d be able to sit somewhat together. My parents had a lot of Southwest points to book flights, so they were able to book themselves and my sister, but they also booked DD’s flights too. We only had enough points when flights were released so DH booked himself and DS. Then we had to wait for more points to go into our account to book my flight. DH and DS had A boarding group, so they went on first. Since we had DN, my sister was eligible for family boarding after A group, she went on next with DN and took DD also, and my dad went as the second adult to help her. My mom and I got on last, but sitting in the back of the plane we had no problems getting seats together since my mom and I boarded early in the B group.

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DN was in front of us and getting a kick out of watching the kids play Rock Paper Scissors.

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The flight was mostly uneventful except for some serious turbulence about halfway through that had my heart in my throat! DN slept for the whole thing, DD finished her homework, and DS was on his tablet.

Untitled by disneymom1024, on Flickr​

When we landed it was a little earlier than expected at 12:55 pm Orlando time!

IMG_9050 by disneymom1024, on Flickr​

Our first ride of the trip, the airport monorail!

IMG_9051 by disneymom1024, on Flickr​

At this point we were splitting up. We had rented a car for only that day so that we could get all of us to church that evening, and make a stop at the grocery store. It was big enough to fit all of us, but not all of us AND our luggage. So once we had our big checked bags, my parents left us to take the Sunshine Flyer while the rest of us got our van and headed to Bay Lake Tower.

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We all ended up arriving at about the same time! Troy at BLT helped us check in, and told us that our request had been granted and we had a room on the 10th floor! But it was still a little too early, so it was not ready yet. He said he was putting a note on the reservation not to change our room since it was exactly what we wanted, and said we would get a text once our room was ready. Since we had sent in a request, we did not do online check-in prior to arrival. We left our bags with bell services and had just a little time before we had to leave for Mass, so we took the Skybridge over to the Contemporary to look around.

IMG_9062 by disneymom1024, on Flickr​

DD wanted to buy ALL THE THINGS already, but I convinced her to just wait on some of these items until we had been in the parks since we could always come back to the resort gift shop to get it later. She really wanted this Turning Red notebook, because she definitely doesn’t have enough notebooks.

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After looking around, we got back in the van and made our way to Corpus Christi Catholic Church in Celebration for 4 pm mass. During mass, DH got the text that our room was ready…on the 6th floor? We were very confused! But before we could find out what was going on with our room, we had to make a grocery stop before going back to BLT. The original plan had been for just DH and Poppi to do the shopping, but we decided since we were all in the car we could just go on the way back to the resort. We made a stop at Walmart and got our breakfast items, baby items, snacks and alcohol for the room. DH was dropping the vehicle off at the Car Care Center that night, so he dropped us and the groceries off at the resort and went to return the van while I went to the desk to find out what had happened to our 10th floor room.

Troy was still working at the desk and was very surprised when I told him we had ended up with a 6th floor room. He really tried to fix it for us, but unfortunately he couldn’t get us back into the original room. He offered us a room on a higher floor but on the marina side, and I said no, we would just keep what we had been assigned and see what kind of view we got. He was very apologetic and ended up giving us all Genie+ for the next day. This was not a day we had been planning to get it, so it was a bonus day of G+ for us. We were very thankful for his help!

Once we got up to the room, we were all starving so we started cooking the take & bake pizzas we had picked up at Walmart and unpacking. As it turned out, we had a GREAT view of the Castle and Space Mountain from our balcony!

Untitled by disneymom1024, on Flickr


Untitled by disneymom1024, on Flickr​

We had reserved 2 single strollers through Orlando Stroller Rentals, and has scheduled our drop off time for 7:30 pm so we would be sure to be at the resort for the night since they cannot leave the strollers with bell services. The delivery driver had texted me earlier in the day to confirm our time, so since I had his number, I texted him at 6:30 to let him know we would be available any time and he was able to get them to us a little early at 7 pm instead.

At 8:15 pm we could hear the loud BOOMs of Enchantment starting, and we got to watch from the balcony!!

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Once that was done and we had unpacked, we got the kids to bed because we had an early morning planned!

 

[rdkeim]

Following! Happy to see your TR! Been following your adventures for a long time. Glad you revealed early on that you had a great trip. Style-wise the Contemporary isn't my favorite but you can't beat the location. Anxious to hear about your first park day!

 

[Counting Stars]

Your balcony view looks spectacular! So happy you got a great villa. Looking forward to hearing more about your experiences

 

[VAtink]

Joining in! I was there the same week as you, can't wait to read how your week went!

 

[vamassey1]

Great start to your trip.

That was a very long day.

 

[Nicnicnic.nic]

Following!

 

[SEAGULL59]

Following!

