Day 1 MK - Do you want to build a light-saber? August 2023

[Goldia]

Day 1 MK – Thursday 3rd August

I woke up at about 2am, went to the toilet and tried to go back to sleep. I woke up again at 4am and called it a day . The alarms had been set for 6am.

Dave woke up at about 4.30am and then Ellen messaged and said everyone was awake in their room and that she had been awake since 2.30am . Given the late night I’d wondered if the boys would sleep in this morning, but obviously not .

We are all going to feel the lack of sleep later considering we didn’t get to bed until 11.30pm, I figured everyone would be running on fumes today. But, I’d planned for us to spend the morning in MK and then back to the resort in the afternoon for a rest or a swim and eventually dinner at Geyser Point would be a casual thing when we were ready rather than having a fixed time, we had no ADRs booked up for today.

Dave made some coffee and I had my first cup on the balcony.

I love it first thing in the morning, all quiet and watching the sun come up.

I was trying to figure out which rooms were theirs.

We knew they were opposite us somewhere and one floor higher, plus there weren't very many rooms with lights on as no one else was awake at this early hour.

Eventually we figured out they were the rooms right in the corner on the fifth floor, so one under the top floor as they both had their lights on.

We waved at each other from the balconies for a little while and sent messages on what's app.

I went to Alex and Ellen’s room at 6.45am to see how they were getting on, as I had itchy feet. Turns out I wasn't the only one as Temmy and Toby had gone out already with Grandad for a little walk – everyone was keen to get moving this morning!

I had a plan to try and get Tron VQ for us all today. While I felt like I was paying attention to the time and refreshing my phone from 6.59am I didn’t get the VQ slots this morning. I wasn’t unhappy about it though as I knew we would have lots of other opportunities to get on Tron this trip.

So, Alex and I went to try and scout out Dad and the boys while Ellen and the others finished getting ready.

I messaged Dave to get him to remind Kate we needed to meet at the dock at 7.45am, cos, teenagers . I showed Al both pools and the QS, their room was right next to the elevators which was pretty handy. As we were walking past the pool we saw T&T back on the balcony so went back up in the lift to take them out!

We were so excited to get started today! The boys were desperate for a swim and I promised them they would get a chance later today.

We made our way to the dock and were there before schedule at 7.35am.

There was a boat approaching but no Dave and Kate! I messaged to say hurry up! And they appeared as the boat started to dock.

Dad was very impressed with Alex’s muscle man vests!

He also was pleased that he and Dave had dressed in very similar outfits, Dad had a blue T shirt and yellow shorts, Dave had a similar colour T shirt and beige shorts. Last trip they had dressed identically a few times!

You can see Dad standing up over Dave's shoulder in this photo!

I took lots of photos of the beautiful blue sky, green trees, blue lake.

Ahh bliss.

Nearly there.

.

And I tried hard to not be too annoying pointing out stuff and saying things like, here is the monorail and here is the Contemporary. Dave did a bit of tour guiding here as he recalled that the lake has a water bridge that we would travel over with a road underneath. Water bridges over roads are very rare and apparently different to aqueducts and canals, there are not many in the world and Disney has 3 of them as they don’t like to spoil the water view with an eyesore of a bridge for cars. I’m sure they were all impressed with his knowledge.

At bag check 7 of us made it through fine.

Dave and Ellen were called over by security. It felt like we had to wait for ages for them, but it was looking at the time stamps of my photos it was only 5 minutes.

At the scanner entry points Mum and Dad picked the best queue as they were through very quickly, ours seemed to go slowly and I was itching to get in!

And what did we do as soon as we made it into MK? Marvel at the sights and sounds? Nope, we hydrated! We always have tried to stop at the water fountains fairly regularly as:
1. I’m pretty tight and don’t want to waste money on buying bottles of water
2. I’m pretty lazy and don’t want to lug a big bag around with water in it
3. It’s hotter than the surface of the sun and you need to keep drinking, even at 8.13am in the morning!

We wandered up Main Street and then mum reminded me we needed to get I’m Celebrating and the First Visit badges, so we doubled back into the shop. This is where we lost Dad! He had been following a duck, I’d gone back with Ellen, Alex and the boys to get the badges.

Dave and Mum were a bit stressed . They did find Dad pretty quickly and then he decided he would nip to the toilet while we were in the shop, as he’d remembered the restrooms by Tomorrowland Terrace, but we were sorted very quickly.

So, I suggested we queue up for a photo in front of the castle as I figured Dad would be back quickly. Well, the line moved superfast, so I said, why don’t you four get a photo just the four of you?

They did a few poses, hands out and thumbs up.

Still no Dad, so I said why don’t me, Dave and Kate get a photo. We had to do the same poses as the others.

