Lottie & Dickie visit Mickey - Oct 2016 - Day 2: Magic Kingdom, Crystal Palace, Be Our Guest

[lottie89]

<<< Day 1 - Travel Day

Day 2 - Magic Kingdom

Sunday 9th October 2016

First park day! The alarm was set for 6.30am but we woke up at 5.40am, so there wasn’t really much point in going back to sleep. We just stayed in bed marvelling at how cosy it was and talking about the day ahead, before getting up at 6.30am to get ready. I had planned my first day outfit to be a backless body and high-waisted shorts, as I knew it would be the only day I wouldn’t have a pot belly! I really loved how big our room was and really appreciated padding about getting ready, with plenty of room for both of us to do our thing without getting in each other’s way. I just love hotel rooms in general, a little private cocoon away from work and housework and everyday life.


Hair bows and Mickey lamp


Messy cosy bed


Magic bands <3


Ready to go!

We left the room at 7.15am and headed down to the bus stop. It was still not 100% light outside but despite the sun not yet being up, it was already nice and warm. It was also perfectly still with clear skies – more than I could’ve hoped for after the week of hurricane worry! I felt so happy and excited waiting at the bus stop. It’s always exciting starting a new day in Florida, but there’s a special feeling about that first morning when it’s all ahead of you and you haven’t been in a Disney park for ages. We only had to wait 5 minutes before a Magic Kingdom bus pulled up – I loved the ‘my other ride is a magic carpet’ flashing up on the front.


Beautiful early morning


Time to go!

We stopped at the Beach Club on the way, which is quite annoying to be honest when you just want to get going, but at least it meant we always got a seat on the bus. I think we pulled up at MK at about 7.40am and made our way through our first bag check. It seemed really busy outside the gates, but that’s probably because I’ve never been there for the welcome show before. We managed to get a good spot in the centre where we had a our first Photopass pic, it was so easy with our magic bands. Finally, the welcome show started - I loved it! I tried so hard not to cry but I just couldn’t help a tear rolling down my cheek, much to Rich’s amusement. He enjoyed it too and it made us both really excited to finally get into the park, I’m really glad we made it for the show.


Showtime

Finally, we were slowly walking under the train station and making our way onto Main Street! What a feeling. The sun was shining, the music was playing, and the day was ahead of us. We stopped for a Photopass and slowly made our way down Main Street, just taking it in and enjoying the atmosphere.


Finally on Main Street





Richard had his eyes closed in about 75% of photos, so I'll basically post all of the ones where they're open


...and some of the ones where they're closed, because it's funny


Happy

Our Crystal Palace reservation was at 8.15am so by the time we made it up to the hub, it was almost time to check in. We got our buzzer and hung around outside, taking pictures of the castle while we waited.


Waiting for our table. I love how empty the hub looks here.


Breakfast time!

After about five minutes, it was our turn to go in! We were shown to a table near the front of the restaurant and ordered some coffee and OJ from our server, before going up for our first plate. I think we both tried pretty much everything between us! The omelette station was great, and I was very happy to be able to have my first Mickey waffle. I was interested to see how Rich was with meeting the characters, but he was great and really got into it, I was so happy. We were both just in such a great mood, it’s making me smile thinking about it. Eeyore went for a break so we almost didn’t get to meet him, but he returned just as we were about to leave, so we hung around for a bit longer to get the full set of characters!


Buffet bound


Rich caught me chatting to Tigger when I got back to the table before him


Selfie!


Then Rich decided to join us


My first plate


Richard tucking in


The main man


My second plate


Rich's second plate


Pig & Piglet


And finally, Eeyore!

We paid with our dining credits, and both agreed that while we had a lovely time, we wouldn’ t pay OOP for it. The character premium is a bit too much when the food is just tasty but average breakfast fare. However, I’d certainly return if we were on the DDP again.

Finally, it was park time! The plan for the morning was to start in Fantasyland and make our way around to Frontierland, before lunch at BOG. When I booked CP, the park wasn’t opening until 9am, so the dream of an empty Fantasyland was scuppered when the opening time changed to 8am. However, I wasn’t too sad as it meant we could catch the welcome show.


Love the castle from different angles

Fantasyland was quite busy, I’d hoped to be able to get on a couple of rides but the queues were already quite long. We just wandered around and took it all in really, before deciding we’d try and ride Journey of the Little Mermaid because of the constantly moving queue. However, it was closed! Good start, but we did get a magic shot with Sebastian, which I can't seem to find in the album!

We carried on walking and saw that Dumbo had a 15 minute wait, so decided to make that our first ride of the holiday. It turned out to be a walk on which was good. When I was tiny and first visited Disneyland Paris in 1992, Dumbo was my favourite ride, and until I was at least 10, I basically thought the point of Disneyland WAS the Dumbo ride, so with hindsight I’m really pleased this was our first ride! Unfortunately for some reason, our lever didn’t work for the first two thirds of the ride, so we were stuck going around the bottom, but eventually we managed to fly high, if only for a few seconds!


