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Old 14 Mar 19, 09:39 PM  
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vics18
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Here we go Again! Charlotte's 2nd WDW trip Jan 2019 - Day 1 Magic Kingdom & Via Napoli

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Day 1 – Magic Kingdom
Thursday 24th Jan 2019


As is the norm for me, I woke up at 3:40am. Jetlag just seems to hit me the hardest, it always takes me a full week before I’m properly in the right time zone!

I Whatsapped with people at home for a while, and tried to doze for a bit. Charlotte and Martin both woke at 5:30 which wasn’t too bad at all for the first day. We lifted Charlotte into our bed and I gave her some milk and a banana, we switched the TV on to the must do’s and the channel with all the opening hours etc on it. I could happily only have these on my TV, they make me so happy! Sadly after a couple of rounds of Stacy, Lottie lost interest and asked for Muppet Babies. So we switched to Disney Jr, and I got her some cereal to have while I did the last of the unpacking.


It was, obviously, still pitch black outside, but we could hear that there was some serious rain coming down. We knew it was forecast and just decided to get ready leisurely, as it was due to dry off by around 10am. It became a major storm, with some pretty spectacular thunder and lightning which lit up the sky.


Once we were showered and ready we bathed Lottie and popped her clothes on. I was a bit unsure what to dress her in, so went for leggings and a light long sleeved T shirt. I thought it was perfect for today as we had a fastpass for Mickey and Minnie in their celebration outfits for Mickey’s birthday, and her T shirt (from Zara) was from their Mickey 90th birthday collection, with Mickey holding some balloons. She was super excited to “go and see Mickey Mouse!”



We only waited around 5 minutes for a bus, and an American family started chatting with us. As we were leaving the Beach Club at around 9am the rain had eased to a drizzle and stopped altogether as we were pulling into Magic Kingdom.


Typically (see most days of my last report) Charlotte had fallen asleep on my lap on the bus, so missed the entrance to Magic Kingdom and our first look at the castle for this trip.



Regardless, I felt a bit teary as I always do, to be there with my little family. As always in this situation, we make the most of Lottie being asleep by looking in the shops!


I wanted to pick up the purple spirit jersey so we walked through Emporium (making mental notes of other things we wanted to get later!) and into one of the sections right at the end. I tried the spirit jerseys on and needed to get the XS! The sizing of these are so weird, I have 3 others, 2 are size small and 1 is a medium! But this one in an XS fitted nicely so that’s the one I got. I charged it to my magic band (first charge of many) and shipped it back to the resort.




Next I wanted to have a little look at the Dooney’s so we popped over to Uptown Jewelers.


There was one in particular I really liked, but wanted to get a particular placement and they didn’t have any so decided to leave it and have a look elsewhere.


These ears were £4.99 from Smyths toys and they were practically identical to the ones they were selling in the parks for $27.99





You’ll note that Martin and I rarely eat breakfast in the room, so as it is our tradition to go into Adventureland first we decided to check out the spring roll cart located here. The cheeseburger egg roll was high on our list of “need to try snacks” and they had just released a new mac and cheese one that we both fancied too. Sadly we were thwarted because it wasn’t open yet! We decided to have a stroll through Frontierland and loop back to it if Charlotte was still asleep. By the time we got into the Hub, she woke up.


I gave her a little snack in her stroller and the new Move it, Shake it, Mouskedance it parade started up so we hung out to watch it. I have to say, this is really lovely and the tune is SO catchy, you’ll never forget it! It was still a bit overcast and drizzly, but not too cold. We were 3 happy little clams. Charlotte enjoyed waving to the characters and we decided once it was all finished to head for an early lunch (readers of my previous TR will notice we are trying to avoid making the same mistakes we made last time!)


Charlotte was desperate to go “inside” the castle, but it was closed off as I think they must have been about to start one of the stage shows. We had a little look at the front instead and promised her we would come back later, although I was secretly hoping she’d forget , as I knew she thought we would literally be able to go inside the castle, and was really regretting not booking Cinderella’s Royal Table for this trip! It’s top of the wish list for our next one.



