Our Family

Our Family

Monday, October 16, 2017

Walt Disney World Trip Report Day 4: Monday, October 9, 2017


We’re up bright and early to hit Magic Kingdom today!  When they first changed park hours to begin at 8AM, I was a little disappointed, because I’d already planned out my day.  With a little tweaking of my plan, I realized that extra hour was actually wonderful!  We arrived before rope drop and immediately headed for Peter Pan’s Flight.  I like this ride, but its not worth the normal wait time to me, nor is it worthy of using one of my three fast passes.  So, I knew it we didn’t get it early, we probably wouldn’t do it all.  Arriving at rope drop, we maybe waited 5-10 minutes to board.
 

After Peter Pan, we immediately headed across the way to It’s a Small World.  I feel like this is a Disney classic that shouldn’t be missed.  Sarah absolutely LOVED It’s a Small World.  She would point to different things she saw.  It was her favorite ride of the trip.  After we finished It’s a Small World, we headed for Princess Hall to meet Cinderella, Elena, Tiana, and Rapunzel.  Sarah still wasn’t too comfortable with characters so I had to go with her. She liked some of them but wouldn’t get too close.
 

After meeting the princesses, we headed to Adventureland.  Dakota, Sarah and I rode Aladdin’s Magic Carpets.  Dakota tried his best to get us to the right height for the camel to spit on us, but I think we only got wet once.  It was hot enough that I was more than willing to get spit on by a camel.

We then headed to Jungle Cruise.  This was more fun than I remembered, as well.  The jokes are so bad, they’re good, if that makes sense.  You just can’t help but laugh.  From the Jungle Cruise, we headed to Pirates of the Caribbean.  It was maybe a 15 minute wait at this point.  Sarah was a little scared of the drop and I had to keep pointing out the “non-scary” stuff to keep her from getting scared.  Our picture didn’t turn out great because none of us were expecting the picture to be taken at that moment.
 
 

Once we got off Pirates, it was pretty close to time for our Big Thunder Mountain fast pass. Dakota and Jon rode first, getting a rider swap pass.  Once they were finished, Dakota and I rode.  It’s still a fun ride.  I am still disappointed that it’s neighbor, Splash, was closed.   That is one of my favorite rides.

We then headed to Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Café for lunch. I had the fajitas, Jon had the nachos, and Dakota had the tacos.  This meal was delicious.  We really enjoyed our lunch and that there was somewhere cool to eat and relax for a bit.  We decided not to do Country Bears and our Fast Pass to the Haunted Mansion didn’t start until 11:45am so we took our time eating lunch and enjoying our time together.

Dakota was a little scared of the Haunted Mansion.  I actually think Sarah did better on it than Dakota.  This is one of Jon’s favorite rides, so we had to do it.  It was fun, just not the excitement level of some of the bigger rides. After Haunted Mansion, we headed to Mickey’s PhilharMagic.  Every time I see this show, I think its so cute.  The kids enjoyed it as well, I think so it was well worth the 15 minutes or so spent. 

We still had a few minutes until time for our 7 Dwarfs fast pass, so we let the kids ride the Carrousel.  Now, let’s pause for a minute.  Remember me briefly mentioning in a previous day that I was using a cane?   I have pretty severe arthritis in my hip and it prevents me from being able to do a lot of things that “normal” 34 year olds could do.  My feet were also hurting and I’d discovered that standing still hurt worse than walking most of the time, so I decided I’d try to pick a horse that wasn’t too high and actually sit on it with Sarah.  Successful – we found one that was very low to the ground and I was able to get up on it pretty easily and sit with Sarah.  She LOVED the “horsey” and asked about going on it again later in the week.  Once the ride stopped, it was time to get down.  The “horsey” that had been so easy to get on was now up about as high as it could go.  In addition to not bending very well, I’m 5’1” on a good day, so a ‘high horse’ isn’t a good situation for me.  It took me a bit to figure out how I was going to get off the horse.  I finally put one foot on the top level of the horse next to me and one on our horse.  Then, stepped down to the next.  Now, my problems was that I’m so short, I can reach the bottom with my foot.  So finally, I put my knees on the bottom step and THEN was able to reach the floor.   It took way too long to get off the horse on the carrousel.

Now, it was time for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train.  Sarah isn’t quite tall enough for this one either, so again, we did rider swap.  Dakota and I rode it first.  I enjoyed this ride – it wasn’t too rough or wild, but was enjoyable and not too boring either.  Jon and Dakota rode next and their picture from this ride was my favorite of all ride pictures we had.  They look like they are having the best time ever on this ride.


 

Once we were done with Seven Dwarfs, we decided to start heading out of the park, but I had one request – I wanted to stop and let Sarah meet Tinkerbell on the way out.  This line was very deceiving.  It looked like a 15 minute line and I believe the time posted was something like 20-25 minutes.  It felt like we were in that line for 45 minutes and it moved SO SLOW! It was horrible.  Some of us finally sat down on the ground waiting.  We finally entered into Pixie Hollow and met Tink herself.  She was awesome.  She was a much better character than the princesses we’d met earlier in the day.  Sarah was still a little scared and just kind of stared at her.  She did give her five and as we were leaving, she wanted a Tinkerbell Barbie doll, which she got.
 
 

After Tinkerbell, we headed back to the room for a quick rest.  We had dinner reservations later that night.  The bus wait felt SO long.  We were the first in line and I’m pretty sure we waited over 30 minutes for a bus.  As I believe I mentioned before, standing still hurts my feet worse than walking so this wait was no fun.  We quickly decided we would be driving more often than we’d originally planned.  We finally got back to the room, rested, and then got ready for dinner.

Our original plans were to take the bus to Magic Kingdom and then the boat to Wilderness Lodge for dinner at Whispering Canyon Café. After our bus adventure that afternoon, we’d decided instead of taking Disney transportation, we’d drive to the Wilderness Lodge.  We enjoyed the drive and learning our way around the property a little better.  Jon described the Wilderness Lodge as looking like Lincoln Logs and he kind of had a point.  We arrived a little early and had a bit of a wait but their sitting area in the lobby was so comfortable, we didn’t mind the wait at all. 

I cannot say enough good things about Whispering Canyon Café.  It was absolutely wonderful.  We ordered the All You Can Eat Platter and it was delicious.  We ate so much that we all decided to take our dessert back to the room with us for later.  If you go, make sure to ask for ketchup.  Sarah is still yelling “I NEED KETCHUP!”
 
 

After dinner, it was time to head back to the resort to prepare for ANOTHER early morning on Tuesday.



 

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