Day 6: A day in the Kingdom

May 7, 2009
Magic Kingdom--Daytime
EPCOT--Nighttime

Despite my concerns with the Magic Kingdom having morning Magic Hours (which usually means heavier crowds), we boarded the bus for the original park early in the day. The wait wasn't long for the bus, unlike the evening before when we never got on the Downtown Disney bus.

We arrived at the front gates and my original thoughts looked about right: the park was busy.

We made our way past security, through the turnstiles, walked over the Mickey shaped pixie dust (which Janice still doesn't have), under the train station and out onto Main Street. What a sight! There were already lineups for a couple of characters around the flagpole (can't remember which ones as there was too much going on), a lineup for Mickey (I assume, as he wasn't out yet) and a lineup for Chip and Dale.

We continued up Main Street where we caught a bit of the "Towns Folk" performing a song and dance number. We made it to the hub and decided to head to Fantasyland before it got too busy. This was a bit out of the norm for me, as I usually head to Adventureland first for Pirates of the Caribbean. Of course, we now had kids with us, so we needed to show them a good time too.

Peter Pan's Flight was already pretty busy, so we grabbed a fast-pass and headed onto It's a Small World. This was the second time I noticed some refurbishments (the first was Main Street). There was next to no wait.

We moved on to Winnie the Pooh and Snow White, and then made our way over to Adventureland. On our way we stopped for a coffee and bottle break.

We took in Pirates of the Caribbean and the Enchanted Tiki Room. Surprisingly Graydon fell asleep in the Tiki room with all the birds singing around him.

We had lunch at the Columbia Harbour House while Graydon slept. At the quick service restaurant, I noticed the new laminated menu cards (which somehow ended up in the diaper bag). By the time he woke up, it was our chance to use our Fast-passes for Peter Pan.

We finished off the day with the Jungle Cruise and the Haunted Mansion. We used the baby swap system at the Haunted mansion, as we felt Graydon wouldn't handle the attraction. Steve and Charlotte went first while we waited in the shade of the Haunted Mansion merchandise cart.

We made it out of the Mansion without becoming the 1000th haunt and walked down Main Street through the many shops. I poked my head in the Art of Disney shop in the old Main Street Cinema only to be disappointed: I was hoping to find the three inch Vinylmation figures, but was told the sold out shortly after they were released. They still had the nine inch series one figures, which I figured I would pick up later on.

Our last stop was the hat shop to order our personalized Mouse ears. We were heading out of the park, and since we would have had to wait 45 minutes for them, we had the hats shipped to the resort.

We were soon on the bus back to the resort for a break and a swim.

Our dinner reservations that night was for the San Angel Inn, in the Mexican pavilion in EPCOT. When I made our reservation, I found out that tonight was the last night before they closed for renovations (for the new Tequila bar I presume).

We made it to the restaurant on time (unlike the night before) and we're seated fairly quickly. Dinner went by pretty quickly, which was somewhat disappointing, as the atmosphere in Mexico is the best.

We went on the Gran Fiesta Tour and made our way to Spaceship Earth to end the night. This was our first time on Spaceship Earth since the renovations and we were pleasantly surprised. They retained many of the former portions but included new interactive portions at the end, which included photos of the three of us (well, actually just Janice and Graydon).

I went into the Art of Disney (yes, two in one day) quickly. I actually bought the Vinylmation at the EPCOT location .

We went back to the hotel room and turned in for the night. Day one was a very busy day, so we were very tired!

Note: Sorry for the long delay in posting Day 6 and subsequent days. I'm hoping to have the rest of my trip up within the next couple of weeks. And sorry for the lack of photos on this particular day. I used my video camera for most of the day.