GarrettJD
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2003
- Messages
- 1,598
OK, everyone-- I've been putting this off for too long. I meant to have a quick turnaround on my trip report, but it's now March 2005, and I'm posting a trip report for a trip in June 2004. I actually didn't finish writing it until November.. so a lot of stuff in here is outdated... but maybe someone will want to read it anyway. 
Dates: June 1-9, 2004
Cast of characters
Garrett, age 27- Your humble Narrator. Dedicated Disney nut who obsessively plans every single detail of his vacation, driving seemingly everyone else in the free world completely nuts with his constant talk about WDW. Is known for being the person you'd better not mention WDW too, as he'll never shut up... and heaven forbid if you say you're GOING to WDW... he'll try to plan your trip for you, too! He is in management at a major mall-based book chain and has singlehandedly sold enough copies of the Unofficial Guide and the Passporter to lay waste to a small forest. Has been to Disney only twice before (1984 and 2003), but is planning on making an annual trip if finances allow (fingers crossed...)
Nikkie, age 29- Music teacher extraordinaire who really needs the annual break from her students (what a great idea... going from a classroom full of screaming kids to a theme park full of screaming kids). Also a devoted Disney fan, especially of Winnie the Pooh. Not quite the rabid WDW aficionado I am, but she's getting there! Made her first trip last year with me after years of planning, and I think she was more sad to leave than I was... so we immediately planned the next trip!
Day 1- Tuesday, June 1
Plan: Depart Memphis, arrive Orlando, Check in to Pop Century, go to Magic Kingdom for Spectro and Wishes
Actual:
We set our alarm for 6:00, but I think I was so excited I got up about 5:30. I guess sleep schedules don't follow their normal patterns when you're going to Disney. That means I'll be hurting later in the trip... oh well.
We did some last minute packing and started to get everything together. Everything got double checked, especially park tickets. Can't leave those behind. My mom and brother Austin were supposed to pick us up at 7:00. Well, knowing my mom, they actually arrived about 7:15. No problem, though... we had plenty of time because we leave only 15 minutes from the airport.
We arrived at the airport, said our goodbyes, and checked our luggage curbside with the skycap. There was something of a line, but it moved quickly. We were already checked in and I had printed our boarding passes online the day before, so we were all set to proceed to the gate. Security was no problem-- we were through quickly and there wasn't much of a line. I guess getting there early helped. We began the trek back to our gate. Now, if you've ever been to Memphis International, it's not a nice, efficiently designed, monorail-driven airport like MCO. We walked and walked and walked and walked some more, until we finally go to our gate-- the LAST one in the airport. Wow. Once again, I guess getting there early helped. We grabbed seats in the waiting area and I volunteered to make the million-mile trek back to a McDonald's Express we passed on the concourse and grab a ridiculously unhealthy breakfast. I guess I needed the exercise to help burn it off.
We boarded our flight and took off from Memphis right on time, 9:35. I hate flying so I took a dose of Benadryl an hour before, but it didn't really make me sleepy enough. The flight was pretty uneventful, but we had a lot of turbulence on the way down. That sort of comes with the flight path, or so I've heard. Fortunately, the jet stream pushed us along and we landed in Orlando about 15 minutes early. We made our way to the monorail and down to baggage claim quickly. Despite our early arrival, our Tiffany driver was already there. Renata was very courteous and friendly. She helped us with our bags (all there fortunately, no problem) and we were quickly on our way out of the airport and towards Disney!
We stopped at a brand-new Publix for our grocery stop. We had stopped at an older one last year. This one was really nice. It wasn't busy at all, very clean, and easy to find everything. We picked up some Pop-Tarts and other breakfast stuff, and a few snack items for the room. We were in and out in ten minutes and back on our way to Disney. Renata chatted with us the whole way and we arrived at Pop Century very quickly. I was really glad to see the WDW sign on the way in. I started to feel like we were really there.
