Day 3: A Day at Disney

Psst. We’re knee deep in recapping our family vacation to Florida! You can read all about Day 1 here and Day 2 here.

This day was so much fun. We were exhausted from Harry Potter World the day prior, but determined to get every last penny’s worth out of the money we shelled out for a day in Disney. We’ve both been before (Mitch twice, me once), but they have added so much since the last time we were there three years ago, so we were excited to go back.

We had another early morning- we bustled down to the hotel lobby for a 7:00am breakfast of waffles and fruit before heading back upstairs to brush teeth, pack the backpack, and get ready to leave. Our goal was to leave by 7:30… we probably made it out the door by 7:45 or so and got to the park around 8:20am.

A few shuttles from the parking lot to the park and we were all set for a day of magic!

We had read enough ahead of time to know that the ride that would get most crowded would be the new Snow White ride, “Mine Train”. Since we were not able to get a FastPass for that one, we decided to head straight over to see if we could get on the ride before the line got super long. Let me tell you, we were not the only ones with that idea! However, we didn’t have too long of a wait and managed to get to the front of the line when… the ride shut down. The good news, though, was that they gave us all an extra FastPass that we could use any time during the day.

Since we were already in Fantasyland, we decided to jump on the Winnie the Pooh ride which was right across the way, but that was shut down too! Soooo…. at that point, we just wanted to get on something (and lines were starting to get long!) so we went to It’s a Small World, right around the corner. Victory!

Winnie the Pooh was open at that point so we rode that, had a quick spin on the tea cups and then headed over to Tomorrowland!

Lunch was simple- chicken strips and fries- but it was so good! And it was nice to get out of the heat for a little bit.

After we got some food in us, we set off to see if Snow White had opened yet (it had not) and checked out the new Little Mermaid ride. The cool thing about Disney (and Harry Potter World, actually) is that the lines that you wait in are so interesting. And this one did not disappoint. In fact, I think this might have been my favorite “scene” we saw all day.

The craftsmanship was amazing and the attention to detail, impeccable.

The ride itself was cute, taking you through the story with all of the songs- lots of fun! Back outside, we took a spin around the carousel and checked back with Snow White. It had just opened, but the FastPass line was long because all the people who didn’t get on in the morning were in line so we chose to wait until the line went down a little. Since the carousel is right there, we joined the hoards of 5 year olds for the classic ride. 🙂

For a break from the sun, we did “Enchanted Tales with Belle”. And thank goodness we did, because had we not, Mitch would have missed his calling. This attraction tells the story of Beauty and the Beast, but they bring up kids to play the different parts. And guess who got chosen to be a knight?

HAH! It was hysterical. And so much fun. And Mitch even got to meet Belle! #worthit

After Beauty and the Beast, we tried again at Snow White and finally got on- it was awesome! Great ride with beautifully made scenes from the movie. Highly recommend. Somehow, we caught the FastPass line when it was only 10 minutes long. Every time we passed it the rest of the day (we had wanted to see if we could go on again at some point) the normal line was 45-90 minutes of wait time. No thank you.

Oh, and while we were in the area, we did one of my phavorites… Mickey’s Philharmagic! 🙂

At this point it was time to start making our way to the other side of the park because we had some FastPasses that we could start using. On our way, we got stopped by the parade!

Being mid-afternoon, it was HOT so we took a break to see the Country Bears show. From there, we were able to ride the big ones in Frontierland- Big Thunder Mountain (neither of us had ever been on it because it was broken the last time we were here) and Splash Mountain! We were thankful to have FastPasses for both of these because the lines were really long, being that it was the hottest part of the day.

After a ride on the Jungle Cruise and a trip to Never Never land with Peter Pan (the wait for this was ridiculous and we were thrilled to be able to use a FastPass), we decided that it was time for dinner and parked ourselves at The Pinocchio Village Haus for a meatball sub and pizza. We both agreed that the food at Harry Potter World was way better in general.

After dinner, we visited the Haunted Mansion (Mitch was most disappointed at the lack of “hauntedness”) and cashed in our last FastPass to ride Space Mountain. I don’t remember liking this one very much last time, but it was so much fun! Another one with a long line, so we were thankful to have the FastPass. We had time for a few more things before the Electrical parade and fireworks started happening, so we did the Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor (which was awesome- we highly recommend!) and another ride on Big Thunder Mountain.

At this point, we were pretty exhausted and by some luck of the draw, got a GREAT seat on the parade route to watch the line up. It was really cool- they do a great job with that show.

When the parade ended, we moved to where we could see Cinderella’s castle for the fireworks. I’m not sure I will ever be old enough to not think that is magical. And when Tinkerbell flies? Forget it. We were in shock.

Overall, it was an awesome day and we loved going back to see everything. We even put the GoPro to good use and got some shots of a couple different rides we tried… and because it felt like we did everything from spinning to zooming, to dropping, to splashing, I figured I’d make a mashup of sorts for you. 🙂 Here is our day of rides… in 90 seconds. Enjoy! And don’t get sick!

It ended up being a late night after all was said and done and we were so tired, we could barely keep our eyes open. The thought of being able to sleep in a little the next morning was the only thing that made the drive back to the hotel bearable. Honestly though, we got to see and do so much and had such a wonderful time, we wouldn’t have traded anything for the day we had.

Day 4 is up first thing next week along with a little house crashing of the beautiful home we stayed in for the second half of our trip! Stay tuned… and happy weekend!