D - (not so) Magic Kingdom

Another day, another early rising for a Disney Magic Hours morning. This time we were headed to Magic Kingdom - finally! It was actually rather imperative that we get there as quickly as possible because we knew we were in for a day of rainy weather. And since it wasn't supposed to hit until around 9:00, we had to take advantage of that first hour in the park.

Off we go on the ferry! That was actually one of the best parts of staying at the Wilderness Lodge. It was very convenient to get everywhere.



Magic Kingdom was a really fun park to enter. The welcome show already had us smiling before we even walked in and then all the greetings of "Welcome, Princess!" were so fun for Katie. You just can't help but smile the whole way down Main Street.



We picked up fast passes to Peter Pan and then hit some of the smaller highlights for kids rides. Of course there was the mandatory Dumbo ride......




& the tea cups (which I couldn't count how many times they rode)



Astro Orbitter

They also hit the Tomorrowland Speedway and Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin before we went back to Peter Pan's Flight. They both really loved this ride, and it was definitely one of Katie's favorites of the trip. I think a big part of it was that they got to ride it together with no parents. They really enjoyed the rare rides where they got to do that.

And then it started raining. Another example of me following the books is that I decided before we left that we weren't going to splurge on those expensive Disney ponchos, so I went to Target and bought 4 of the $1 one-size-fits all ponchos. Smart, huh? Not so much. These things were HUGE on the kids, so I had to tie them up. They were also very lightweight plastic and felt like an icky, cheap, cold trash bag on you all day long. The kids hated them!

See? Here is a miserable little girl begging to take hers off as we wait for the Mickey's Philharmagic show.

Luckily it did sort of die down every now and then. There were reprieves in there where we could take off the miserable ponchos and have some fun. We crammed so much into that day. We did the Haunted Mansion, Tom Sawyer's Island, The Magic Carpets of Aladdin, and the Swiss Family Treehouse.

With a lot of convincing, we managed to talk Noah into trying another roller coaster, and was it ever a hit! I believe he ranked this one as #2 on his top 4 list of rides in the Kingdom. It was the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. And he loved it!

He and Mike did it alone the first time, and they were convinced that it wouldn't scare Katie too much, so we all did it together. And they were right! She WAS scared, but she is so very proud of herself for riding it. If you ask her about Disney, she will be sure to mention this one. I think she felt very big that she could handle it.

Oh! I almost forgot this one. Outside of the Aladdin ride there was a camel statue that randomly spits water like one of the scenes from the movie. It's really funny to watch as unexpecting people walk by and suddenly get spit on. We sat and watched it for a while because Mike found it quite hilarious and REALLY wanted to get a picture of someone with their shocked face. He kept getting on to our kids for playing in it because they were ruining the surprise!

Well, the rain kept coming down. We decided to ride It's a Small World once during a particularly strong downpour just so we could get out of the rain (notice my very wet jeans). Noah still likes to mention this particular torture. He does a hilarious impersonation of the little robot children. I think this one could use a little updating, but Mike really enjoyed it because it was long and dark and he got a nice little nap.

I can't lie. We were pretty miserable by that afternoon. We were all tired, cold and wet, but I insisted that we stay to see the parade. Here is our one lame attempt at a family picture in front of Cinderella's castle. You can't tell it, but it's raining pretty hard here, and Mike couldn't talk the 3 of us into trying very hard. We didn't even have the patience to let him find someone to get a pic of all 4 of us. I do regret that now, hon!

Here is poor Katie waiting for the parade. She's in there. I promise.

So, after we waited on the curb in the rain for 30+ minutes, the powers that be cancelled the parade. Bummer! At this point we were all just miserable, so we just headed back to the hotel.

Here's our drenched little Katie-bug on the ferry ride home.

And she wasn't the only one who was miserable.

We got back to the hotel around 4:00 and stayed there the rest of the night. I did a lot more laundry and made some enemies in the laundry room by not getting my clothes out of the dryer fast enough, but we somehow survived. It turned out to be somewhat of a blessing to have some forced time in the hotel as it gave me time to get a lot of packing done. I don't know when I would have done it otherwise. Only one day to go!