Feb 10th –
Another late start this morning – this will be the theme for the rest of the trip really.
I was up before everyone else again and went for a run – it was a bit slower going this morning as it is starting to get busier at the hotel for Mardi Gras and the upcoming Presidents’ Day weekend.
The kids woke up around when I got back from the run so we got moving and went and had breakfast / lunch at the hotel.
Today was set to be Magic Kingdom and we were lucky enough to get one of the newer bendy buses almost entirely to ourselves – it was different enough to make the ride to the park a little funner.
Magic Kingdom was fairly busy but we had fast passes later plus it was Magic Hours at Magic Kingdom that night so we weren’t worried that we wouldn’t have fun.
We started with Astro-orbiters which gave a great view of the park and then we hit Stitches’ Great Escape before walking back down Main Street to get to the fast pass viewing area of the Festival Fantasy parade.
We grabbed a pretty good spot there and had fun snapping pictures and interacting with the characters. Our kids got high fives and our daughter got a hand kiss from Donald Duck. Some pictures are below but I will probably add a gallery page at a later time.
After the parade we blasted over to Seven Dwarfs Mine Train for our fast passes and we all managed to ride – Heather took some of her travel meds for motion sickness so that she could hopefully ride the ride. Whoohoo! She did it!
We then had a snack on Main Street before ditching the busy park for the hotel for a while.
A few hours later we came back for a fast pass for the Anna and Elsa meet and greet (which seemed a bit rushed – they seemed to move us through much more quickly than we were used to) and then headed over to Be Our Guest for our supper reservation.
Supper at Be Our Guest was very good – great atmosphere (we were in the main ballroom) and we loved watching the fake snow fall outside.
After that we were into Magic Hours and took advantage of the reduced crowds to hit an amazing number of rides:
- tea cups
- Tomorrowland Speedway
- It’s a Small World
- Big Thunder Mountain – Heather was able to ride this one too because her motion sickness meds hadn’t worn off yet!
- Pirates of the Caribbean
- Magic Carpets
- Haunted Mansion
- Royal Carousel
And then we figured we would end the night with a ride on the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train again – we were able to get on and through the line up fairly quickly (maybe 10 minutes) and when we were done they were still letting people through…so we bolted back through the line and got to ride again! I think we were in the 2nd last train to go through. Whoohoo – Mine Train 3 times in one day! That is pretty rare.
This did make for another late night – back to the room at about 1 am.
Feb 11th
I woke up around 9 again and did a few laps of running around the hotel. It was still a bit cool but the sun was warm and you could tell it was getting warmer.
When I finished the run I checked out the pool and it was set to be very warm. So I ran back to the room and found that our son was up so I got him to grab his swim suit and we went to the pool for a half hour to some daddy-son time.
Heather and our daughter were just getting up when we got back so off to breakfast we went.
We decided on a Downtown Disney / Disney Springs day today so we took the boat down the Sassagoula River to Disney Springs.
We did some wandering around and shopping – a fair number of changes since our last trip and way more to come!
T-Rex was the choice for supper and we went in around 4:45 – always a fun place to eat.
After some more shopping we headed out and took a bus back to the hotel. Unfortunately it stopped at French Quarter first and a huge tour group got on and the bus driver almost didn’t stop at Riverside to drop us off – it took some yelling back and forth over the crowd before he caught on and dropped us off. That could have been quite irritating.
We then hit the pool for an evening swim and grabbed some hot chocolate and snacks before getting to bed quite early compared to other days! Tusker House for breakfast tomorrow so everyone needs to be up bright and early!