We visited Magic Kingdom today, weather hot and very,very humid. When you arrive you’re instantly aware just how huge the park is as you have to take a reasonably long tram ride from the car parks, to the ticket office. Here we collected our park passes and to our surprise had to take a monorail to the main park entrance, which annoyed Luke as we quite excited and couldn’t believe “we weren’t there yet” ! Once down main street we walked past the brass band and dancing characters welcoming the public to another Disney day of fun, to what Matty dubbed quite aptly “the roundabout”. This is a large circular area which was pretty much the link between the different zones in the park we headed for Space Mountain, pausing at Monsters Inc Laughter show. The laughter show wasn’t bad but the boys are older now (than whenthe film was released) and as such some of the “joining in” and humour was below Matty who refused to wave his hands or to scream or laugh on demand.
We all rode on Space Mountain, Luke thought it was scary but fun. He says he’d go on it again if we went back for the night parade later in the week (Proof of the pudding, in the eating I think!).
Overall the queues were not too bad at about 50 minutes per ride. Considering how many more cars are parked in the car park than at Alton Towers or Chessington the rides are not too busy, as the queue times are comparable.
Later in the day while we were waiting for Woody and Jessie’s autographs (Luke is collecting), it began to rain. The toys (that’s how the park guide refer to Woody and Jessie) were lovely and signed his book and let him Lizzie take a picture of Luke with them, before they retreated out of the rain. Having ridden Splash Mountain before pausing to obtain the autographs, we continued our quest for more rides, walking around the corner to Big Thunder Mountain (runaway mine train). We just about got ourselves under cover and it tipped it down. The kind of rain where you expect to end up drenched in just a few minutes. If it’d been Scotland the wind would also have been blowing and the rain would have been coming down sideways!! Luckily we were inside, however the rain storm was so very heavy it stopped the ride. We all sat in the queue line and most people had a siesta, which was weird. I’m not sure if you can detect the rain, the train is empty as they’re testing breaking times due to the torrential rain storm.
An hour later the rain stopped and the ride started again, the queue moved pretty quick and we rode the mine train within about 10 minutes. We walked back to a couple of other rides and the left the park (5:30pm local time).
By the time we had driven all down International Drive and found some food (Dominos Pizza) it was 7:00pm. Still tired and confused from the 5 hour time difference / jet lag we headed back to hotel, munch pizza, brushed teeth and bed.