Park Day Three: Magic Kingdom (TP Crowd Level Predicted 5 and Actual 6)
Despite the long day prior, C and I were up with the sun once again. We tossed on some clothes as quietly as possible and headed down to Boardwalk Bakery for our morning coffee. She was a lost cause but I was hoping that A and B could sleep a bit. The bakery opens at 6:30am and we were, once again, some of the first patrons. After grabbing coffee, we stopped for photobooth photos (aka time killers).
As part of the photo process, the booth tells you to, “treasure these magical moment forever,” which made me laugh out loud. Sorry, photo booth, but that time I was using you to try to entertain my kid when she woke up an hour early isn’t a memory I’m going to cherish. On the way back toward our room, C saw some cool Adirondack chairs tucked under the stairs behind the village green that she wanted to show her sisters. When we got back, B was up but A was still resting, so I headed back out, now with two in tow, to kill a bit more time.
The second set of photo booth shots was done at 7:15 and I figured A had to be up by then. Back in the room, we all had a quick breakfast and got ready to head to the Magic Kingdom. We were walking down to the bus stop at 8:00am to see that we had just missed an MK bus. As would be true throughout our trip, the MK bus times weren’t updating on the board or the app, so we had no way of knowing how long our wait would be. The bus eventually came at 8:26am and we found ourselves walking up toward security at 8:41am. We had a thorough security line, too, and found ourselves speed walking up to the hub just in time for the welcome show.
Our original plan for the morning was Buzz -> Astro -> Barnstormer (triple swap required) -> Dumbo -> Tea Cups -> Ariel Ride -> Ariel M&G with 1st FP -> BoG 11:35am lunch reservation. After our 1st MK day, we swapped “Buzz -> Astro” which we’d already done in favor of Merida, whom we’d missed. Her greet doesn’t officially open until 9:15 but we found out the hard way that trying to sneak a ride or two in first could mean that the line closed before we got there. Unfortunately, because of our bad bus and security luck, I didn’t have a chance to get coffee before the rope dropped. To be fair, I’d had plenty at the resort, but life is always better with a frappucino, right? I could have sent Hubby with the kids to Merida while I got drinks, but the path to Merida is also the path to 7DMT and I wasn’t going to send him through that mess alone with three kids, one of whom would have to be walking with him instead of safely contained in a stroller.
We marched with the crowds until we made the left at Cosmic Rays and headed to Merida’s area. We were the second family in line and it grew behind us quickly. We used the Junior Encyclopedia of Animated Characters as our autograph book for this trip, which I would highly recommend to anyone else with little ones. It is definitely bigger than your normal autograph book (I had to but my park bag specifically so that this book would fit) but it was great to have. To kill time in line, we would read about the character we were meeting, other characters from that movie, other characters we had already met, etc. Plus, now that we’re home, the book can get pulled out and read through again, rather than just being left on the shelf.
We were let in to meet Merida promptly at 9:15. When she spotted the girls, she immediately recognized that they were triplets and started talking about her brother, asking if they were good or if they were also trouble makers. She even flipped to the boys’ page in the book, circled, them, and wrote “Wee Devils” before signing her own page. We had a great meet with her and it was worth every bit of hassle. We did some regular posed pictures and then A asked for one with everyone shooting arrows.
We finished up with Merida at 9:20am and headed over to Barnstormer. In case anyone is unfamiliar, because of the car design, only 2 riders can ride per car and an adult must be immediately next to each child under 7; unlike other rides we couldn’t ride 3 across or have an adult accompany from behind. With 2 adults and 3 kids under 7, I knew we’d need to triple swap in order to get all three a chance to ride. In my research, I read a few accounts that indicated, in cases when all of the party are tall enough, CMs will let you wait together and do the swaps at the platform. The more consistent story was that people had to use rider swaps and wait the FP line for each successive ride. When we got up to the CMs and asked to do the swap at the platform, they said that we had to use the RS passes and loaded them onto me, Hubby, B, and C. I then went into standby with A while Hubby waited with B and C.