Renata helped us unload our bags, and a luggage assistance CM came up to us and loaded our bags onto a cart. We proceeded into the lobby and got in line to check in. I was impressed with Pop Century immediately. It looks similar to the All-Stars but everything seemed so much newer, and I loved the pictures behind the desks and the glass display cases full of pop culture memerobillia. We were only in line about ten minutes. We got a CM (can't remember the name) who was being trained, and he was very friendly. I had requested a room in the 70's section, nonsmoking, on the 1st floor, and we got all our requests, and to top that, our room was ready-- room 0137 in 70's building B. We bought E-ride tickets for June 4 and confirmed all of our priority seatings. He handed us an info packet and map to our room and we were off.
We got to our room, and saw something strange. "That's funny-- the door is open." Someone had left the latch in the door, and I saw why when we went in-- the room wasn't ready even though the CM said it was. The bed linens were off the beds and there was trash in the room. I went over to the phone to call the front desk, but at that moment luggage assistance showed up and we told her what had happened. She apologized for the inconvenince and called dispatch to tell them what was going on. They reassigned us to room 0136 right around the corner. She let us into the room (which was ready) and told us that someone would bring us new room keys. We began to unpack and settled in to wait for our room keys, but I was chomping at the bit to hit the Magic Kingdom. We waited about 30 minutes and when nobody showed up with our keys, we decided to go back to the lobby and see what was going on. The CM at the desk looked it up and said that our new keys had already been made-- we must have just missed them. He made us two more keys and we were quickly out the door to the Magic Kingdom bus stop. The minor hiccup with our rooms was unexpected, but it was resolved quickly with no problems. We waited about 5 minutes for a bus, and we were on our way! I really started getting excited when I saw the monorail, then the Magic Kingdom gate, then the Contemporary, and finally Space Mountain. We're here, we're here!
We had our bags checked then went through the gate at the Magic Kingdom at about 3:15. I was a little worried about our park hoppers (we had never bought them online before) but they worked fine with no problems. Our excitement at a fever pitch, we made our way under Main Street Station and ran directly into the beginning of the Share a Dream Come True parade. What perfect timing, and what a nice treat to start out our trip, as we had missed it last year. We really enjoyed the parade, and I vowed to purchase the CD later in the trip. We headed down Main Street, in awe of the castle. This is when it really hit me, that we're on vacation, and that we made it back, and we're ready to have a great time!
We got to the end of Main Street, and stopped by the Tip Board near Casey's to check wait times. Seems like the Memorial Day weekend crowds are still here-- 80 minute wait for Pooh, and 60-plus waits for the Mountains. We took a left turn into Adventureland, took the shortcut through the restroom corridor, and walked toward Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, one of our favorites. The wait was 60 minutes so we grabbed Fastpasses for 5:30-6:30. We made our way back through the crowds toward Pecos Bill's and decided to eat since we had not eaten since breakfast this morning at the airport. Was that this morning? It seems like such a long time ago now.
Pecos Bill's was great. It was crowded in there, but the lines moved pretty quickly. We both ordered cheeseburgers and fries, and a Coke to share. I made sure to load up my burger with a ton of toppings. I love how they have grilled onions, mushrooms, and cheese sauce here. I got a bunch of cheese sauce to use on my fries. The burgers were good, and we were ready to move on. We still had some time before our Fastpass window, so we walked toward Adventureland and Pirates of the Carribean.
Pirates had a 25 minute wait-- it really must be busy today. We decided to walk over to Jungle Cruise and check out the wait there. 35 minutes. Pirates won out and we got in line, hoping that the wait may have been overestimated by a bit. No such luck here. We were in line for every bit of the 25 minutes. This was fine, though, because it was nice and cool inside (really hot temps today.) We had a very enjoyable first ride of the trip, but got stuck in a long line of boats waiting to get out. Is this the norm now? I think I enjoyed the ride more than last year-- I noticed some new things I hadn't seen before.
