Disney Day #5: A Second Day in Magic Kingdom, and Breakfast with the Princesses

Since our homeschool class the day before met before the Magic Kingdom opened, it almost felt like sleeping in to only have to be up and out--

--and on the monorail and at the park by 9:00 am. By this second day at Magic Kingdom, we also knew exactly what we wanted to do. This mostly consisted of riding roller coasters--

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad--I honestly can't tell you how many times we rode this ride! Six, maybe?

 --re-riding favorite rides--

How many times can two kids ride Dumbo?

Willow was in love with Prince Charming's Regal Carousel.

--and checking out the couple of rides that we somehow missed the day before:

We made up for missing The Jungle Cruise the previous day by riding it twice in a row.

This day, however, mainly seemed to revolve around meeting every single character in Disney World twice more. I want to say that it was the girls who were completely character focused, but by this point in our trip, I'd fallen in love with watching the characters interact with my kids (not as much as this other mom with toddler sons who we eavesdropped on in the monorail, who was telling another stranger all about their own princess breakfast, and naming which character had given each son his "first kiss"--ewww!)--so sweet, and the girls were always SO entranced, and the fangirl in me loved hearing each face character's patter that interpreted her own back story. 

Not only did we attend the Cinderella's Royal Table character breakfast in Cinderella's Castle--

Breakfast was tasty, and although I'd been afraid of feeling rushed, what with all the character meetings, we had plenty of time to eat.

The decor? Also fabulous!

--but we also Fastpassed the princess character spot on Main Street:

This was our second time meeting Cinderella (this morning!)




--our second time meeting Belle (yes, this morning!)--

See what I'm talking about with the Photopass photographers' giant cameras?

--our third time overall meeting Aurora (and did the kids ever seem to notice a difference? Nope!), but it was our first time meeting Rapunzel:

She was adorable--she asked the girls if they'd journeyed far to see her, and when they said that they had, she asked them if they'd brought their frying pans!

Of course, all this scheduled character interaction does not mean that we passed up ANY opportunites to meet characters on the street--

Fairy Godmother

--EVEN if we've already met that same character three (four?) times already!

I had a fabulous time accompanying the girls to meet all of these characters, because there was some sort of unspoken agreement on this day that every single face character would 1) compliment my children on their manners and 2) compliment me on their homemade Snow White dresses. How thrilling, right? One CM even chased us down in Tomorrowland to tell me that she had actually had that same sheet set as a child! It was super-cute that they all asked if Snow White had seen their outfits yet--I sort of thought about searching her out (I could have easily asked any CM to call and find her for us), but nixed the idea as too much trouble on such a lovely day when there were so many other fun things to do.

Cinderella's Castle looked glorious in the sunshine, and I'm pretty sure that I forced my children to pose in front of it on every side:

This was in addition, of course, to the show that takes place in front of the castle, which we also enjoyed:

One interesting fact of note is that the previous day had been Matt's birthday. He got presents from me, yes, but no carrot cake or kid-made crafts or work-sponsored birthday dinner. His main birthday celebration was SUPPOSED to consist of him stopping by Guest Services as soon as he entered the park that morning, on his way to meet me and the girls after our YES class, and receiving a birthday button from them. It says "I'm Celebrating My Birthday!", and Guest Services writes your name on it, and all the CMs that you pass that whole day wish you a happy birthday by name.

Pretty awesome, right? Well, Matt thought that it sounded kind of lame, and he claimed that he'd seen the birthday buttons around but hadn't noticed anybody getting wished a happy birthday because of them, so he figured he'd just skip it.

Want to guess what he then had to hear me bitch about for the next 24 hours?

Yep, the fact that he'd ruined his birthday and didn't want to have any fun and it certainly wasn't MY fault if he didn't have a festive birthday!

So on this day, Matt snuck off to go to the bathroom early on and came back with... a birthday button! Personally, I was still outraged, since it was not his birthday but the day AFTER his birthday, but I garnered sweet revenge from the fact that every single CM that we passed all day (and many park guests, too!) said "Happy Birthday, Matt!" Matt got told to have a happy birthday a hundred times, easily, and possibly even double that. One guy even sang. And finally, FINALLY Matt admitted that yeah, it actually was pretty awesome, after all.

