The Magic Kingdom!

We started out day 2 by heading out to the Magic Kingdom. We had an early start as we had to be out at the bus stop by 7:30 in order to make our 8:20 breakfast at the Chrystal Palace inside MK. This was a great time for a breakfast as the park did not open that morning until 9, so we were able to get in early and take all of our "had to" shots with out fighting crowds. I let the Disney guy take our Cinderella Castle shot so I don't have that one in my file. It was so fun to hear Jake scream: "Dere Cinewella's Caaasssle!" It was like time hadn't passed since my last visit over 10 years ago and then from my childhood memories. There truly is NO PLACE like the MK. I don't care if you are 5 or 105....it's a magical place! I got chill bumps as we walked gown Main Street to our breakfast destination.

Breakfast was good; Jake was in a bitter mood from lack of quality sleep so he was crying a good bit while we waited to be seated. All he cared about was finding Mickey to take a picture(who knew he would be so into taking pics with him...)and explaining that we were going to do that after breakfast only made him more upset. Luckily he brightened up a little once we got to our seats and saw Tigger. The other characters at this breakfast included Eeyore, Piglet, and Winnie the Pooh. He wasn't fond of Eeyore, but found interest in all the others. The pictures make me laugh because he would be so stiff for the characters and not move much when their arm was around him! He looks so solemn but I promise he was having a blast;)!

After breakfast I was outside taking a couple of pics when I saw the crowd coming from Main Street. They had opened the park and I almost went into panic mode...only me and my mom, I know I know....Matt and his mom were inside finishing up and it took everything in me not to throw the kids in the stroller and high tail it to Fanastyland. But I waited until they came out and still managed a "Come ON!" in a panicky voice. Silly I know, but I think you just get caught up in the rush and excitement of the surroundings..and so we should!

So from there we headed to "It's a Small World Ride" while Matt went to get fast passes to Peter Pan. We were the first group to ride that morning and looking back should have done Dumbo first because that line was in the sun. Small World was in the air conditioner(note to self!) and not busy early on. But SW is a classic and I have lots of memories(or rather my mom has lots of memories and shared them with me a lot!)so I'm glad we did that one first. From there we went to the carousel and then to line up to see Mickey. Jake insisted on going to the race cars, so Matt did that with him while we waited at Toon Town to see THE mouse. They didn't open up Toon Town until 10 and we got there about 9:30 so we wouldn't have to wait so long to take a picture. I would have to say that the one thing I wasn't really prepared for was how pushy some of these stroller driven moms are. You can't help but want to stake out your territory when you have patiently been waiting behind the rope for 25 minutes when some mom in a stroller starts closing on YOUR stroller and before you know it they are in front of you and had only come up 2 minutes ago...had to tell myself to not worry about it several times but come on! OK, so maybe that is the competitor in me, but I just eventually let it go. But I did pass her up on the way to see Mickey:).

We did a couple more rides before heading back to the resort at a relatively decent time. Noonish I think it was. LGT didn't make it pass the Contemporary Resort without crashing and we put the kids down for a nap once we got home. Since they got up around 3ish, we had time to hit the main pool as it had more to offer than the one in our unit. They loved it and Landry went down the smaller slide all by herself several times. She would grin from ear to ear the whole way down. I loved it! Jake was one with Donald Duck at the water play area. I think I traumatized him a couple of weeks ago when I tried putting him in swim lessons and he just wasn't ready. We didn't go back after day one, but he won't even get near deep water anymore. I am sure he will outgrow this, but in the mean time he is just my cautious child and that is OK.

That night we went back to the Magic Kingdom to ride some more rides and eat at the Liberty Tree tavern. Not our favorite but it was perfect because our dinner reservations were at 9pm(yeah..another last minute reservation and that was the only time available) and the parade went right by our restaurant. So we watched the entire parade and I will tell you that it was GREAT! I am so glad the kids got to see all of it as you cannot go to DW without seeing the parades. Jake LOVED it and knew more characters than I thought he would so that was fun to see his reactions. When we got back inside we ate dinner and then prepped for the fireworks. Jake watched for a while but I think they were a little loud and therefore he told us he wanted to LEAVE. Word to the wise: if you don't want to get trapped in the MAYHEM of crowds after the fireworks, don't be in the middle of the park or be in a hurry to leave. Of course you want to watch it near Cinderella's Castle, but really any view point would have been OK with a 1 and 2 year old. So we had made it to CC by the time the fireworks were ending and that is when the crowd buckeled and you couldn't go ANYWHERE. Try adding a stroller to the mix and we just waited out the crowd and 30 minutes later we exited the park with 2 DEAD SOLDIERS.

Got back to the resort around 11:15 and I was SO glad I had changed our 8am breakfast reservations to 9:20am earlier that day. It would have been tough to make it there that early! But of course LGT was up by 6:20 the next morning and thankfully laid in bed with us until 7:15. More about day 3: Hollywood Studios tomorrow. Hope you enjoyed the recap and sorry for the lengthy details! But I will refer back to this someday when we go again and it will be a reminder of what to do and not to do.