After narrowly escaping capture by marauding pirates, we headed toward Frontierland as it was almost time for our Fastpasses for Big Thunder. I took some video of Frontierland including some shots from different angles of logs coming down the big drop on Splash Mountain. The recent rehabs of both Splash and Big Thunder were obvious-- colors were brighter and everything looked better than last year. Our FP window arrived and we quickly boarded Big Thunder. They were operating both sides of the load station-- on our last trip they were only using one side, maybe due to the lighter crowds. This is one of Nikkie's favorite rides, and I really enjoy it, too. No exception this time. Feeling pumped and excited after our ride, we decided to move on.
We considered getting Fastpasses for Splash Mountain, but the return time was 9:00-10:00-- right when we were going to try to watch Spectromagic and Wishes, so we passed. We moved on to Liberty Square and decided to watch The Hall of Presidents, another favorite from last year. The show was great, and I got most of it on video. The wait for the Haunted Mansion was pretty long, so we decided to move on to Fantasyland.
Fantasyland was jam-packed with people (about what we expected.) Wait times were long, so we picked up Fastpasses for Mickey's Philharmagic for 7:00-8:00 and continued walking through Fantasyland towards Tomorrowland, noticing the construction walls surrounding the now-drained 20,000 Leagues lagoon. I hope they put some great E-ticket in this area. We entered Tomorrowland and immediately boarded the Tomorrowland Transit Authority, with no wait, as usual. We really enjoy this ride-- the view is nice, it's relaxing, and there's never a wait. Other Tomorrowland attrractions had long waits-- Space was 75 minutes, Buzz Lightyear was 50 minutes. We skipped them for now since we knew we could hit them on E-ride night.
We went to the Carousel of Progress since it wasn't open on our trip last year. This was new for us-- I had seen the CoP on my trip in 1984 as a kid, but to be honest I don't remember much about it (short attention span, I guess.) This was a pleasant surprise and turned out to be one of our new favorites. I hope they find some way to keep this one running even after they open the new Stitch attraction, but I wouldn't bet on it, unfortunately. With "It's A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" thoroughly stuck in our brains, we made our way back to Fantasyland to use our Fastpasses for Philharmagic. On the way we stopped by Winnie the Pooh (it was under rehab during our last trip) and grabbed Fastpasses for 8:25-9:25. We headed on to Philharmagic and waited about 10 minutes with our Fastpasses (as opposed to the standby line which was 60 minutes. Did I mention that I LOVE Fastpass?) This show was new to us, and we absolutely loved it! It's wonderful beyond words. I still have to watch Muppetvision 3D again to decide which is my favorite, but I have a feeling that Philharmagic is going to be the winner.
We still had some time before our appointment at the Hundred Acre Wood, so we headed towards Frontierland again and saw that the next show of Country Bear Jamboree was starting in a few minutes, so we got right in. I didn't care for this show much last year, but this year I enjoyed it a lot more. I think it had a lot to do with the crowd-- last year the crowd wasn't in to it, but this year, everyone was clapping, laughing, and stomping. It really added to the atmosphere. After the Bears got done, we headed back to Fantasyland to see Pooh. We got over to Fantasyland and the Fastpass return line right at 8:25. Even with Fastpass we still waited about 15 minutes before we boarded our 'hunny pot'. As far as dark rides go, Pooh is one of the best. Kind of short, but I guess that goes with the territory. I wouldn't want to wait more than 10-15 minutes for it. It's cute, though, and fun, and Nikkie really enjoyed it being the extreme Pooh-lover she is.
It was now 8:45, and we decided to find a spot for Spectromagic. Since the parade started so soon, a spot on Main Street was out of the question, so we decided to try from Frontierland. As luck managed, we snagged a pretty good spot close to the curb in Frontierland near Country Bear Jamboree. We settled in to wait for the parade to reach Froniterland. As we waited, we talked about how well everything had gone so far, and how glad we were to be back in the Magic Kingdom. Then, one of the moments I was waiting for finally occurred-- the opening notes of Spectromagic, and the theme, "On This Magic Night", booming over the speakers. We absolutely love this parade, and that music gets to me every time. We noticed a lot of things in this parade we hadn't noticed before (like the Cheshire Cat on the back of the Alice float)-- chalk another one up to Disney's love of detail, detail, detail. The only problem we noticed is that the Chernabog float wasn't working-- it sort of stayed in the "folded up" position. Spectromagic epitomizes everything we love about Disney-- great music, characters, and purely magical moments. We could watch this parade over and over and never get bored. The parade ended all too soon, and it was time for us to make our way towards Main Street to find a spot for Wishes.