This guy, performing in a show on Main Street, wished Matt a happy birthday, but only after thoroughly enchanting Sydney, first:

I don't think an hour went by while we were on Disney property that I wasn't amazed by how friendly, helpful, or just generally awesome the Disney CMs were. If one of them didn't know how to solve a problem, such as when a Fastpass machine only spit out three Fastpasses after I'd inserted all four of our tickets, it didn't take an entire minute before someone was found who could open up the back of the machine and grab another Fastpass for me. CMs at ride entrances high-fived the kids as they passed the gates. Princesses gasped, held their gloved hands to their hearts, and beamed upon meeting the girls, as if their presence had just made their day. Ride operators who'd seen us a couple of times already often offered us shortcuts back to the front of the ride or let us stay on the same ride while it re-loaded. At one point, when Matt and Willow were in the bathroom, Sydney wandered a few feet away from where I was sitting to check out a couple of CMs who were playing with bubble-blowing guns while they manned their respective kiosks. When they saw her there, both CMs immediately aimed their bubble guns at her and let her run around and chase their bubbles until she got tired. 

But that's not even the best part of that story. Here's the best part:

Look at that CM's face! Doesn't she look like she's having as good of a time as Sydney with those bubbles? One thing about being a parent is that you're kind of obsessed with how great your kids are. Even if you never admit this, you secretly want everyone to notice how cute and nice and funny your kids are, and to be as utterly charmed by them and in love with them as you are, and it always kind of sucks just a little bit because nobody ever does. 

But at Disney, everyone who works there acts like they notice how cute and funny and nice your kids are, and they act like they're utterly charmed by them and just absolutely love them. It's intoxicating.

Magic Kingdom's version of the Jedi Training Academy is Captain Jack Sparrow's Pirate Tutorial. Syd wasn't into this one, but Willow was all about learning to be a pirate!

Pirate CMs took the kids on a little parade around the grounds a few minutes before the show began.

Of course, Sydney got so jealous sitting in the audience with us while Willow fought pirate-style that afterwards she jumped right on the stage with all the other kids to take the pirate oath, too:

And then, well, since we're over there, might as well ride Pirates of the Caribbean a couple more times!

Sydney spent the very last dregs of her spending money on an Aurora doll (her favorite princess, ya know!), and I bought each of the girls a seven-pack of princess panties, with a different princess per panty. Can't have too many underpants! Matt and I never ended up purchasing anything for ourselves, and Willow came away from Disney with plenty of spending money left unspent, that clever girl.

Over the five days of our trip, we'd often joked that Willow was taking her own personal tour of the water fountains of Disney World. Our girl loves to be well hydrated, and she had to stop and drink from Every. Single. Water fountain. You don't realize how many water fountains there are at Disney World until you have a kid who seeks them out!

After a while, we all got into the game, pointing out any water fountains that we saw so she could run and drink from them. This particular water fountain that we spotted on one side of Cinderella's Castle on our way out of the park is the most elaborate that we found:

Strangely fitting that it was our last "official" Disney activity, then!

We had so much more fun at Disney World than I ever thought that we would (and I thought that we'd have a LOT of fun!), but our five days there was so much more exhausting, physically AND mentally (so overstimulating!), than I'd ever expected.

The next day, we drove to the beach. I called our days there our Disney recovery!

Disney Day #4: One Day in Magic Kingdom, and our YES Program Class

Although we'd been loving all our days at Disney, I, personally, had been looking forward to our YES Program class the most, and our time in Magic Kingdom. Our class, How Things Move, met at the Magic Kingdom entrance 45 minutes before the park opened, and so I was excited about seeing the park for the first time before its official opening, and I was excited to see what Disney-style education entails.

