The Disney Do Minus Two Tour 2012 - Day Two - Magic Kingdom

[mkingdon]

Previously on this tour...

Premature Pretripulation
Day One - Travel

Day Two – Monday 20th August 2012

It was an unusual, welcome and a not surprising side effect of the marathon day yesterday that I didn’t wake at some ridiculous hour. I suppose it is all relative, as I was awake at 6.30am, which to those of a teenage persuasion is pretty much right in the middle of the ridiculous.

Nobody else was yet awake so I wandered out of the bedroom, made myself a brew, and carried out other essential tasks such as connecting my phone to the internet. So for quite some time I sat on the couch in my underpants browsing the wonders of the internet, well most of them anyway. I also took the chance to write up my notes from yesterday which took a while too.

Eventually the girls made an appearance, their bodies telling them that it was a usual wake up sometime in the late morning, but their phones telling them it was stupid o’clock. As a sign of their growing maturity, they made their own breakfast. The complex nature of adding milk to Froot Loops makes them a credit to their very proud parents.

Showers began and I made myself and Louise a bagel, who was now up and getting ready. I showered and took care of my sack.

We are finally out of the door at 8.20am, and nothing is going to stop us now until we hit a theme park…apart from a quick stop at Wal-Mart for some stuff I foolishly forgot last night. One such thing was After Sun. Despite the usual vastness of Wal-Mart, we soon locate the relevant aisle, and I stand at the end of it impatiently, imagining every single person currently getting ahead of us in every single queue at Magic Kingdom. I hide it well of course, and Louise seems to have selected the correct After Sun potion. It is of course vital that the right shaped bottle is chosen, as let’s face it this is the only difference between all the different bottles, well, that and price.

The selected bottle is one of those pump action types, and as Louise reaches down to pick up, she does so by the sticky up pump action thing. Half way between shelf and Louise said pump action sticky up thing frees itself from the bottle, and sends the bottle, complete with all its contents to the floor. Thankfully, it lands right way up, and not on its side, so there was no big spill to clear up.

Unfortunately for Louise, this meant that it spattered half its contents straight up in the air. This resulted in what I can only describe as a “Something About Mary” moment for Louise. For the next few moments, whilst trying really hard to breathe and laugh at the same time, I was pointing out every little bit of “special cream” which had somehow found its way into her hair, her bra, her shorts, her feet. It was like a scene from one of those wonders of the internet that I wasn’t watching earlier!

Having witnessed one of the largest “money shots” in history, I somehow managed to get myself together enough to get whatever else we needed, and head for the car, only to see as Louise walked in front of me, that she had been “splattered” on her back too.

With the excitement over, well, all over Louise anyway, we climbed back into the Dodge, and give the girls an edited version of what had just happened. They didn’t find it quite as funny as I did for some reason.

Anyway, it is now Magic Kingdom or bust, and by 9.10am we are parked in Simba 17, and after watching one full tram pull away, we board the next and we are getting closer. We sat on the back row, and found something to watch out for. If there has been rain recently you may find lots of it dripping from the tram roof, especially at the back, and sometimes through the speakers. It was cold, and Rebecca was not best pleased.

The first morning is not the time for messing about, so the ferry is not even an option. We march to the monorail, and feel giddy beyond belief at hearing some of the best words in the Spanish, or any language.

After a quick fondle of my sack, I am deemed no risk to security, and allowed to enter. We three iPhoners (me and the girls) quickly establish a wireless connection, and begin to really rub it in to everyone at home by tweeting endless pictures of the entrance. You’re Welcome!

This was the first time that I’ve been to Disney with the ability to get online in a park. Is this a good thing? Well, I have mixed thoughts.
One the one hand it truly is lovely to be able to send live pictures to family, friends and followers, and with the new Disney app (once they sort out the frequent time lags in wait times) it will make the park experience better and easier for sure.

The down side is that you do now see endless folks walking around one of the most beautiful and magical places on earth with their face in their phone. I did it some, you can’t help it, as did the girls, but not as much as I thought they would. You have to be careful not to see the holiday through your Twitter client I suppose. It also causes another issue, in that those folks walking around looking at their phone become a health and safety hazard as they walk straight into you.

I found one of my withering stares and loudest tuts got the message across. That, and taking their phone and stamping on it.

So now, having had first sight of the castle from the monorail, the next milestone is to stop for the usual photos on Main Street. This for me is a real “stop and smell the roses” moment. It is the fulfilment of all those months of saving, planning and wishing. So we do some of that, and it is lovely to be here for sure.

I allow the girls to choose the first ride, and a sign of the passing years sees them choose Space over Splash but not for the first time. So we take a right at the top of Main Street, past the redundant Noodle place and over to Space Mountain. The queue is only ten minutes, which is well within our tolerance levels, and as happens a lot, it is less than that. That is sort of a shame, as there are now interactive games in the queue, and we didn’t get a chance to give them a go before having to walk on and board.

There’s a routine and an approach to these holidays once you get to the rides and stuff. From telling the Cast Member how many are in your party, to me taking my cap and glasses off on the wilder rides and shoving them into my fanny, which isn’t as painful as it may sound. Stood here, at the first ride of the holiday, with the seemingly endless days stretching out before us, is, a good time. Sprits are high, the queue is short and my T shirt is tight, but no matter.

The ride itself is always much wilder than I am expecting, and I scream like a girl all the way around, with a few words I wouldn’t use in polite company. Louise and I say in unison as we get off, that we’re getting too old for this!