Then we saw Dad strolling along and shouted at him to hurry! And we all did the same poses as a group of 9.

I felt a little bit sorry for the group waiting behind us, but I guess if we’d been actual parties of 4 and 3 then it wouldn’t have made much difference to them having to wait.

MK was glorious and we scanned in for the extra half hour magic hours just at the start of it.

I had decided Peter Pan would be our first ride. The lines for this usually get very long and I wanted to avoid having to stand waiting around for rides on our first day.

Dad spotted the sword in the stone and stopped here to try and pull it out! I was ushering everyone along rather than in a wandering kind of mood .

We got to Peter Pan at 8.35am.

The queue moved fairly steadily not really stopping.

I said to Dave that I don’t think we’ve ever done stand-by for this ride as we have always used FP and last year we had Genie+ for the entire trip so it was quite interesting for us to see the queue.

We were getting on the ride at 8.52am, so not too bad. Kate rode with Toby and they were first on.

They were followed by Temmy, Alex and Ellen, then me and Dave, with Mum and Dad following us.

I wanted to follow this up with more of a thrill ride and we walked over to Frontierland to ride Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

Everyone saw the size of the queue, and were worrying they would have a long wait but I just said you’ve got to trust me it won’t be a long wait, plus look at the wait time it only says 5 minutes.

In the end it wasn't 5 minutes, which was fairly obvious from the line, but it was only 10 minutes of queue time and most of that we were walking through the queue.

While we were queuing up Temmy was worrying that it would have a big drop as I’d said there would be no big drops. Afterwards he said it was good and he enjoyed it. But, oh dear , I had not anticipated this, one of us did NOT enjoy this ride .

Toby had chosen to ride with Kate again, so we had stuck with the same groups as Peter Pan. Well, Toby had been pretty upset during the ride as he felt like we was going to fall out of the ride . In hindsight, he would have been better off in between the sweaty armpits of Alex and Ellen like Temmy had been, as then he would have felt way more secure . He’d been next to Kate and she said they had both been sliding around a lot in the seat . This kind of put him off big rides for a while and he asked each and every time before a ride “Does it go fast?” and “Does it go up and down?”.

I hoped that my next choice would be better received. I wanted to ride Pirates of the Caribbean as we were all hot and needed a bit of the cool air con, it’s a gentle boat ride and Toby loves the POTC movies.

Fingers crossed . We didn't have to wait at all either, it was a walk on. Result

This one went down pretty well and after this I was asked when we were allowed to eat! Not yet, we don’t want to waste time eating when the queues are short . It wasn’t yet 10am, so I said we would do 1 more ride and then have breakfast.

I chose Haunted Mansion. It wasn’t a long wait at all and of course, no big drops and it’s very slow. Although I did wonder how Toby would feel about it as when Kate first went on this ride when she was 7 years old she hated it and hid her head in my lap until the ride had finished .

We decided that it would be best if Toby rode with Ellen and Alex, and we figured we would all ride as groups of 3.

Temmy said he wanted to ride with Kate and Dave.

Which meant that I got to ride with my mum and dad! How awesome!

We got some more photos outside HM as there was a photopass doing magic shots as well.

This is us doing our surprised faces

And here we are with the hitch-hiking ghosts!

It was now approaching 10.30am and I thought that 4 great rides was enough for now and that we should eat. We stopped at Friar Nooks.

Mum and Dad shared a bacon, egg and cheese croissant with tots between them.

Me, Dave and Kate did the same, plus we had a coffee each, our bill came to 20ish dollars. I love tater tots, these were perfect!

Ellen, Alex and the boys had the croissant plus they ordered some cinnamon donut holes and a strawberry lemonade.

We also each got a cup of iced water.

While eating breakfast Ellen asked people what their favourite ride had been so far.

Alex picked BTMR, Toby went for Haunted Mansion, Temmy said BTMR first but then changed his mind to POTC, Ellen said POTC and Kate didn’t answer as she said “I’ve been here before!” . For my part I think my favourite ride had been Pirates too as I was so relieved that everyone enjoyed it after the terror of BTMR.

After we’d had our breakfast and chilled out for a while I was asked the question of the trip, the one that would be repeated multiple times…”What are we doing next Aunty Abby?”

I had already decided I wanted to do Under the Sea with Ariel. I love this ride and it never has a long wait.

Next up I was asked The Question . I asked if they fancied driving a car. Yes they did! The touring plans app said the wait time was 25 minutes, so I said they might have to wait about 20 minutes. They said this was fine, and the line actually moved very quickly and we were off within 15 minutes.

Kate said she didn’t want to wait in the hot sun and I suggested she sit in the shade for a bit, she used the time to catch up on her phone!

We rode in the following pairs, Dave and Temmy, Toby and Grandad, Alex and Grandma, Me and Ellen.

