More Magic!

I'm starting off with my all-time favorite picture from our whole trip, cuz I love it so much. :)

After a somewhat earlier day, on our next to last day at Disney, we planned to go back to Magic Kingdom and catch all the parades and shows and fireworks that we missed the first time around when we were busy doing rides and characters. This time we rode the monorail over...

After a quick photopass picture upon us entering the park (again right when it opened!)....

Ok, so some of those might have been from later on in the day but I don't know which ones so you get them all at once. (I told you, we snagged those Photo Pass guys anytime we saw them!)

We made a beeline to the Rapunzel greeting. Our first day we passed by Rapunzel in the afternoon and there was a 2 hour wait!!! So we skipped it that day and planned for it this day! We went straight there. There was still a 15 minute wait (first thing in the morning!). But that's much better than 2 hours. So, note to anyone else planning a trip with Rapunzel lovers...go to Rapunzel early if you want to avoid the wait!

On our way to the FairyTale garden (where Rapunzel was), we noticed this in the sky...

Isn't that cool? Apparently someone was 'writing' Jesus Loves.... (you?). We thought it was kinda neat. Also while waiting in line, this little family of ducks came up to Brooke. The Disney park animals are definitely some of the tamest animals!

And finally, we got to see Rapunzel! The girls were so stoked b/c when we were in DisneyLand, she was not there (the movie hadn't come out yet).

Right after Rapunzel, we noticed Alice and the white rabbit were next to the teacups, so we snagged a quick autograph and picture with them too. At first it was just Alice, but she kept asking Brooke if she had seen a white rabbit anywhere?!? She had been looking for a white rabbit forever! Then all of the sudden, Brooke turned around and the rabbit was right behind her. :)

Quick photo op, near the hallways of the castle - Cinderella's wishing well...

This day we planned out a LOT better. While the family was waiting for Rapunzel, I walked over and got us a FastPass for Peter Pan's Flight. When I did, it shot out a surprise Fast Pass to Mickey's Philharmagic show. Cool! So, after seeing Rapunzel, we were eligible to get another Fast Pass, so I stopped by and got one for Winnie the Pooh's Adventures. Instead of doing either of those right off, though, we went to Brooke's all time favorite ride that had no line at the time - It's A Small World.

Both the girls loved it for some odd reason, but Brooke REALLY likes it.

From there, we went and used our Fast Pass to ride Peter Pan's Flight. It was another hit - in fact, Brooke kept asking to ride it again and again.

But we didn't want to wait in line when we had Fast Pass options, so next we went and watched the Mickey's Philharmagic 3D show. It was a fun show - very funny. The girls loved the ending where Donald actually comes out of the screen and lands in the back wall. :P

It was in this show, while we waited for it to start, that I started going through my collection of Fast Passes and noticed that we were missing a ticket! Not a Fast Pass ticket.... no. A ticket to DisneyWorld. Brooke's ticket to be exact. (they have you label them when you buy them) I am not normally the one to lose things (ahem!), but I was certain that what happened (in hindsight) was that the Fast Pass machine ate the ticket or didn't return it and I just didn't notice it not spitting it back out. There was one Fast Pass machine that was faulty. So I just knew that's what it was. Anyway, as soon as the show ended we raced back, but of course, no ticket. And the cast member manning the booth opened the machine and nothing. He went through a pile of lost tickets and nothing. He very nonchalantly gave us a fake ticket (just to get more Fast Passes with later) and told us if we had our receipt we could easily get our ticket back later. I still hated not having it...but wasn't too worried. Also, I was sure to heed the advice to take a picture of all of our tickets (on my phone and with my camera!) as soon as we bought them. (I also took a picture of our Photo Pass card too...another good idea in case you lose it..all you need is the number off the back)

So, on we went with our day and went and had lunch at Pinnochio's Village Haus restaurant.

Again, another counter service restaurant that we enjoyed. I had chicken parmigan, the girls had PB&J and Brad had a salad that he raved about...

After eating, we again used our Fast Passes to ride Pooh's adventures. This one was very similar to the one in California and the girls enjoyed it ok. (Brenna has a sticker over her mouth...)

Next up...Snow White's Scary Adventures. Now...I was really hesitant in riding this with the girls. I had heard it can be really pretty scary. Its just another boat ride type ride where they take you through the story of Snow White, but there is a lot of witch scenes and what not. Both the girls love Snow White, but particularly Brenna, so I hated her to miss out. But then again, I didn't want her screaming through the whole ride. In the end, we decided to do it. The line was short and I told Brad, if nothing else, *I* wanted to ride it just to see and he agreed to just everyone riding.

After it was over, we realized..it wasn't too bad. There were scary parts, but it was nothing like stuff coming out to get you or anything. Nothing worse than a scene in a movie anyway. We decided against Haunted Mansion for this reason..we thought it would be too scary for the girls, bc its a little more realistic.

