5-week Split Stay in Florida, Feb/March 2020 - Day 23: Magic Kingdom & The Polynesian

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Day 23: Magic Kingdom & The Polynesian
March 3, 2020
[-- Trip Index --]

Today's quick movie:


If you read yesterday's report, you may remember Myla fell asleep very early - around 7:15PM. It should come as no surprise then that she woke up very early this morning too, at the ungodly hour of 5:45AM! In fact, I'm pretty sure Michael's leaving for the gym is what woke her, as he'd left only minutes earlier. I'm not an early bird at all, so I tried to get Myla settled with the iPad and her headphones, but I didn't manage to go back to sleep.

So we were all up and wide awake when Michael returned with the coffees at 7AM - he was not happy with the gym at all. It's quite a walk, and he said it was SO busy even at 6AM!

I had my coffee & cereal on the balcony, enjoying the tropical vibes.


Being up so early at least meant we were out the door early - it was barely 8AM when we set off for the monorail!


It was pretty quiet at the monorail station - no queue for bag check, and we were literally scanning our bands for entry into the park about 10 minutes after leaving our hotel room! This is probably my favorite thing about the Poly!


The park wasn't oficially open until 9, so we just soaked up the atmosphere for a while.


We wandered up Main Street to get some Photopass pictures taken in front of the castle.


We found a seat on the hub and watched the little opening show from a distance - Myla loved it, and the morning sunshine was lovely!


I spotted the zoom shot photographer with no queue, so did that with Myla while Michael was in the toilet.


When he came back, I did it a second time with him, but Myla didn't want to do it a second time so it's just the two of us!


Then it was 9AM, the park was officially open, and right away I got a notification. We had a Fast Pass for 7 Dwarfs Mine Train for 9AM, but it was down with technical difficulties, so I was given a general, good-for-anything FP. We decided to head to something else in the mean time that had a small queue, and choose to try Winnie The Pooh so we headed into Fantasyland.


This was actually our first time doing this via the Stand By queue, which Myla loved!


Now if you read yesterday's report, you'll also remember we did Journey Into the Imagination there, and it totally freaked Myla out and she came off crying and didn't want to do any more rides. She seemed to have forgotten that statement this morning, and didn't mention anything about it in the queue. When we climbed into the honey pots, she did ask me if this one was scary, and I said no it wasn't - during the ride she was a little apprehensive, but then it was over and she turned to me all relieved and goes "That wasn't scary at all!" We agreed with her and told her good job for trying it!

I was hungry for a snack next, so we walked back to the Cheshire Cat, and I got a Cheshire Cat Tail (so yum) and we both got coffees. Not vegan but it was so delicious! I shared it with Myla, we both really enjoyed it. We sat down on a wall just inside Storybook Circus to eat, and were watching the Dumbo and Barnstormer rides from there. 7DMT still wasn't open, and Myla asked if we could ride the Barnstormer instead. Last year she was too short for this, but she was tall enough this time! So off we went - all happy that she was asking to try a (small) rollercoaster!


Some good views of the Tron Coaster construction from the Barnstormer queue!


Now please note: if you are in our position, visiting with a child who is tall enough to ride smaller coasters for the first time: DO NOT START WITH THE BARNSTORMER. I mistakenly thought this'd be a good one to start with. I was wrong. Having only ridden it myself once 5 years ago, I did not remember how rough and bumpy it actually is! Myla doesn't mind the going-down-fast bits, but she hated how rough it was. She was a big girl and didn't get upset like she did with Figment yesterday - she just said calmly that she didn't like that one, it had hurt her, and didn't want to do it again. That was OK...but then it turned out she now assumed all coasters are like that, and we could not convince her to give 7DMT or Slinky Dog a try at any point of the holiday! I tried to explain those are much smoother but she wasn't having any of it. Looking back, I'm fairly sure if we'd started the day with 7DMT like I had planned, she would have enjoyed it. So don't make my mistake - don't do the Barnstormer as your kid's first coaster lol!