Columbia Harbour House was our choice of lunch for today. We ate here once before, when we did the Keys to the Kingdom tour back in 2015. Although on that occasion, you pre order your food at the start of the tour and just sit and eat in there, so it kind of felt new to us today! It was very quiet (likely because it wasn’t much past breakfast time!), so we had a little look at the menu standing off to the side. Nothing winds me up more than when people get in line to order, get to the front AND THEN look at the menu to decide what they want. I did think Martin might want to try the tuna sandwich here, but he decided as it was officially the first day of our Disney trip he wanted chicken nuggets and fries. I was going to get the chicken nuggets and fish combo for me and Lottie to share, but decided it would likely be way too much food so just ordered chicken too. I spotted they had the Mickey Mouse celebration sipper cups so picked one up. He is so cute, and a bargain too – only $10 or $13.99 if you get him with a drink. I had already asked Beth to pick up 2 of these for me, one for us and one for the Hardings but when I saw them in the parks decided to give one of those to my brother and get us one.






We obviously had drinks with our QS meals so just got him empty and got an ice water for Charlotte. As soon as she realised he was a cup though, she insisted on putting her water inside him and drinking through the little party hat straw. The result of this situation was that she would only drink from him for the rest of the day, and so we had to carry him all round Magic Kingdom rather than putting him under the buggy or in a bag as he would spill everywhere! So many people came up to us asking where we got him from.


Anyway, back to Columbia Harbour House. The food was good, standard Disney chicken nuggets.



I definitely would like to go back and try some of their other menu items. We had a nice view overlooking the path up to the Haunted Mansion and it was very nice and relaxing in there.


Feeling recharged, we had fastpasses to get to – typically right at the very front of the park! There was method in my madness though, rather than booking them for first thing on our way in (guessing that Charlotte would probably be asleep) I purposefully left them later in the day. We headed off to Town Square Theatre to meet Mickey and Minnie, and Tink.





Town Square Theatre was all decked out with Mickey’s birthday celebration decorations. We waited about 10 mins before going into the main room. Charlotte was giddy with excitement, she kept saying “I want to give Mickey and Minnie big cuddles!” When it was our turn, Mickey came over and took her by the hand which I think threw her a bit as she just wanted to hug him! He led her over to Minnie, she threw herself at her and hugged her for many minutes. Martin was videoing it, and Mickey is standing there like a spare part, so much so that he walks off and leaves them to it! Minnie waved him back and thankfully Charlotte decided he deserved a hug too. We did pictures, then got them to sign a castle that I’d bought from Pixie Dust Products Co on Etsy to collect autographs. Spoiler alert – this was so good, the characters loved it and it has pride of place on Charlotte’s chest of drawers now, she loves to look at it.







If this doesn't epitomise what a Disney trip is all about I don't know what does! Jumping for joy


When I picked up the Mickey sipper from where I’d left it on the side, Mickey was overcome with excitement, he was looking at it and put it on the floor next to Minnie, took Charlotte’s hand and went to leave haha. Thankfully he brought her back, we scanned our bands and were out of there!



It was such a lovely meet, Charlotte was on cloud nine talking about it as we left (through the gift shop of course).


Our FP for Tink was active now, so we looped straight back into the theatre and into the empty FP line. This was not as successful, Tinkerbell was a bit overwhelming, pretty much dragged Lottie over to the meeting spot and started talking and talking at her. She didn’t take any time to let her respond, she just chattered on and to be honest Charlotte looked shell shocked and like she didn’t really know what was happening! I was a bit disappointed to be honest, but suppose you can’t get good interactions every time. Like many little girls I’m sure, Charlotte absolutely loves dressing up in her “princess dresses” at home and I had brought some with us for her to meet the princesses, but not Tink. I was so glad I hadn’t bothered getting Charlotte changed into a dress for this 2 minute encounter. Oh, she also signed her name really big on the castle, which annoyed me can you tell I'm not a Tinkerbell fan!

I've just looked and I didn't even download any of the photopass pics from the meet! I must have been really annoyed!


We stepped out into Town Square and it was really hot and sunny now. I rolled Charlotte’s sleeves up in case she got too warm and topped up her suncream. Move it, Shake it, Mousekedance it was coming through again so we paused to watch and wave.



Once that was done, we grabbed a photo pass on Main Street. It’s one of my favourites from the whole trip.



Despite being in Magic Kingdom for a few hours, we hadn’t actually been on a ride yet! So, wanting our first ride to be Dumbo again we headed through to Storybook Circus, having a little look at the stage show on the castle as we passed.





They sent us into the play area and gave us a buzzer. Martin was on duty while I sat on a nice bench in the AC and downloaded those Main St photos which had just come through to the My Disney Experience app. Soon the buzzer went off, and Charlotte was not a big fan of leaving the play area- she loved it in there. I explained we were going on the ride now so she decided to come with us after all.


While we were in the short queue waiting for our Dumbos we spotted a lady , sitting on her own going round in a Dumbo at the same level – not going up or down , never looked up from her phone, unsmiling, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she was on a ride in the Magic Kingdom! It was so funny. Every time she went past we burst out laughing.


