Disney Day 6 & 7: Rest and Magic Kingdom Again!

*All of these Disney World posts have been long, but this one is MEGA long. Sorry about that :-)!

Day six of our vacation was Wednesday, February 6th. I had scheduled this day as our second "rest" day, knowing that we'd need a little break in the middle of the week. It worked out perfectly that we didn't have any set plans since we had been out so late the night before. And I didn't take ANY photos this day. ZERO. Oh well, I'll just narrate the day to you without photos :-(. 

Chris actually did have plans and had a very early morning this day. Ross loves to golf, and had scheduled golf outings on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of the trip. He invited Chris to join him in golfing on Wednesday morning. I think they seriously left the suite at like 6:00am, but the kids and I slept in!

Saratoga Springs (the resort where we stayed) is pretty large. Our suite was toward the back of the resort and pretty much backed right up to Village Lake (it was only separated from the lake by a bit of woods). On the other side of Village Lake is Downtown Disney, which was completely within walking distance of our suite (there is a bridge that crosses the lake). 

After getting up and ready for the day, the kids and I grabbed some breakfast and walked over to Downtown Disney with Tia. We didn't really have anything specific we wanted to do there, so we casually walked around and did a bit of shopping. I let Brianna and Brenson both pick out one souvenir, and we also did the "build a Mr. Potato Head" thing at Once Upon a Toy. Brianna picked a set of princesses for her souvenir while Brenson chose a plush Tramp dog from Lady and the Tramp. And he LOVES that Tramp and always sleeps with him. 

It was a great, leisurely morning where we just mosied around Downtown Disney and really enjoyed ourselves. For lunch, we decided to eat at The Earl of Sandwich in Downtown Disney, and the guys met us there after their golf outing. Can I just say that I'm a little obsessed with that place? The sandwich I had was seriously the BEST sandwich I've EVER had. Ever. I could have eaten all of our remaining meals there and been so happy! 

As soon as we finished eating, Tia and I walked back to our suite and took their rental car to the outlet mall for an afternoon of shopping. And it was soooo nice to do a little bit of kid-free shopping. That's a very rare occurrence for me, and while we were only out for a few hours, it was great. Chris and Ross took the kids to ride the carousel in DD, then headed back to the suite for naptime. 

We had already decided that we were cooking in that night (we had a baked potato bar and baked chicken . . . it was SUPER yummy!), so when Tia and I got back to the suite we pretty much immediately started dinner. The kids got up from nap and were acting wild, crazy, and CRANKY. It was a bit much in our little suite, so Chris finally took them to a park on Saratoga property so Tia and I could finish dinner. Oh, we also made brownies from a mix that Tia had purchased at the Ghirardelli store in DD and they were amazing. As soon as we finished dinner, we gave the kids baths and put them back to bed. Poor babies were tuckered out and we knew we had two long and busy days ahead of us. 

On Thursday, February 7th (vacation day seven), Magic Kingdom had an Extra Magic Hour that morning (where resort guests can get into the park an hour before it officially opens for the day), so Chris and I had already decided we were heading back there and getting there EARLY. I think we ended up actually walking into the park at about 8:15am. We actually planned to get there earlier, but the monorail was crazy busy that morning and we had to wait like 20 minutes to get on it. 

As soon as we got in the park, we had this fun family photo taken:

The above photo was a photopass photo that we purchased. The one below is one that we had the same photopass photographer take with our camera. Love them both!

I reeeeally wanted to do Enchanted Tales with Belle first as we hadn't met her yet and she is my favorite princess :-). So, we headed straight through Cinderella's Castle to New Fantasyland to meet Belle!

The view of Main Street, U.S.A. from Cinderella's Castle (on the left side of the photo, right in front of the little area with grass and trees is where we stood to watch the fireworks on Tuesday night):

Looking up at the castle from directly in front of it:

So, the plan was to see Belle, but when we got there (at 8:25am!) the wait was already 75 minutes! Ummm, what?!? We hadn't even seen that kind of wait time on any ride at any park during our trip. As much as I wanted to meet Belle, I just did not have it in me to wait that long first thing in the morning.

