Day 4--Magic Kingdom

Monday, April 7th.

We decided to go to Magic Kingdom today. We knew it was going to be crowded (thanks to my "Disney Bible", Tour Guide Mike ), but the kids wanted to go. So we decided to go and just do things we hadn't done before.

So we went first to Adventure land and rode Big Thunder Mountain R.R. , then Rode Splash and were waiting at Tom Sawyer Island--first in line for the first boat. This was probably our biggest mistake of the day--no, probably the trip.

They didn't let us past the rope onto the boat until 10am--even though I had read they opened earlier, and other managers had come by and said it would be open in a few minutes. This should have been our first warning. We finally get on the boat and position ourselves to be one of the first off and the first problem happens--the Riverboat is going to leave and we have to wait for it to pass....so we wait 5 minutes and we can go (so we think). Apparently there is a new employee training on driving the raft and this is her very first time to ever steer the raft--or any type of boat it soon appeared. We tried 4 or 5 times to leave the dock--each time we had to reverse because we would be running into the side momentarily. We finally got going and everyone cheered, it was a false hope that we had gotten over the worst of it and had smooth sailing ahead. After at LEAST 10 tries, we finally docked at the other side. There was a bigger cheer this time when we docked and we all secretly hoped that the training would be done by the time we returned! It was now 10:35 and we had wasted an entire hour of prime touring for this! I tried to remind myself that it was worth it and this was a relaxing--no schedule day--after the 15th time I think I finally sold myself on it. The silver (or Syrup as Carter says) lining to this is that with all the times trying to dock the kids found a paintbrush (as did the rest of the people on the raft)--but we were the first ones off so Carter and I walked quickly and easily got it first. As we continued on to explore the island a bit, Matt saw another paint brush and told someone about it but they said it wasn't one and kept walking--the people behind them picked it up--sure enough, a valid paintbrush.


As we rode back (with our original driver--she had gotten better--only 3 times to dock this time) it was 11:00 and I really really tried to remember to enjoy myself and not worry about all the wasted time. That said, I don't know that I will ever care to go to Tom Sawyer Island again!

Caroline wanted to use the fastpass we earned from finding the paint brush to ride Thunder Mountain r.r. again so Matt and Caroline rode while Carter, Alex and I waited.

After that we went and picked up a fast pass for Buzz, rode Tomorrowland Transit Authority a couple of times (Alex decided it was perfect time for a nap)--which was neat because Space had just stopped when we rode through the first time
Matt: Isn't this supposed to be a dark ride? (you can tell our vast disney knowledge here)
me: Maybe it is just light because this is the loading area?
Matt: Then why are all those people just standing there out of the cars?

So when we rode it the second time we took a picture. By this time all the people were out and all the lights were on:


We had lunch at Cosmic Rays (yummy! I loved the fresh green beans with the 1/2 rotisserie chicken!) and it was time to ride Buzz. The line to see Buzz was short, so we stopped for a quick picture--Carter LOVES buzz and I had a hard time getting him to face the camera--he just wanted to look at buzz (kind of in a starstruck way)


After Buzz, we decided to hit Main Street and get Matt a haircut (he ran out of time before the trip and when we called to find out where we could get hair cut, this was by far the cheapest at WDW). So we walked into Harmony Barber shop and it was empty.

Matt started to get his hair cut


And they announced F-15s from Nellis AFB in Nevada (they also had a name, and I am very bad that I can't remember it) would be flying over a few times. So we all went out to see them--it was great. After watching a couple of fly-bys we started to go back inside and Matt noted that Pluto and Claribel's & Horace were out with no lines and right outside the barber shop. So we had pictures taken and our books signed:




Everyone was hungry and it was time for a break (and Magic cookie hour was approaching) so we decided to have a small treat at the Main St. Bakery then head home.