Main Street was packed-- big surprise. We ended up near the end of Main Street close to Casey's with about 5 minutes til showtime. Wishes was new to us as Fantasy In the Sky was still running last year when we came. After all the hype and praise that was heaped upon this show on the internet, it would have to be mightily spectacular in order to live up to that. Well, the show started, and I'm sorry, but we..... absolutely LOVED the show! Loved the music, loved the effects on the castle, and REALLY loved all the unique types of fireworks we had never seen before. We were in a perfect position to see everything, and we simply stood there transfixed for 15 minutes while the Disney pyro engineers did what they did best-- worked magic. So-- the immediate question arose-- which do we like better-- Wishes or Illuminations? Well, we'll have to watch Illuminations again to decide. I'm looking forward to the opportunity.
The crowd slowly shifted toward the exit, and we decided to move right along with them. Despite the large crowd, everyone moved in an orderly fashion towards the exit, and we were out the gate by 10:20. As we passed in front of the railroad station, Mickey was there, waving goodbye to everyone. Don't worry, Mickey... we'll be back in a few days! We walked to the Pop Century bus stop... which was the last one. I wasn't surprised... we ARE in a value resort, after all. There was a huge line of people waiting for the bus, but they sent buses continuously and we were quickly aboard and on our way back to Pop Century.
We got back to Pop close to 11:00. I was kind of hungry since our last meal was about 4:00, so I almost bought a dinner, but decided I didn't want something too heavy before bed. We bought some refillable mugs and headed back to the room. Nikkie jumped in the shower, and I snacked on some of the stuff we bought at the store and watched a little TV while I worked on the trip report. We turned in around midnight, ending a great first day at WDW. We couldn't have asked for much more.
Best Moments: Getting to WDW, Mickey's Philharmagic, Spectromagic and Wishes
Worst Moments: The problem with our room upon arrival, but it was quickly resolved.
Dates: June 1-9, 2004
Cast of characters
Garrett, age 27- Your humble Narrator. Dedicated Disney nut who obsessively plans every single detail of his vacation, driving seemingly everyone else in the free world completely nuts with his constant talk about WDW. Is known for being the person you'd better not mention WDW too, as he'll never shut up... and heaven forbid if you say you're GOING to WDW... he'll try to plan your trip for you, too! He is in management at a major mall-based book chain and has singlehandedly sold enough copies of the Unofficial Guide and the Passporter to lay waste to a small forest. Has been to Disney only twice before (1984 and 2003), but is planning on making an annual trip if finances allow (fingers crossed...)
Nikkie, age 29- Music teacher extraordinaire who really needs the annual break from her students (what a great idea... going from a classroom full of screaming kids to a theme park full of screaming kids). Also a devoted Disney fan, especially of Winnie the Pooh. Not quite the rabid WDW aficionado I am, but she's getting there! Made her first trip last year with me after years of planning, and I think she was more sad to leave than I was... so we immediately planned the next trip!
Day 1- Tuesday, June 1
Plan: Depart Memphis, arrive Orlando, Check in to Pop Century, go to Magic Kingdom for Spectro and Wishes
Actual:
We set our alarm for 6:00, but I think I was so excited I got up about 5:30. I guess sleep schedules don't follow their normal patterns when you're going to Disney. That means I'll be hurting later in the trip... oh well.
We did some last minute packing and started to get everything together. Everything got double checked, especially park tickets. Can't leave those behind. My mom and brother Austin were supposed to pick us up at 7:00. Well, knowing my mom, they actually arrived about 7:15. No problem, though... we had plenty of time because we leave only 15 minutes from the airport.