Instead, we headed over to Under the Sea: Journey of the Little Mermaid where the wait was 10 minutes. MUCH better!

This was another ride where you ride in seashells. After the Nemo debacle at EPCOT, I didn't know how Brianna would do. However, she did great and LOVED this ride. It was only that Nemo ride that she hated, haha!

We all rode together in one shell, which was nice!

This was one of my favorite movies as a kid. 

Although now I think Ariel was a real brat, haha!

Scary Ursula!

One of my favorite scenes from the movie!

Most of New Fantasyland was still under construction while we were there. I think the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train will be so fun when it opens. This photo is of Beast's Castle (back over where Maurice's Cottage and Enchanted Tales with Belle is located), and the construction on the left of the photo is the Mine Train. Oh, and it kept threatening to rain on us this day, and actually did just a bit. It didn't slow us down though!

We weren't planning on standing in line at Ariel's Grotto to meet Ariel since we had already met her the day before at our castle lunch. However, Brianna was disappointed that we didn't meet mermaid Ariel (because we had met human Ariel) and really wanted to meet her. The wait was 45 minutes, and Chris was not on board with waiting that long. I reminded him that this trip wasn't really about us (completely, I mean we for sure had a great time, too), and we waited. I figured if one 45 minute wait was all we had to do the entire trip, then we were doing GREAT!

Brianna thought Ariel's hair was so beautiful.

I look so tired in some of these pics! Brenson loved Ariel's fin, and we had a hard time getting him to look up for a photo.

Thank you, Daddy, for waiting for us!

After meeting Ariel, we walked back by Enchanted Tales with Belle where the wait was now 90 minutes! Ridiculous!!! We passed it by and headed over to ride Prince Charming's Regal Carrousel again. Then, we went to check out Mickey's PhilharMagic. We really had no idea what this was, but we had heard that it was a must-see.

Brenson looked so cute in his 3D glasses! Before I had a chance to take any more photos, we were shuffled into the theater to sit down. We couldn't have timed it better!

We all LOVED Mickey's PhilharMagic, and I wish that we would have done it a second time! It was such a cute 3D show, and I especially loved that water splashed on us and the air filled with smells of what we were seeing. SO neat!

We hadn't taken a potty break or had a snack all morning, so as soon as PhilharMagic was over, we busted out the snacks and headed to the bathrooms. On the way there, we noticed that there was a small line to meet Cinderella's Ugly Stepsisters. Yes, please!

Anastasia and Drizella were so funny. They bickered with each other (arguing about whose hairbows was the prettiest . . . they finally decided it was Brianna's!) and then pouted because Bri was cuter than them :-). 

Anastasia is having Brianna congratulate Drizella on having the ugliest dress and hairbow. Bri totally DID NOT know what to think!

She finally said, "Those ugly sisters are mean girls but they were nice to me" haha! Don't you love how they never break character?!?

We headed over to Liberty Square next to try and meet Princess Tiana. We thought we might as well get all the princess meeting checked off the list! We found her meeting spot fairly easily (thanks to an app on Chris's phone), but she wasn't there and wouldn't be back for 45 minutes. We ended up walking around Frontierland and even listened to some live (banjo!) music for a while. We had just gotten in line to meet Tiana (she wasn't back yet, but the line was forming) when we noticed the Move It! Shake It! Celebrate It! parade going down Main Street. Chris took Brianna over to see the parade while Bren and I hung out in line. 

He was in the sweetest mood that morning and was being so cute!

Happy to be out of the stroller!

We saw this constantly while at Disney World. So curious!

Handsome man was hamming it up for Mommy! The little scratch below his eye happened the evening before when he was acting crazy in our suite. It was what actually prompted the trip to the playground!

Tiana arrived about the same time that Chris and Brianna got back. Perfect timing!

They had quite the little chat before posing for a photo.

My girl is a hugger and had to hug allllllll the characters she met.

