Orlando, FL - Day #3 Magic Kingdom

Lying in bed at 7:30am I thought, no way! How is it possible that Thing 1 is up, awake, hyper, and ready to go, go? He hasn't slept much in 2 days, and it's been a long 2 days! When will he EVER want to rest? When will he sleep? Where is this energy coming from? And most importantly, how do I get some of that? Enough whining, get your butt out of bed you lazy piece of crap.Thus, began day 3. Like every vacation that we've been on, this one seemed just as physically demanding as the rest of them were. Unlike the others, however we were planning on visiting Magic Kingdom this day. But even as an adult with arguably childish hobbies, how excited can someone possibly become about visiting Magic Kingdom? When I was six years old I would have been going out of my mind, and in fact I think I did that one time my family and I went to Disneyland in LA (of course Mom put an end to that very quickly with yelling and beating which resulted in crying, screaming, and Kodak moments that immortalized that entire experience). This was going to be different, though! This time I was there as the parent with my own family, and my good buddies from residency were there with their families.

So out the door we went at 9am. I didn't realize that the parks actually open at 9am; I thought they were already open at 7 or 8am. No wonder the parking lots seemed almost empty when we arrived that day. Another peculiarity about at Magic Kingdom was how one actually entered the park. I was accustomed to parking the car, then riding a trolley to the front entrance to buy your ticket. Not the case here. For anyone who hasn't been here you have to park your car, then take the trolley to the main gate, then from the main gate take a train or boat over to the front entrance....and from the front entrance you ride a hot air balloon to this beacon in the mountains, where a pack of dogs and a sled team takes you to a guide awaiting your arrival on this glacier where you travel on foot until......Okay, not the latter three. But you get the point.


Izzy, Thing 1, and Thing 2. Looks like someone fell in the back there.


That bulge is my cel phone. No, really.

Magic Kingdom is where all the classic rides were, and I think we rode them all. One reason we were able to do so is because the weather wasn't very kind to us in the morning. Sure no one likes 80 degrees and 90% humidity at 9am, but 65 degrees and rain and drizzle aren't weather favorites on most people's list, either which was the case here. So the wait times weren't too bad for each ride; maybe 20 minutes was the longest. Snow white, Small World, Peter Pan, and Haunted Mansion were all done. The kids loved it.


Although it was tough to tell with Dryden's expression, or lack of. I couldn't tell if it was boredom, stoicism, or stimulus overload. It couldn't have been fatigue because this was the first ride of the morning.






Now, usually Small World is my least favorite ride and it's something that I never had a particular interest in. But am I must say I was very thankful for this ride on this day. It was during this ride that I had time enough, and it was dark enough that I figured out that my camera flash wasn't going off. Thank God for Sony's technology for capturing light in low-light areas. I would have had even worse pictures than I already had; no wonder everything was slightly blurry or under-exposed!

Stupid camera! Where's my auto-flash?

While we were walking, we saw this sign that said "start time: 2 minutes". I had no idea what it was, but everyone just starting running in this building. When in doubt, follow the leader. Following K, we plunged deeper and deeper into the dimly lit and winding corridors until we stopped at a counter with glasses. A show! And a 3-D one, no doubt. This would be interesting, as neither of the kids have ever watched anything in 3-D.

During the show, needless to say Thing 1 and his buddy Iz were having a blast, laughing it up through the whole show. At one point, Thing 1 was swiping the air in front of him, trying to grasp at the 3-D images he saw. Meanwhile, Thing 2 had no clue what was going on. He was content to watch the show WITHOUT the 3-D glasses, which meant watching a blurry show. Everytime I put the glasses on him, he'd watch the screen for 5 seconds and then start screaming. Granted, Thing 2 is a big chicken to begin with but when you're 2 years old and you're watching Donald Duck throwing a fit as if he were on an LSD high, I can see how things can get a little scary.

It was approaching noon, and there were still so many things to do and see. One thing that K recommended was a show that played every so often at the castle. Not sure what it was all about since we missed the beginning but there were characters, singing, dancing, and music.



Whatever it was, it was enough to entertain hundreds of people.

By the time the show was over, it was past noon and by that time we were all hungry. Time for lunch, but where to go? We ended up eating what Roxanna fondly referred to as park food in a little tavern/restaurant next to the Haunted Mansion. I'm still trying not to think of where they got their meat. That didn't stop Dryden from devouring his food, nor did it thwart his attempts at devouring his brother's, mother's or my food.

I actually tried taking pictures and video inside the Haunted Mansion but it was so bloody dark it was pointless. Now that I think about it, I should have taken out my old Sony bazooka video cam with night vision. Oh well, maybe next time.

After the Mansion, K and the family were "parked" out, having visited amusement parks all day for the 3rd or 4th day straight. And who can blame them? There's only so much happy-happy-cheerie-brightness one can take. I almost felt like I needed to watch Dark Knight to balance things out. But I had just the remedy for that, something that would enable us to stay at the park a few hours longer.

Pirates of the Caribbean! Another dark ride, literally. Luckily the whole Pirates mania had died down by this time (I guess some thanks should also go to the horrible writers of the 2nd and 3rd movies). Again, throughout most of the ride I was watching Dryden's face for some sort reaction, but like a Small World, Dryden was very stoic. Sensory overload, again, perhaps? He actually showed more emotion and excitement after the ride when we walked out in to the souvenir store for Pirates. Unfortunately, the same thing happened as in the Mansion and the whole ride wasn't very picture friendly. Oh well, no pictures of this, either.

Afterwards, we wandered for an hour or so, watched another parade, and then finally decided to go on one more ride before heading home. Of all rides, I'm not sure why we wanted to go back to Dumbo. But we did, and so there we were. Obviously, Keenan was too young to go on this. So R and Thing 1 would ride Dumbo while Keenan and I watched from below. It was during this time where I started to play around with my camera a bit more in preparation for taking R's and Thing 1's pictures during the rides. I took about 4 test runs and they all went fine. By the 4th time, I think people were beginning to wonder why I was randomly taking pictures of strangers on a ride. And of course as Vince-luck would have it, once R and Thing 1 got on the ride I blew it! I took a bunch of blurry pictures, but thank god I was able to recover and got some nice shots.




It appears that everyone was still having fun. But actually we were all dead-tired by this point and wanted to go home. So that's what we did.