Wednesday December 17th: Magic Kingdom
Predicted Crowd Level: 6/10
Actual Crowd Level: 6/10
Reservations:
Dining: 1900 Park Fare 5:00 PM at the Grand Floridian
Fastpass:
Enchanted Tales with Belle-10:30AM-11:30AM
Seven Dwarf's Mine Train-11:40-12:40 AM
Meet Anna and Elsa-12:50-1:50 PM
This particular morning we got up early so we could catch the opening ceremony at Magic Kingdom. This is one thing I had been looking forward to on the whole trip. I am not sure why-I had just watched videos of it before when went and it just seemed so magical. Even now, 1.5 months later as I post this I tear up a little when I watch it. I think it is because I see how excited Elsie gets watching it and much she remembers. It is kind of fun too because sometimes in the morning, even before the trip, I would sing Elsie Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah when I would go in to wake her up and it is featured in this video. Now, sometimes she will ask me to sing the "Good Morning" song from this clip. Then, the other day we were watching Dumbo and in the movie they play the song about the train coming down the track and she remembered it was from when the steam train came to Magic Kingdom with Mickey and Minnie so it is fun to see her remembering moments from the trip.
We stayed until the welcome show was over and by that time, people were already inside the gates. What people would rush to at this point was Seven Dwarfs Mine Train (the wait was over an hour by the time we made it back towards the ride) but we didn't need to go there because we have a fastpass for that ride later in the day. The other attraction that everyone rushes to is Princess Fairy Tale Hall to meet Anna and Elsa because later in the day the line can get to be over two hours! But we had a dsfastpass for that too. So we made our way back towards new Fantasyland. The plan was to ride some of Elsie's favorite rides again first thing in the morning when the lines wouldn't be long since it was so early so we beelined it for Under the Sea: Voyage of the Little Mermaid.
After Little Mermaid, we made our way over to Barnstormer because Elsie wanted to ride a roller coaster. Then we immediately walked over to Dumbo-for the third or maybe fourth time on this trip :). There are two Dumbo rides but one of them was closed because they were shooting a commercial so we had to wait a few minutes for this ride.
After Dumbo we went over to Peter Pan and Winnie the Pooh. Both of these rides get longer lines (45-60 minutes or more) later in the day and Elsie really wanted to ride these again so we did. We had to wait like 20-30 minutes for each of these rides but that was shorter than it would be later.
Peter Pan Ride Selfie-Sorry Elsie! :)
After that we made another stop at Prince Charming's Regal Carousel. I think Elsie could ride this over and over and over. She would pet her horse, name it, and had to pick out one that had pink or purple on it. Within two hours of the park opening we had been on six rides with hardly any wait at all and the lines were not bad-however, that was about to change. It got SO crowded that they had cast members telling people which side of the walkways to walk on.
The next place we went was Tomorrowland so John and Elsie could ride Astro Orbiter. Elsie loved it! I walked around, got a coffee, and just relaxed a bit while they waited for the ride. Then we hopped on the Tomorrowland Peoplemover-which there was no line for at all so that was nice. By the time we were done with that, it was time to head to Enchanted Tales with Belle to utilize our fastpass. This attraction is a participant involved attraction. Any child who wants to participate can be a character and help tell the story of Beauty and the Beast. It was fun to watch. And then all the kids get a picture taken with Belle at the end so it was a great place to meet Belle.
Elsie was the pepper shaker :) and John was lucky enough to get chose to be a knight.
After we were done here, John and Elsie made their way to Seven Dwarfs Mine Train-the newest attraction at Walt Disney World. The standby line was over 90 minutes but they had a fastpass.
Elsie absolutely LOVED it! It was fun to watch her ride a "Real" rollercoaster vs one that is geared more for younger kids. John said she was squealing with delight the entire time! I waited on the bridge right across from the Beast's castle which provided me a great view of them on the ride.
After the Mine Train we headed to Columbia Harbor House for lunch. This restaurant is located in Liberty Square and features seafood on their menu. I had the fish and chips and John had the lobster roll and both meals were REALLY good. I would definitely recommend this place. After lunch it was time to go to Princess Fairytale Hall to meet Anna and Elsa. We used a fastpass for this and it went VERY quickly.