It was lunchtime by now, so we headed to Main Street, U.S.A. to find something to eat. We ended up eating at Casey's Corner which is a cute vintage baseball themed place that served hot dogs, corn dog nuggets, and fries. It hit the spot!

Brianna was impressed by The Magic Carpets of Aladdin, so after lunch we went over to Adventureland and rode that ride. The Magic Carpets, Dumbo, and Triceratop Spin are all essentially the same ride with a different theme, and Brianna LOVED them all. 

There wasn't enough room for us all to ride in one carpet!

As soon as we finished with Aladdin, we headed toward the front of the park to exit. On the way out, we saw that there was no waiting to meet Mickey at the Town Square Theater, so we stopped and quickly did that.

My kiddos just think Mickey is great.

So cute!

It was pushing 2:00pm by this time and Brenson had completely skipped his morning nap. Because of this, the minute we put the kids back in the stroller to head to the car, Bren fell asleep. This completely changed our plans. We knew that while he would probably sleep through exiting the park, taking the monorail to parking, walking to the car, and riding back to the suite, there is no way that he would transfer to the pack n play after all that and nap at the suite. So, if Bren wasn't going to be napping, what was the point in going back? Especially since it's such a big hassle to leave and return to MK. 

We decided to just stay at the park and let the kids nap in the stroller. Ideal? No. BUT, we thought it was the best option at the time. We walked around for just about 5 minutes, and Brianna fell asleep, too. Then, we just parked the stroller in the shade by the Town Square Theater, sat down next to it on the curb, and had a Coke :-). It actually felt really good to just sit for a while. We also used this time to go through our map of MK and decide what attractions we had left to do. We marked them as must-dos, if-we-have-times, and we-could-pass. We wanted to make sure we left with no regrets!

After about an hour, Brianna woke up ready to go! Bren was still sleeping though, so we decided to ride the Walt Disney World Railroad around the entire park. Brenson actually slept through the whole ride, and it was really fun to see the whole park from that point of view (it's raised so you look down on all the attractions!)

When we got off of the train, we were back close to the Town Square Theater. In addition to Mickey Mouse, there was also several princesses that you could meet there. The wait time to meet the princesses was 60 minutes, BUT we could get a fastpass for it. After grabbing the fastpass, we headed back over to Fantasyland to see about riding The Barnstormer.

The Barnstormer had a 60 minute wait, but we grabbed a fastpass for that as well. Someone had told us (and I don't know if this is true or not) that you could only have one fastpass at a time. However, we had used my ticket for the princess fastpass and Chris's ticket for The Barnstormer fastpass (I wasn't riding The Barnstormer), so it worked out great for us.

While we were waiting for our fastpass times, we headed inside Pete's Silly Sideshow to meet a few more characters. We burned this day up with all the character meetings!

We met Daisy first . . . and she was dressed as a fortune teller (boooo!). This section of Fantasyland is themed like a carnival, so these characters go along with that.

The kids were fairly unimpressed with Daisy.

The lighting in this building was terrible. 

After Daisy, we met Minnie. She was so cute here!

Can you tell that Brianna was totally tired of taking photos?!?

Brenson was walking just a few steps at a time while we were at Disney World, but he walked to see Minnie!

Cute!

Daisy and Minnie were on one side of the room, while Goofy and Donald were on the other side. When we got in line to see Goofy, Brianna just sat down and crossed her legs. SO tired of standing in line!

The Great Goofini danced with Brianna!

Hugging, of course!

She was concerned about the oil spot on his pants and had to ask him about it :-).

Chris hugged Goofini for some reason? Haha, I'm not really sure what was going on here.

We actually skipped meeting Donald since we had already met him twice and he was also dressed as some sort of fortune teller. Instead, we headed back over to the Town Square Theater to meet some princesses! If it seems like we did a lot of jumping around from one area of the park to another, we did. It was a TON of walking and my legs were SUPER tired by the time we got back to the suite that night. 

We actually randomly ran into my friend, Sean, and his crew again while meeting the princesses. Craziness!