We arrived at the airport, said our goodbyes, and checked our luggage curbside with the skycap. There was something of a line, but it moved quickly. We were already checked in and I had printed our boarding passes online the day before, so we were all set to proceed to the gate. Security was no problem-- we were through quickly and there wasn't much of a line. I guess getting there early helped. We began the trek back to our gate. Now, if you've ever been to Memphis International, it's not a nice, efficiently designed, monorail-driven airport like MCO. We walked and walked and walked and walked some more, until we finally go to our gate-- the LAST one in the airport. Wow. Once again, I guess getting there early helped. We grabbed seats in the waiting area and I volunteered to make the million-mile trek back to a McDonald's Express we passed on the concourse and grab a ridiculously unhealthy breakfast. I guess I needed the exercise to help burn it off.
We boarded our flight and took off from Memphis right on time, 9:35. I hate flying so I took a dose of Benadryl an hour before, but it didn't really make me sleepy enough. The flight was pretty uneventful, but we had a lot of turbulence on the way down. That sort of comes with the flight path, or so I've heard. Fortunately, the jet stream pushed us along and we landed in Orlando about 15 minutes early. We made our way to the monorail and down to baggage claim quickly. Despite our early arrival, our Tiffany driver was already there. Renata was very courteous and friendly. She helped us with our bags (all there fortunately, no problem) and we were quickly on our way out of the airport and towards Disney!
We stopped at a brand-new Publix for our grocery stop. We had stopped at an older one last year. This one was really nice. It wasn't busy at all, very clean, and easy to find everything. We picked up some Pop-Tarts and other breakfast stuff, and a few snack items for the room. We were in and out in ten minutes and back on our way to Disney. Renata chatted with us the whole way and we arrived at Pop Century very quickly. I was really glad to see the WDW sign on the way in. I started to feel like we were really there.
Renata helped us unload our bags, and a luggage assistance CM came up to us and loaded our bags onto a cart. We proceeded into the lobby and got in line to check in. I was impressed with Pop Century immediately. It looks similar to the All-Stars but everything seemed so much newer, and I loved the pictures behind the desks and the glass display cases full of pop culture memerobillia. We were only in line about ten minutes. We got a CM (can't remember the name) who was being trained, and he was very friendly. I had requested a room in the 70's section, nonsmoking, on the 1st floor, and we got all our requests, and to top that, our room was ready-- room 0137 in 70's building B. We bought E-ride tickets for June 4 and confirmed all of our priority seatings. He handed us an info packet and map to our room and we were off.
We got to our room, and saw something strange. "That's funny-- the door is open." Someone had left the latch in the door, and I saw why when we went in-- the room wasn't ready even though the CM said it was. The bed linens were off the beds and there was trash in the room. I went over to the phone to call the front desk, but at that moment luggage assistance showed up and we told her what had happened. She apologized for the inconvenince and called dispatch to tell them what was going on. They reassigned us to room 0136 right around the corner. She let us into the room (which was ready) and told us that someone would bring us new room keys. We began to unpack and settled in to wait for our room keys, but I was chomping at the bit to hit the Magic Kingdom. We waited about 30 minutes and when nobody showed up with our keys, we decided to go back to the lobby and see what was going on. The CM at the desk looked it up and said that our new keys had already been made-- we must have just missed them. He made us two more keys and we were quickly out the door to the Magic Kingdom bus stop. The minor hiccup with our rooms was unexpected, but it was resolved quickly with no problems. We waited about 5 minutes for a bus, and we were on our way! I really started getting excited when I saw the monorail, then the Magic Kingdom gate, then the Contemporary, and finally Space Mountain. We're here, we're here!
We had our bags checked then went through the gate at the Magic Kingdom at about 3:15. I was a little worried about our park hoppers (we had never bought them online before) but they worked fine with no problems. Our excitement at a fever pitch, we made our way under Main Street Station and ran directly into the beginning of the Share a Dream Come True parade. What perfect timing, and what a nice treat to start out our trip, as we had missed it last year. We really enjoyed the parade, and I vowed to purchase the CD later in the trip. We headed down Main Street, in awe of the castle. This is when it really hit me, that we're on vacation, and that we made it back, and we're ready to have a great time!
