Magic Kingdom

YEEEAAAAHHHH!!!!! It’s Magic Kingdom day!!! I absolutely love Magic Kingdom. There is no question this is the best park (in my opinion). And nothing beats the nostalgic feel of Main Street, especially when it is not packed full of people. So, our plan was to get there early to grab some coffee, walk through the stores and enjoy the beauty of Main Street before rope drop. Sadly, we took too much time taking with the PhotoPass photographer at the enterance and missed rope drop. Waisted all of that time and our pics did not even turn out that great. Ugh.

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Main Street

I love these pictures of the girls on the bench with Roy Disney and Minnie Mouse❤️

We did a little shopping and got some treats from Starbucks

We took a few more pictures on Main Street. Some of these show examples of the filters, borders, and stickers you can add to your PhotoPass pictures. These can be added when you download your pictures. These options do change frequently.

Here are a few more with the whole gang!

Adventureland/Fantasyland

Once we were done with picture taking it was time to make our way back to Adventureland! We had a FastPass for Big Thunder Mountain at 9:30. It was a was around 9:00 and the back of the park was dead! So the brave souls who were willing to be wet for the rest of the day went on Splash Mountain first. It had a posted wait time of 10 min. It did take them closer to 20 min. but just the walk back to the queue for this ride takes a couple of minutes. ***Side note here, there is the nicest little quiet, rest, play space back behind the entrance to Splash Mountain towards the entrance to the Railway Station. (Pictured above) There are also bathrooms back here.***

Once they were done we literally walked on to Big Thunder Mountain with our FastPass. It was 9:30 and the posted standby line was 20 min but looked to be more like a solid 30 min wait. We loved this ride!

Pro tip – Ride Big Thunder Mountain at night! It’s awesome! If you can not get FastPass for this ride do it within the hour after opening or the hour before closing. Or both!!

It was becoming apparent that my 6-year-old niece was not as comfortable as we had anticipated with most of the rides. This one scared her a little which, in turn, made her nervous about all most all of the rest of the rides. So we decided to head over to It’s a Small World. I really enjoy this nostalgic ride even if it is a little dated and could use some TLC. My niece enjoyed it too. But, our next FastPass was for the Haunted Mansion.

Our nervous little girl was definitely concerned about this ride but we reassured her that it did not go fast or have a hill. We let her know that it was really dark. She reluctantly went on. You know when you assume that if you make them go on something they anticipate will be scary and end up loving it?……..yay, that was not the case. This ride did not increase her confidence in us or in any the rides. Time for some low key rides to get her back on board!

We also did Mickey’s PhilharMagic somewhere along the way. Next up was the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train.

Everyone loved it!!

The Seven Dwarfs Mine Train’s line queue and ride are so adorably themed. It’s a ride that has to be done multiple times to be able to appreciate all of the little touches, too bad it is such a hot ticket. This is my kind of roller coaster. Like many other rides, the Fastpass line queue is not as interactive but you also, basically, walk right on. I would take the time to do the standby line on occasion to experience the interactive queue.

Mid-day Break from Magic Kingdom

This was how the troops were starting to feel so it was time for a break from the park. Part of our group went back to the Art of Animation, my girls went back to the Swan. I am a freak and love spending every minute I can taking in all of the Disney magic so I took the monorail over to the Polynesian Resort. Everyone’s bus experiences were not great during this break. It took all of them an hour to get back to the resorts. When you are tired and need a break this is not ideal. I will share some of my photos and thoughts about the Polynesian on another post.

I did find this little treasure hiding at the Pinapple Lanai just outside the back doors of the Polynesian resorts lobby.
This is a Dole Whip with a shot of coconut rum……it was magical✨

It began to rain and I was starving. I had hoped to check out Trader Joes but it was not open for the day yet. I decided to head back to our resort to grab something to eat and meet up with the girls. My plan was to catch a bus to Hollywood Studios from the Polynesian then walk to the Swan. Apperently it was my turn to have a miserable bus experience. The arrival time for a bus going to Hollywood Studios continuously changed. I waited for at least 30-45″ for the bus. It defininatly took me at least an hour This trip was just prior to Disney adding the bus wait times to the My Disney Experience app. I can see where this would be really helpful so you don’t have to be sitting at the bus stop for 20-30″. You can just plan to be there at the next scheduled bus time!

Thankfully the girls had ordered room service and there was plenty for all of us! We probably did this 3 times during our trip. Food at Disney is not cheap so ordering room service was really not that much more expensive than getting something in the restaurants and so worth the convenience. It was alway really good, too!

Happily Ever After

It was raining a little when made our way back to the Magic Kingdom. We brought inexpensive ponchos with us so we packed those. I have done many, many trips to Disney World but it was only after this trip that I have decided the best options for dealing with rain is to buy quality ponchos (I plan to purchase a Mickey Mouse one when I go back) and bring an umbrella. This was also the first time we have experienced hard rain that lasted over 30 min during of our trip. It has definitely rained before but never this hard. The cheap ponchos were really just sticking to us and not effective in this amount of rain.

We went to the Enchanted Tiki Room to get out of the rain and because I love it!! In the Tiki Room song is my ring tone 🙂 To me this is one of the quintessential Disney attractions.

Thanks to the heavy rain the line for Jungle Cruise was short so we rode that next. The ride was not as enjoyable during the rain and the PA system on our boat needed a serious update so it was a little disappointing. The rain was still coming down when we got off so we stood under some cover by the ride exit for quite a while.

By the time the rain finally let up it was time to claim a spot for Happily Ever After. We ended up standing on the Adventure Land side of the “hub” or the circle area around the statue of Walt and Mickey. This spot was nice because it was close enough to see most of the projection show well but a little too close to fully enjoy the fireworks. There are several trees in this area that blocked some of the firework viewing. I think it is very difficult to pick an ideal spot for watching this show, they all have their pros and cons. One thing that is consistent is that people are rude. Be prepared to stand your ground. People will shove right past you and stand directly, and I mean DIRECTLY and within inches of you if you let them, even if you try to corner them off. It is really sad and frustrating. I will have another post about some tips and tricks for watching the fireworks and other shows at some point.

After the fireworks, we fought our way through the masses to get over to Tomorrow Land. We rode Buzzlight Year Space Ranger Spin and went to Monsters Inc Laugh Floor which was hilarious. I think we all would have done Monsters Inc again but we had an early morning character breakfast to get up for. Check back to see where we went for our amazing character breakfast! While you are waiting check out THIS POST for a list of things you probably did not know you could do at Walt Disney World on your next trip 🙂