After riding Space Mountain, we decided to head to Fantasyland. Mad Tea Party had a really short lineup, the sign said the queue was 15 minutes but it was actually only about 5 minutes.

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As we were exiting the ride, Pooh and Tigger walked past us, so we decided to follow them to their meet and greet area. There were only a few people in line already, and I love those characters so we hopped in line for our first character meet of our trip!

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After meeting Pooh and Tigger, it was time for our third fastpass of the day – Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. It was a cute ride for sure, but way too quick and I can’t imagine waiting in line for over an hour for it. I also realized way too late that I didn’t get my on-ride picture and video

Since we had now used up our three pre-selected Fastpasses, we headed to a kiosk to pick out a 4th one. We ended up in line behind people who were completely clueless, and had no idea what they were doing or what they wanted to select. The Cast Member was very patient, but you could tell they were getting a little frustrated too, since the people were looking at their phone, and would say they wanted a fastpass for a ride that wasn’t even in Magic Kingdom. Eventually we made it to the front and selected a 4th fastpass for Pirates of the Caribbean.

We checked wait times on the Disney app, and decided to head to Ariel’s Undersea Adventure. The wait time said 25 minutes, and it was pretty much exact.

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The ride itself is basically the exact same as the one at Disney California Adventure, but the exterior is really impressive at WDW. I loved how it looked like you were entering a cave while waiting in the queue line. I also apologize for continuously comparing the rides in Florida and California, but I had been to Disneyland first..

We walked over to the Storybook Circus area to check on the wait for Dumbo – only 15 minutes so into another line we get!

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From there, we hopped on the Railroad – with zero wait time. We rode it all the way around to Frontierland. We still had time to kill before our FP+ window opened for POTC, so off to the Enchanted Tiki Room! We didn’t have time to check it out when we were in California (either time as it so happens). We got into line and as we walked through the queue line the doors opened up – perfect timing once again! I have to say – seeing that once is enough. Our FP window was open by the time we left the Tiki Room; in less than 5 minutes we were on a boat off to see some Pirates. Once again, another ride which is way better at Disneyland. The ride ended, and Luke and I just looked at each other and said “that was it?!”. It’s way too short at WDW.

When we checked the time, we realized we needed to hurry to get to our supper reservation – which was of course on the other side of the park…

Next: More MK

Day Two – Wednesday, January 6, 2016 – Part Two

After dropping off our goodies from the race Expo, it was time to head to our first park of the trip! We headed out to the front of our hotel and had to wait….. one minute until the bus was pulling up. We were killing it at Disney transportation so far!

After a bus ride which took around 25 minutes, we were pulling up to Magic Kingdom! We had picked this to be our park of the day based on our supper reservation, and it just seemed like the perfect one to start with! And the Christmas decorations were still up, which I didn’t think they would be so I was excited about that!

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As soon as I entered the park, I stopped to get a birthday pin (my birthday was the following Wednesday, so I figured it was ok to wear one since it was within a week). As soon as we got to Main Street the Move It! Shake It! Dance & Play It! Parade was starting, so of course we stopped to watch our first WDW parade.

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While watching the parade I actually got a little choked up, after months of planning and reading trip reports on the disboards, I was finally standing in Magic Kingdom! The parade itself was nothing special, but it was cute and had some great characters. After the parade, we walked down Main Street (where I was again a little choked up at the sight of Cinderella’s castle – it’s so big and beautiful!). We didn’t really have a ton of time to admire it though, we had to get to our first Fastpass selection of our trip! FP+ #1 – Splash Mountain! Once we hopped into the fastpass line, it took about 5 minutes before we were boarding our log. I also prefer the logs here compared to Disneyland – sitting side by side is so much better! It’s so easy to plan ahead for a funny photo on this ride, so here’s our first ride photo of the trip:

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By the time we finished our visit with Briar Rabbit and Briar Bear, it was after 1pm and I hadn’t ate since breakfast, but we were both getting hungry. We knew we wanted a quick service option, since all of our table service credits on our dining plan were spoken for with reservations, so we decided on Peco’s Bills! We figured we’d be fine splitting an entree, since we did have a supper reservation for later and we knew we’d have a fairly large meal there. Our review of Peco’s Bills can be found here.