Only one parent is permitted to accompany their children to a YES Program class, so Matt dropped me and the girls off bright and early, and then headed back to the condo to sleep and swim (he was supposed to do laundry, but since no laundry actually got done, I can only assume that this is how he spent his morning?). We said goodbye to him, walked up the ramp, and then got our first experience on...

...the monorail!!! If we ever drive through Orlando again (likely) without going to Disney World (also likely), I will set aside an entire afternoon simply to ride the monorail. It's made of fun.

Our YES Program class was also VERY fun, and so educational and inspiring that I really wish that we'd taken it on the first day of our trip, instead of the next to last. Our instructor, a Disney teacher who specializes in working with this specific age group (and you could tell!), escorted us to a before-hours Main Street and spent a few minutes having the children point out to her all the things that were moving. When all the children seemed engaged and their answers started becoming more creative and sophisticated, she walked us back to Fantasyland, asking us to notice as many more things that were moving as we could on the way. We sat in the shade of the teacups ride while the children shared the things that they'd noticed (Water! Horse and Carriage! Flags on Cinderella's Castle! Dumbo!), then led them to think about what made each of these things move--that's its source of energy!

To get the kids' minds focused specifically on mechanical energy sources, we all rode The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, again observing things that moved, this time also trying to envision their source of energy. Then, our instructor talked about several mechanical sources of energy, specifically solar (She brought out a small solar-powered car for the children to play with in the light and the shade), air (We rode Dumbo, and learned to recognize that specific sound that signals pneumatic power), electricity (demonstrated by a battery-powered circuit), gravity (We rode Goofy's Barnstormer twice in a row without having to get off!), and magnetism (which powers the PeopleMover, we learned as we rode it; in other news, I was stunned when Willow was able to easily explain to the class how a magnet works--yay, magnetism unit study!). 

Although I would never want to have the class (or any other class, as a matter of fact) take place outside the Disney park, a Disney park is VERY distracting to attend a class inside. It helped vastly that our instructor was excellent, and really good at keeping young children focused (the value of a simple hand on a distracted child's shoulder as one speaks can never be overestimated!), but nevertheless, would YOU pay attention to a short lecture on energy sources when just across the sidewalk a million Disney characters are emerging from a hidden gate and heading off to their various stations before park opening?!?

Clearly, this Momma couldn't! And, of course, our instructor didn't expect any of the 5-8-year-olds to, either, so we all waved and yelled hello, and then, during the first break in traffic, she subtly herded us somewhere a little quieter.

When it was time to do some designing, our instructor took us to a restaurant that wasn't open yet, and there we had tons of room, plenty of quiet, empty bathrooms(!!!), and air conditioning to hang out in while the children worked hard to design their own rides, also thinking hard about what energy sources should power them. Willow designed a double-inversion roller coaster (she talks big talk, for a kid who wouldn't even ride Space Mountain!), and Sydney got a lot of praise from the instructor for the details that she drew into her roller coaster that goes in and out of a mountain, at the top of which is a fire-breathing dragon:

I also must say that I found our instructor's habit of referring to the children as "future imagineers" SO refreshing, considering that, for the past three days, basically everyone who works at Disney had been calling my girls "princess." Mind you, I knew already that Disney was a den of gender heteronormativity, but it got very wearisome to hear from two perspectives, the first as the mother of a very gender-conscious girl who sees the princess thing as a license to put on high heels, lipstick, and dresses that tangle you up when you try to run around and climb trees, and the second as the mother of a very butch girl who sees the princess thing as yet another way in which she is inexplicably different from seemingly every other little girl in the world. 

The girls and I talked about this a LOT, discussing archetypes and consumerism and the fun of fantasy play and stereotypes and gender heteronormativity, and coming up with a list of other things that CMs could call children (Pirate! Your Highness! Mouseketeer! Imagineer!), but I also invented a game for them to play:

You probably can't understand her, because part of the fun is how difficult the phrase is to say, but the gist of the game is that whenever a Disney CM called one of my children "princess," that child would turn to me a few seconds later (ideally, after the Disney CM was no longer in earshot) and say, "I object to their sexist hegemony!"