We boarded our Dumbos – we sat in two as Charlotte wanted to sit on the bench not my knee. Martin took some pics and video from his Dumbo in front of us. Charlotte loved it, and I welled up a bit seeing her happy little face, thinking of all the fun we were going to have over the next 2 weeks.



With no real plan what to do next we wandered into Tomorrowland and took a trip on the TTA. A firm favourite with all of us, although Charlotte has developed a bit of a fear of the dark and when we went into the very dark sections would snuggle into me and mutter “mummy where’s the light gone, how will we get out?” Bless her. She wasn’t frightened as such, she through enjoyed it I think it was just a bit of a new developmental thing. Previously she slept in the pitch black apart from the little Gro Egg night light, so I was pretty sure it was just a phase. They come and go so quickly at this age.



There was a 20 minute wait posted for Buzz Lightyear when we exited the TTA so we joined the queue.



Charlotte was on my lap and got a bit bored watching what was going on, so she took over my gun. I didn’t mind as I’m absolutely terrible at this ride! The photo from this didn’t ever appear in MDE which is a bit of a shame.


Tomorrowland ducks


Martin wanted to look in the Merchant of Venus and Mickey’s Star Traders to see if there was any Star Wars stuff. There wasn’t, but they did have all the new D-Lish range of merchandise based on Disney snacks. They had a pack of 4 melamine plates that were so cute, and perfect for toddler snacktime. Like an absolute idiot, I didn’t buy them here though as the plan was now to head out of the park before the parade blocked us in. Charlotte wanted a baby Minnie toy so we said we’d stop in the Emporium to get her one. I looked and they had every other piece of D-Lish merch except the plates! ARGH! I told Martin this heartbreaking problem, he wasn't as distraught as me so we bought baby Minnie and made our way to the bus stops. As we neared the stop for the Beach Club, there was a Boardwalk bus at the stop next door so we decided to jump on that instead and walk home from there.



By the time we got off at the Boardwalk, we had modified the plan slightly to include a stop at Ample Hills Creamery!



. I ordered Charlotte’s cone first and asked for just 1 scoop of Strawberries & Cream flavour. The portion they gave her was huge so when I ordered my cone (Cookies and Cream) I asked for a single scoop too. Martin got an ice cream cookie sandwich with Baked/Unbaked ice cream smushed in between 2 big cookies! His was the best flavour (hate it when that happens) although ours were delicious too. We used 3 snack credits for these.



It was so hot out that they started melting straight away so we found a bench in the shade and tucked in. Charlotte and I didn’t really make much dent in ours but Martin finished his off and declared it very good indeed.


Many baby wipes later, we carried onto Beach Club and let Charlotte have a little run about.



Back in the room we had a little rest, freshen up and got changed as we were headed into Epcot for dinner at Via Napoli. We made the short walk from our room, past the quiet pool and to International Gateway. The security guard was so lovely and was chatting to us about visiting England, Disneyland Paris, best restaurants at WDW etc. He gave Charlotte some stickers. I really should have cast complimented him thinking about it, but it’s too late now I can’t remember his name – shame on me.


It was lovely to be back in Epcot – our favourite park. We saw a few Festival of the Arts booths and some of the artists tents, but didn’t really have time to look as we were all very hungry and had an ADR to get to.


As always it was chocka block in the little check in/waiting section at Via Napoli. Martin parked the stroller while I went in to book in, and as soon as he walked in we were getting called. We were taken to a great table right near the big pizza ovens and open kitchen where they are making the pizzas. It was really fun to sit and watch them, and it kept Charlotte entertained for ages!



We ordered a large pizza to share between us. Our server was so helpful and explained the new addition of alcoholic beverages with DDP! I ordered a Via Vesuvio (blood orange vodka, prosecco, raspberries) and Martin got the Italian beer flight.





We also got Charlotte a milk. We actually saw them make our pizza and we were so ready for it!






Sadly we couldn’t finish it, but we didn’t do too badly. We were far too full for dessert though. All the CM were so nice in Via Napoli, making an effort to say hi or wave to Charlotte whenever they passed the table. We paid up, and went back out. It was still early and we felt OK so decided to carry on around World Showcase and have a look at some of the booths.




Beautiful nighttime EPCOT






When we got to Mexico we went on the Gran Fiesta tour. Charlotte loved this so much, she was looking around everywhere for Donald, and laughed hysterically at that bit where there’s a screen in the floor and he appears with his snorkel on. “There’s Donald Mummy! He’s so silly! He’s in the pool!”






