Disney World, Day 2 (part 3) (Magic Kingdom)

It was now about 5:30 p.m. and we were ready to test out a new land: Toon Town! Kathryn took some kids to try and catch some characters in the State Fair tent, and I let Matthew blow off steam in Donald's Boat. He didn't want to leave there. Eventually, Kathryn found the line for characters was too long, so she, Matthew and Caroline decided to try Goofy's Barnstormer, a fun little roller coaster.

I kept an eye on Sam (and Josh) in the boat and another little playground.

Kathryn encouraged us to push onward as it was now around 6:30 p.m. So I did one of my famous dashes across the park to see if I could get Fast Passes for Jungle Cruise. While there, I checked out the line for Pirates, and it was less than 10 minutes. So I sprinted back, and got the family back to Adventureland.

We then mimicked our early morning success in terms of "rides per hour". We essentially did everything in Adventureland in one hour: First it was Pirates, then the Magic Carpet, then the Tiki Room, the Swiss Family Robinson tree house (I like that it's not Tarzan), and then the Jungle Cruise.

The Jungle Cruise is DEFINITELY more fun at night as the skippers are more relaxed and are funnier. The kids loved Skipper MIke. They loved a joke about the dancing natives losing the key to the men's room, we loved him humming "Small World" while going through the scary dark cave, and his comment that while he didn't know where the cave would take it, odds were -- being Disney -- it would end in a gift shop.

It reminded me of when Liz (my sister) and I did Jungle Cruise at night many years ago at Disneyland. We still laugh about the jokes...it was just so dry. I don't think we had ever done it at night.

At this point it was now about 8:15 and the parade was coming our way (it goes through Frontierland in Magic Kingdom, unlike Disneyland.) Kathryn found a place that sells ice cream that was just closing down, but we got ice cream, went through a passageway and saw the parade, which had many components of an Electrical Parade. We then figured we'd see the fireworks, but of course it was time for the Matthew and Sammy sleepfest.

So we made it to the Castle area and kept an eye on Sammy in the stroller and held the sleeping Matthew while Kathryn and the olders went for a better view of Tinkerbell and fireworks.

I couldn't really see it, but Kathryn said this was her favorite night time program.

Then, much to my dismay, we joined the throngs at exiting the park in mass. Matthew got heavier and heavier, and I felt my arms were losing their elastics, like a rubber band. Down the street, up the ramp to the Monorail, on the Monorail, down the ramp, onto the parking shuttle. Of course, once we get to the car he wakes up.

But a very very satisfying first full day that even got some swimming.

Hollywood Studios, here we come!!!!


Mark