Epic East Coast - Day 19

Magic Kingdom.  Well, the kids liked it.  I did not.  It seriously needed about 1/3 as many people as were there in order to be enjoyable.  The rides are fun and cute, but none of them are worth longer than a 15 minute wait, and all morning and afternoon, every ride (even the tiny stupid ones) had a 30 - 45 minute wait.  If you can only do one little five minute ride every hour, how much fun can you have?

Anyway, Sandra said I wasn't allowed to write this blog post, but none of the kids seemed interested in writing anything, so here I am.  We tried to get there before the park opened at 9:00am but it took too long to get the kids up and far too long to get into the park.  We actually parked the van at 8:50am, but the frustrating tram (too small and unorganized) and extremely full monorail and security meant that it was 9:30am before we got into the park.  We headed straight for Splash Mountain and some railroad roller coaster, as they are big draws and Sandra was hoping we could get rides in before the got busy (i.e. 90+ minute wait times).  She was right, and we were able to ride both with only short waits, though Bradley wasn't tall enough so he couldn't go on either ride.  The older kids really, really liked both rides, so I scheduled one of our FastPasses (where you get to skip the line to a ride - each ticket gets three) for a late night return to Splash Mountain.

Hogsmeade @ Universal was busier than this.

We then got everyone on a simple spin ride in the Aladdin area, and then stood in line for 50 minutes for Pirates of the Caribbean (totally not worth it) and 45 minutes for a jungle boat ride, that was OK, except that a thunderstorm hit the park right as we got out.  We all got completely drenched before we found some shelter.  We then headed towards the Fantasyland part of the park, but it was now afternoon and all the outdoor rides were shut down until the storm passed, so the park was literally full - you could not move without running into someone else.  It was positively insane.  Sandra and everyone but Jonathan stood in an extremely long line for the carousel, since Jonathan was tired and cranky.  Then it was a long line for the Winnie the Pooh ride (which everyone liked), a long line for It's a Small World, a long line for the teacups and so on.

Our first FastPass use was a visit to Mickey in the late afternoon, as there is a pretty constant 60-90 minute wait to meet characters, and Jonathan wanted to give him a hug, so we had scheduled this one yesterday.  It was very nice to walk in and go directly to the front of the line, and the little kids had massive smiles on their faces when they met Mickey.

After Mickey, we had an hour and a half before our next FastPass (a small roller coaster than Evan wanted to go on), so we did the Dumbo ride, which features a play area in the queue line and a buzzer they give you when it is your time for the ride.  However, finding all of your kids once the buzzer has gone off is a bit of an exercise in frustration.  The next ride was some race cars that you could drive, which is where things fell off the tracks a bit - we had been at the park for 12 hours, hadn't had supper yet, and Alex wanted to drive by himself (well, with Evan), but soon after starting became scared of driving and wanted out, which was then upsetting Evan.  I was trying to encourage him as best I could by shouting at him from behind, but around the halfway mark an employee called out to find out what was wrong and she ended up getting in the car and driving it back to the start.  Despite talking to him, Alex was pretty shook up and he lost it in line for the roller coaster, once he found out that he would have to ride with Evan and not an adult.  We eventually got him to go through the line and wait for the rest of us, but we could not calm him down after we were finished.

At this point it was 8:45pm, and with 15 minutes before the fireworks we ran to a nearby cafe that Kristen told us was a good point to watch the fireworks from.  Unfortunately, the burger restaurant had run out of burgers, so I missed all the fireworks while I waited in line for supper.  We convinced Alex to eat, which helped his attitude and then ran through a bunch of rides a second time - between 9:30 and 10:30 we went on five rides, with no lines, because the park was much emptier and everyone was out watching the parade.

We made our way back to Splash Mountain and I took Alex on the train roller coaster before Sandra, Evan and Jonathan used their last FastPass on Splash Mountain.  Once they were done, Alex and I went and then we headed out of the park.  It was already late, and it just got later as we waited for two monorails before getting to the parking lot and four trams before getting to our van, where I had to somehow navigate Florida in the dark to get back to our hotel.  It was, by that point, 1:00am and everyone was exhausted, so the kids went straight to bed.  Tomorrow we are supposed to get up early and get to Hollywood Studios early enough to sign the kids up for the Jedi adventure, but I don't see it happening.  In fact, pictures will have to wait, because I need to get some sleep as well.