disney: magic kingdom 2.0

Our main objectives for our second day in the Magic Kingdom were to hit some of the attractions that we missed on our first day, and to make it to the Main Street Electrical Parade (my childhood favorite) at night. In order for that to happen, we knew we'd have to take a break and go back to the hotel for a stretch in the middle of the day.

A lot of what we missed on day 1 was over in the Adventureland/Frontierland side of the park, so we headed that way after breakfast.

We hit one of my all-time favorites:


Cap'n Jacob:



As the old saying goes . . .


Arrrrr:


This one was a little scary for the girls, so we made up for it by meeting more royalty:



Then Elizabeth wanted to try Splash Mountain again. I had washed my hands of Splash Mountain after The Incident, so I left that entirely up to David. He got in line with Jacob and Elizabeth, and Caroline and I settled into a viewing spot. I got this one of the gang at the beginning of the ride.



You can see that Elizabeth is none too happy. I was really glad that I was where I was and David was where he was!

I then took approximately 150 pictures of boats splashing down the mountain in an effort to capture my gang. I missed exactly ONE BOAT while leaning over to help Caroline with something, and since I did not think that I saw David and the kids plunging in any of the other pictures, I assumed that they must have been on that one boat that I missed. So imagine my delight when I went through the pictures and saw that I did indeed capture them. Ready, squint hard:



Elizabeth is burrowed into David's lap, so you can't really see her. After they were done, she ran up to me bubbling about how AWESOME Splash Mountain was and how much she loved it. One thing is certain: she either loved it or hated it.

But Elizabeth left no ambiguity about the next one -- she hated, and I mean hated, the Haunted Mansion. It is one of my Disney favorites, and I really remember it being more campy than scary. As we worked our way up to the Haunted House, she kept saying she didn't want to do it, but we kept telling her that they weren't scary ghosts, they were Scooby Doo-like ghosts. And that it is my all-time favorite ride! Caroline played the haunted piano:



And we read the tombstones:



Once we were on the ride, and I put myself in the shoes of a 6 year old who didn't want to ride it, I felt really bad. It would definitely scare a 6 year old who was expecting to be scared. As we were walking out, she wiped a tear away and cried "that is the worst all-time favorite ride ever!!" Mother of the Year moment right there. Caroline, oddly, didn't mind this one (of course, put a giant Goofy in a Hawaiian shirt in the haunted dining room and we'd have a different story).

We made it up to Elizabeth by cashing in our fastpasses at the Jungle Cruise, which she picked as the one attraction she really wanted to do today. Nothing like some bathing animatronic elephants to make everything better:




We hit some other parts of the park next.

Dumbo:



Okay, we didn't actually go on Dumbo. It is by far the most frustrating ride in WDW. It's kind of a classic, but it's pretty small, so the line is always very long, and it's 100% in the hot sun (we're talking old school Disney attraction here) for a 90 second ride. We enjoyed the Triceratops Spin in Animal Kingdom and Aladdin's Magic Carpet Ride in Adventure land several times -- these are essentially Dumbo. Except they're not Dumbo to a small child. We probably should have gotten on Dumbo straight from our breakfast. But we didn't, so we settled for this picture in front of Dumbo instead. The great news is that Disney is redoing parts of Fantasyland, and by next year, there will be a new and improved Dumbo! The artistic renderings look incredible:





A large bigtop (read: covered, not in the hot sun) with numerous interactive exhibits will funnel into twin Dumbo rides. It should dramatically improve the Dumbo experience. I love the classics as much as the next person, but the existing Dumbo simply can't accomodate the crowds the way that he could in the 70s.

J made a futile attempt to pull the sword from the stone:



More castle shots!







We headed to Tomorrowland for a bit:


And while we were there, we ran into Push, the Talking Trash Can {you can watch Push in action here}. Caroline felt like the thing to do upon happening on a talking Trash Can was to stick her head inside - that's my girl.


We decided to leave the park for a few hours to rest and go swimming, and then come back later for the Electrical Parade. David and Jacob had gone to get fastpasses for later, and we planned to meet at the main entrance, but we got caught in afternoon parade (something about Wishes or Dreaming, I think) on the way out.


We could see David and Jacob stuck on the other side of the sidewalk:


I suppose if you can't get where you want to be, it might as well be because of a Disney parade.

After spending a couple of hours in the pool, we cleaned up and headed back to the Magic Kingdom. I was hoping to get some twilight pictures in front of the castle. Jacob was hoping not to pose for twilight pictures in front of the castle, but to use his fastpass for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad immediately (can you tell?):



We decided to get some hot dogs for dinner and stake out a viewing spot on Main Street for the Electrical Parade:



And then proceeded to be delighted by the lights spectacle:









After the parade Jacob and I watched the fireworks while riding Big Thunder Mountain Railroad -- possibly the highlight of the trip! We made our way back to the hotel tired, but happy tired.