After meeting the Frozen characters Elsie took a little snooze in her stroller while John and I walked around. We headed to Frontierland because John was going to ride Big Thunder Mountain Railroad but when we got there the wait for the line was over an hour so he decided to skip it. So we walked towards Main Street to do a little souvenir shopping. One thing we wanted to get for sure was coffee/hot cocoa mugs for all three of us. We found mugs for John and I but decided to let Elsie pick out the mug that she wanted. I also picked up this blue sparkly plastic mug that Elsie had wanted all week but I wouldn't let her get because she can't use it for hot beverages. (Santa ended up bringing this to her and she was ecstatic ;). After shopping we decided ice cream sounded good and we found a little table and just relaxed. Elsie woke up just in time to finish off the ice cream.
After we relaxed for a bit we walked over to Liberty Square to ride the Riverboat. It was a nice relaxing ride however, there really are no seats to sit down on and you have to stand the entire time. I was kind of hoping to just sit and ride so I ended up just sitting on the ground-ha! One thing we hadn't done yet was ride the train so we walked through Fantasyland to try to catch the train there to ride to the entrance to the park. We had 5:00 dinner reservations at 1900 Park Fare at the Grand Floridian and knew we had to either take the ferry or the monorail and wasn't sure how long that would take. We got to the train and there was a HUGE line! We asked the cast member if he thought it would be faster to wait for the train or try to walk back to the front of the park. We were kind of feeling rushed at the time. He told us that we may or may not make it on the next train so we would be waiting for the next one but he still though it would be faster than trying to walk through Main Street which was packed! We took a minute to assess the situation and decided to high tail it out of there and walk. We took a back route through tomorrowland and in the end, it only took us 11 minutes and we beat the first train. As we were walking out of the park the first train was pulling up to the station.
We ended up taking the monorail to the Grand Floridian and decided to take the ferry back. We arrived a few minutes early so we had a little time to walk around. The lobby here was just beautiful!!!
1900 Park Fare is a character meal that features Cinderella, Prince Charming, and the evil stepsisters and Lady Tremaine (the stepmother). The food was really good here but like other character meals that featured a buffet we felt rushed to get up to the buffet to get our food and back without missing any characters. I also have to note Elsie was a bit squirley for this meal.
This was the gingerbread house in the lobby of the Grand Floridian-it was huge!
After dinner we had planned to go back to Magic Kingdom. Elsie REALLY wanted to ride the tea cups again and we kept telling her we would do it later because the line for it is always so short that it is one of those rides you can do whenever you have a few minutes. We took the ferry from the Grand Floridian back to Magic Kingdom and then planned to take the train from Main STreet to Fantasyland to ride the tea cups. We got up to the train stop. We had waited about 10-15 minutes for the train and then Elsie said she had to go to the bathroom-Really??? so we had to try to get out line and down off the platform. It ended up working out because as we were trying to walk against the crowds they made an announcement that there was an issue with train so it all ended up working out. We walked to Liberty Square, bought a Christmas ornament and then headed to the Tea Cups. Elsie had waited so long and I would have to say this was one of her favorite rides for sure.
After tea cups, Elsie wanted to go on the roller coaster one more time so John and Elsie got in line for Barnstormer. After about 15-20 minutes they got out of line and Elsie complained her tummy hurt. Oh no! I was terrified she was getting the stomach flu. We walked over to Fantasyland train station and took the train to the park entrance and left. It was a sad way to end our Disney World trip and was bumming that we didn't leave on a high note but we definitely didn't want to push it and she said she just wanted to go back and lay down and got really whiny. We got back to the hotel, laid Elsie down and packed up our suitcases for our early morning departure.
Some point in the middle of the night Elsie woke up SO upset! Like never before. We had a really hard time getting her to calm down and go back to sleep. It was about this time that I starting to worry about her being too sick to fly. I fell back to sleep for a little while-we had to be up really early for our flight. Our flight left Orlando at 8:05 and we wanted to plan at least an hour to drive there since it is a bit farther than Orlando International. I think we were up by 4:00 AM.
When we woke up Elsie for the morning the first thing she said was "My tummy feels ALL better! I can go on the roller coaster now!" That just broke my heart! I wish she could have done the roller coaster one more time. So we packed up and left around 5:00. When we got to the airport, Elsie acted like she was a frequent flyer. She remembered exactly what she needed to do through security and she even just had to take off her shoes like Daddy even though she really didn't have to. Once again, I opted for the pat down so I would avoid the scanners. We grabbed a quick breakfast and waited for our flight. The flight was uneventful and Elsie did pretty good considering our early morning wake up and we arrived back in Des Moines safe and sound and ready to unpack and pack back up for all of our Christmas Celebrations!
I plan to write a post reflecting back on the trip, what I would recommend, and what I would do differently but all in all, it was a trip I will remember forever!!