 

[suse66]

Following along! You had a very full first day! Even though you didn't get your original room, the view from your balcony was so good it bet it made up for it.

 

[footballmouse]

Great view!

 

[Woth2982]

Joining in! We stayed in a BLT studio in October, went to visit for a day in January and my DD kept pointing to BLT and saying "hotel, go to hotel". I guess she remembers staying there. She was just shy of 2.5 in January so I was really impressed lol

 

[bsjs0708]

Looks like the room was pretty amazing the views!!! Looking forward to more of your trip report.

 

[DLo]

following along. looking forward to reading more .

 

[Jerzetta]

Following along

 

[erinch]

Following!

 

[khertz]

Following! Happy to see your TR! Been following your adventures for a long time. Glad you revealed early on that you had a great trip. Style-wise the Contemporary isn't my favorite but you can't beat the location. Anxious to hear about your first park day!

Welcome back!! Very happy to see you joining in again

As for the Contemporary, I totally agree. There is nothing special about the decor of the rooms to me, but that walk to MK just can't be beat! For the makeup of our group, we knew we'd be spending a lot of time there, so being able to walk back and forth was awesome!

Your balcony view looks spectacular! So happy you got a great villa. Looking forward to hearing more about your experiences

It was such a great surprise to still have a beautiful view even though we were disappointed our original room had been given away. Turns out, the 6th floor was plenty high enough for us to have the view we were hoping for!

Joining in! I was there the same week as you, can't wait to read how your week went!

Oh that's so cool! How did you enjoy your week? I have had trips where it felt like everything was going wrong, but this was one where it felt like everything went RIGHT! Which was great, since it had been such a long time since we'd been in WDW.

Great start to your trip.

That was a very long day.

Yes, SUCH a long day!! There were many times I would turn to whoever was closest to me and say, "I hate travel days!"

Following!

Welcome!

 

[khertz]

Following!

Welcome!

Following along! You had a very full first day! Even though you didn't get your original room, the view from your balcony was so good it bet it made up for it.

Yes, it was very busy and a little hectic trying to move with so many people!

Although the room was on a lower floor than we had hoped for, it turned out it still had the great view we had been trying to get! It was really great luck!

Great view!

It was beautiful! We were so thankful it still worked out even with the lower floor!

Joining in! We stayed in a BLT studio in October, went to visit for a day in January and my DD kept pointing to BLT and saying "hotel, go to hotel". I guess she remembers staying there. She was just shy of 2.5 in January so I was really impressed lol

Welcome!

Aww, that's so cute! It must have really made an impression!! When my oldest was 5 and the youngest was a baby, DH and I went for a few days without them and stayed in the Contemporary, and every time we walked to MK and the monorail passed overhead, we would say, "DS would just LOVE this!" I'm so happy we got to experience it with them both all these years later!

Looks like the room was pretty amazing the views!!! Looking forward to more of your trip report.

The view was spectacular! We were all really happy with where we ended up.

following along. looking forward to reading more .

Welcome!

Following along

Welcome!

Following!

Thanks for joining in!

 

[VAtink]

Oh that's so cool! How did you enjoy your week? I have had trips where it felt like everything was going wrong, but this was one where it felt like everything went RIGHT! Which was great, since it had been such a long time since we'd been in WDW.

It was such an amazing week, I think I'm officially hooked on traveling to Disney in January! I totally get it about those weeks where everything goes wrong, we've definitely had those trips in the past! I'm so happy you had a week where everything went right! Those are such amazing trips, I cannot wait to read more about it!

 

[khertz]

Day 2: Sunday January 22nd

Since I didn’t do any kind of Pre-Trip Report, I’ll do a rundown of what we had planned prior to the vacation to see what kinds of changes we made along the way.

• Park Reservation: Animal Kingdom, early entry 7:30 am
• Park Hopping: DHS with plans to do shows and see Fantasmic
• Dining Reservations: None
• Genie+: Purchase ILL for Rise of the Resistance

Immediately, our plan had changed since we had gotten G+ added complimentary the day before by Troy after our check-in issues. We had told the rest of the family that our plan was to be out the door to head to the bus stop at 6:30 am. They were up before us, but still not ready by the time we left at 6:25, taking some quick breakfast items to eat with us to munch on while waiting for the gates to open at Animal Kingdom.

IMG_9340 by disneymom1024, on Flickr​

When we got to the bus stop, there was only one other family waiting and they were also going to AK, and a bus showed up at 6:30 am so we were soon on our way to AK! Of course, this park is a bit of a drive to get to, so it was 7 am when we arrived. On the bus ride, we booked an afternoon LL for Slinky Dog Dash and purchased an evening Rise of the Resistance ILL. Ugh, it was NOT fun spending $72 on that ride, but because we had never done it, we wanted to have a chance to ride it this afternoon, and re-ride it on our DHS morning if we wanted to do it a second time so we did it.

