Day 74: Round 2 at the Magic Kingdom.

Our trip to Disney World includes two days at any one of the parks and of course, we chose Disneyland The Magic Kingdom. Trying to get through any one park at Disney World in one day is a lot of work. You have to be really dedicated and not to mention in top physical fitness conditions. So for us trailer trash with no gym memberships, we made it a two-day visit.

Today we are going to try to get to all of the rides that we didn’t make it to yesterday as well as getting more meet-and-greets of Ava’s favorite characters. At the end of the day yesterday, we checked out the wait-time at Crystal Palace Restaurant on Main Street. It was over 45 minutes for dinner! We just could not wait that long so we decided to try our luck again this morning.

The Crystal Palace is described by the Disney literature as a buffet with “character”. You know what that means. It is a trap for children. Disney World runs like a well oiled machine. It really feels like that they have thought of everything and uses every possible method of getting you to feel more comfortable hence you spend more money. We have come across some of the rudest people here in Florida and it feels really strange to have everyone who works here being so polite. I mean, they are smiling ALL THE TIME.

Here is The Crystal Palace Buffet exuding some of its ‘character’ with the girls at our table.

The weather here in Florida has started to turn hot and humid. It has really changed the way the girls travel. Usually Mila spends a good part of the time inside the baby carrier when we walk. Lately it has just been too hot for her to do that. Plus she is growing like a weed so Marlene is not gonna be able to take carrying a sack of potatoes all day for much longer. We need a double stroller. Badly. Luckily for us, today the air was relatively dry and the heat was tolerable for us spoiled Californians.

I really don’t know how these “cast members” do this all day long. Look at how much this super-sized fairy godmother has to wear! Maybe that’s why they are only out for a few minutes at a time before heading backstage. Probably working in shifts with an army of other fairy godmothers.

We had shown Ava some of the rides on the Disney website before coming here and she was excited about all of the rides. But when we got here, we noticed that a good handful of them are missing in action. This one for example, probably one of the most anticipated rides for Ava the Ariel Admirer was under construction. Bummer.

Fortunately, we got into a reasonably short line for Dumbo. This is one of the few rides she got to go on when we went to Disneyland in California when she was not yet two years old.

Hopped up on the Pooh and friends buffet this morning, we decided to go on the Winnie the Pooh ride. She did not like the dream sequence at all. She is going through the afraid-of-the-dark stage right now when she goes to bed and is not a fan of dreams or nightmares. She covered her own eyes through most of it.

Here again is yet another ride under construction. Damn you Disney! I need a partial refund!

Ava in the last year or so has become a big Toy Story fan. She has toys of all of the main characters and the timing is perfect for us to take her to see the new Toy Story 3 at the theaters as it comes out in over a month. She was pretty excited to see the Buzz Lightyear ride in Tomorrowland.

It is kind of similar to the new Toy Story ride at Disneyland in California we went on but much lamer. The blasters we use to shoot at the targets don’t give much of any kind of feedback and neither do the targets. Ava once again is covering her eyes through much of this ride because if there is one thing she doesn’t like from the Toy Story movies,

is ZURG!

Save me Buzz!

Our meet-and-greets continued with Mickey at his Toontown house. Ava is partial to Minnie Mouse but we could not find her anywhere so we thought maybe meeting Mickey would be good enough.

She really gets into meeting these characters and insists on hugs all around.

A surprise for her when we got to the front of the line is that Minnie is actually here! Definitely a highlight of her life so far.

Check out the foot work with these poses by Mickey and Minnie. Classic male and female heel and toe positions.

Aside from the meet-and-greets, we wanted to make sure we caught all of the parades. We missed this one yesterday just by a few minutes so we lined up under the hot sun early today.

“How did Minnie get out here so quickly?”

Captain Hook and Mr. Smee here found a girl dressed in a Tinkerbell outfit in the crowd and decided to get into their characters a little more. I wonder if she enjoyed it or peed her pants. Get it? Peter Pan? I know, I am lame.

Even though we met 3 princesses yesterday, Ava probably wanted to meet Ariel most of all. The only place we found her was on this float in the parade. She got so excited and waved her hand at her like she was trying to flag down a New York taxi.

“Hey Dada! Don’t make fun of me!”

The hugging continued with the newest Disney princesses of all: Princess Tiana.

And of course Prince Naveen. But too bad he did not have the unusual accent like he does in the movie.

We decided today that we were going to stay until after the fireworks show and keep the girls up late so they can see it.

That means we had hours to kill before it got dark so we slowed our paced down a bit and got some treats on Main Street. Even the ice cream cones have mouse ears.

Once dinner time rolled around, the park got much less crowded. We were able to get on most of the rides. We got right into the Mickey’s Philharmagic 3D movie show and Ava got to wear these ‘Magic 3D Glasses’ for the first time.

Philharmagic is in the tradition of the fantasia stories where Mickey turns inanimate objects to do work for him with his wizard’s hat. In this movie, Donald Duck gets a hold of it and proceeds to magically traverse through almost every Disney story from Lion King to Peter Pan. She did not know what to expect and every time something popped out through the screen via her ‘Magic Glasses’, she always flinched and almost screamed out loud a few times. Although I think she secretly loved it.

As we walked around the Magic Kingdom, we see a lot of little girls dressed from head to toe in princess outfits complete with makeup and hairdos. As we looked into it, there are a few shops in the park that do complete princess makeovers. If you know how much these dresses cost alone at a Disney store, you can imagine that these transformations are not going to be cheap. Well, turns out, a little makeover is going to cost you nearly 2 big ones. Ouch! Sorry Ava, I think the glitter we got from the tinkerbell girl at the store will have to do! We are on a tight budget!

Before we made our way over to the castle for fireworks and parade, we probably rode It’s a Small World at least 3 more times. She is going to be dreaming this ride tonight fore sure.

“Good night princess castle!”

“Good night Mickey! See you next time!”

over and out,
dan