Chapter Eight: Day 2 - All Castle Everything
A long time ago (read: April) when we booked this trip, we knew that Saturday was going to be our big Magic Kingdom day. This was our original plan:
9:00am: Trail's End Brunch
10:30am - Big Thunder Mountain Railroad FP
11:30am - Splash Mountain FP
12:30pm - Enchanted Tales with Belle FP
But after our first day at the park, we decided to make a couple of changes. The first was dropping the Splash Mountain FastPass. We'd gotten wet enough on Friday night that we didn't need more water in our lives, especially with the forecast calling for more rain on Saturday. The second change was to start our day later. We moved brunch to 10:20, which gave us more time to catch up on much-needed sleep. In moving the brunch reservation later, we ended up having to drop the Big Thunder FP entirely, but we still ended up with a nice mix of Pirates, Enchanted Tales and Haunted Mansion -- aka three indoor things that would keep us out of the rain for at least a little while.
I'd read mixed reviews of the Trail's End brunch, but I found it to be really good. I'm a big fan of Disney's breakfast buffets -- mostly because the idea of unlimited eggs and bacon is basically my idea of heaven -- and this was for the most part the traditional buffet line, with a few added lunch/dinner items (like the fried chicken, which I avoided because I knew I'd be having plenty of it that night). I did think it was a bit weird for a brunch to not have a full drink menu available, but they were basically able to make any drink we wanted (though I ended up settling for a traditional brunch mimosa). One thing probably helping boost my opinion of the meal was the fact that Trail's End was another of the current 40% castmember discount restaurants, so our final bill for a brunch buffet ended up being less than what we'd usually pay for a single-entree brunch locally. Still, I'd definitely consider going back again.
The convenience of being able to leave the restaurant and walk right over to a boat that took us to the Magic Kingdom was certainly nice too, especially because the security line for the Fort Wilderness boats is probably the shortest of any of the various ones for the Magic Kingdom.
We arrived at MK just after noon, right on time to see the Main Street Trolley performance -- and right as they were performing "That's How You Know" from "Enchanted", the movie I watched each of the four nights before my trip to get me in the Disney mood (as if I'm not literally always in the Disney mood).
From there I began my day-long obsession with taking as many pictures of Cinderella's Castle as possible -- including one of me and my girlfriend in front of the castle that I won't post because I know she hates posing for pictures and only indulged me in the moment. But I will post this one of just me in front of the castle, so you can truly understand the title of this entry.
Yes, I followed through with my plan to wear my "Castle" outfit. So you don't have to go back and read all the past entries to identify every item, here's the list from top to bottom:
"My Happy Place" Castle hat,
Cinderella Castle tank (over plain black T-shirt),
Cinderella Castle MagicBand,
Orlando Magic "City series" shorts (because leggings are not pants),
Cinderella Castle leggings,
Cinderella socks, and
Vans Princess shoes. Because when your entire Instagram account is "365 Days of Cinderella's Castle", you need to make sure you're representing the Castle when you're in the parks.
I continued to take plenty of Castle photos as we made our way over to Tomorrowland and The Purple Wall, where I had to both take my cheesy Purple Wall Instagram photo and try the new Purple Wall slushy. The drink was pretty good, even if the boba balls were kind of gross (though, to be fair, I think all boba balls are kind of gross). Once it melted a bit and I was able to swirl the whipped cream into the slushy, it tasted even better. It's probably not something I'd get again, given all the other various drink options at WDW, but I'm glad I tried it at least once.
Once we got past trendy drinks and photo walls, we headed to the two things we'd wanted to do the previous night before getting soaked: the PeopleMover and Carousel of Progress. I feel like a lot of people skip these two attractions when visiting MK, especially since things like Space Mountain and Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin are right there and far more popular, but I don't feel like it's a real Disney World trip unless I do both of them. We did PeopleMover first, and were going to skip CoP to do it later, so we could make our Enchanted Tales FP, but while we were on PeopleMover, I got the infamous "There has been a change to your FastPass" email. Yes, somehow, Enchanted Tales was down. So we did Carousel of Progress, where the ride briefly got stuck, creating a weird situation where the song was playing at the end of one scene, but we didn't start moving until the next scene had already started playing. Toward the very end of our journey on Carousel of Progress, we heard a very loud noise that we couldn't quite pinpoint, but were fairly certain was thunder. When the exit doors opened, that suspicion was confirmed, in the form of another downpour.
We put on the disposable ponchos my girlfriend had smartly packed in her purse then made our way over to Merchant of Venus to hide from the rain for a little bit. After killing some time and buying some drinks there, we ducked into Cosmic Ray's, which was packed, as expected. After walking around for a little bit, we finally found a table, and were able to sit down, enjoy a non-alcoholic beverage or two, and wait out the worst of the rain before eventually making the decision to try and make it across the park to our Pirates of the Caribbean FastPass. That turned out to be a bad decision for two reasons. First: the walkway outside of Cosmic Ray's connecting Tomorrowland to The Hub was basically a river. We probably could've taken the long way around to Adventureland, but we decided to walk through the river (my girlfriend at least had the option of taking off her flip-flops and walking barefoot), and my socks and shoes got soaked.