Then it was time for second breakfast, we went to Gastons Tavern for a cinnamon loaf.

In the end we shared 1 between all of us! It was enough to just have a taster of it.

Plus we had 4 Le Fous brews. This was kind of an accident though as Alex and Ellen ordered 1 to share and then Dad offered me and Dave a beer. I said yes sure, without really thinking that you can't buy beer in MK as it's a dry park. By the time I'd registered what was going on he'd ordered 3 more Le Fous brews. So, this was a bit much really and we struggled to finish it!

Still, we enjoyed sitting in the air con and we of course had to take the time to get a photo in Gaston's chair.

I spotted another photopass out the back here.

She was great and asked if there were any siblings in our group, well of course we all said T&T, who had a few photos.

Then it was mine and Alex’s turn. I love these photos of us.

We should have gone first as the boys felt a little self conscious with everyone watching, whereas we were happy to pose!

I was then asked The Question and I said that I think we are all a bit hot so what about an indoor show and then back to the pool. This was very welcome news to Toby who was desperate for some pool time. I explained that the show I wanted to take them to was funny and used to be Max’s favourite, so he decided this was a good idea .

It felt boiling hot, it was around 12.50pm when we entered the Monsters Inc Laugh Floor queue and we had maybe a 10 to 15 minute wait for the show.

Kate was shown on the screen with the boys either side of her and the caption "sat between 2 monsters".

We all needed to have a bit of a rest and we slowly walked back towards the train station and out of Magic Kingdom.

We were very lucky with our timings as there was boat waiting for us.

Demo-ing the faces of people who are hot and tired and definitely do not want to be asked questions about what they enjoyed the most so far

At the hotel we all invested in resort refillable mugs. I got the purple lid and Dave the silver!

These are so cute!

Dave, Kate and I finally had our chicken tenders and fries an adult portion was $11.79 which is 5 tenders and fries that we couldn't manage and shared with the boys.

Kate went back up to our room so that she could chill out and have some quality phone time.

Dave and I visited the resort shop so I could buy the boys autograph books. Then we headed back to our room to change for the pool. I took the opportunity to request extra coffee, creamer and sugar from housekeeping which was delivered very promptly.

Over in the other rooms, Ellen and Temmy chose to have a nap, as did Mum.

It was just me, Dave, Alex, Toby and Dad for a while in the main pool.

It was pretty quiet and the clouds were looking heavy. Then it started to spit and the pool emptied pretty quickly. I figured this would be the start of a thunder storm and that the lifeguards would empty the pool, but nope it stayed open. Result We didn’t know it at the time, but this was the first of only three times that we had rain in the whole two weeks on our trip, we have never known anything like it! This wasn't even a proper storm as there was no thunder and lightning and the rain wasn't heavy at all and didn’t stop us enjoying the water.

Mum came down at around 4pm and enjoyed a yoghurt snack from the QS.

Ellen and Temmy came down at around 5pm, by this time we had moved over to the quiet pool to test this out.

It looks pretty cloudy but it had stopped raining by now.

At about 6.30pm we dragged the boys out of the pool and I messaged Kate to say we were going to get a table at Geyser Point for dinner so that she could join us.

We were allocated a table looking over the lake.

Dave and I ordered a cocktail each. Dave had a whisky sour. I had the black cherry mule. It was very gingery and I liked it. Ellen had a mocktail and others all had water.

We shared the cheesy brisket and chips between all of us as a starter. This has a light BBQ flavour, last year I'd has this as a lunch and knew Dad and Al would love it. I forgot to take a photo when it was brought out!

Oops!

A variety of main courses. Kate had the chicken sandwich, she loved it.

Dad and Alex decided to split a chicken sandwich and the steak sandwich as they both wanted to try them, again they enjoyed what they had.

Yummy pretzel bread on the steak sandwich, Dave also had this, here is a view of the meat.

Mum had the crab cakes. She asked for the spicy slaw to be on the side she enjoyed it but it was a little spicy for her taste. I didn't get a photo of this, but Dave had this appetiser later in the trip.

Ellen had the salmon and I'm pretty sure she enjoyed it, she got her leftovers boxed up, along with Toby's leftover chicken tenders.

Toby would prefer actual nuggets than tenders .

Temmy and I both had the Bison burger. This was delicious. I absolutely loved it! I ate every bite.

I also ordered another cocktail. I had a margarita and Dave had a second of his whisky sour.

We finished our meal at around 8pm and Dave suggested an evening stroll around the resort . We showed the others the cascade cabins and Boulder Ridge lobby.

Then we headed back to the Boulder Ridge pool for a night swim.

We were all feeling pretty tired now and we said our goodnights and headed back to our rooms. I saw the MK fireworks from our balcony and I loved it! What a great end to the day .

