Today I woke at 7:30 and for the first time could have happily lay on or dozed back to sleep. But I did still get up as we had Magic Kingdom today. Plenty of time for a long lie on tomorrows free day!
Kieran was sitting waiting for me in the living room and so began our usual routine before we woke the sleepers at just after 8am, saying I wanted out by 9am.
We managed this fine with me finishing off the washings etc and Kevin packing our picnic into the cooler backpack. We were parked up in Simba 26 by 9:20 and it was mobbed getting the wee trolley so we had to wait a while. We chose the Ferry to go over to MK as we had never done this before. Last year we were staying at Disney the first day we visited so the bus took us straight to the gate. Then the second day we visited we parked at the Contemporary for breakfast at Café Mickey then used the monorail from there. Really liked the ferry with the breeze as you crossed over. Today was probably the hottest it has been since we arrived.
As we were crossing over I started to worry about the time for our first fast pass given we still had bag check and entry to do and it was 9:50. Our first fast pass was ending at 10:20. I pulled my phone out only to find this message
I had not been able to get a FP for Seven Dwarves Mine Train on any of our MK days (the joys of no Disney booking so only being able to book 30 days out instead of 60) so I would have loved if we could have used it on there, but as you can see it wasn't included. At least now we were able to wander up Main Street at our own pace as we only had to make our way to our second FP for Splash. When we arrived the wait was saying 30m so we were initially tempted to queue then have a second go using the FP, but it didn't LOOK like 30m so we didn't chance it. Enjoyed the ride. It really seems to go on so much longer than other rides which is great. I even managed hands up on the ride photo. Getting so much better at this!
When we came off Big Thunder Mountain had just reopened and showed a 15m wait time so we queued for this straight away. So this actually worked really well for us as we still got to ride BTM but still had a FP banked for later.
We had a wander around Frontierland, and had a go on the Liberty Square River Boat which we all loved.
We had a picnic from the coolbag, and had a look round the Hall of Presidents but didn't wait for the show. We went to Haunted Mansion for our 12 o'clock FP. Had never been on this before and really like how chilled it was. I had expected to be half scared out of my skin but it was more like watching ghosts than having them jump out on you!
From here we decided to do It's a Small World which showed a 25m wait, purely as Kieran had never been on it. Hannah was given the wee red card to monitor the queue time and it was indeed exactly 25m. Kieran was somewhat unimpressed with this as a ride!
Hannah wanted to do Peter Pan but that was a 60m wait so we bypassed it. We headed into Mickeys Philharmagic, which I had also never seen, and Kieran and I both really enjoyed it. Hannah was indifferent and Kevin fell asleep!
We left this and decided to see how long we would need to queue to do SDMT. It said 80mins and Hannah was not pleased when we decided to wait. I spent the whole queue dibbing and facebooking on my phone and was devastated to see the news coming through that Prince had died. I love Prince. My mood was not improved when the American man in front of us, who had queued for 70mins on his own, was suddenly joined by 2 women and 3 really badly behaved kids who skipped their way up the queue to him. Aaaaarrrgghh. After 5 mins I was not surprised those kids couldn't manage 80mins, the cheeky wee sods. They couldn't do the final 10 mins without driving everyone around them up the wall while one of the women simpered 'now now darling, mummy would love it if you didn't kick that lady behind you'. That would be me. Sort your kids love. For all our sakes. The queue was much easier to bear once we got to the interactive bits for the kids to play with.
Finally got on and as much as I loved it, couldn't stop laughing when we came off and Kieran was wide eyed saying 'we waited an hour and twenty minutes? For that?!' The queue time as we came off was now 100 minutes. No second ride here then! Incidentally the ride video for this showed up and could be viewed in full on my MDE within 20 minutes. Impressive. So half an hour after we had been on it I had posted the video of it to Facebook. Got to love technology eh?
Little Mermaid was a 55m wait so skipped that and the kids had a go on the Tomorrowland Speedway which said 25 mins but they were on and off within 15. Kieran made no comment on his sisters driving. Very diplomatic.
Walked into Tomorrowland and checked the wait times, 40m for Buzz and 60m for Space Mountain, so we agreed to queue for Buzz then use our bonus FP on space mountain. The queue for Buzz in the end only took 25m so not too bad. Whilst in the queue we started to talk about what to do for dinner. Kevin and I wanted to stop at a restaurant on the way home and thought we were just discussing which one to go to. But both kids were adamant they wanted back to the villa for some pool time and just to eat there so we didn't reach agreement just yet. Hannah scored WAY more than everyone else so I think she must've done that Zurg thing I think I read somewhere.
As we crossed over to Space Mountain the wait time was now 70m so we were glad of the FP. As we were flying round this I was being jerked about all over the place and started to wonder if I was just over doing too many rollercoasters. But as we pulled in Kevin declared that it was way more jerky than he remembered so not sure why this was, but at least it wasn't just me!
Time for a wee relax on the Peoplemover! I know some folk slate this but I really like chilling on it while I get to nosy through the other rides. Then we went to the FP+ machine to see what we could get a 4th FP for. We picked Pirates Of The Caribbean as the kids had never been on that. So we went and did that. Hannah loved all the Jack Sparrow models in here. She likes him. She asked me the other day if Johnny Depps lips had always been that perfect or if he had something done to them. I said they had always been like that and asked if she had googled any pictures of him from when he was young. She said no, and when I told her he was even more gorgeous then she sighed 'Oh man'. Hormones!
Having finished everything we wanted to do and now being dead beat, we made our way out, using the ferry as the monorail was off. As we were now tired, and had to stop for bread and milk anyway, Kevin and I gave in to the kids to pick up dinner at the same time and eat by the pool. So we stopped at Target on Rolling Oaks and got our essentials plus the breaded chicken and roasted chicken we got the other night and some amazing potato salad. This ended up being a really good shout and we loved having a dip in the pool to cool off and taking our time picking over dinner. Good times.
Tomorrow is a free day. Hannah will be allowed to sleep until she wakes up by herself then I will be plonked by the pool in my favourite spot. So be prepared for a short TR tomorrow!
The American radio stations are playing back to back Prince tonight (as I imagine they are at home too) so I am loving it. Me with a wee Malibu and Cranberry, and Kevin with his beer, while the kids are still playing in the pool at 9:30pm. Love this villa. Love this holiday.
Night all xx