It was just after 10AM now, and the character meets were opening. Myla begged to go see Minnie and Daisy, so off we went for more autograph collecting. We ran into Pluto wandering around on the way, and Myla gave him a big hug!

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The queue was not even 10 minutes, and we saw Daisy first.


Next up was Minnie.


Both were lovely and cuddly, and Myla was over the moon. Our next FastPass was for meeting Cinderella and Elena, and it was open now, so we walked over to the Princess Fairytale Hall.


It was fairly quiet inside, and we saw them with our FP in less than 5 minutes. Myla was over the moon to be meeting Cinderella - she loooves that movie at the moment, and Cinderella was so sweet with her, chatting to her and hugging her! She said to Myla her dress was SO pretty, it must have been made by mice too! Great character interaction!


Next up was Elena - I haven't watched any Elena with Myla yet so she had no idea who this was. That didn't dampen the fun though - Myla was happy to meet and hug any princess no matter who she was lol!


By now it was 11AM, and after her early start, Myla was exhausted. I put her in the stroller and we decided to go for a little walk, hoping she'd fall asleep while we walked. We headed in the general direction of Frontier Land, enjoying the scenery as we strolled along.


Success - she was asleep before we got to Liberty Square. Michael and I decided to go for lunch while she slept, and we headed for Pecos Bill. We got the vegan Roasted Vegetable Bowl each, which we pimped out at the toppings bar - they were delicious and sooo much food! We also got Myla a kids Uncrustables meal so she could eat it later when she was awake again. Total was $28.20 for lunch.

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Our next FP for Tinker Bell was coming up, so after eating we headed back towards Main Street, me snapping photos on the way.


When we got to Town Square Theatre, Myla was still asleep. I gently woke her up and told her was time to meet Tinker Bell, and that as a surprise, I had a new dress with me for her. This woke her up good - she was immediately excited and loved the little surprise dress when she saw it - it matched Michael's shirt haha.


The meet itself was really cool - the queue makes you feel like you're going into Pixie Hollow itself, and there's lots of big props around - like huge playing cards, etc. It's a really cool set, more than just, oh here's a room with Tink in it! Tinker Bell herself was adorable as well, the only downside is that this is the one and only meet where we encountered the dreaded Photopass box. So there's no photographer, just a box on the wall. This box took a grand total of 3 photos, and Myla was looking the wrong way in each of them. By comparison, most other meets we've done get you anywhere between 10-30 photos in my experience! I did know about the box in advance though, so I took lots of photos with my phone instead and was glad I did that to capture these precious moments!


It was 12:30 by the time we came out of there. 7DMT was now back up and running, but in spite us trying to persuade us, Myla did not want to try it. It was hot too and we all wanted to swim, so we took the monorail back to the Poly, and we were our room just after 1PM.


They got changed and headed down to the quiet pool right away (Myla's choice, she didn't want to go to the big pool), and I sat and did my work on the laptop first before going down to join them. It was lovely in the warm sun, so relaxing!


Myla was done with swimming by 15:30, so we headed back and all got showered and changed - we planned to go back into Magic Kingdom for the evening! We walked over to Captain Cook's for some food first. Michael ordered 2 Super Food Salads for us, and Myla only wanted a banana. Unfortunately I didn't like this salad at all. The dressing was extremely vinegary, not nice at all, and the salad was basically just various lettuce leaves with very little other filling! Michael's was the same - I was not impressed, but he didn't mind as he likes vinegar. So he ended up eating mine too, and there was some annoyance between us - he gets a bit annoyed at me being a picky eater and not eating healthy enough, and feels it sets the wrong example for Myla. That rubs me the wrong way, because I can't help if I don't like something, and I literally can't force myself to eat something I dislike - that just doesn't work on me! So meh, just one of those things again, where you have an argument with 5 words or less, because you've both had the exact argument before! Married life eh! Anyway - Myla did enjoy her banana, and Michael ate both salads.


We went over to the grassy bit beside Captain Cook's after we ate - they had lots of games and activities set out, and Myla joined them for a while.


