WDW July 2018 Recap: Day 1, Sunday July 1st - Travel & Magic Kingdom
So ... travel. Beth and I traveled separately - I took a plane and then DME, and she took an Amtrak and then Lyft. Nothing too eventful on either commute (well, Beth had a luggage issue, but it was all okay in the end). I managed to get a third row seat on DME and got this picture:
Not perfect, but probably the best one I've ever gotten. I like it.
I got to the hotel before Beth, ate something, and started to settle in, and then Beth showed up. We both got our stuff organized (and I finished eating) and then headed out to the best first park for any trip:
Our first stop was City Hall, where I picked up a shiny new Annual Pass, a Passholder slider for my MagicBand (those things are in high demand!), and some "I'm Celebrating" buttons. I don't have a picture of the buttons, but Beth's said "1/4 through med school" and mine said "my sister!" We only wore them that first day, but we definitely got lots of comments (particularly on Beth's button).
Next on our agenda was coffee. But when we stepped out of City Hall, we realized that it was around 3:15, which meant the 3 o'clock parade was about to come through!
This was our first time seeing Festival of Fantasy (well, we'd seen a few bits and pieces before), and while it was cute, I don't think it's a "must see."
Once the parade was over, we grabbed went to Main Street Bakery for coffee, then sat outside Cosmic Ray's for a little bit to drink our coffee and eat some sandwiches. Once we were finally caffeinated, it was time to start riding attractions, and we started with a classic:
Mad Tea Party! And that's one of my favorite pictures to take - I take the same picture pretty much every trip. I just love catching the dormouse popping out of there!
Once we finished our tea party, it was time for our first FP+ of the trip. We had made our first FP+ for our favorite attraction ...
Seven Dwarfs Mine Train.
Next up was our second FP+, which was right nearby ...
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. After that we made our way to a scrim-covered
Prince Charming Regal Carousel, where we were a little disappointed to not get our usual views of the castle (Beth usually gets some really good castle pictures from the carousel ... no dice).
It was a little hot, so we decided to go
Under the Sea – Journey of the Little Mermaid (yeah, I know that was terrible). We were excited to see Scuttle in the queue, but again ... no dice. The queue was all wrong without Scuttle.
Once we got over our disappointment over the lack of Scuttle, we made our way over to Storybook Circus and
Pete's Silly Sideshow, where we met some characters:
In case you're at Disney and looking for someone to chat with about the latest episode of Grey's Anatomy ... find Donald. He's a fan.
While we were in the area, we made our way to
Dumbo the Flying Elephant and
The Barnstormer. After that, it was almost time for our next FP+, but first we stopped at one of my favorite attractions to photograph,
“it’s a small world”.
So ... I got a new camera last year. It's supposed to be good for low light because it has a setting with a long exposure that really helps with the low light. The problem is ... with a moving attraction, the long exposure doesn't work very well. So my pictures didn't come out great. Some of them came out okay, but nothing great enough to share.
Finally we made our way to our 3rd FP+,
Peter Pan's Flight. This was cute, as always. After leaving Neverland, we made our way over to Tomorrowland to try our hand at fighting Emperor Zurg on
Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin.
By this point it was raining, but we had a FP+ for Magic Carpets of Aladdin. It turned into one of those "multiple experience" FastPasses, so we wanted to use it for something else, but we went to see if it looked like it would start running soon so that we could ride standby. While we were waiting for it to reopen, we decided to do something new to us.
This was our first time doing
Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room. At first it was cute and there were birds and flowers and we knew the song. Then the chanting started and I'm still not sure what bizarre ritual I experienced. I'm not sure we were able to form an opinion about it.
Anyway ... by that point
The Magic Carpets of Aladdin was open, so we rode that, and then used our multiple experience FP for
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
At some point during the night (I don't remember exactly when and timestamps are failing me at the moment) we went to Tomorrowland for Incredibles pictures:
Our final attraction for the night was a traditional night attraction for us,
Pirates of the Caribbean (it's just a thing that we do - we only ride at night). It was fairly empty. We sat in the back row:
The talking during the ride picture is a pretty normal thing for us too.
This was our first time doing Pirates since the change in the auction scene, and we were not impressed. The new scene just didn't make sense to us. Meh.
After Pirates, there was one last photo op we wanted to do. Beth is a huge Tangled fan, so this was a must:
By this point in time it was obscenely humid, and you can see the layer of sweat on us.
Once we got our lantern photo, we made our way out of the park and back to the hotel. We had kind of had a PhotoPass and Character fail (we usually take lots and lots of PhotoPass pictures and visit all the characters), but ... we did good with attractions. So there's that.
We knew we had an early morning scheduled for the next day, so we packed our bags and went to sleep.
