Disney Diary - Day 4

Dream a Little Dream :)
August 26, 2008

This was our first Magic Kingdom day. Our routine was to eat breakfast in the room (cereal brought from home plus milk and granola bars) and get to the boat/bus stop by 8:15am. We did that on this day, and it worked perfectly. I love rope drop at the Magic Kingdom because they do a little show with Mickey and Minnie and some other characters. They arrive at the front of the park on the train and dance and sing and sprinkle confetti on the crowd waiting to enter. Not a huge deal really, but sort of fun to be a part of and makes you really feel that the excitement is about to start.

Since we were returning to Magic Kingdom on Thursday morning for the early extra magic hours (park opens at 8am instead of 9am for resort guests), we decided we would do the Fantasyland stuff during morning EMH on Thursday and do Tomorrowland now. Although Alex and I had already ridden Space Mountain on Sunday night during the EMH, it is our favorite ride and we had to head there first. Since the ride had only a 10 min. wait when we got there we didn’t use Fastpass but just hopped in line. Fun ride as always – I joked to Alex that I had broke my “screambone” on that ride. Yes, yes, I’m a screamer, and now I was feeling a little bit horse.

We decided to do Buzz Lightyear next before the lines got very long and also because we wanted to do something all of us could ride together (Sean and Katie did not do Space Mountain). Standby for Buzz was listed at 15 min. which isn’t much, but Sean almost did not want to ride – we don’t do long lines – we passed on anything more than 20 min. I reminded him though that Buzz is one of the more popular rides and it is likely we won’t have a shorter wait the rest of the day. So we get in line. About 10 min. later we are approaching the front of the line when we see guys in white jackets with blue wording – “The Year of a Million Dreams” written in a nice script. Silly me in my glazed over “Waitin’ in the line” zone out didn’t even register what this could mean. Then I notice they are counting each person in line. They stop at Katie, whose hand I was holding. The man looks up at me and asks, “How many in your party ma’am?” Stupid me is still not really registering and thinking he means how many are going to ride together I say “just two” because Alex and Sean planned to ride in one cart and Katie and I were going to ride in another. He says, “Really, just two?” and I say, “Well, those two are with us too (pointing at Sean and Alex), but just she and I are going to ride together.” He says okay, and then starts talking to the person behind us for a minute or two – I’m starting to wake up to the fact of who this cast member is and why he’s asking questions and start to wonder if we missed out based on my cluelessness. A minute or two goes by and then he just starts passing out DREAM FASTPASSES! I guess he was asking how many in each party to be sure that he had enough passes and didn’t have to give some to only part of one party. Here is Alex holding up his:

Alex was completely thrilled. I think if he had won a sticker he would have been pretty excited. Just to win something at all was a big thrill for him. Once we explained what it actually was, he was that much more happy! In case you aren’t familiar, a dream fastpass is a fastpass to all rides that take fastpasses in the entire park! So in Magic Kingdom that was all 3 mountains, jungle cruise, Peter Pan, Winnie Pooh, Mickey’s Philharmagic, Stitch, and Buzz.

We ditched our touring plan for the day and did rides as we came to them – which was so nice! It wasn’t a very busy day to begin with that day, so anything that didn’t have fastpass was a pretty short line anyway. We got so much done that day. We did the Indy Cars next since we it was one of the few rides that sometimes has a longer line but does not have a fastpass. Then we just meandered around Tomorrowland and did everything as we came to it. Laugh Floor comedy, Tomorrowland Transit Authority, Carousel of Progress, and Space Mountain one more time since we had the Fastpasses. We skipped Stitch even though we had the fastpasses because Alex and I had done it when we were there for the EMH and didn’t care for it and I know it would have scared Katie to death anyway (too much dark). We did not do Astro Orbitor either because Sean is scared of the height.

It was still pretty early, so we did Mad Tea Party, Winnie Pooh, Peter Pan, Mickey’s Philharmagic and It’s a Small World (using our Fastpasses where necessary) before heading to lunch at Cosmic Ray’s. All day, people kept noticing our Dream fastpasses around our necks and asking how we got them. Alex loved to tell the story – you could tell he felt like a real celebrity. I don’t remember exactly what we ordered at Cosmic Ray’s but I know that by this time we had fallen in the habit of ordering 3 meals for the 4 of us. Since we were on the dining plan, a dessert came with each meal, and all that food was just so much – and trust me I like to eat, but just couldn’t justify eating all that. It also helped that Katie is pretty picky, and wouldn’t eat much if we got her a separate meal anyway. Sean, Alex, and I would each just order a meal each, and I made sure that somewhere in there was something Katie could share. Worked out perfectly and nobody went hungry and we still had to throw some food out a few times (mostly too many fries, or an extra dessert). We saved her counter service credit each time this way and it worked out so that we had an extra counter service meal on the day we didn’t have a table service because we had used up 2 table service credits for a special dinner.

After lunch we decided to just try to make the most of our dream fastpasses and then go back to the hotel before we got burned out. We did Jungle Cruise – which we all really liked. We didn’t get the chance to do it last time, so it was fun being on it for the first time. Then Alex and I did Big Thunder Mountain before we headed out of the park. We had done Splash Mountain last time we went to Disney, and although neither of us hated it, we didn’t really like it either, so we skipped it. We rode the boat back to Wilderness Lodge all happy and content and feeling so lucky to have won the dream fastpasses. It really made our day. Sean suggested we pass on the fastpasses we hadn’t been able to use to someone else, so that is what we did. We saved Alex’s for a souvenir and gave the other three to some people at Wilderness Lodge waiting to get on the boat to go to Magic Kingdom. I looked for a party with no small children as we had used up all the Fantasyland stuff, and there were still fastpasses for the mountains on 2 of the 3 badges. It was fun to pass on the magic – we gave the passes to a mom and dad and their teenage son – looked like we made their day too.

The rest of the day was not nearly as exciting, but we were happy and enjoyed it anyway. We did our usual rest/pool time and then went to Coral Reef for dinner. Here is a pic of the inside of the restaurant:

I had a new york strip steak that was really good, so were the accompanying potatos. Sean had some sort of fish dish – the mahi mahi I think, which he also enjoyed. It was a nice meal, but we’ll probably pick someplace different next time. No complaints, just not so great we’d keep coming back with all the other great choices at Disney World. I think this was the night we rode Spaceship Earth at Epcot. It was closed for refurnishment on our last trip, so this was our first time riding it. Definitely another family favorite for us. We didn’t know about the pictures they take of you and put into the video at the end, so that was pretty fun/funny for us. I did manage to hold Katie up so her head was in the shot on the ride, even though I didn’t know I was doing it at the time. Hilarious apprehensive expression on her face! She was probably feeling a little nervous about some of the ride being a little dark, but she calmed down and enjoyed it well enough with no problem.
Alex and I also tried to ride Test Track sometime that night, but were thwarted once again by long lines. We rode Ellen and the Universe of Energy and then headed back to the hotel for a little more swimming and of course watched Wishes from our balcony again.