We caught the monorail back to MK around 17:15, and walked around to New Fantasyland to meet Ariel, a last minute FP I picked up this afternoon! It was fairly quiet for a bit everywhere now, and the park looked beautiful in the setting sun.


We didn't have to wait long, and Ariel was soo lovely - she admired Myla's Little Mermaid dress and gave her the biggest hugs!


When we came out, I asked Myla what she fancied doing now, and she asked if we could go back on It's A Small World. I picked up an FP that opened in 10 minutes, so yup, not a problem! We walked over and rode that again - definitely Myla's favorite ride (and we were both relieved there'd been no mention of Figment or yesterday's trauma at all today!)

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Myla was complaining of being hungry by the time we finished this, so we thought we'd collect the stroller and do a quick mobile order and get some pasta from Pinocchio Village Haus for her.


That's all the order was - 2 servings of pasta (I was joining in as I was hungry too). However, the park had gotten pretty busy in the past hour, and it took a whopping 45 minutes to get our orders! At least half that time I was standing at the mobile ordering window, because I went to check why it was taking so long after 20 minutes. Then Myla came and found me, and I also had to take her to the toilets for an emergency pee - got all that sorted (and she peed on the toilet again, yay!), and our food still wasn't ready! By the time we finally got it, it was cold, and Myla ate 2 bites before declaring she didn't want any more. I didn't blame her - it wasn't nice at all. Last week's pasta here had been far nicer!

And to add to the annoyance, by wasting an hour here, we'd kind of missed our chance to do more rides. Our plan had been to either watch the fireworks from the top of Main Street (if Myla wanted to - the loud bangs frighten her), or else from the Poly beach. So we wanted to be out of the park before the crowds came, and with the fireworks starting in 30 minutes, we made our way back to the park entrance.

On the way, I checked with Myla one last time did she really not want to ride 7DMT - I still had that VIP fastpass from this morning. She was adamant, and I then suggested maybe we could use it to nip in and see Mickey Mouse on the way out. We didn't have her autograph book last time she saw him in MK, so that would get that one checked off too. Myla was very happy at that suggestion, so we walked back.


We got to Town Square Theatre, I scanned in - and the scanner turned blue. It turned out that the 7DMT replacement pass doesn't work for the Mickey meet - this is pretty much the ONLY thing that's excluded, and I hadn't read properly to realize this! Oh no! Myla burst into tears, saying she just wanted to give Mickey a hug, but there was nothing I could do and the CM didn't budge, just shrugged and turned away. And there was no one else there, she just literally turned our back on us.

I tried to explain to Myla that I'd made a mistake and we didn't have a ticket to see Mickey after all, but she was understandably inconsolable (her tiredness this late in the day didn't help). The CM continued to ignore us, not even looking our way as I carried a crying Myla outside.

She cried all the way back to the Poly, to the point where various other CMs outside came up to us at different points to ask if she was OK. I explained that yes she was, she was just disappointed and sad she couldn't see Mickey. She got handed like 6 stickers by various CMs, which was really sweet, and it made me really annoyed that the Mickey CM wasn't a bit more helpful. I know it was my own fault and all, but still! It's not like it was super busy.

So with Myla being so upset, we abandoned all plans for the fireworks and just headed back to the room - she was exhausted after this, and I tucked her into bed with a promise that I'd do my best to get her to see Mickey tomorrow. I felt super guilty and like such a bad mummy for not having checked the FP more carefully!

[4fromsuffolk]

Myla’s little face when she is meeting the Princesses 😊. Sorry about your Mickey meet, that must have been a cold hearted CM you ran into. I would have let you in!

[JackyH]

What a mean CM. Poor Myla.

[mick]

What a shame they wouldn’t let Myla in to see Mickey

Joan

[Em4owen]

What a shame about Mickey. The CM could have used some Disney magic there but no 😥

[jothp]

What a shame about the end to an otherwise great day. I suppose they can't let everybody in who doesn't have a FP but surely they could see you had a VIP one even if it wasn't really meant to be valid and let you in. Even if they'd been a bit more sympathetic it would have been better.