John & Family - August 2007

Participants: Me - 40, DW (Karen) - younger than me , DS#1 (Thomas) - 7, DS#2 (Andrew) - 2, DFiL (Rich) - Older than me, DMiL (Janet) - Younger than her husband
Location - Magic Kingdom
Pictures - Disney Day 2

DAY 2: August 4, 2007

It's Saturday and our first full day in the World. I make sure that we all wake up early. I see the message light flashing and there is a voice mail for me. It is from Consuela, with the rooms folks, calling to confirm that we wanted to make the change to the room next door with the connecting room to my in-laws. I call her back and confirm. She says I have to do nothing and I can check in to the new room in the late afternoon. I am a little concerned since we will be back from the park sometime between 1 and 2 pm for break and leaving before 4:30 to make dinner. It's gonna be close. At the least it going to cause some inconvenience as we are moving all our bags to my in-laws room and the kids will have to nap in there today.

We move the bags, and head over to the Mill house food court for breakfast. Karen, I, and Thomas have to use a CS for breakfast as our reservation changes to the next one on the morrow and we have two CS's to use in one day. Using a counter service for breakfast is not something I think is the best value but.. better than losing the money! You get two drinks and an entre for breakfast. They won't tell you this unless you specifically ask. My breakfast of choice, when not having a big lunch, was the made to order omelette. They have a choice of items to add, but not bacon, and you get some tasty seasoned potatoes to go with. Then you grab some drinks. I usually grabbed a Gold Point Ice Tea (yummy) and a large juice, apple or orange for the kids. This 'costs' about $12 and change, which puts it over my $10 minimum for profitability on CS meals . We all get our breakfasts and head out to the South Depot.

At the South Depot there are two shelters. The first shelter is for Animal Kingdom, Epcot, Downtown Disney, and the two water parks. The second shelter is for Magic Kingdom and Disney MGM Studios. We got to the shelter around 7:40 to make sure we get to the park in time. I wanted to be at the entrance around 8:30. Luck is with us and we get a bus right away.

At 8:20 we are through security, and the turnstiles and we are at the left tunnel rope drop. We are right at the rope so I know we did well : We are set to get to Fantasy Land as fast as we can and get in to our day of no line riding! As I stand there taking video and photo a CM is coming around greeting everyone and asking if today is the first day for anyone's vacation. Of course I pipe up and say that it is our first day and she invites our group to come in and for me to take a short survey. She says 'you will miss the morning greeting/park opening but you will be able to go in the park when you are done with the survey'. I think for about 2 nanoseconds and say 'That's fine!!' and off we go. I take the quick survey in the town hall and then we are off.

How many times can you be in the park where you see maybe 3 or 4 people about? I have done this one time before but it was 2AM and we were the last ones in the park and it was DARK! This time it is beautiful sunny (and humid). Now it is 8:30 and we are reveling in the emptiness of the place I have dreamed about being in since we were last here!

We move our way down Main Street USA looking at the stores. At the end of the street we find a cart open and we buy my youngest son, Andrew, his first set of ears. As we get up to Walt and Mickey's statue we find our first Disney Photographer and get our first photopass pictures. I hope they come out, as we are planning on using them for a lot of the 'landmark' pictures.

After the pictures are taken we move further along to Fantasy Land. Soon we are through most of the Castle and are at the rope drop there. We have about 15 minutes before the rope is removed and we can proceed in to Fantasy Land. At 8:50 am we turn back to look towards Main Street USA and the train station beyond and there is a SEA of people moving towards us :. How easy it would have been for us to be a part of that deluge!

Fortunately for us they have another barrier between them and us and at 9:00 we are let loose and make our way to Dumbo! My son, Andrew, has talked about nothing but riding the Teacups and Dumbo. So we are on the first ride of Dumbo at five minutes past nine! It appears my somewhat aggressive plan for our MK morning may just work out! After Dumbo we head over and walk on to Pooh. At 9:20 we are done with our first two rides! Next we headed over to Snow White and walked on to that ride as well. Now, we remembered the Teacups (how could we forget it with our Andrew asking to ride it!). Unbelievably it was closed But seeing the crestfallen look on our Andrew she confided that it would be ready in less than 5 minutes so we hoped on the empty queue.

After the fun of the cups we headed over to walk on to the Carousel ride! Next we rode Peter Pan and headed for the second star on the right. Are you out of breath yet? We debarked Peter Pan and jumped on to It's a Small World with about a 2 minute wait for front seats. Our Andrew was signing along the whole time. It was less annoying than I remember it.

Now, while the others were hitting the bathroom break I headed down to Splash Mountain and got fast passes. I met them at the entrance to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and had a 10 minute wait for wild ride. Wow, this was way better than I remember it! I love this coaster!

Arrrgh, next we headed over to Adventureland for walk on ride to Pirates of the Caribbean! Anyone still concerned that the recent changes will be a negative should relax. It is awesome. We loved looking for Capt Jack Sparrow in all his hiding places. I have to add here that this is was a very difficult ride for me to video tape. The light is just low enough to cause a lot of focusing issues. I had to turn on night vision more than I had hoped. Ok, so, time check. We got off of Pirates of the Caribbean about 11:15. Not bad, I had wanted to have ridden Splash Mountain and Jungle Cruise by now but the delay at Teacups (both backtracking and waiting) messed me up a little bit.

