WDW07 – Saturday – Magic Kingdom

The Walt Disney Travelogue continues …

1. Slept in again.  Kitten did well with late nights, and did pretty well at sleeping in.  In fact, I was the first one up.
2. Breakfast at the Pepper Market, then off to the parks — this time, looking to finish up the Magic Kingdom.
3. Since it was tops on her list, we headed to Splash Mountain first.  Yikes — it wasn’t running!  Some sort of problem, unscheduled, so we grabbed FastPasses for it, and went over to Big Thunder Mountain (which, despite catching all of the Splash Mountain non-riding overflow, had a shorter line than the night before).
4. We backtracked a bit, to not get too far from Splash (our FPs weren’t that far in the future), so we rode on Pirates again, then looked at Jungle Cruise — which had a line stretching across the plaza, so no thank you very much.
5. Heading back toward Splash, we ran across the Cap’n Jack street performance show, which turned out to be a hoot (we ended up seeing a lot of street shows, and all of them were good — they are worth the time to watch, even if you don’t feel like seeking them out).  Katherine ended up getting called up to help Cap’n Jack Sparrow teach everyone how to be a pirate, and was the only one of the four kids so chosen who actually followed instructions (which I chalk up to her karate training, to be perfectly honest, plus being a remarkably clever girl).  Fun stuff, and the guy who played Jack, as well as his mate, were quite good.
6. Splash was still down.  The cast member at the FP line told us that the original problem was with the animation, but now one of the monitors was down.  He told us the FPs would be good all day, though.
7. So we hightailed it over to Fantasy Land, grabbing more FPs for Peter Pan (the most popular ride there).  In the interim, we hopped on Small World (corny and hokey and annoying but a good way to sit down in the cool for a few minutes), the Carousel, then Snow White (meh), then grabbed some lunch at Geppetto’s place.  By which time it was time for Peter Pan.  Which was standard Peter Pan entertainment.
8. We headed to the ride status board in the main square and saw that Splash Mountain seemed to be open again, huzzah — with a 70 minute wait time.  We headed that way, and found that wasn’t true — it was an 80 minute wait time for stand-by, filling up pretty much the whole switchback area by the ride, but the FP took us nearly to the place where the lines join, so we only took about 10 minutes to get on, tops.  Huzzah for FastPass!
9. Katherine, by the way, decided this was The Year of Riding By Herself.  In this case, she soloed the front seat of Splash Mountain, and had a blast.  This was echoed on many other rides, where she went on her own and Margie and I were on the car/boat/pod/row behind her.  Not a bad arrangement.
10. We definitely were ready for naps all around at this point, so we took the train from Splash Mountain around to the front and headed back to the resort to snooze a bit.
11. Dinner at the Pepper Market (decent Kung Pao Chicken), then off to Magic Kingdom again.  We’d FPed Splash before we left, and it was time for the tickets — the FP line was a bit longer, and the stand-by line was “only” 50 minutes, but it still worked out to our advantage.  On our way out, we FPed Thunder Mountain, then caught the train to Toon Town.
12. Margie worked on dinner reservations for the next night while Katherine and I got in the longest line I’ve ever been in for Goofy’s Barnstormer.  Saturday was by far the most crowded day at  the parks during our stay.  After that, we all headed over to Autopia, which Katherine could officially steer on, though she was barely tall enough to steer and work the gas pedal (we took turns).
13. Space Mountain had a 60 minute wait line (and would for the rest of the evening), so we headed to ur next choice — the new Monster Laugh Floor.  Picture a Monsters Inc.-themed comedy club, using both canned routines and some of the cool interactive animation techniques first used on Turtle Time with Crush a few years back (i.e., animations that work with live folks behind the scenes to be interactive with the audience).  We got in the “fast” line as passholders, which was nice.  In the queue, you’re encouraged to text in message with jokes the comedians might use.  Kitten gave me a couple, and the number gives a very amusing reply (who knew Mike Wazowski has an 818 area code?).  The show is what I’d expected from the preview material I’d read online — funny, engaging, and rather abrupt in its ending.  I do think it will hold up to multiple viewings … if they cycle the canned material every year or two.  I do recommend it.
14. Fireworks time again, though this time we hoofed over to just outside Tomorrow Land so we had a view of the castle and got the music and narration to go with the (Tink flew almost due over our heads on her zip line).  Nice fireworks display.
15. Katherine had a yen to see the Stitch escape show, so we went there next.  Katherine was asked to be the Line Leader, complete with a Galactic Prison Service flag to carry, and got a certificate out of it.  Good stuff.
16. Over to Buzz Lightyear, which we’d FPed on the way to the Monster Laugh Floor.  Kitten’s score was an order of magnitude higher than either of ours, which made me think it was a bit on the blink, or due to illegal behavior.  When we walked around and did the ride again, and a left-hand gun came up with a similarly outrageous score, that was confirmed.  Still, a very fun (and unusually interactive) ride for Disney.
17. Everyone was fading at that point, so we exited the park as the parade trailed out of Main Street, riding the swell of the exiting crowds.  We were back at the ranch and in bed by 11:15.