We got to the end of Main Street, and stopped by the Tip Board near Casey's to check wait times. Seems like the Memorial Day weekend crowds are still here-- 80 minute wait for Pooh, and 60-plus waits for the Mountains. We took a left turn into Adventureland, took the shortcut through the restroom corridor, and walked toward Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, one of our favorites. The wait was 60 minutes so we grabbed Fastpasses for 5:30-6:30. We made our way back through the crowds toward Pecos Bill's and decided to eat since we had not eaten since breakfast this morning at the airport. Was that this morning? It seems like such a long time ago now.
Pecos Bill's was great. It was crowded in there, but the lines moved pretty quickly. We both ordered cheeseburgers and fries, and a Coke to share. I made sure to load up my burger with a ton of toppings. I love how they have grilled onions, mushrooms, and cheese sauce here. I got a bunch of cheese sauce to use on my fries. The burgers were good, and we were ready to move on. We still had some time before our Fastpass window, so we walked toward Adventureland and Pirates of the Carribean.
Pirates had a 25 minute wait-- it really must be busy today. We decided to walk over to Jungle Cruise and check out the wait there. 35 minutes. Pirates won out and we got in line, hoping that the wait may have been overestimated by a bit. No such luck here. We were in line for every bit of the 25 minutes. This was fine, though, because it was nice and cool inside (really hot temps today.) We had a very enjoyable first ride of the trip, but got stuck in a long line of boats waiting to get out. Is this the norm now? I think I enjoyed the ride more than last year-- I noticed some new things I hadn't seen before.
After narrowly escaping capture by marauding pirates, we headed toward Frontierland as it was almost time for our Fastpasses for Big Thunder. I took some video of Frontierland including some shots from different angles of logs coming down the big drop on Splash Mountain. The recent rehabs of both Splash and Big Thunder were obvious-- colors were brighter and everything looked better than last year. Our FP window arrived and we quickly boarded Big Thunder. They were operating both sides of the load station-- on our last trip they were only using one side, maybe due to the lighter crowds. This is one of Nikkie's favorite rides, and I really enjoy it, too. No exception this time. Feeling pumped and excited after our ride, we decided to move on.
We considered getting Fastpasses for Splash Mountain, but the return time was 9:00-10:00-- right when we were going to try to watch Spectromagic and Wishes, so we passed. We moved on to Liberty Square and decided to watch The Hall of Presidents, another favorite from last year. The show was great, and I got most of it on video. The wait for the Haunted Mansion was pretty long, so we decided to move on to Fantasyland.
Fantasyland was jam-packed with people (about what we expected.) Wait times were long, so we picked up Fastpasses for Mickey's Philharmagic for 7:00-8:00 and continued walking through Fantasyland towards Tomorrowland, noticing the construction walls surrounding the now-drained 20,000 Leagues lagoon. I hope they put some great E-ticket in this area. We entered Tomorrowland and immediately boarded the Tomorrowland Transit Authority, with no wait, as usual. We really enjoy this ride-- the view is nice, it's relaxing, and there's never a wait. Other Tomorrowland attrractions had long waits-- Space was 75 minutes, Buzz Lightyear was 50 minutes. We skipped them for now since we knew we could hit them on E-ride night.
We went to the Carousel of Progress since it wasn't open on our trip last year. This was new for us-- I had seen the CoP on my trip in 1984 as a kid, but to be honest I don't remember much about it (short attention span, I guess.) This was a pleasant surprise and turned out to be one of our new favorites. I hope they find some way to keep this one running even after they open the new Stitch attraction, but I wouldn't bet on it, unfortunately. With "It's A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" thoroughly stuck in our brains, we made our way back to Fantasyland to use our Fastpasses for Philharmagic. On the way we stopped by Winnie the Pooh (it was under rehab during our last trip) and grabbed Fastpasses for 8:25-9:25. We headed on to Philharmagic and waited about 10 minutes with our Fastpasses (as opposed to the standby line which was 60 minutes. Did I mention that I LOVE Fastpass?) This show was new to us, and we absolutely loved it! It's wonderful beyond words. I still have to watch Muppetvision 3D again to decide which is my favorite, but I have a feeling that Philharmagic is going to be the winner.