Whilst the queues are smallish we must conquer the mountains, so we head all the way over to the two in Frontierland.

Alas, Splash is down, so we get a Fastpass for it. Big Thunder already had a thirty minute queue, which is not within our tolerance levels so we give that a miss and head for Pirates instead.

This too is down. This is a critical point in the day and trip. I either march to Guest Services and demand a refund for the full caboodle, flights, new white trainers, after sun, the lot or I look on the bright side and go and find another ride to do instead.

So we do Jungle Cruise. With two major rides down the queue here is much longer than you might expect at this time of day, but we join it nonetheless. We wait longer than the posted twenty minutes and indeed we are the family that take the red pendant thing with us to prove that the wait time was a lot longer than the one shown on the sign outside. Happy to help!

We’ve had better Jungle Cruise guides, but we enjoy it still. Pirates is now open, with a ten minute wait which we join and after about, well, ten minutes board the ride.

OK, so we’ve been here ages now and not eaten so it’s time to put that right. Louise wants to eat somewhere outside to get some sun. Yep, some of the skin scarring, 90 degree, drive sweat into every roll of fat sun. As I think where such a place might be, I turn around and see we are at it. We take a table outside Pecos Bills, with some seats in the shade for the normal members of the party, and Louise sat on a sun drenched stool. Why they couldn’t do it in a restroom I don’t know. What with the After Sun and the stool her clothes are a right mess already.

Continued...

[mkingdon]

We’ll call this lunch. OK, so it’s just gone eleven, but lunch it is!

We have –

Me – Taco Salad (yep, a salad)

Girls – Burger

Louise – Chicken Caesar Salad

We get two cokes and part with $40.

In an attempt to further her impression of a walking Persil ad, Louise proceeds to tip half of her salad all over the table and lap. She was genuinely gutted, not because of the mess, as that ship sailed in Aisle three of Wal-Mart, but because she was really enjoying her lunch.

Thankfully, mine is pretty much all Taco, so no need to worry!

Full for now, we walk down to the Haunted Mansion, and the queue has changed. You can choose to go straight into the normal entrance (posted with no wait time) or take the right hand side with a ten minute wait. Curious to find out why we take the latter.

It leads to a new interactive queue area. It won’t give you hours of endless fun but it is a nice distraction if you are waiting a while and with younger kids.

In truth we walk straight through in our own time and find ourselves at the normal entrance and go straight in.

It is now almost time for the Splash FP I got earlier. Dad’s always thinking!

On the way we see that Mickey’s Philharmagic is just a ten minute wait so we do that whilst we can. The park is getting busier now, which makes those twonks who sit down half way down a row deserve every one of the expletives I say almost loudly enough for them to hear. I’d bring back public flogging for that. I’d do it in front of the castle every forty minutes until people learned.

Walking through Fantasyland to Splash and the crowds had really arrived. It is always one of the most congested areas with two popular rides opposite each other and more strollers parked than there are people in the park, but it was very hard to get through. After all our initial vim and vigour, we are also all starting to feel a bit tired now too. But, we have a live Fastpass so nobody is going anywhere yet.

The first smug Fastpass walk of the holiday brings me the same levels of pleasure as previous years, and we are boarded by Tinie Tempah, who I believe is some sort of pop beat combo that the kids are digging these days.

Reflecting our flagging energy levels, we catch the train back to Main Street, and head for the exit, recognising that staying longer than your energy does leads to unhappy people.

It had been several hours since we had been to Wal-Mart so we felt compelled to call in again on our way home. This time for some beers and a chapstick. Of course, what else.

By 3pm, we are home and enjoying the pool. The girls played (it’s been a while since I said that I can tell you!), I read a lot more and Louise of course worshipped the sun. This was the case for the next two hours, interrupted by me entering the pool for a cool off at one point.

The readying process began around 5pm, so I watched TV until around 6.30, had a shower and got dressed and we left the house at 6.40. You hear me fellas?

The Outback was the eatery of choice, and it really is one of our all-time favourites. There was no wait for a table, and we order –

Cheesy Fries to tise our apps. We attack these as if the last time we saw food was sometime in early Spring.

Me – Fillet Steak and Shrimp

Louise – Steak and Wild Mushroom…wild, it was livid!

Rebecca – BBQ Chicken

Emily – Blooming Onion Burger. It had been several hours since last burgering so this was not a shock.

These photos are dark as me having my flash go off at the table was frowned upon, as apparently taking pictures of every meal is “sad”!
Louise had two (delicious) Sangrias and the bill was $82 plus tip.

As our bellies filled, our desires to be awake diminished, and we couldn’t wait to get the bill paid and get home. Somehow I made it back to the villa whilst asleep at the wheel, and we all crashed into bed (not all the same one) before 9pm. Rawwwk and Roolllll.
Tomorrow – Rest and a little bit more MK.

[Twiga6]

Love it! Have you finished the next day yet?!

[chris5117]

Great read as usual

[Guest]

Got a great picture of what Louise looks like in my head!

[Juliemack]

It's such a lovely, warm fuzzy feeling when you walk up Main St on that first day...looking forward to more

[Guest]

Fantastic - thank you

[kirstielou]

Would have loved to have seen that event in Walmart!

[disney owl]

a great 1st park day, waiting for more please

[daisyowl]

Really enjoying this trippie as always!