We finished up and went to the Christmas store in Magic Kingdom. I’ve been trying to buy a new ornament on every trip we go on, so eventually I can decorate an entire Christmas tree just with ornaments that remind us of trips we’ve taken together. I decided on this one, I knew I wanted something that had the year on it, and also said Walt Disney World (which this one has on the side).

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I was scared of breaking it if I had to carry it around with me all day, so I had it shipped to our hotel for pickup the next day – I love this feature of staying on site!

After this, it was time to head to our second fastpass of the day (and our second ride of the trip!) We basically had to walk from one side of the park to the other, but that was okay, we had lots of time. Luke snapped this picture of me in front of the castle while we were walking to Tomorrowland: (and yes, I had a different Disney outfit to wear every single day we were there haha)

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We stopped for our first Photopass pictures of our trip along the way too! We were both really hesitant about buying Photopass before we left, especially with our terrible exchange rate, but my mom decided to give us money towards the cost as part of my birthday present. So, I prepaid the $150US for it – which ended up being $211 Canadian dollars, ugh.

Anyways, I was determined to make it worth it! So here’s a few from our first stop at a photographer:

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From there, we headed over to Space Mountain. The Fastpass line was huge, and I was a little worried we might be in for a long wait time, but it ended up moving pretty well, and we were at the front of the line in about 20 minutes. The star effect isn’t nearly as good as it is at Disneyland, and I wasn’t a huge fan of the single file seats. Also, 7 weeks after this, we were at Disneyland again and got to experience the Hyperspace Mountain overlay – and nothing can compare to that. It was phenomenal! I still enjoyed Space Mountain at WDW, but I definitely enjoy this ride more at Disneyland. That being said, here is our on-ride photo (our Space Mountain pics were among my least favourite of the trip sadly):

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January 6, 2016 – Part One

We woke up on our first day at Disney around 8am. I know from reading a lot of trip reports that this is “sleeping in”, but I am not a morning person, and we had a late night the night before with our luggage not showing up to our room until after midnight. We got ready and headed to Intermission Food Court at our hotel (All-Star Music) for breakfast. That review is here.

After eating, we stopped to take this picture:

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and then we headed outside to catch a bus to the race Expo. It opened at 10am that morning, and we wanted to be there as close to that time as possible. We walked outside the hotel to a coach bus sitting there waiting, so we walked on and were off to the race Expo! This was our first Disney transportation (excluding Magical Express) and our wait time is currently zero minutes – I was so worried we were going to waste so much time waiting for busses…

Before long the bus dropped us off, we had a short walk and then we were seeing this:

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I apologize, I didn’t write notes or pay attention to the buildings we went into here. The entire thing was quite overwhelming, and unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. It also started raining shortly after we arrived, so I left my camera in my bookbag to keep it dry, and any pictures I did take here were with my phone (and I didn’t take very many).

Luke went and picked up his race pack in one building, and then we had to go into another building to pick up his race shirt. He also bought himself a Disney marathon weekend tshirt, and we looked around at some of the expo vendors. I loved the Ariel NewBalance shoes, but I couldn’t justify the cost when it’s not the brand of sneaker I wear (I love my Asics). I did end up buying Luke a Disney themed medal display, as it was something I had looked at ordering online, but the shipping cost to Canada was a little ridiculous. So when I saw the exact one I was going to order there, and I could take it home with me that day, I was sold! I don’t have a picture of it, but it’s this one in sparkly black: http://www.heavymedalz.com/Product/10OnceUponBlack.php Now to fill it I guess we’ll just have to plan on more RunDisney events (which are already in our plans…).

We didn’t spend too much time at the Expo, we had FastPasses to get to! We did see what we wanted to, and Luke had more than enough time to look at the official RunDisney merch, so we decided to head back to our hotel to drop off our purchases. But first, I made Luke pose for this picture:

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We walked over to the bus pickup spot, and there was a bus sitting there waiting! Two for two today! We went back to All Star Music, dropped off our race Expo purchases and then headed back out to catch our first bus to one of the WDW parks! I might have been a little bit excited at this point…

Next: Our First Park!