The Brooks Family: Disney Day 3

On Valentine's morning we woke up super early because we had a 7:20 am reservation for breakfast at Chef Mickey's at the Contemporary Resort. Hunter definitely warmed up to the characters at this breakfast...just as he'd promised the night before while we were dining with Cinderella's family. He did great, and I was proud of him for overcoming his fear.

The first character to stop by our table was Goofy...

Then Mickey...

Donald...

Minnie...

And finally Pluto, who put the autograph book on his nose to sign!

After finishing up a yummy breakfast (with the best hashbrown casserole I've ever had - I totally got seconds), we made our way to Magic Kingdom. We saw the opening ceremony again, and then headed over to Tomorrow Land. The first stop was the Tomorrowland Speedway...

I drove and Charlotte was my passenger while Hunter drove with James behind us...

After the slowest race ever, we headed to Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin...

This was another family favorite. You shoot your gun at the Z's (for Zurg) all throughout the ride and try to get the most points possible. You can even spin your own spaceship as fast as you want all throughout the ride.

I knew we wouldn't get a chance to meet Rapunzel at any of our character meals, so we headed over to her home in Magic Kingdom. The line didn't look bad at all, so we hopped in, hoping to be up to the front in about 10 minutes. Ten minutes later, we hadn't moved from our original spot in line...

What I didn't realize was that they took a large group of about 10 families into her little area at a time. After all of those people met Rapunzel, then the outside line would move up as a new group would get to go in. Since it was taking so long, James and Hunter went to Fantasy Land to ride the carousel and teacups one more time and to get a Fastpass for Peter Pan.

Fastpass is a service Disney provides where you can insert your Key to the World (park ticket, room key, meal plan card all in one) into one of the machines set in front of popular attractions and retrieve a pass to come back later (usually at least an hour, depending on how many Fastpasses have been distributed up to that point). When you return, you get into a special line set aside for Fastpass holders, which is super short. The Fastpass basically holds your place in line. They give an hour time period for you to return during (for example 10:25 - 11:25), but historically they have let you use the Fastpass even if the time has passed (our return time for Peter Pan was around 12:00 - 1:00, but we didn't return to ride it until that night), but I've heard starting at the end of February they aren't going to allow you to do that anymore. So you'll have to return only in the time period stated on the Fastpass.

It was amazing to me that people would wait in 60+ minute lines for a ride that had Fastpass availability. We never waited longer than about 10 minutes for a ride while at Disney World, with 1 exception (but we were there during a slower season, so you should expect to wait longer during more crowded times).

Forty-five minutes from the time we lined up to meet Rapunzel (the longest wait for anything we did at Disney), James and Hunter came back just in time to see Charlotte meet Rapunzel...

She and Charlotte had a sweet little conversation, and then posed for a picture...

It was definitely worth the wait!

After that long time standing in line, we wanted to sit down and rest for a little bit, so we headed over to the Monster's Inc. Laugh Floor...

I didn't have very high hopes for this attraction, but it ended up being my favorite thing up to that point in the day. They interact with the audience and it is hysterical. We were all rolling.

Next we headed over to the Move it! Shake it! Celebrate it! Street Party. They have a little mini parade with 4-5 floats, and then they invite guests to come out in the street and dance with the characters!

When they invited everyone out into the street, Charlotte jumped right out there...

Right after that video Frozone came up and started dancing with her. I wish I would've videoed that, but she was a little hesitant to dance with him so I had to dance along with them. Then one of the street dancers on stilts came up and danced with her. He had to bend all the way over, and I was so worried he was going to fall! Luckily, he didn't...I'm sure he's done that countless times, so there was no need for me to worry.

After the street party it was time for our lunch reservation at The Crystal Palace where we would meet Winnie the Pooh and friends. James and I loved the food and both kids loved meeting all of the characters!

First we met Piglet...

Then Eeyore...

And Tigger...

And finally, Pooh...

After lunch, we headed back to the resort for naptime. When we came back, we rode the WDW Railroad over to Frontier Land...

We hopped off and walked to Fantasy Land to use our Fastpass for Peter Pan. After that we headed over to Tomorrow Land for dinner at Cosmic Ray's Starlight Cafe. The kids had so much fun dancing with each other before and after dinner...

When the were dancing outside after we ate, we heard another street party starting, so we walked over and Charlotte and I danced for a couple of minutes. Then we found this sweet couple to take our picture with the castle...

...or at least part of it.

We headed over to ride the Tomorrowland Transit Authority People Mover, and honestly, I thought this was going to be really lame, but it turned out to be such a cool attraction! It took you through every ride in Tomorrow Land...

Hunter and Charlotte were both really scared when we went into Space Mountain because it was so dark (and Hunter kept thinking we were going to have to ride Space Mountain everytime the man on the speaker talked about it). It was pitch black in there, but I thought I'd take a picture just to see what Hunter's face looked like...

Looks like James was a little scared, too:)

Then we rode Buzz's Space Ranger spin one more time with a Fastpass we'd picked up earlier and headed over to Adventure Land to check out the Swiss Family Treehouse...

My advice would be not to visit this attraction unless your kids are big fans of Swiss Family Robinson or stairs. Actually, my kids both love stairs and they were not too keen on this "treehouse". You climb a TON of stairs and you get to look in different rooms that have been set up to look just like Swiss Family Robinson, but you can't go in or touch anything inside. I had gotten it confused with Tom Sawyer Island and told Hunter he would get to play once we got to the top. You can imagine what he thought when we got to the top and just turned around to go back down.

So we quickly headed over to Frontier Land to see Tom Sawyer Island. Unfortunately, I had forgotten that it closed at sunset, so we weren't able to go. Nothing a Mickey Pretzel, Churros, and a Sprite couldn't fix, though! So we shared a snack, and then headed back to Tomorrow Land.

I hadn't planned on riding Astro Orbiter because I thought it would be too scary for the kids, but when Hunter saw it during our People Mover ride, he asked if we could go on it, so we got in line. This was the 1 exception to our short wait time. We had to wait for 30 minutes, and Char had some interesting ways of entertaining herself during our wait...

Finally it was our turn, so we loaded our spaceships and we were off...

I took literally 5 self-portraits of us with Char's eyes like this...

...before I got this one...

It went pretty fast, but both kids loved it! It was so cool to be able to look out at Tomorrow Land and the castle all lit up at night. (You have to take an elevator up to the ride, so it's elevated over the rest of the attractions.)

We found a spot in Tomorrow Land to watch Wishes. Charlotte handled the fireworks a little better this time...

And Hunter loved them just as much as the night before.

James and I were both a little sad as we walked out of the park that night, because we knew we wouldn't be back to Magic Kingdom this trip...but we knew we'd be back one day, so that helped a little:)

Our favorites from Day 2 at Magic Kingdom:

James - Astro Orbiter

Carole - Street Party

Hunter - Astro Orbiter

Charlotte - dancing at the Street Party