First up was Cinderella. It was nice to actually spend a little time with her!

Here is a short video of the kids meeting Cinderella.

We also got to meet Rapunzel!

Telling Rapunzel who she is:

Brenson LOVED Rapunzel. He cried when we took him away from her.

I wanted a photo with her, too!

And finally, we met Aurora for the third time. 

She was asking Brianna if she had been a good girl at Disney World.

I love that Bri didn't realize that she was meeting different Auroras.

As soon as we were finished meeting princesses, we booked it back over to The Barnstormer. We had to make sure Bri was tall enough to ride. Sure enough, she barely made the cut!

Chris is the person in white that you can see in the photo!

Brianna loved her first roller coaster. Daddy finally has a riding partner! Of course, for now he'll have to stick to the kiddie coasters :-).

I was wanting to ride the teacups again, so after The Barnstormer (and a snack break), we did that. Again, I was SO thankful that we were there during a low crowd time because that enabled us to really pack a lot of things in.

We had passed the Tomorrowland Speedway several times, and Brianna was very interested in it. So, Daddy decided that they needed to ride. 

He let Brianna be the driver! He said that she jerked the car around so much he nearly got sick, haha!

Seeing her behind the wheel was a sight I was not ready for!

While Daddy and Bri were "racing", Brenson fell asleep in the stroller (again!). We ended up just walking around for a bit and snacking (because it was dinnertime and none of us wanted real food) while he rested. He woke up after only about 30 minutes, but it was just in time for us to do Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor. The Laugh Floor was one of those things that I wasn't really interested in, but ended up being one of my favorite attractions! It was legit SO funny. I usually think "comedy" type things are just stupid, but I actually laughed out loud multiple times in this one!

By this time, it was about 6:30pm, and we were finished with all the attractions that we wanted to do this day. After our bad experience with the fireworks show a few days before, we knew for sure we would not be staying for that again. However, the electrical parade was scheduled to begin at 7:00pm, and we thought it would be fun to stay for that. 

The castle was so pretty at dusk. I love that you can see all those balloons in the lower left-hand corner of the photo. Castmembers were walking around with GIGANTIC balloon bouquets trying to sell the balloons. It all added to the atmosphere.

We found a nice spot on the curb and waited for the show to begin. Main Street, U.S.A. looked so pretty!

At 7:00pm sharp, the parade began!

We had no idea what to expect, but were pretty impressed.

So fun!

I ended up holding Bren almost the entire time as he couldn't see from the stroller. Poor dude was SO sleepy. Look at that face :-(.

Alice in Wonderland!

Brianna loved Cinderella's carriage, of course.

Even Cinderella was all lit up.

The dancing and the energy was just so fun. We were extremely glad we stayed for it!

Peter Pan!

The dwarfs were so cute!

I think this was Pete's Dragon or something? I can't remember. The float behind this one was the last float of the parade.

Getting out of the park after the parade wasn't nearly as bad as it was after the fireworks. It did start to rain on us, so we put our ponchos on and kept truckin'. The wait for the monorail was probably about 25ish minutes. Brenson got super fussy in the stroller, so while we were standing in line (on the ramp) for the monorail, we took him out of the stroller only to discover that he was covered in poop. Covered. All of his clothes had to be changed and the stroller wiped down - the works - and all while we were in a moving line! The best part was that so many parents standing around us felt for us and really helped us out. We had people giving us wipes, sanitizer, ziplock bags for his soiled clothes, helping us wipe everything down, etc. They all just kept saying, "Hey, we've been there" and it actually turned into a pretty entertaining situation. It would have been a whole lot funnier had it not been my kid, but we did get to interact with a whole lot of nice people, haha!

We immediately put the kids to bed after getting back to the suite, then spent a little time watching TV together until Ross and Tia got back from their day at Universal. Then, the four of us hung out for several hours just visiting and having fun. We stayed up waaaaay too late, but it's actually one of my favorite memories from the trip. 

Whew! Thursday was definitely our loooooong day, so tomorrow's post should be a little shorter than this one!