After the hiccup of Toby not enjoying BTMR the rest of the day went really well and we all had a fun time. Yes it was hot, but we all coped fine in the heat. Yes we were tired, but we had a lazy afternoon in the hotel and pool. Plus, the boys got to enjoy a night swim which was high on their list of things they were most looking forward to.

Stats for day 1
Steps 23,806 – no surprises that day 1 has a high step count.
Attractions – 6 rides and 1 show.
Cocktails – 2 for me and 2 for Dave.
How many times was I asked, “What are we doing next Aunty Abby?” – Only 3, but maybe I undercounted them!

Next up would day 2 be able to top day 1? Well, in the plans was a morning at Epcot and I was hopeful we would get VQ slots for Guardians of the Galaxy, we had our first ADR of the trip at Garden Grill and in the evening we were off to HS so that we could wander around Galaxies Edge and 3 of us built light-sabers. So, yes, we reckoned we were in for another great day!

[jocat]

It must feel like such a responsibility to try and make sure everyone has a great time, but it looks like you all had a fabulous first day, especially considering you’d all had so little sleep! Looking forward to reading more.

[Goldia]

Originally Posted by jocat

It must feel like such a responsibility to try and make sure everyone has a great time, but it looks like you all had a fabulous first day, especially considering you’d all had so little sleep! Looking forward to reading more.

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Hi Jo we are finally off to Toronto and Niagara at the end of October - I may have to re-read your trip report as I can remember loving reading it a couple of years ago.

This trip was somewhat stressful at times and I had to remind myself that it wasn't my fault if things didn't entirely go to plan and that if people (Grandad) wanted to wander off following a duck or if people (Grandad) wanted to try and pull the sword from the stone and it wasn't in the plan then it was ok and that it actually might be just as good as what I had planned!

Seriously, it was a good trip, we all relaxed into it and in the end we didn't have any arguments and we even went our separate ways a little bit, which I think helped a bit as we could all do what we wanted rather than feeling like we needed to be together all the time.

[jocat]

That made me smile with Grandad following a duck. 😂

Your family can’t be anything like mine. 😂 Staying together all of the time for us would be a recipe for disaster. 🙈 Even just a small amount of respite from each other works wonders though, so glad it all went well for you and you found a happy medium.

Toronto seems a lifetime ago now. Hope it hasn’t changed too much since we went and that you still manage to find something useful from the trippie.

[MrsSilverStar]

Aw, it’s so special for all your family to be enjoying this together! Well done for keeping everyone (especially your dad) in line 😂 I did laugh when they asked if they were allowed to eat yet…feels very familiar!

Looks like a wonderful first day with a great balance of rides and pool time.

[Goldia]

Originally Posted by jocat

That made me smile with Grandad following a duck. 😂

Your family can’t be anything like mine. 😂 Staying together all of the time for us would be a recipe for disaster. 🙈 Even just a small amount of respite from each other works wonders though, so glad it all went well for you and you found a happy medium.

Toronto seems a lifetime ago now. Hope it hasn’t changed too much since we went and that you still manage to find something useful from the trippie.

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We did try and make sure there was a little bit of downtime every day. Kate for 1 needed a bit of time to herself and her own space.

Originally Posted by MrsSilverStar

Aw, it’s so special for all your family to be enjoying this together! Well done for keeping everyone (especially your dad) in line 😂 I did laugh when they asked if they were allowed to eat yet…feels very familiar!

Looks like a wonderful first day with a great balance of rides and pool time.

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I had pre warned them that the first 4 rope drop days they could take snacks to eat on the go, or they could have cereal in the room, but we were not stopping for breakfast before 10am! It was a good first day and they all did what they were told!

[Lizzim]

Great first day, I sense you like being in charge of the plan 😉

[Sparksy72]

Honestly that was a perfect first day! Fab rides, yummy snacks and a night time pool swim (plus cocktails at Geyser Point!) you couldn’t want for more. You did so well with your planning and organization which is absolutely not surprising to me! 💕 xx

[Goldia]

Originally Posted by Lizzim

Great first day, I sense you like being in charge of the plan 😉

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Me? No, I think you've got the wrong end of the stick there! 😂

Originally Posted by Sparksy72

Honestly that was a perfect first day! Fab rides, yummy snacks and a night time pool swim (plus cocktails at Geyser Point!) you couldn’t want for more. You did so well with your planning and organization which is absolutely not surprising to me! 💕 xx

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It was a great day, I'm glad we didn't try and cram in lunch at MK or ice cream like I'd previously thought. We were tired and we wanted a bit of downtime. It was a good end to the day.

[Neep]

Looks like a great day and some lovely photos. Had forgotten about the bison burger and didn’t know you could night swim!