Day 1 - Magic Kingdom - 11/28/2019

Day 1 @ Disney Magic Kingdom – Orlando, Florida:

We planned this trip on the week ending of Thanks Giving. Surprisingly, this was more like a last minute plan. The initial idea was to do the beaches and have a rest-o-cation but turned out to be a really hectic Disney World trip. It was a 5 day trip from Nov, 28th until Dec, 2nd. We had a wonderful yet tiring experience and we did so much over there that i felt it has to be blogged and wouldn’t be fair to just post pictures on social media without explaining about the parks we visited. I write this blog for audiences like

·    For my people back in India who need more details about the parks than just the photos. It wouldn’t make sense to just bombard them with tons of pictures that we took.

·    To my friends and acquaintances here in US who haven’t visited Disney World yet, this can help them in the littlest way possible, but not for a thorough reference. There are wonderful travel blogs out there to serve the purpose.

·    To my friends who love to read my blogs

·    And to my girl to read this when she grows older to take in my perspective of our Disney World trip. I think she will have a good laugh J

In my honest opinion, a trip to Orlando to visit the Disney World is an expensive affair, especially, if you are planning to cover most of it in one trip. We booked our tickets through a third party vendor visitorlando.com to get over a $100 discount on the tickets. In total, it costed us over $1300 just for the park tickets for 5 days. There are several options to get the Disney world tickets. You can even buy the tickets on reaching the park but you can’t make the best out of fastpass+ option if you buy tickets on the day of arrival at the park. And similarly you can plan visit in several ways like multiple parks in a day, 1 park a day, 4 parks in 4 days and many more options.

Disney World has 6 parks in total (4 theme parks + 2 water parks).

1.     Magic Kingdom

2.     Hollywood Studios

3.     EPCOT(Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow)

4.     Animal Kingdom(my favorite J)

5.     Typhoon lagoon – Water park

6.     Blizzard beach – Water park

We planned for 4 parks in 5 days and skipped the water parks. I have noticed mostly people skip the water parks during their Orlando theme park visits, but may be in future I would plan a trip only to cover the water parks in Orlando. Water is equally fun.

A year back we visited universal studios during the Christmas week and we all 3 had so much fun. According to us, Universal studios is a 5/5 and worth every penny you spend for the trip to visit it. I should have blogged about my visit to Universal Studios last year, especially about the Harry potter world which literally brought tears to my eyes being an ardent fan of the book, the movie and the author and to relive the memories of the book in reality, but I failed to write about the experience. I would say I had the best time of my life when I was there at universal studios last year. So it raised the bars for our Disney World trip. And you will hear my verdict towards the end of my blog.

Now getting back to the itinerary, We had a 8 AM flight from Nashville TN to Orlando,FL on 11/28. We took the Frontier Airlines, which is like our new go-to flight option for most of our trips. They offer some of the cheapest flight options in the country and you should be lucky enough to have Frontier operating out of the airport nearest to you. We haven’t had any bad experiences with them so far, except for a cancelled flight due to bad weather. But it wasn’t their fault J. It’s actually a 1 and half hour flight to Orlando from Nashville TN, but due to the time zone difference we reached an hour later, when landed. The weather was amazing. It felt like summer, somewhere in 80F. Was a great relief from the Nashville's coldest winter.

Above:At the airport. Waiting for the boarding call while sipping over frappucino with sprinkles from Starbucks

 

Above: Orlando bloom(ing) out of the clouds.. Get it??? 😃

We booked a room with Exploria express for our 5 days stay. We got that as well at an amazing deal and the room was fantastic. The first day upon landing at Orlando, we picked our car from priceline rentals and headed straight to Magic Kingdom. There was a huge delay at the rental office as they added additional charges for different insurance coverages during the pickup, so the rent was way higher than what was estimated during the booking. Venmani had to spend a lot of time bringing up e-mails and their policies/agreements in the company websites to convince them and deduct the additional charges. So that kind of added to the delay.

Before I start about our experience at the park, I should write about the Disney World App. This app is the best thing that could happen to the visitors visiting the parks. It’s available for Android and iPhone users at app store. The parks are massive with lot of attractions to keep you entertained and tired at the same time. This app has everything you need to navigate inside the park, book fastpass+ passes and entertain yourself with games while waiting for your turn in the long lines for the rides. Fastpass+ is an option where you can pre-book a time slot for certain high rated attractions/rides before arriving at the park to bypass the long lines. This will help especially for rides like the flight of passage, Slinky dog dash, Himalayan roller coaster and so on. You are allowed 3 fastpass+ passes with your ticket for a day. People who really want to make the best use of the fastpass+ passes usually buy their tickets a month ahead and book their spot for fastpass+ way ahead of time. That way they are guaranteed a spot if they are able to make it on time to the attraction in the slot reserved for them. This is a very good option and helped us cut through the biggest wait time of 195 minutes for flight of passage (will discuss more about this on day5).

