WDW Day 4: Back to Magic Kingdom

At this point in the trip, I think we were all starting to be worn out. Kids were not going to bed until after 9 every night, up again at 7, and then having busy and exciting days, and the adults were getting less sleep than normal. But exhaustion doesn't matter when you get to spend another day at the Magic Kingdom! Seriously, except for a few minor episodes with Gwen, you wouldn't have known that all of us were running on fumes.
I was SO excited to see my planning for Super Bowl Sunday at the Magic Kingdom come to fruition, which was declared to be one of the best days to go to Magic Kingdom. If the first day was good, this day was going to be GREAT! And then we cruised up to the Magic Kingdom on the bus and I saw the enormous crowds of people waiting to get in, and it was still really early. My heart SANK! I was through security really quickly with the bags but it took forever for everyone else to get through security, and the day was feeling like it might end up being busted. BUT, we gathered our crew and started in on our plan. This time we had morning fast passes, so we knocked those out and then started scheduling our afternoon ones. They were far harder to schedule than our first day, because of the increased numbers of people, but we had held onto a few of our paper fast passes for the parent switch and used those to fill in extra time. Ultimately, we noticed that it was more crowded than our first day, but it ended up not hindering us much. It really helped that we had already had a day there and were familiar with the layout and the rides.
I really wanted to go on Peter Pan's Flight again, but that was way too popular. We did wait in line for Pooh's Honeypot ride, by far the longest we waited for any ride in any of the parks, about 45 minutes. I really liked the ride, so it was worth it and we didn't have anything else scheduled.
Also, because of the crowds, we did a few things we likely wouldn't have done otherwise, including the Carousel of Progress and the Laugh Floor. The Carousel of Progress was, well, a good time to sit in the cool dark and take a break while experiencing a very odd animatronics story of the decades. The Laugh Floor was funny and again offered some nice sitting time.
That night we ate at the Cuban Restaurant in Downtown Disney. The food and the entertainment was great! Stephanie picked chicken nuggets as her kids meal, and I was a little bummed that she went with something so boring- but they ended up being chicken bites they made there. They looked delicious.
I preferred eating at Downtown Disney for travel purposes- you can catch a bus back to any resort from there. I also thought the servings of food were larger than the other meals we had and that the prices were ever so slightly more reasonable, but that may have been unique to the Cuban restaurant and not to Downtown Disney in general.

Let's start photos with a little Battle of the Cameras-  I can't believe we got this photo with no one in the background. The first is Alaina's picture, the second is mine.

Small World ride- I think the first ride we got on that day.

After NOT getting this picture from Splash Mountain the first day, I had myself appropriately staged and finally got a picture.

Also I managed some Big Thunder photos!

The teacups... I passed, again.

Gwen loved Dumbo. There were several rides exactly like Dumbo, but none were as adored as Dumbo.

Stephanie took a few of Alaina and I.

And a nice family shot

Entertainment at the restaurant. Stephanie didn't want to do the napkin dance initially, but we insisted. She ended up really enjoying parading around the restaurant with the dancers.

One day park day left!