Day 2, Part II Monday, August 13, 2007
With our bellies full and our spirits high, we headed over to
you guessed it, Space Mountain! Not that we wanted to ride just yet. Oh nooo, not just after gorging ourselves on pastries and sausages! I was being a dutiful Tour Guide Mike girl and getting our fastpasses for later.
Now, I have to confess that when I was planning out this whole trip and trying to figure out which parks to go to on which days, and where and when to make my ADRs, I had a really hard time making myself follow all the touring plans and whatnot. I had never done so much planning for Disney World before not even when my whole family went over Christmas in 2004 and we had never had a bad time. I had never heard of the DisBoards (blasphemy I know!) or Tour Guide Mike or the Birnbaum guides
imagine that!
But I figured I should do a good job planning this trip so that we minimized wait times and had good ADRs because I wanted Tigger to have a great time and want to come back! You like how all the scheming really just comes back to benefiting me?
The only thing I just could not obey no matter how hard I tried was going to a park other than Magic Kingdom for our first full day both the touring plans and Tour Guide Mike suggested different parks for this day and I tried for a while to talk myself into going to Epcot for the first day, but in the end, I couldnt imagine not seeing Cinderellas Castle the first morning. Oh well, I tried!
Aaanyways, back to my dilemma in the Magic Kingdom. So in the past, my family and I would always always go left at the roundabout and head toward Adventureland. Some of my greatest memories involve the early morning hours in Adventureland when it was quiet and we could spend as much time as we wanted in the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House. I dont know why, but I just looooove that tree house! So the idea that we had to veer right at the roundabout and head first toward Tomorrowland was a little tough for me to digest, but I figured it was my duty this trip to make sure we werent stuck in a 2 hour line later on!!!
So off we skipped to Tomorrowland, where we gathered our fastpasses. The line was already surprisingly long, but I guess wed been at breakfast for a while so lots of people had already made it into the park. But we were contented with our fastpasses and happily headed toward our first ride of the trip: Buzz Lightyear!
I had only been on Buzz once before in
Disneyland (I dont know why we skipped it last time we were in Disney World!), so I was really curious just how different this one would be from the DL version. Turns out its a pretty different experience! Although I still love the WDW version, I think I might have to vote for the DL version because its just a little more fun to be able to move the laser guns around more. But oooo, I did manage to find the sweet spot on the back of the orange robots hand (thank you very much, Ms. Murphy of Fans Guide to Walt Disney World!) and I think I got somewhere over 300,000 points to handily kick Tiggers butt
Unfortunately, I shared the secret with him and that was the last time I beat him on this trip.
Anyways, so after Buzz, we headed across the front of the castle toward Adventureland I couldnt stay away much longer
On the way there, we saw Captain Hooks crocodile and tried our luck:
And heres one of the least flattering pictures of me ever:
We saw the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House at this point and I of course had to drag us on, so we climbed around for a little bit. It took a little longer than we had planned because on the descent we were behind a couple and their little daughter who was just learning to walk. She handled the stairs going up pretty well, but had some trouble going down cause the steps were too big for her little legs! It was adorable!
Eventually the dad got impatient and picked her up to carry her down the rest of the way and thats when I looked up behind us and saw a huuuge backup of people
ooops! After the tree house, we were in the mood for
can you guess? Here, Ill give you a hint:
Ahoy matey! I think thats one of my favorite pictures of Tigger from this trip he really got that lip curl down perfectly, no?
So off we sailed with the Pirates of the Caribbean and it was awesome. One of the blasts of air from the canons in the opening scene actually shot my Minnie ears off!
I hadnt seen the Jack Sparrow additions and they didnt disappoint he looked so realistic! I kid you not, I actually heard a couple behind us having a discussion about how that really looked like Johnny Depp but he couldnt possibly have the time to stand down there in the ride. I swear its true!!!
Next up was the Jungle Cruise! We were in the neighborhood and I hadnt been on this ride in years, so on we went. I should perhaps mention here that Tigger absolutely loooooves puns. Looooves them! I think it runs in the family because his dad is also a huge fan of silly puns. As you can imagine, Tigger thought Jungle Cruise was the absolute best ride ever! It didnt hurt that our guide had a very dry delivery which fit the absolute silliness of the jokes pretty well.
This was her:
Heres the elephant we met:
And the ornery rhinos!
By this point, we were pretty hungry, so we were thankful when we crossed over into Frontierland and found the turkey leg cart! Yummy!
We werent quite ready for the big mountains of Frontierland yet at this point, so we grabbed fastpasses for Thunder Mountain Railroad and got on the train toward Toon Town. The turkey leg was so huge that we were still eating it while we were on the train! When we got off at Toon Town, though, it was soooo crowded that we pretty much ran straight through and into Fantasyland. We got in line for my absolute favorite ride of all time: Peter Pan!!!! I know its like a dinky 30 second ride, but it holds such great memories for me that it will always be my favorite ride. Surprisingly the line wasnt very long so we didnt wait to try and get fastpasses.
While we were in line, however, I realized that I never called about the room situation! I suddenly became desperate to talk to the room assignors, so I called them on my cellphone, but I kept getting put on hold. Eventually we got to the front of the line and I still hadnt gotten an answer so I hung up to try again later. The unfortunate result of this interaction was that I was fairly distracted throughout Peter Pan and wasnt really able to focus on it until the very end
No worries, though we went on it again later in the trip and in even better circumstances! You'll have to stay tuned to find out the details!
Anyways, so we got off the ride and I got right back on the phone. After about 30 hot and frustrated minutes, I was told they didnt have any other Magic Kingdom view rooms with king-sized beds, but they could give us a room with a view that had two queen beds. That was fine with me, especially since the king-sized dormer room was actually too small to even lay out my suitcase! So I said wed take it and could they move our suitcases to the new room please? Noooooo was the crushing answer! They said they couldnt be responsible for moving the suitcases even though they were already packed because they couldnt be sure they were ours. So we would have to go back to the hotel to move the suitcases ourselves. Bummer!!! I was pretty upset that we would have to interrupt our big day at the Magic Kingdom to go move our suitcases, but I thought about it and decided it was worth it if it meant we could get a room with a better view.
Soooo, off we went back to the hotel. It was about 1:30pm at this point which meant that my plans for going on all the rides before 2:00pm and then taking the afternoon off wasnt going to work out quite as planned. Did I mention it was incredibly hot at this point too?!? Woooh was it hot!
Next up: What room do we get? Is it any better? Do we make it back to the park for SpectroMagic? Stay tuned!
), I'll tell you that the room drama turns out great in the end 
!!!
You should definitely get a chance to wear them!
) Waiting for next installment!