So on reaching Magic Kingdom you have 2 options, to either ride the mono rail or to take the ferry to reach the entrance of the park. Upon arrival, your bags will be checked and you need to scan your ticket card with the barcode/wrist band(the magic band-if you buy the tickets at Disney world site) and you will be checked in.

I will be sharing the experience of the rides/attractions that we loved the most in the parks, rather than rating every one of it. Again all the Disney world parks had rides for all ages, so what we didn’t like, might be preferred by parents with smaller kids. There were many rides we skipped because they were for smaller age groups. And Aditi at 7 prefers all the thrill rides with big drops. In that aspect Magic kingdom disappointed us. There were very few thrill rides for older kids but we loved the meet and greet sessions with the characters which was spread all over the park.

The first thing that caught my eye on entering the park was the blue roofed ‘Cinderella Castle’. This is the castle you will see in the opening frame of every movie under Disney productions, a sign in their label. Having seen it only on screens and photographs all these years, it was indeed a magical moment for me, when it emerged right in front of my eyes, as we entered the park. We took a million photos around the castle in the first couple of hours itself. Couldn’t resist having it in the backdrop in all my pictures.

Next up, We were right on time for the Disney festival of fantasy parade which starts around 2 PM. The unbridled enchantment and vivid pageantry of Fantasyland marched its way through the park in a thrilling parade spectacular. We found a spot right around the circle near the castle. Aditi mounted on Venmani’s shoulders to get a wonderful view of the parade. It was a spell bounding experience, watching life size floaters and characters in their extravagant costumes performing while marching right before your eyes. The kids went screaming for some of their favorite Disney characters and princesses when they appeared on the parade. It was a good 30 minute spectacle.

 

 

 

Before visiting the park, I got this picture book for Aditi. This had all the Disney characters in it. And Magic kingdom is known for its plenty of meets and greets. Aditi was too excited to meet the princesses and to get their autographs in this book. There was a long wait time to meet the princesses. We managed to meet all the famous onesJ. For me the girls who were dressed up like the princesses looked like the real princesses from the movies. They received each of the kid with the warmest hugs and smiles and took them to the spotlight for more pictures. They also shared some real good thoughts with the kids.

Below are the pictures we took with the princesses/Disney characters and their autographs. These are the pictures from meet and greet interactions from all the 4 parks, though Magic kingdom and EPCOT had most of it.

One of the interactions that was really fascinating was the Enchanted tales with Belle. This is a very different concept for an attraction, where the kids are called out to participate in a small play interacting with Belle the princess from Beauty and the Beast. Kids from the audience are called and are given a role to play in the Beauty and the Beast Story. Belle herself was part of the play and the kids had a wonderful time interacting with her and receiving a book mark from her at the end of the play. Aditi had the opportunity to play the Beast but she got scared. She backed out and picked a different role, but eventually we learnt that had she played the beast, she could have danced with Belle, later in the play. She missed a wonderful opportunity, but did a great job playing her part as one of the silverwaresJ.

Then we used our fastpass+ option to do the Big Thunder Mountain rail road. This is a roller coaster for kids and adults. This one did not have any big drops, just medium ones but was really fast. It was an outdoor roller coaster and was a fun ride. Kids like Aditi who likes the rides being fast and furious would love it.

Later in the day the Cinderella castle was lit with hundreds of lights and looked very much like the castle from the Frozen movie. This lighting on the castle is a special event marking the holiday season, so i would consider this a seasonal special. There was also a crescent moon and a star in the night sky adjacent to the peak of the castle, that made it even more beautiful. 

The temperature started to drop later in the evining and the light jacket we all carried really helped. I planned our outfits in such a way this time around to handle the heat and the cold of the day. We had our dinner at Starlight cafe and had a wonderful view of the Cinderalla castle lit for the festive season from there.

I didn’t enjoy any other rides from our Day 1 at the park. But then the firework spectacle at night, blew my mind. Happily ever After and Once upon a time is a back to back firework display and castle show in the dark. Together it was roughly around 45 minutes. And the firework display is like something I have never witnessed in my life before. Definitely not  some 4^th of July kind of fireworks, this was way beyond imagination. They used an amazing state-of-the art projection technology to orchestrate the firework with the theme and the story projected on the Cinderella castle. It wasn’t just the fireworks but laser lights, visuals effects on the castle and the sound effects made it even more amazing. It really had a big impact on adults and kids around us and they were left astound by the end of the show. Certainly that’s a classic way to bring Day1 to an end. Below are some of the clips from ‘Happily ever after’ and ‘Once upon a time’, which we captured. Again this is not something you get to witness on everyday of your visits. Happily ever after and Once upon a time is scheduled only on select nights, so plan your trip accordingly if you don’t want to miss this.

After the firework we reached the hotel room around mid-night. We all were super tired. Could feel every muscle in the body aching from the walk in the park. Took a warm bath and headed straight to bed for yet another long day to be followed.