I wanted the children to notice when they were being typecast, and to remember each time that I don't approve of stereotyping, but in a way that remained playful for them. For myself, it reminded me each time that I could allow my children the fun of the Disney experience without giving in to any values of which I don't approve. You'd be surprised at how many of my friends have given me flack about taking my kids to Disney World, but I stand by my assertion that I can let my children enjoy Disney World without letting them internalize consumerism or sexism. I can let them spend all their own money on all the crap they want without letting them think that they HAVE to have any of it. I can let them have fun going on rides and meeting characters without letting them watch most of the movies upon which those rides and characters are based (and the kids don't seem to notice either way!). I can let them love the princesses without letting them believe that they, themselves, have to be princesses to be loved. We can enjoy the fantasy that Disney World sells without letting it own us, and I think we did a good job at that.

In our class, the children also worked together in teams with tubing and marbles to design their own gravity-powered ride, and they learned a bit about how a ride is brought to life from a design, but the best part of this class was how, even after we were dismissed and off to spend the rest of our day riding rides and seeing shows and watching parades and meeting characters, the children always had it in their minds to think about the energy source behind everything. For the next two days, Matt and I would often hear something from the kids like, "I bet there's a hidden car driving that parade float," or "We're floating! This ride must be powered by moving water!".

As far as Magic Kingdom as a whole goes, if there was a ride, we rode it. If there was a show, we watched it. And then we did it again!

Prince Charming's Regal Carousel

We rode it twice!

Haunted Mansion--we rode this one twice, too.

Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin--we didn't really like the aiming system on this ride, so we only rode it once.

We figured out that we could drop Syd+parent off at the entrance to Space Mountain, then take Willow to ride the PeopleMover; the PeopleMover is a longer ride, but it takes longer to walk the miles of queue to ride Space Mountain, and so we almost always got off our respective rides and met up at the exact same time!

Sydney, in some combination of parents or other, rode Space Mountain probably six times, and possibly more; Will rode the PeopleMover about that many times. We saw PhilharMagic, rode Peter Pan once, It's a Small World Once, Goofy's Barnstormer a couple more times, Dumbo once more, Pirates of the Caribbean at least three times in a row, saw The Enchanted Tiki Room (Matt perennially teases me about the Tiki Room, because I've had that song stuck in my head my entire life, and first sung it to him probably 16 years ago), and Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, both of which Willow actually consented to ride!

Off and on when entering a ride queue, one of these was scanned and handed off to us:

We'd give it back to the CM who helped us onto the ride itself, and I noticed them scan it immediately upon receipt--my theory is that they're timing our exact wait time and comparing it to the wait times listed at each ride's entrance (most of which vastly overestimated the wait times--even when a wait time was listed at 20 minutes, we often just walked right onto the ride). 

The kids ate even more ice cream--

--and we had a great spot for the afternoon parade:

Nevertheless, it was nice to know that we had two days in Magic Kingdom, and so to feel perfectly entitled to spend an hour or so goofing around Tom Sawyer's Island--

--and to hang out for nearly that long by the Sword in the Stone, eating sandwiches and watching people fail to pull the sword from the stone and, of course, trying our luck ourselves:

That thing was STUCK!

The girls had plenty of their own Christmas and birthday money to buy their own souvenirs, but I had a couple of things in mind that I'd budgeted to buy them myself, too. The kiddos spend almost all of their playtime playing with little people and animal figures, so I let them each pick out a Disney-themed figure set (Will has never played with hers, preferring to play with the remote-controlled time machine that she bought with her own money, but don't worry, Sydney plays constantly with BOTH sets!), and a gigantic, elaborate, ten dollar Mickey balloon: 

Magic Kingdom closed at 7:00, and it was the perfect closing time--the kids ate their packed dinners off and on throughout the afternoon, finishing them up on the ride back to the condo, then swam for a while, got ready for bed, and were sound asleep at the perfect time to wake up well-rested and ready for another day of Magic Kingdom in the morning.

It was particularly important to be well-rested, because the next morning, we were going to have breakfast with the princesses!