When you come out of the Snow White ride, you are dumped into a princess type store and it was Brooke's turn to pick out her ears. She, in the end, decided on the same ones Brenna got and was happy with her selection. If only we hadn't gotten behind the woman who ordered 10 pairs of ears!!! Holy moly!

We waited so long for the ears, that Brenna fell asleep.

I kid...I kid. We walked around and were going to be waiting for the parade to start so we wanted her to sleep! This time it took some doings to get her to sleep but she finally did.

And when she woke up, it was for the show (that we missed the other day) at the porch of the castle steps. About dreams coming true and all the characters came out to talk about their dreams. Really a cute show. :)

Almost immediately after that show was the (again 3pm!) parade. So we decided to stick around for that. And this is where we almost died.

Ok...not really. But this was, by far, the hottest and closest to heat exhaustion we all got. More on that in a minute, but here's some pics from the parade (which wasn't even all that, though after hearing the same song in CA to this parade, we had to come back and download the song from iTunes -its Hannah Montana's "Pumping up the Party" and the girls have been dancing to it non-stop since we got home)...

After it was over, Brooke was complaining of a headache, was very flushed and her eyes were just looking very tired. I felt like I could pass out. Brad was pretty hot too. So, we went to a bakery on Main Street for the sole purpose of cooling off. I was pretty close to calling it a day since we all felt kinda bad. I knew we had one more day and wasn't worried about missing stuff, except for the fact that the next day the chance of rain was pretty high. So we sat for a while, had several bottles of water and a couple of bottles of vitamin water. We might've sat in that bakery for close to an hour and Brooke may've slept a bit too. In the end, we all felt a little better and were ready to move on thankfully.

Here's another photo pass picture shortly after leaving that bakery...

And then we went on the Jungle Cruise (with a Fast Pass), which was just a silly guided tour of the "Amazon River". Eh...it was ok. Brooke wasn't particularly a fan of this one for whatever reason.

Then Brenna and Brad went here and cooled off with the splashpads...

On our walk back we saw a TON of ducks and ducklings.

We went and ate at probably our favorite restaurant, Cosmic Ray's Starlight Cafe. It was counter service food, but they had such a variety of food, serving from three different counters (all different kinds of food) so the kids could get whatever and we could get whatever we wanted too.

And there is this guy providing us with dinner music. Haha..

After eating we went and started to get our spot for the Electrical Parade, Memories show and Fireworks (they are one after the other). It would've been awesome to have gotten a reservation for the Wishes Dessert party at one of the restaurants, but they were booked when we called. If I had to do over again (and more planning time) I would definitely try to reserve that. It would be worth it to not fight the crowd for the fireworks.

But anyway, when we were there, it wasn't too bad. We staked our perfect spot, in front of the castle, just at the end of Main Street so we had a great view for the parade as they came up the street and then also for the fireworks, we just had to turn around and the castle (and hence, the fireworks) were right behind us.

While we waited for it to get dark, the girls enjoyed playing around...

The electrical parade was awesome! Here's some still pics...

And some video too to give you an idea...

Next, like I said, we just simply turned around and waited for the Memories show and fireworks to start. The Memories show is apparently a sort of new thing, where they display images of real people enjoying their time at DisneyWorld across the castle. It sounded kind of cheesy to me, honestly. And then, all I kept thinking about waiting for it to begin, was my friend Ana telling me that that might be kind of creepy if you had read the Hunger Games series. LOL But, it was very very cool actually. It was way more than just images of people. It was really pretty awesome. Here's one still picture...

But I couldn't catch it very well on camera and do it justice, so here's a short video of some of the show...

Almost immediately after the Memories show, are the Wishes Fireworks show, which are equally as awesome. We got a taste of that at DisneyLand in California and they are just as great at DisneyWorld. I love it b/c I always feel like I am seeing what IS the start of a Disney movie, complete with Tinkerbell flying in and fireworks over the castle, with "when you wish upon a star....". Magical.

Here's some stills...

And a couple of videos - the beginning of the fireworks is the first video (which shows Tinkerbell) and the finale is the last video...

Doesn't it look like a scene from (the beginning of!) a movie? So cool.

The girls made it all the whole entire day. Were champs. But after the electrical parade, Brooke wanted to sit with Brenna while we waited on the fireworks show, so we let them snuggle up in the stroller and they ended up staying there through the whole 2 shows. They had a great seat, because turns out it really wasn't *too* crowded and everyone in front of them sat down! Anyway, on the walk to the front gates, and subsequently to the monorail....they BOTH fell asleep, snuggling away. Everyone kept commenting on how cute they were and I have to admit, they were... :)

We rode the monorail back, put them in the car, drove to the hotel and put them back in the stroller to ride the elevator back up to our room and through it all I don't think they ever woke up. They were out! And for good reason. It was after 11pm when we got back to the hotel that night. Definitely our longest day throughout the whole trip.

We had one more day at Magic Kingdom and we planned to go back the next day, leaving earlier and just hit our favorite spots again.