So after two hectic days at the World, and two even more hectic driving days, it was time for a day off.
We woke up that morning and headed over to the Poly for something I personally had been looking forward to for quite a while: Tonga Toast!
I'm definitely a little bit of a foodie and I'd heard so many good things about this stuff.
Fortunately it did not disappoint!
Unfortunately, the air conditioning at Captain Cooks was definitely out. It was pretty darn hot with everyone in there and everything.
Anyway, after a good breakfast, we rode the monorail loop for a little while, just hanging out.
I really needed a day to sleep and chill out after everything we'd already done, so most of the troop and my family packed it up and headed out to Typhoon Lagoon, while me and my dad stayed at the hotel room to catch up on sleep.
I have a pretty chronic anxiety disorder, so doing big stuff like Disney World and such can be pretty hard for me. I really have to take it slow and take the time to chill out or risk being a total wreck. I'm pretty lucky to have extremely understanding friends and family that make that happen.
This trip was honestly a lesson in taking the break. I was worried that we weren't going to be able to get all that we wanted to do in if we took the mid-day nap, but having everyone be reasonably well rested and sane was a true blessing. And even with breaks and naps, we still managed to do all of the stuff that was important to my family.
After a wonderful morning and afternoon spent doing nothing, my GS troop decided to grab some dinner at Downtown Disney. I was feeling up to it, so off we went.
I actually used to work on a food truck, so I was pretty excited to try the trucks set up at Downtown Disney with the food from the different parks. I picked the Chicken Waffles from the Magic Kingdom truck. They were okay. I liked the chicken and waffles by themselves but not necessarily together. Their waffle fries were delicious though! In hindsight, I wish i'd gone for something more adventurous, but hey, whatever.
We looked around for a while. The new Superhero store is really neat, but oh my gosh, WAY too small. There was no room to move around at all. They had some pretty neat stuff though.
We went over to the other side of DTD to go get some pins and such. I'll probably never get tried of going into World of Disney.
Got a little sad when I saw this though.
Also, if any of you all are bath bomb/spa obsessives like me, Basin is pretty great. Even better, they had a military discount!
Anyway, it was a fun night out to back into the swing of walking and being in big crowds again. Seriously, I had no idea that Downtown was still a popular area?
Anyway, the next it was time for Magic Kingdom!
Magic Kingdom is my very favorite park, and I was so looking forward to a full day there!
We had booked an early breakfast at Cinderella's Royal Table (!!!), which the foodie in me was pretty meh about, but my inner nine year old was ecstatic.
We were all Disneybounding for today. Since I have red hair, I went Ariel, who is one of my favorite princesses.
(From left to right, my mom who wasn't bounding, Alice, Ariel, Rapunzel (yeah, that's a frying pan), Cinderella, Snow White, Belle, and Jasmine!)
My dad caught up with us and we were escorted into the castle!
The food was super average, but hey, it's hard to really mess up bacon and eggs ( I really wanted some of that French toast, but I try really hard not to eat sweets for breakfast). It's the experience anyway.
So obviously I was pretty excited to meet Ariel, because I was emulating her today, and it litereally reduced me to a five year old. I was way too excited.
HAIR TWINS!
Anyway, after breakfast, my little sister needed to go take a break at our hotel, so my dad offered to take her. She gets homesick sometimes when we're away for a while, but she rejoined us later in the afternoon. we took a picture at the fountain (my favorite spot in Disney) before she went though.
So me and my mom got to hang out at Magic Kingdom for the morning, which was pretty fun. We checked out the new Little Mermaid ride, did Philarmagic, an old favorite, the Peoplemover, a new favorite, and took a lot of pictures. I won't make you suffer through all of them.
It was good to have a chill morning just getting to shop around a check out all the new stuff that has been put in since we were at the World last.
We decided to participate in the craziness that is the Magic Kingdom Starbucks, and exploring MainStreet. I never realized how awesome Mainstreet is until this trip.