A stop off at Gaston's


Obligatory hat photo


Dumbo action shot


Exploring Fantasyland

Next up we decided to get into the Pooh queue, which was posted as 30 minutes. A highlight of the queue was Richard thinking the pump thing that makes gopher pop up was a see-saw and trying to sit on it. It’s a lovely little ride, we enjoyed the bouncing Tigger section.


Scaring off the kids


Too cool

It was now time for a Peter Pan’s Flight FP, which was lucky as the wait time was 70 minutes! Absolute classic, love this ride.
It was really hot now, not that we were complaining! One thing I loved about October was that the sunny Florida weather is so contrasting with the grey English weather. We queued about 20 minutes for Haunted Mansion next. I had cancelled our FP for this having read that the FP doesn’t really cut out much of the queue, and was glad I did because we were merging with the FP people after only about 10 minutes. Unfortunately the scaffolding was still up, and the interactive queue was closed, which was a shame, especially as it was Halloween season!


Welcome, foolish mortals

HM is one of my favourite rides, it’s so well done – nobody does a haunted house ride like Disney.
It was nearly time for our Jungle Cruise FP now, so we enjoyed a slow stroll through Frontierland. The wait time was 75 minutes, so another good use of a Fastpass! Our skipper Ramon was good, his jokes reminded me of Richard’s :p

I was keen to ride PotC next but the queue was 40 minutes, which we didn’t fancy, so we headed to Splash for our final FP instead. Unfortunately it was down! I was a bit gutted as I had been really looking forward to it, plus it was so hot that a bit of splashing wouldn’t have gone amiss. The poor CM was having to explain the situation over and over again to annoyed FP holders, he said we could come back and use our FP when Splash was running again.


Another castle view


We caught the new Muppets show on our way to Fantasyland

We decided to head back towards Fantasyland so we weren’t too far from BOG when our time came. We watched Philharmagic and both really enjoyed it – it’s so Disney! Afterwards we gave Ariel another go, and luckily it was running now. We got into the queue at 12.45pm, and it was posted as a 45 minute wait. I was a bit worried as our BOG time was 1.15pm, but I just hoped that the actual wait time was shorter than posted. Luckily it was only about 30 minutes and we were at BOG at 1.25pm, which was fine.

We bypassed the queue as we had pre-ordered, although we did stop to change one of our fries to green beans, in a half-hearted attempt to get some non-beige food into our diet. It’s such a beautiful restaurant, and we had a look around before choose a table near the windows in the ballroom. We had a perfect view of the falling snow as we waited for our food to arrive.


Waiting for our food

I chose the croque monsieur and Rich had the roast beef sandwich. We were both really impressed, with the main courses, great value for a quick service credit. For dessert we both had the Master’s Cupcake, which was nice and moist, although I must say that the grey stuff was ‘quite nice’ as opposed to ‘delicious’.


My food


Rich's food (we split the fries and green beans)


The Master's Cupcake

After lunch, we checked MDE to see if Splash was back up and running, but unfortunately it wasn’t, so we decided to head back to the hotel for a rest (I say decided, it was in the plan).


aaand another castle angle

continued below...

[lottie89]

A Yacht Club bus turned up as soon as we got to the bus stop, and we popped to the room to change before heading down to Stormalong Bay for our first alcoholic drink of the holiday! I had a Captain’s Mai Tai and Rich chose a Caribbean Pilsner. We found some sun loungers and I wrote some notes while Rich snoozed. It was lovely and sunny, and it felt quite surreal to be chilling in Stormalong Bay having seen so many pictures and watched so many videos. As we were finishing our drinks, a waitress came over with a menu so it would have been rude not to have another drink – we both chose Corona this time. We had a chat with the waitress, who was American, and it turned out she had gone to the University of Worcester, of all places.


Back at the lovely hotel


View from our room


Ready for the pool/bar


Preparing to write this riveting trip report


Great hair

After our drinks we realised we hadn’t actually been in the pool, so we did a couple of blissful laps of the lazy river before heading back to the room to get ready for the evening. I put my hair up and chose a Peter Pan hair bow instead of Minnie ears, before we headed to the bus stop where a Magic Kingdom bus was just pulling up, perfect!

Tonight happened to be the last night of the Main Street Electrical Parade. I had planned to be in the park anyway so we could see Wishes, but I was expecting the park to be quite busy because of the parade, plus the fact that it was Columbus weekend.


