Stepha-Roo and Gwendolyn Too!: WDW Day 2: Magic Kingdom

In what can only be described as a wise decision, we spent two full days at Magic Kingdom. I purposely selected Super Bowl Weekend for visiting Disney, as I had read that that Super Bowl Sunday historically had some of the lowest crowds of the year. Our first day at Magic Kingdom was a Friday, and it was totally uncrowded. We showed up as the opening ceremonies were beginning, but Alaina and I had a plan, so we lined up to head into Adventureland. Stephanie wanted to see the opening ceremonies, and I regret not taking the time to do that. First, I was really excited to get her on some rides and I figured we would have time to catch it on our second day. With such low crowds, getting on rides was easy, and we were too late to see it on the second day, so we really should have checked out the opening ceremonies. Our first ride was Aladdin's magic carpet, mostly because it was the first one in Adventureland and I wanted to get the kids on a ride right away. As you will come to learn over the next few posts, I am obsessed with the rides. This means I likely missed much of the other things Disney had to offer. However, I don't regret missing those things, because I really loved the rides- and we rode every single ride in every single park (not every single one of us, but everyone in our party covered all of the rides)- and I count that as an enormous success.

There are several fast pass strategies, and we tried two different ones on each of the days. What would work best would likely depend on the crowds, and I think that is hard to predict. Initially, you can only schedule 3 fast passes, at least one hour apart. After you use all three, you can get on your phone and schedule another. You may schedule one at a time, but there are no limits to how long between after you use up the first three. Morning lines are fairly short, so having fast passes to those isn't that helpful, but it allows you to use up your first three by about 11am, at which point you can start scheduling more. The second strategy is to take advantage of short lines in the morning, preschedule afternoon fast passes, and not have the ability to fast pass more until later in the day. Fast passes do "sell out", so there is a chance that by waiting too late you won't get the rides you want. We tried the later strategy on the first day, and I think it was an excellent choice for a low attendance day. We zipped through a bunch of rides first thing, had some lunch and then burned through our three fast passes in the afternoon. At that point, we were literally walking onto a ride with our phones in hand, scheduling the next fast pass for 15 minutes later. It was somewhere around then that Alaina decided we needed a blog, which she entitled "crushingwaltdisneyworld.blogspot.com". And we really crushed it. Magic Kingdom is set up in lands, and the rides are heavily concentrated, so there was much less running around than Epcot. Over the two days, we rode every ride in the park, most more than once. Another very good decision was packing our lunch in. Disney has no problem with that, our lunch was easy and available and quick. It saved time, money and decision making chaos. Once again, our little magic ticket Gwendolyn really paid off. We actually held onto a few of our "extra" parent switch fast passes (they are paper) to use on Sunday, and that was really wise, as Sunday was much busier and we used those passes to fill time when we weren't able to closely back up fast passes.

Another major time saver at Disney is to have kids that don't care about photos with the characters. Stephanie was totally disinterested- and we saved a bundle of time and ended up with no pictures with (creepy, IMO) princesses. Gwen may be a different story in a few years, but it was really nice to skip all of that, since it isn't my thing either-clearly. The last thing that helped us with time and mobility was skipping bringing a stroller. This was a non-issue for Stephanie, but Gwen could have never made it around the park on foot. I was armed with an Ergo, and did indeed tote her around in that when she did nap, but the vast majority of her transportation was on Kevin's shoulders. I know this wouldn't work for everyone, but it was great for us.

Favorite Rides: Krista= Peter Pan's Flight and The Pooh Honeypot ride. Stephanie= Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain. Gwen= Barnstormer RollerCoaster (which was way faster than I expected for a "kiddie" coaster) and Dumbo. Alaina= Big Thunder Mountain. Kevin= Space Mountain

I also enjoyed the fact that I was able to do all of the rides and coasters and not be motion sick. Many offered some woozy moments for me, but nothing was too intense. Instead, Disney is good at creating interesting rides with a lot to see, which is perfect for me. A surprising number of the rides were very similar (I am looking at you, boat rides) but had totally different themes and all felt different. Also, Disney is great about making you feel like you aren't standing in line, and I enjoyed standing in line and figuring out how Disney had manipulated me into not feeling like it was really a line. It helped that we actually spent very little time in line. Also, we had spectacular February weather, which has to make everything easier and more comfortable.

That night, we ate at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. We were able to take a bus straight from Magic Kingdom, but in order to get to our hotel, we had to bus it back to Magic Kingdom and then to our hotel. It was extra travel at the end of the long day. I enjoyed the ambience and the food, but much preferred Sunday night when we ate at Downtown Disney, as the transportation was easier. We also drove into Magic Kingdom minutes before fireworks started. The timing was perfect (crushing it!) and unintentional. However, it was uniformly agreed on that we were all a bit exhausted and Stephanie was anxious to go to the pool, so we watched the fireworks from the bus as we drove away. We didn't get to do any of the firework shows any of the nights, but it is tough with such long days and little kids, but I would add it to my regrets list.

One of our better family photos!

Okay, I take back what I said about not feeling sick after a ride. This picture almost makes the teacups worth it, but it was the last time I went on them. The rest of my party went several times, and apparently Kevin "took it easy" on the spinning for my ride. Gwen and Stephanie couldn't wait to go on them again, so hopefully my motion sickness has skipped them.

This ride was a pleasant surprise. It is on top of a little food place in Tomorrowland. There is no fast pass for it, but the line was short. You had great views of the park from up here.

Gwen fell asleep on me and we didn't get to go in the carousel. But it looks like everyone else had fun.

And back to the teacups- and this time they had a photographer.

How Gwen begged to drive the little cars. We didn't think we would have time, until we started crushing it! Seriously, we did about 4 more rides at the last minute than we could have possibly had time for. We were able to fastpass them minutes apart and zip through them.