Because it was so early, A and I were past the FP merge right away and only had a short wait to ride. In the meantime, B and C were getting quite upset with Hubby. At our local theme park, we do ride swaps all the time, but always at the loading platform. The other two girls thought that, since they weren’t allowed to get in line with me and A, they weren’t going to have a chance to ride. Hubby quickly talked B off the ledge, but C was clearly feeling the effects of burning it on both ends for three days. By the time A and I got out of line, she had switched to being upset about having to take so many waiting turns. I sent Hubby and B into the FP line while I tried to calm C down a bit more. We sat near the ride exit to watch for Hubby and B so that we could go straight into line as soon as they got out. She would have fun for a minute or two, then remember she was upset and start grumping again.
As soon as B and Hubby were off of the ride, I went around into the FP line with C. Unfortunately, even after the FP merge, there’s still maybe an 8 minute wait to board. While that’s perfectly reasonable for a FP wait, it was adding up for us with having to go through it 3 times. Despite it finally being her chance to ride, C was grumping about how it wasn’t fair that she had to wait so long. She wasn’t wrong, either, but sometimes life isn’t fair. I tried to distract her from her grumps by pointing out the pin collections that the family behind us in line were wearing. A boy and girl, I’d say late teens, were traveling with their parents and both wearing extensive collections. We started talking about how pin collecting worked and the son quickly popped a Chesire Cat pin off of his lanyard and gave it to C to start her own collection. It was incredibly sweet of him and just the thing C needed to brighten up. Soon after, she got her turn to ride and we all met up at the exit. As for the coaster itself, the kids all enjoyed it but no one thought it was worth the triple swap hassle we had to go through. All in, we spent 30 minutes swapping through all three kids and made it to Dumbo at 9:56am.
Dumbo was posting a 25 minute wait which was higher than I was expecting for 10am but not awful. That is, until we found out that the play area wasn’t open. For anyone unfamiliar, there’s a short section of line leading up to what looks like a hostess stand where a CM hands out buzzers like at a restaurant and then kids can go into the extensive play area to wait. My research had indicated that they opened the play area once the wait broke 20 minutes, but it wasn’t open when we got there. The kids could see into the area and they saw a handful of CMs coming and going, working on the computer at the hostess stand, etc without actually opening the play area. Every parent in line was having to explain to their kids why they couldn’t go play, which was incredibly frustrating. I think I said, “I don’t know, girls, maybe it will be open soon,” at least a dozen times over the course of those 25 minutes. Our one distraction was when C saw that the girls ahead of us in line had pins. She whipped out her Chesire Cat, asked to trade, and somehow ended up not only trading but also being given another pin. The little girl she was trading with was maybe 8 years old and would have given her a couple more, but both her parents and I stepped in to pause things before she very sweetly gave away too much of her collection. Of course, the play area finally opened up just as we were being sent outside to board our elephant. We were flying through the sky and fighting over who got to control the elephant at 10:21am.
When we unloaded, the kids wanted to go back into the play area. I tried to tempt them with tea cups and Ariel rides to convince them to move on, but they just wanted to climb. I explained to the CM at the entrance that we had just waited through the whole line and asked if there was any way to just cut through to the play area. She apologized but confirmed that we’d have to wait again to get through to the play area and let us know that the play area opens at 10am so that we could plan better next time. I managed to swallow my “We were in that line at 10! We were right at the stupid hostess stand at 10! You opened the play area 20 minutes late!” and we got back in line. Things were more backed up, so we probably had to wait 10 minutes just to get into the play area.
As I sat on the bench watching the girls climb, I really had to remind myself that the whole point of the trip was for the kids to have fun. Before the trip, Hubby and I had talked about letting ourselves be in the moment while we were on the trip. He was (rightfully) concerned that the kids would be enjoying something off-schedule and I’d be trying to force them back to “the plan”. I promised that, outside of hard-to-get FPs or ADRs, I’d do my best to be flexible when the kids wanted to do something that would push us off track. In this case, I was more annoyed at Disney than anything else: they should have been able to play while we were waiting, not waiting then playing. As it was, we let the girls play for about 30 minutes, blowing through our tea cups and Under the Sea time, before we had to go to make it to our FP for the Ariel meet.
We got to the M&G just after 11 and were the second family in the FP line. The girls really liked meeting Ariel with her tail. A and I were wearing our Ariel shirts today, so we both got separate pictures, too. From the greet, we headed around New Fantasyland to our early lunch ADR.
my favorite is "Let's try to do that later." Lies, lies, lies lol
My younger boy was similarily disgruntled with the button situation. 