Next on my wish list was the Pirate Tutorial, which we are brilliantly placed to attend. We sit on the wall and await the arrival of Pirate Max (or was it Mack?). Soon he shows up ( a little bit later than the scheduled time, at 11:25) and we enjoy an absolutely brilliant performance by both himself and Capt. Jack Sparrow. WOW was Jack spot on!!! My oldest, Thomas, was picked to be one of the 4 pirate trainees and had a blast. With our Andrew in my arms I volunteered for the swearing in ceremony (and got a doubtful leer from Jack himself but got picked). This was one of our highlights of the day and the trip.

After this wonderful show I did my duty as fast pass runner and got passes for the Jungle Cruise and then joined everyone at Splash Mountain. Thanks to our fast passes we walked right on to this ride. It was a great ride but I seem to remember there was more 'song' part when last I rode it in 1999.

Then we decided to eat lunch and went to the near by Pecos Bill Caf and had delightful meal. Well, okay maybe that is a bit over the top but : it was good. I was unimpressed by the desert choices but still spent over my $10 goal.

After a relaxing 45 minutes of eating and sitting we used out Jungle Cruise fast passes and had less than a 3 minute wait to ride. I asked if Thomas could drive the boat and he was granted this privilege. As he was wearing his birthday button (a short note here about all these buttons. These are being SOOOOO abused by people. We ran in many people wearing birthday buttons whose birthday was 6 months ago. We ran in to another couple wearing 'just married' buttons who got married in March. If these keep getting abused like this, this too will be gone like the 'Re-hitching Ceremony. For the record Thomas' birthday was 7/20, just two weeks before this day, and Karen and I wore Anniversary pins as our Anniversary occurred during our trip on 8/9) Skipper Ken had everyone sing Happy Birthday to Thomas (well at least the first 2 lines . We enjoyed this ride but I found Ken's delivery to be staid. On these kinds of rides (as with Tower of Terror) the CM's really need to be over the top as they can make or break the ride.

Once we finished this ride we headed toward the exit and went back to our home for an afternoon break. While the boys slept in the In-Laws room I spent my time at the lobby trying to check in to the correct room. Guess what!!! The check in system was down again. Apparently this happens EVERY SINGLE day in the afternoon!! I ended up waiting so long making sure everything was good with this new room and the long reservation that starts tomorrow that the system finally came back up. We got our new cards (which will last until tomorrow), and I headed back to Building 38 and started moving our stuff in to the adjoining room from my in-laws.

About 4:30 we all headed out to the North Depot to catch a bus back to MK for dinner at the Liberty Tree Tavern. Our reservation was at 5:20 and with the delays of getting a bus we just got there on time. We waited about 5 minutes for a table to free up and finally got sat down with menus at 5:30. Karen and I have eaten here before and it lived up to our expectations. We had some good time with Goofy, Chip, Dale, and Minnie and thoroughly enjoyed the food. We finished up about 6:35 and continued on with some more attractions.

We hit the Frontier land shoot out. Thomas had a great time :. I found it amusing to see two teenagers (16 or 17) trying to outdo each other with their rifle prowess.

Once this was over we headed over to the Enchanted Tiki Room: Under New Management. We had about a 7 minute wait for the next show but sat too far to the left for the best viewing. In any case I loved the show but Karen and her father were less than impressed. Has it changed since it came under new management? I don't think it was any different than it was 1999. To each his/her own.

Exiting the Tiki Room we headed to the Country Bear Jamboree. I love this show and it was a hit with everyone as well.

Once we finished with this show we started over to the Contemporary to attend the Magical Fireworks Cruise. Our information was that we needed to be on the second floor at 8:15.. : oops the correct time was 8:45! So we had hour sitting around in the lobby area. The rest of our group joined us and we sat and relaxed. At some point a CM came by with our special pins and instructions. At 8:45 we moved over and had some snacks and were joined by Capt. Jas Hook and Mr. Smee! As others have commented on, the snacks are pretty lame. They had packaged chips and popcorn and cans of beverage. After about 30 minutes we headed down to the docks, lead by one of two Pirate CM's who were our hosts. We had a wonderful view of the Electric Water Parade, my first time seeing this and then Wishes. Wow. I'm so glad I picked this for our group to do instead of renting a pontoon boat just for us. Yeah we were with a lot of other people but having the synchronized music and narration really made it perfect. During the ride there was a trivia game (aimed at the kids) and each kid won something. Our Andrew won a pirate bandana hat and Thomas got a pirate mug. The boat headed back to the dock after the fireworks and Peter Pan was waiting for us :. The boys both enjoyed meeting him, having just watched the movie before our trip.

This was the end of a very long first day. It was very successful day I think! A late night indeed, after 11 PM when we returned to the room, very sleepy and looking forward to an easy day at Typhoon Lagoon next!

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