The trip started the way it always does for my family, with a long overnight drive. This time we did things slightly different. We usually leave late in the afternoon from our home in Texas, make a brief stop in New Orleans to see my parents and drop off our dogs, then race to the park for opening. This trip, we stayed in Houston until Sunday morning. We left fairly early, and spent a half day in New Orleans relaxing and letting the kids play. Our original plans were to leave at 8 pm, but we moved it up to 6:45. The extra time was needed to pick up our cousin near the Orlando airport before heading to the parks.The drive went pretty quickly, until the very end. The last 3 hours were pretty challenging, with my wife and I trading seats several times to take turns napping. We arrived on time and even had extra time to check into our hotels to drop off luggage before going to the parks. (Since our original plans had us arriving Saturday, our rooms were ready a day in advance of our arrival.) We arrived at the Polynesian at 7:30 for our breakfast reservation. Breakfast was awesome as usual, and we were able to get to Magic Kingdom by 8:45. Unfortunately for us, the park opened early, and people were being let in the park already as the monorail was reaching the station. This was such a bummer, as the first few minutes of park opening are extremely important to riding several rides before the crowds get there.
After getting through the gates, we decided to head to adventureland since we missed the opportunity to see Anna & Elsa, or ride the Dwarf Mine Train at rope drop. The following was done prior to our midday break:
Jungle Cruise
Pirates of the Caribbean
Splash Mountain
Woody and Jessie
Under the Sea
Storytime with Belle
Dumbo
The park was getting busy as we left for our midday break around 2 pm. It is always hard to leave the park when you are having fun on the first day, but it is always necessary with young ones if there is hope of staying late enough for the night time entertainment. We decided to return to the park around 7 pm, in time for our scheduled fastpasses. The following is a list of attractions we were able to take part in prior to park closing at 11pm:
Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin
Mickey’s Philharmagic
It’s a small world
Dwarf Mine Train
Peter Pan
Wishes
Tinkerbell
Main Street Electrical Parade
The evening started off a little disappointing, as Space Mountain (our first fastpass) was broken down. We used our fastpass on Buzz Lightyear instead. Since the park was still quite crowded, we saw Mickey’s Philharmagic and rode It’s a small World. The lines on these attractions are usually two of the shorter ones in the park. This got us to our 8:45 fastpass time for Dwarf Mine Train. We were able to ride the Dwarf Mine Train, and get rider swaps for our friends to ride (since they did not have fastpasses).
While we were able to get rider swaps for our friends for Dwarf Mine Train, the situation did not work as well for Peter Pan. They had fastpasses for Peter Pan, but rider swaps are not available since all ages can ride. As my wife and I waited for our friends in the extremely long Fastpass line, we noticed that no one was entering the regular line. We decided to get in the regular line and went right to the front of the line. We were able to get in front of our friends who had already waited at least 15 minutes in the fastpass line. After getting off the ride, we returned to our strollers in the Rapunzel bathroom area in Fantasyland. Right as we returned to our stroller, a bird with a very large wingspan swooped down towards our heads. After settling in a tree just above our heads, we were able to identify the bird as an Owl. Although I have seen a few owls in person from a distance, I have never seen one this close. It was such a beautiful and unique site.
When our friends were finally able to get through the Peter Pan Fastpass line, and complete the ride, we were off to see Wishes as fast as we could. With the Peter Pan Fastpass being very long, and the owl incident, the fireworks started without us. Although late, we were still able to rush to the area next to Crystal Palace to watch the second half of the show. At the conclusion of the fireworks, we waited for the crowds to clear out before heading to the front of the park to see Tinkerbell. After exiting Tinkerbell at 10:50, there was still several open spots on the street to see the Electrical Parade front row. Two of the tips for the Electrical parade are: 1. If there are two parades, wait until the second one. 2. Watch the parade at the circle just inside the train station. I am not sure why, but this always ends up being the least crowded area of the parade.
With night number one complete, we were pretty tired, with all 4 of our children asleep. Of course we had to wake the biggest one up to get to the car, but he was practically sleepwalking the entire way.
Mouse Guide To Walt 