April 19 - Magic Morning Day
So despite being really tired at this point in our trip, we were bound and determined to use our magic morning entry. The park's regular opening was at 9 am, so we could enter at 8 am for the magic morning. We got up at 6:00 and headed to the parks by 7:15 so that we could get there early enough. Our plan today was do a lot of Fantasy Land and as much of Tomorrowland that we could during the Magic Morning. We focused primarily on rides that WDW doesn't have. There were still several things that we hadn't ridden in this park, and we wanted to make sure we got to all of these rides/attractions today too. Because Peter Pan had been crazy busy every time we tried to ride earlier in the trip, we were going straight to PP this morning. We enjoyed DL's version of PP a lot. I think it is slightly better than WDW. We had to ride Snow White, Pinochhio, and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride again especially since they don't have these in WDW. Then we headed over to the Alice in Wonderland Ride. This is one that we really enjoyed too.
We headed towards Tomorrowland and rode Astro Orbiter. They have this ride in WDW, but we never go on it because the line is always too long. Twice when the kids were younger, we almost made it to the front of the Astro Orbiter line at WDW only to have one of the kids need to use the restroom. So, since the line for this ride was essentially non-existant here, we decided to go on.
Now, this ride looks like a carnival ride and the ride looked tame enough to me. I am not a fan of spinning rides, but I thought I could handle it. I hated every single minute of it. The centrifugal force of the spinning pushes you against the side of the car and it goes much faster than I thought it would. I vow to never ride this ride again. The kids liked it though.
After that ride we rode Star Tours:
Up next was Autotopia. The line was only 5 minutes but it took more like 10-15. Just before we were going to get on, they opened a second lane of cars to load.
There wasn't much room for my 6'5" DH's legs -
Here's Douglas driving:
A couple of times, Douglas' cars would stop moving even though it was still running and the gas pedal was down. The worker had my son Matthew push him from behind in his car.
On our way out of this area, I took this picture:
Our biggest disappointment was that this ride was down.
We headed over to Space and grabbed Fast passes for later and rode it since the line was short. It blew our minds the entire week that the wait for this ride was so short compared to WDW.
It was time to head over towards Adventureland and New Orleans Square. We road Pirates and the Haunted Mansion and then rode Splash Mountain.
John ran and got Thunder Fast Passes for later and then we went to the Pirates Lair Island.
View back at New Orlean's Square from the raft.
John and the kids from the dock/stage of Fantasmic!
We really enjoyed that this island was different from Tom Sawyers Island in WDW. It was fun to explore a different island and we loved the parts that were similar to Pirate's of the Caribbean movies.
The kids found the treasure!
By this point in the day, we were pretty pooped. It was around 12:30. We decided to head back to the hotel for lunch. The kids had McDonalds and John and I got Chinese take out from the restaurant in the plaza next door to our hotel. It was similar to the Chinese food found in the Maine Mall, not great but not horrible. After lunch, we desperately needed a nap. Melissa and the boys watched TV in their room and John and I took a nap. We wanted to be up by 5:00 so that we could get back to the park for the Soundsational Parade.
Up Next - The rest of our day/night at DL.