about our Disney day trip (part 2)

Again, a warning: this post is probably boring unless you really care about Disney World.



So my last post left off with our Fast Passes for Splash Mountain. Since we had a couple of hours to kill before we could come back to ride it, we hopped on the Walt Disney World Railroad to go back to Main Street and head to Adventureland.

Adventureland holds another favorite ride:

We got to ride in the front of the boat, even!

The park was still surprisingly empty. We got some ice cream and enjoyed this view again:

Per Aaron's request, we stopped at the Country Bear Jamboree on our way back to Splash Mountain.

We rode Splash Mountain in the back row, which was fun, and then grabbed Fast Passes for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

Then it was back to Tomorrowland for a couple things...

Monster's Inc. Laugh Floor

Stitch's Great Escape

The park was getting a little more crowded now. We ran into a bunch of parade traffic on our way back to ride Thunder Mountain.

It was finally time for a little nap, so we headed into the air conditioned sanctuary of the Hall of Presidents.

After being reminded of America's fun history, it was 4pm, and the nice people at Be Our Guest had encouraged us to check back to see if there were any cancelled dinner reservations since we had never eaten there for dinner. It is booked months in advance. And wouldn't you know, it really was our lucky day. There were cancellations, and we were seated right away. This was turning out to be a day for the books.

We not only got to try "the Grey Stuff" (it's delicious, you know...), but we also got our picture with the Beast. 

• Our photo with the Beast was also taken by an official Disney photographer who gave us a Photopass so we could later download our picture online. Unfortunately, not 20 minutes later, it fell out of my back pocket into an automatic flushing toilet. I sadly watched it flush away unable to do anything about it. Epic fail.

I will say that after eating at Be Our Guest for dinner, we are more than happy to only eat there for lunch from now on. It's half the price and just as fun!

After dinner, we moseyed around Tomorrowland again. Aaron researched how to score high on Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, and got a ridiculous score.

I think I only got 7000. :(

No trip to Magic Kingdom is complete without the Carousel of Progress and the Peoplemover (twice).

Then, since we had done everything that we wanted to do someway somehow, we headed to the castle for the last show.

I LOVE HER.

It started to look like it might rain, if you can tell from the sky. We meandered into one of my favorite shops on Main Street right before the downpour. We were safe and dry and entertained by this awesome glass blower guy for the next 30 minutes until the rain stopped.

It was time to find our place for the special 4th of July fireworks next.

I love the castle at night.

And here are a few of about 50 fireworks pictures that I took. For 4th of July, it was a 360 degree fireworks show, so they were all around the park.

They were beautiful.

Since we had done everything that we wanted to in the park, we decided to opt out of staying until the 1am closing time. We had a long drive ahead of us, and it usually takes an hour to get from where you are at the fireworks back to where you parked your car.

We headed for the exit, but couldn't resist the five minute wait time to see Mickey.

It was time to leave then, and we decided to take the ferry instead of the monorail. It was good choice. What a pretty way to say goodbye to our favorite place. 

Until next time, Disney World.

Last note:  we seriously have no idea how we lucked out with such an easy day at Magic Kingdom on the only week of summer that every kid is out of school and the day before a national holiday. Jesus must have known we needed a relaxing park day. It will probably never happen like that again.