Disney Day #3: Animal Kingdom

Animal Kingdom was originally on my itinerary as a park to possibly skip--I'd heard that it was the smallest, and had the shortest hours, and so my thinking was that if we didn't get to everything that we wanted to see in Hollywood Studios or EPCOT, we could always return to one of those for a second day and simply omit Animal Kingdom.

I'm glad that I didn't omit Animal Kingdom, because this turned out to be Willow's favorite park!

For my part, I don't know how I could ever have contemplated skipping a park that has a Dino Land:

We rode Dinosaur four times--

--the kids rode Primeval Whirl and Triceratops spin a couple of times, and Willow decided that the Boneyard playground was basically the best playground that she's ever been to. It has dino bones!

I really liked the fact that the queues for the major rides were actually walks through themed museums, with fascinating artifacts to stop our racing through miles of empty queue to look at:

All the rides, the safari and the train trip and Kali River Rapids and Expedition Everest (which Sydney managed to ride THREE times, once with the family, once with just me, and once with just Matt)--

--were so fabulous and lots of fun, but Animal Kingdom also had what turned out to be my favorite show, The Festival of the Lion King. 

Why was it my favorite show, you may ask? Well, it has great costumes, with the dancers dressed like animals--

This monkey dancer pissed Sydney off by stopping to pick bugs out of her hair and eat them.

 --and it was truly engaging--

--AND we got our day's short rain shower while we were inside, so that we missed it almost entirely, but my real  reason for having this particular show as my favorite is that my kids? Were all OVER it!

The show was pretty full, but not overcrowded, and as soon as the doors to the auditorium were closed a CM walked over to us and asked if we'd like to sit in the Reserved seating, on a bench right in front on the stage floor. Um...yeah! Then, when our emcees and main characters came out and introduced themselves, one of them came over and asked the girls if they'd like to help her. Um...yeah!

They got pulled out again to help in the finale:

How cool is that?!?

Matt and Willow never had a hard day at Disney. Syd had her hard day at EPCOT the day before. This day, though, was my hard day. I often don't sleep well, and I was up for hours the night before (I finished up Dearly Devoted Dexter, and got well into The Water Wars); I was exhausted, and I had a headache. I really liked the shows because they were air-conditioned and I could sit on a nice bench and watch them--

--and I really liked the rides because they were also cooling (sometimes that cooling was from big splashes of water!) and again, I could sit down.

The walking around and sight-seeing, however--

--was really more of a trudge on my part, and although the rest of the family was quite happy to hang out in rain gear and eat their lunches and wait for the afternoon parade that was a little delayed by the sprinkle--

Do you recognize our rain gear from Niagara?

--I really just had my game face on and that was about it. I have, therefore, never appreciated strangers like these engaging Disney CMs more. One particularly fabulous CM, who, as she was clearing the parade path must have heard me tell the girls three times to stop splashing water on my jeans (puddles, ya know), each time with a little more edge to my voice, came up to them just as they were about to splash me for the fourth, sanity-breaking, time, and said, "My lovely little ladies! That filthy water is not for stomping in and splashing your beautiful mother!" Do YOUR kids obey strangers much more readily than they obey you? Mine do!

Another CM, walking the parade route as well, stopped to entertain the girls by asking them what their favorite animal was. Upon hearing their answer (T-Rex, of course!), she did a T-Rex dance for them!

I, personally, was quite impressed by her short arms and two-fingered hands.

Of course the parade was WELL worth the wait:

Willow bought some great toys for herself in this park, a remote-controlled time machine and an absolutely huge carnotaur, both from the Dinosaur ride gift shop. I did NOT purchase this warm Wookie hat:

Nevertheless, the 5:00 closing time was just what I needed. We headed back to the condo, Matt took the girls swimming while the chicken strips and French fries baked, we all ate a nice dinner together, got the kids ready for bed early, then let them watch a movie on the DVD player in their room while Matt and I went swimming, all by ourselves.

By the time we set our alarm even earlier for our next day at Magic Kingdom--and our homeschool class!--I was feeling MUCH better.

And I slept great, hallelujah.