We continued into Future World, and I spotted Jerrod Maruyma at the Wonderground Gallery booth. I love his artwork and had seen a print I wanted to get for Charlotte’s room, so decided to pick it up now and get him to sign for us. He was really nice, chatted for a couple of minutes, signed our print and took a picture with us.





With that chalked off the list, we decided to pop up to The Seas.



There was no wait, we walked straight through the line into a shell. The bit with the EAC makes me feel really odd so I don’t love this ride Also, The Living Seas and Seabase Alpha is one of my earlies memories of visiting WDW so I just can’t being myself to like this IP overlay, but Charlotte enjoyed it and was very animated when she spotted Dory.




She was flagging a bit when we came off and had a bit of a cry when we wouldn’t buy her a cuddly otter, but we did say she could come back and get it another day if she still wanted it. We popped into Mousegear (no plates grr) she insisted on Martin carrying her and wouldn’t go in her buggy, so we decided to head home. By the time we reached Canada she was fast asleep in his arms, we managed to get her into the buggy and strolled back through International Gateway and were soon back in our room. Charlotte was so exhausted she didn’t stir when we changed her into her PJs and tucked her into bed.


Teeny girl in a big bed

We did our usual showers, getting ready for the morning before heading to bed ourselves not long afterwards!

Thank you for reading.


Tomorrow we have breakfast at Cape May, and visit Hollywood Studios, Stormalong Bay and Epcot!

Edited at 09:25 AM.
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Old 14 Mar 19, 11:28 PM  
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collybird
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I’ve always wondered if parents find it difficult to get kids away from the Dumbo play area, I know my nephew would not leave without a huge fuss.

Charlotte and her baby Minnie are so cute, she looks so pleased with her baby.

Being able to walk to Epcot from your room is absolute goals.

had a bit of a cry when we wouldn’t buy her a cuddly otter
It’s a hard life. You guys had a very busy first day, I think I'd have flagged before Charlotte did!
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Old 14 Mar 19, 11:53 PM  
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Palm trees
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What a great day. I always wake really early too, unfortunately the rest of my family seem to be able to slip into U.S.A time immediately so I'm counting the minutes until it's reasonable to wake them!
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Old 15 Mar 19, 06:58 AM  
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LozzaManse
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What a lovely day! Via Napoli looks amazing - so we’re you able to have a large pizza for two dining credits? I always thought you couldn’t do that!
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Old 15 Mar 19, 09:46 AM  
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vics18
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Originally Posted by collybird View Post
I’ve always wondered if parents find it difficult to get kids away from the Dumbo play area, I know my nephew would not leave without a huge fuss.

Charlotte and her baby Minnie are so cute, she looks so pleased with her baby.

Being able to walk to Epcot from your room is absolute goals.



It’s a hard life. You guys had a very busy first day, I think I'd have flagged before Charlotte did!
Haha, well wonder no more! I had a feeling it would happen to be honest, it is a fun little play area.

She was pleased as punch with her!

Oh, the absolute dream. We are absolutely ruined to ever stay anywhere else.

She did do really well looking back! Thanks for reading and commenting xx
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Old 15 Mar 19, 09:47 AM  
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Originally Posted by Palm trees View Post
What a great day. I always wake really early too, unfortunately the rest of my family seem to be able to slip into U.S.A time immediately so I'm counting the minutes until it's reasonable to wake them!
Isn't it so unfair!
Thank you for reading!
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Old 15 Mar 19, 09:49 AM  
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Originally Posted by LozzaManse View Post
What a lovely day! Via Napoli looks amazing - so we’re you able to have a large pizza for two dining credits? I always thought you couldn’t do that!
Yeah we were! We were going to get chicken parm and an individual pizza half and half for us all to share, but you can't split toppings on the small pizzas. I asked the server could we get the large pizza and she said that was fine but it would be 2 TS credits.
Thank you for reading and commenting!
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Old 15 Mar 19, 11:11 AM  
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What a great first day! I always enjoy reading your reports, though they do make me wish I'd talked my DH into going when our boys were small so we could have gone at cooler/quieter times. I'm a fellow redhead and Charlotte really reminds me of how I looked as a baby, especially now she's got a cute wee pair of specs! Looking forward to reading about the rest of your holiday
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Old 15 Mar 19, 08:05 PM  
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Fantastic first day and you packed quite a lot in before Charlotte flaked - the pizza looks delicious.

Looking forward to reading along
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Old 15 Mar 19, 08:16 PM  
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mick
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Great day Charlotte has grown such a lot since your last trip

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