Vacation Days 5, 6 - Magic Kingdon

Sunday was another quiet day in Jacksonville, getting ready for our trip to Orlando. We left about 8:00pm for the 3 hour drive. Our first night was spent offsite about 30 minutes from Disney. Fortunately, the kids slept well in the car as we had a big day planned for Monday.

First stop on the agenda was our hotel to get our park tickets. Our hotel was the Pop Century Resort, one of Disney's budget category of hotels. The theme of the hotel is that it is divided up into decades with the pop culture elements that define those decades prominently displayed. We actually saw this hotel on a travel show about Disney and thought that the cheesy style might appeal to the girls. Also, we assumed that being a Disney property, it would certainly be clean and well maintained. So far, we are quite happy with the choice. The decor is in the retro style you would expect and it will certainly provide us with a place to crash after long days at the parks. We are in the 80's section so we have nice views of several large Rubik's Cubes, a Roger Rabbit statue and a large computer keyboard.

Next stop was our first park of the week - Magic Kingdom. This was the park with the most things of interest for the girls and the one park we plan to hit more than once. We were quite excited when we pulled into the parking lot, only to see that our stroller would not fit on the shuttle trolley taking people to the park. No problem - it was just a 5 minute walk we were told and then we would be there, So we get the the end of the parking area, ready to enter the park and then find that we need to take either a ferry or monorail to the actual park. A 10 minute ferry ride later and we were indeed at Magic Kingdom, although Mindy and I were feeling a little like Steve Martin in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" at this point.

First stop in the park was Fantasyland. First stop in Fantasyland was to go to Ariel's Grotto to meet her. The girls really enjoyed this although Naomi was a little shy. Following this, we hit the other attractions there that we thought the kids would like - Dumbo the Flying Elephant; Mickey's PhilharMagic (a 3-D movie that took you into various of Disney's fantasy worlds); Peter Pan's Flight (an indoor flight over scenes from Peter Pan); Cinderella's Golden Carrousel; It's A Small World (quite long but the kids really enjoyed this one); The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and finally the Mad Tea Party (the kids loved spinning around in the tea cups here). Overall, we thought that the PhilharMagic show was a highlight here, the kids also really enjoyed It's A Small World and the Mad Tea Party...and of course, meeting Ariel.

We then simply proceeded around the part - Buzz Lightyear was a good ride but a little old for the girls. Naomi was pretty much terrified throughout this one. They loved the Indy Speedway as well. In Toontown there was a roller coaster - "The Barnstormer at Goofy's Wiseacre Farm". This was suited to young kids and a good way to get them back into coasters. We then stepped up a bit and hit the "Big Thunder Mountain Railroad" coaster. This was the best ride of the day for all concerned. Nothing too crazy but for the kids it was quite exciting. Fiona only just met the height restriction, so we were lucky we did not come 6 months ago. We then went down to Adventureland where we rode Aladdin's Carpet, walked through the Swiss Family Treehouse and went on a Jungle Cruise.

Adventureland also brought us one of the surprises of the day. Walking around we saw Aladdin and Jasmine posing for photos. Along with Ariel, she was probably the princess that the girls most wanted to see. It was great to see all of the kids and their parents enjoying the moment when we saw something kind of strange. An Indian couple, probably in their 20's was in the line to meet them. Mindy and I were stunned...I mean, I could understand meeting a rock star, movie star or sports hero...but a couple of actors dressed up as Disney characters??? Also, it was more than that - not only did they pose for several photos but they then were taking more shots of other kids with the characters as well. It was really quite strange. I wanted to ask them about it but Mindy would not let me.

We finished up the night lining up to meet some more princesses/fairies. Autographs and pictures were obtained from Cinderella, Belle, Tinkerbell and Silvermist. This took the girls through until about 8:30. We really wanted to wait until the fireworks at 9:00 but the kids had just had enough by then. So a quick walk, ferry ride, walk and drive later and we were back. The kids crashed quickly and we were not far behind them. Epcot tomorrow!