After a pleasant morning, we regrouped with my dad and sister/took a breather at the hotel and headed back to MK.
We wanted to check out teh new parade, and we lucked out big time in that area. My dad always requests a visit to Casey's Corner, as a lover of both baseball and ball park fare. So we stopped in, got some dogs, and snagged a seat with a pretty good view of Festival of Fantasy! It was a beautiful parade, I especially loved the dragon! However, I noticed that there's usually a Pinocchio float when I was researching this trip on the Internet, but it didn't make an appearance on our particular day. I'm thinking it was because it looked a storm was blowing in, and it was pretty windy. Maybe they had some concerns about safety or something. Either way, it was still a fabulous parade.
One of the things that my sister requested to do was drive me around the Speedway, so we managed a Fastpass to do that once we all got back to the park. It was a truly terrifying experience, and I don't know how we made it out alive. My mom got this picture of us that perfectly sums up the whole experience.
After our death defying jaunt around the track, we wandered around for a while, just doing whatever.
One of our first stops was Adventureland, for a trip around the carpets (We tried for Jungle Cruise, but it was just too long, and we'd already done it once)
We also got to do Space Ranger Spin sometime that day (Can't remember when exactly), but either way, we got stopped in the very first room for quite some time and maxed out our scores, which was fun. It also made me realize how loud it is in there.
We did Columbia Harbor House for dinner. This is probably my favorite quick service place on property. Sitting upstairs and relaxing is a welcome break from running around the parks. Our next fast pass was for Haunted Mansion, but we still had some time so we grabbed some ice cream from one of the carts, also a must do. I do love a Mickey's Premium. We also checked out Memento Mori, which was honestly one of the neatest places we went on this trip. I love the little touches around the shop like the portraits that do weird things and the face in the mirror and stuff.
Anyway, Haunted Mansion is my favorite ride, I can never ride it too many times, but I always have to do it when it's dark outside, so our timing was perfect.
After that, it was pre-fireworks so the crowds hadn't thinned out yet, so we spent some time playing Sorcerer's of the Magic Kingdom! If you guys are planning on doing a really long day at MK, I highly recommend SOMK, it's something fun to do while the lines are too long to do anything. My whole family actually got really into it.
Anyway, we got a little lost finding one of our stops over in Adventureland (the one in Tortuga Tavern is a little hard to find), so we asked some of the CMs over at the now closed Pirates to help us out. Since they were hanging out in front of a closed ride, there was a lot of goofing around evident. They h ad a bunch of pirate swords etc. to play around with. They'd even set up hopscotch! We spent a little time hanging out with them, just chatting and playing hopscotch. They were really funny.
We also passed by Aloha Isle while we were doing the game, so of course we had to stop for something like the third Dole Whip of the trip thus far.
We'd completely lost track of where my GS troop was at this point, but we met up with them later to do Small World together for some reason. Either way, it was fun. They hadn't had much of a break all day, and were headed over to Hall of Presidents to get ina little breather and sit in some air conditioning. My family isn't big on roller coasters or thrill rides, and that cuts a lot of stuff to do and a lot of the rides we love never really have long waits, so we don't really have to spend huge amounts of time at the parks to do every ride we want to do. Not the case for the Scouts, but that's okay. We still hung out quite a bit.
After our short meet-up, we went over to watch the Celebrate the Magic show. We hadn't had a great view of it from the party, so we wanted to see it again. This was one of my new favorite things from this trip. We watched it all three nights we were at MK.
We ended up watching Wishes from Tomorrowland just to grab a drink and a seat somewhere. It was still nice though.
Afterwards, we headed towards Mainstreet to do a last few things before we left for the night. We always stop at the Confectionary for some fudge before we leave, so we grabbed some to take back to the hotel. I never noticed that the Confectionary has a little Remy behind the counter, which I thought was adorable.
It was a completely amazing day for us, but super long. We ended up sleeping in a bit more than intended the next day, but we made it work.
Next up: A trip around the world!