Ready to go out again

We arrived just as it was getting dark, when I think MK is at its most beautiful – all lit up at dusk. We felt refreshed after our chilled afternoon and ready to tackle the crowds! Splash was back up and running again so we headed straight there to use our FP from earlier. It is such a long ride, we both loved it, although it probably would’ve been a bit more refreshing earlier in the day when we were hot and sweaty.


Should've powdered my forehead


Splash!


The castle at dusk

Food was next, we decided to try Pecos Bill where we shared a fajita platter. We swapped the dessert for water and loaded up at the toppings bar. You definitely don’t need two of these – the portion size is massive, especially once you add toppings. We used 1 QS credit for this, pretty good considering we were both stuffed at the end!


Pecos feast

I think at this point there was about an hour until the parade, so we headed towards the hub via PotC. Unfortunately the queue was 45 minutes so we decided against it. Instead we thought we’d just pick up some Main Street popcorn and stake out a parade spot. The park was rammo, and the queue for popcorn was really long – we queued about 10 minutes! It doesn’t sound long but when you consider it’s just a line for a popcorn cart it’s not ideal. Popcorn in hand, it was time to find a spot. People were sitting down all over the hub – I read online that some people had been staking out their spot since 4pm! We actually ended up with quite a good spot by sliding between families who were spread out sitting down on the floor. Not looking forward to the days of having kids in tow and prams to think about, because it was quite easy for us to just slot in and get a decent view about 20 minutes before the parade. We sat on the floor and ate the popcorn, just enjoying the atmosphere.

I wasn’t too fussed about getting on loads of rides tonight, I just wanted to see the parade and fireworks and soak up a bit of night-time MK magic. Finally, the old-school music started and the twinkly lights came into view. It had an extra air of magic about because everybody knew it might be the last time they ever see the parade at WDW. I tried to take some pictures but the night settings on the DSLR require a tripod so they all came out blurry. I quite liked the framing though, with the castle and floats in the shot.


Shame about the blur!


I like this one because it represents my two favourite places, Disney and London

After the parade, everyone moved forward into the hub to get a spot for Celebrate the Magic and Wishes. We had a great view, quite near the front just to the right of the castle. When Celebrate the Magic finally started, I lost it a bit. When Wishes started, I lost it even more. It gets me every time. I leant against Richard and felt full of happiness that I was there, with him, watching Wishes. He was really impressed with both shows – I think it’s difficult not to be impressed with the scale and professionalism of Disney productions.

After Wishes finished we had a little hug while I finished my crying, before heading right for our first foray into Tomorrowland. As we moved past the crowds, we saw a girl in who had just been proposed to, crying her eyes out and staring at the new sparkly ring on her finger. That set me off again!


Can you believe this was taken on a phone

After Splash earlier we’d booked a Buzz FP for 10.20pm, so we headed straight there. It’s a good ride but I’m totally rubbish at it. I got 4,800 to Rich's 54,000!


Buzz looking a bit shellshocked

I was glad we’d saved Tomorrowland for the evening, it comes to life at night and I think the theme works best with all of the cool retro lighting against the night sky.

My lower back was really hurting by this point from being on my feet so much. I’m not sure why, it’s not been an issue before. I took up weightlifting about 18 months ago and I wondered if I’d overdone the deadlifts and created a bit of an imbalance in my core. It was quite sore so we decided to have a little sit down on the Peoplemover which was a walk on despite the busy park. It was just us and two other people in the whole train. We stopped for a bit near the back of the park just as you come out of Space Mountain, but it was nice to have a little rest to be honest – I think the tiredness was starting to get to us.

We had wanted to try and stay until close at midnight but the first night jet lag had got to us. We didn’t want to overdo it so we called it a night and headed back to the bus stop where we only had to wait about 5 minutes for a bus.

It was a great, and really long, first park day. I was glad we had stuck to one park and still had the others to come!

I haven’t written down the time we went to bed, but I do know that we were fast asleep within about 45 seconds after turning off the light. Shattered!

Spends
Crystal Palace: $12
Liberty Square Marketplace drinks: $8.01
Hurricane Hanna’s drinks: $42.72
TOTAL: $62.73

Day 3 - Hollywood Studios >>>

[Dutchdisneyfan]

Lovely day <3

[EJSakaAnna]

Sounds like a brilliant day . You got some great pictures!

[JenD1]

Loved reading your day

[Guest]

The sky looks amazing in those dusk photos! Love your ears too, great first day!

[disneyme]

lovely day!

I always cry at least twice during the first day back at MK too

[sheluk]

That is an EPIC day! And to stay up till that time on your first night is so impressive.

Love the green beans attempt at healthiness! and I agree about the cupcake.

That first day is just magic and it really comes across which is lovely to read x

[lovedisney89]

What a magical first day
Really enjoyed reading about it

[Minnie Mum]

Great day and love all your hair bows!