We still had some time before our appointment at the Hundred Acre Wood, so we headed towards Frontierland again and saw that the next show of Country Bear Jamboree was starting in a few minutes, so we got right in. I didn't care for this show much last year, but this year I enjoyed it a lot more. I think it had a lot to do with the crowd-- last year the crowd wasn't in to it, but this year, everyone was clapping, laughing, and stomping. It really added to the atmosphere. After the Bears got done, we headed back to Fantasyland to see Pooh. We got over to Fantasyland and the Fastpass return line right at 8:25. Even with Fastpass we still waited about 15 minutes before we boarded our 'hunny pot'. As far as dark rides go, Pooh is one of the best. Kind of short, but I guess that goes with the territory. I wouldn't want to wait more than 10-15 minutes for it. It's cute, though, and fun, and Nikkie really enjoyed it being the extreme Pooh-lover she is.
It was now 8:45, and we decided to find a spot for Spectromagic. Since the parade started so soon, a spot on Main Street was out of the question, so we decided to try from Frontierland. As luck managed, we snagged a pretty good spot close to the curb in Frontierland near Country Bear Jamboree. We settled in to wait for the parade to reach Froniterland. As we waited, we talked about how well everything had gone so far, and how glad we were to be back in the Magic Kingdom. Then, one of the moments I was waiting for finally occurred-- the opening notes of Spectromagic, and the theme, "On This Magic Night", booming over the speakers. We absolutely love this parade, and that music gets to me every time. We noticed a lot of things in this parade we hadn't noticed before (like the Cheshire Cat on the back of the Alice float)-- chalk another one up to Disney's love of detail, detail, detail. The only problem we noticed is that the Chernabog float wasn't working-- it sort of stayed in the "folded up" position. Spectromagic epitomizes everything we love about Disney-- great music, characters, and purely magical moments. We could watch this parade over and over and never get bored. The parade ended all too soon, and it was time for us to make our way towards Main Street to find a spot for Wishes.
Main Street was packed-- big surprise. We ended up near the end of Main Street close to Casey's with about 5 minutes til showtime. Wishes was new to us as Fantasy In the Sky was still running last year when we came. After all the hype and praise that was heaped upon this show on the internet, it would have to be mightily spectacular in order to live up to that. Well, the show started, and I'm sorry, but we..... absolutely LOVED the show! Loved the music, loved the effects on the castle, and REALLY loved all the unique types of fireworks we had never seen before. We were in a perfect position to see everything, and we simply stood there transfixed for 15 minutes while the Disney pyro engineers did what they did best-- worked magic. So-- the immediate question arose-- which do we like better-- Wishes or Illuminations? Well, we'll have to watch Illuminations again to decide. I'm looking forward to the opportunity.
The crowd slowly shifted toward the exit, and we decided to move right along with them. Despite the large crowd, everyone moved in an orderly fashion towards the exit, and we were out the gate by 10:20. As we passed in front of the railroad station, Mickey was there, waving goodbye to everyone. Don't worry, Mickey... we'll be back in a few days! We walked to the Pop Century bus stop... which was the last one. I wasn't surprised... we ARE in a value resort, after all. There was a huge line of people waiting for the bus, but they sent buses continuously and we were quickly aboard and on our way back to Pop Century.
We got back to Pop close to 11:00. I was kind of hungry since our last meal was about 4:00, so I almost bought a dinner, but decided I didn't want something too heavy before bed. We bought some refillable mugs and headed back to the room. Nikkie jumped in the shower, and I snacked on some of the stuff we bought at the store and watched a little TV while I worked on the trip report. We turned in around midnight, ending a great first day at WDW. We couldn't have asked for much more.
Best Moments: Getting to WDW, Mickey's Philharmagic, Spectromagic and Wishes
Worst Moments: The problem with our room upon arrival, but it was quickly resolved.