The second reason it turned out to be a poor decision to try and walk over to Pirates was that by the time we arrived, Pirates was down too. So at this point, we were completely soaked, but had two anytime FastPasses, plus our Haunted Mansion FastPass, which had just had its window open up. We headed to Haunted Mansion, stopping at Memento Mori to check out what was available and wait out the FastPass line for a bit (it was probably about 50 people deep when we got over there, and maybe 20 people deep when we left the store). Getting out of the rain for a little while was nice, and Haunted Mansion is certainly one of my favorite rides at MK. I even managed to get a semi-decent picture of our hitchhiking ghost.
After that, we decided to use one of our newfound "anytime/(almost) any ride" FastPasses to do Enchanted Tales with Belle, since it was part of our original plan, and it was something my girlfriend had never experienced before. I volunteered to be one of the suits of armor, while she watched bemused from the benches.
Since we were already in Fantasyland, we decided to use our next open FP for Journey of the Little Mermaid -- though we briefly considered Space Mountain, before remembering that we both get hurt every time we ride it. Sure, the ride only had a 20-minute standby wait, but why wait when you can walk right on? Right after we checked in at the FastPass entrance, I started refreshing the app to see which FastPass to grab next. As it turned out, there was immediate availability for Mickey's PhilharMagic, which was perfect since it was both close by and indoors. The only real downside was that because it's a show with a large loading area, it meant a lot of standing with no moving, which is harder on my legs than a continuous moving line. Still, we did get to sit down for a while, and the show is always enjoyable.
Once again, right after we scanned in for that FastPass, I started looking for another one, and grabbed "It's a Small World" for 4:45, which would be right about the time we were getting out of the show. We rode that, and it just so happened that we timed the ride exactly right so that we got to see the 5:00 clock parade right as we were getting off the ride.
While we were on IASW, I went ahead and booked a 5:05 FastPass for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, which I was surprised to find for two reasons: there hadn't been any more FastPasses available the night before when I tried to change our previous one, and at the time I was booking this FastPass, the ride was down.
Now, experienced WDW visitors will know that booking a FastPass for a ride that's down can work to your favor, because if the ride stays down when the FP window opens, you've suddenly been handed one of those precious anytime/anyride FPs. In fact, that was my plan behind booking this specific FastPass. As much as I love BTMRR (in fact, in a past trip report I listed it as my favorite ride, though it got passed by Tower of Terror on recent trips), I had no intention of riding it in the rain, which started to come down harder as we got off IASW. Yet, despite the increasing rain, BTMRR somehow re-opened -- and clearly not many other people were interested in riding it either, since it had a 5-minute standby wait at that moment, and didn't get above a 20-minute wait at any point in the next couple hours.
Rather than risk getting soaked again, we decided to head back over to the PeopleMover one more time, before leaving Magic Kingdom for the day (and for the trip). On our way out, we caught a bit of the Rainy Day Cavalcade, which I legitimately did not know existed. Hey, something else to mark off my Disney checklist, right?!
Before we left the park completely, we did a little shopping, and I bought this gorgeous Princess wallet. Given that I was already wearing a women's shirt and women's leggings, the fact that this was a women's wallet really wasn't going to faze me. In fact, the only reason I hadn't bought this before this trip was that I wanted to check out the inside in person, to see how many cards it could hold and if my iPhone 8 Plus could fit inside it (the answer, if you're wondering, is yes, though with the "tough" cases they sell at D-Tech, it's a very tight fit, so I ended up ordering a slim case when I got home from my trip). Sure, it doesn't exactly fit in my pants pocket, but I loathe carrying stuff in my pockets anyway, which is why I almost always wear a hoodie with a giant front pocket or carry a backpack. I should probably just start carrying a purse -- and almost did exactly that on this trip, but we'll get to that too.
After our boat ride back to the cabin, we had a little bit of time before dinner at the Hoop-Dee-Doo Musical Revue. This was one thing that my girlfriend had done before that I had not, and while she was pretty sure I'd enjoy the show, she was less certain about the food. I'm a picky eater, so she was concerned that there wouldn't be enough that I would eat, but I kept assuring her that as long as there was fried chicken and mashed potatoes -- and unlimited sangria -- I'd be fine. And I was. The cornbread was great, the salad was... well, fine, even if the dressing wasn't what'd I'd choose, and the fried chicken and mashed potatoes lived up to expectations in both quality and quantity. Plus, our server brought us a bowl of the mac & cheese too, which I was more than happy to dig into.
In the end, I'd say the food was good, the show was great, and the price was fantastic (castmembers get 50% off Hoop-Dee-Doo tickets), and I'd probably do it again, though I think I'd try to do the early show, so it could basically serve as the mid-day break between park trips.
While Magic Kingdom was open until midnight that night, we decided it'd be far smarter to go back to our cabin to pack and rest up for another long, but amazing, day.
Next Up: Day 3 - Flowers & Gardens & Cupcakes & Shopping