This was our first experience with the newer security procedures. DH always had to have his bag checked because of all of his camera equipment. I had to have my bag checked as well, and while I was with the security guard, I asked him if he could tell me what had triggered my bag. He said it was DH’s sunglasses case, so from then on I took it out of my bag and held it straight out in front of me going through the metal detectors and never had to get my bag checked again. So make sure you ask! Speaking of that glasses case, I had also realized that I had forgotten to pack my own sunglasses so I used DH’s for a couple of days until I found a pair to buy in the parks.

It was still dark outside when we arrived at the gates!

Untitled by disneymom1024, on Flickr​

We only had one little hiccup at the tapstiles because apparently DD’s MagicBand was not assigned to anyone, but one of the CMs with an iPad was able to help us get it fixed quickly. It prompted me to check in MDE to check her second Band she had brought with her and it too needed to be assigned but I was able to do it in the app so it wouldn’t cause any issues at the tapstiles another day.

Once we were let into the park, resort guests were sent to the left to check their on-site status before proceeding around to the Pandora side of the Tree of Life. It was moving pretty quickly, but we managed to snap a couple of quick photos of no one in front of the Tree!

Untitled by disneymom1024, on Flickr​

Like pretty much everyone else, we were heading for Flight of Passage. We wanted to ride it since it would be DD’s first time, but we didn’t want to wait a long time and we didn’t want to pay for it. I was not sure how this would go at rope drop, especially seeing all of the people that were ahead of us and how the line was snaking around, but it actually worked out really well! We never stopped moving forward until we got to the point in the line where they split you up into rows to go into the pre-show room!

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DD was a little nervous about this one because it was new and she wasn’t sure what to expect, so she was hesitant in the pre-show room.

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Once again, DS really enjoyed this ride and DD loved her first time on it! I was a little worried how she would do with the restraint, but I explained it to her as best I could before we went on so it wouldn’t be a surprise, and she did fine. Of course, her first question was “Can we do that again?!” and the answer had to be no. But it was a great first ride to kick off the first day in the parks!

In the meantime, the rest of our family had caught up and gone on Nav’i River Journey while we were doing FOP, and we met up in Pandora after our rides. In the ways of Cinderella, DN had tossed off one of his tennis shoes, which we never did get back, so we spent some time looking around the entrance to see if we could find it, but no luck.

IMG_3682 by disneymom1024, on Flickr​

The next must do on our list before it got too busy was Expedition Everest, another first for DD and also for DS who had been tall enough last trip, but he was too hesitant and we let him have a pass since DD wasn’t tall enough yet. But this time, both kids were ready to give it a try!

On the way over, we spotted a Photopass photographer on the bridge and stopped for photos. We had purchased Memory Maker and basically got it for free because my aunt had given us her Disney Visa Rewards Card to use because she has no plans to go to WDW anytime soon. Since it was something we would all be using, it was nice not to have to figure out how to split that cost and use the points to purchase it!

2023-01-22 - Disneys Animal Kingdom Park - Disneys Animal Kingdom Theme Park_6 by disneymom1024, on Flickr


2023-01-22 - Disneys Animal Kingdom Park - Disneys Animal Kingdom Theme Park_3 by disneymom1024, on Flickr


2023-01-22 - Disneys Animal Kingdom Park - Disneys Animal Kingdom Theme Park by disneymom1024, on Flickr​

Nonni decided not to ride EE with us, so she was fine sitting out with DN while the rest of us hopped into the short standby line.

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2023-01-22 - Disneys Animal Kingdom Park - Expedition Everest Legend of the Forbidden Mountain_2 by disneymom1024, on Flickr


2023-01-22 - Disneys Animal Kingdom Park - Expedition Everest Legend of the Forbidden Mountain by disneymom1024, on Flickr​

The wait was only 15 minutes and both kids wanted to do it again! The 4 of us got back in line while Nanny fed DN, and Poppi decided he was not up for a second ride in a row.

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The second ride was just as fun as the first! We unfortunately had some trouble getting some of our ride photos, and this was one of the ones we didn’t get even though I tapped at the end of the ride. We had good luck getting photos when Nanny was riding with us because she was the only one with the MagicBand+, and DH sometimes had luck with the Bluetooth turned on getting them, but I had to send in several Lost Photo forms.

Update: I got an email back from Photopass and apparently someone was doing something inappropriate in this photo so we can’t get ours.

IMG_3686 by disneymom1024, on Flickr​