You can see part 1 of our MK day here!
We had a very, very short nap at the room. I struggle with having to wake my kids up when they are exhausted but the park was calling so we had to go 😉
Parking was further back being later in the day which I don’t understand why they don’t let you go look for closer parking? Maybe it’s to keep everything organized? We hopped on the ferry to head to MK to finish out our day!
No one minded, too much, being woken early from nap!
(and I was thankful for that downtime to try to re-work our schedule for the rest of the day)
One of my favorite things about Disney Days are getting to hold Kye’s hand so much throughout the parks!
We had a fastpass for Jungle Cruise so we headed there first thing! It was super nice having the fast pass as the wait was well over an hour. We knew we were in a bit of trouble seeing the huge crowd of people entering the park at the same time we were!
We had a 5:00 fast pass for the boys to ride Splash Mountain and the wait for Pirates (which we’d plan to do next) was WAY too long so we decided to do a “shorter line” item from our list. Phillarmagic is a must-do every visit for us so we went ahead and went there since it’s typically a shorter wait time.
If you ever had to wait in line at Phillarmagic keep an eye out because there are TONS of Hidden Mickeys!
From there the boys headed to Splash!
While the guys were at Splash Mountain the girls and I had planned to ride The Little Mermaid. I pushed that double stroller from Phillarmagic to stinking Little Mermaid to discover that the wait time was 65 minutes. 65!!! My app said it was like a 25 min wait. Just further proof that everything was kinda off kilter this day in regards to the crowds. I felt super, super bad bc the girls were all excited but I also knew there was just no way we could wait in that line.
So how do you compromise? You say “lets get a picture with Ariel!” and then explain that they can pick another ride 😉
So we ended up BACK at Phillarmagic. And yall. The line was OUT THE DOORS. Seriously that has never, ever happened to me ever. We’ve maybe only ever had to wait outside the actual theater door holding area ONCE. But this time we were out passed the theater holding area, passed all the lines inside the building, and at the end of the outdoor line area. I knew it was gonna be awhile but I was stuck because I couldn’t let them down twice!!! Here they are being silly in line 🙂 I’m super thankful that ALL of our kids do SO WELL in a line situation!
Whoop whoop!
The boys were finished well before we were so they went ahead and used their rider swap from earlier in the day to ride Thunder Mountain again. Then they hopped in line at the carousel to wait for us when we exited. I would have probably skipped the carousel due to the crowds (and we can always ride the one at Wild Adventures) but we’d passed it so many times that day and poor Tess really wanted to ride it. Since we had to skip Dumbo we could at least ride the horseys for her 🙂 It does go to show how spoiled we are with never dealing with major crowd issues because our kids were disappointed that they couldn’t ride any horse they wanted haha Usually we’re used to being able to pick and choose which horse 😉
Poor sad child who is at Disney World yet didn’t get to ride the exact horse they wanted (#sarcasm…yall know I don’t do well with any sort of entitlement attitude)
And after all that waiting for the ride Tess wanted…she didn’t want to get on the horse haha #toddlerlife
Once the ride started it was like we had two brand new daughters on our hands! Happy as could be!
And this kid doesn’t let anything steal his joy on his birthday!
Someday I’d like to plan to watch the little show at the Sword and the Stone. I’ve never watched it before? I know that the stone DOES actually come out of the stone and it would freak our kids OUT if it happened to them! They try every visit but, so far, no luck!
We tried to go with the itinerary the best we could for the day. During naps I had dropped down a lot of the things we’d planned on doing and tried to stick with stuff the kids really, really loved or stuff we hadn’t done in awhile. I’ve heard some strong rumors that they will be doing away with Tomorrowland Speedway. Which is needed and I personally won’t be too sad to see it go. But since we don’t know when we’ll be back as a little family to MK I wanted to make sure we had one last run of it just in case it does disappear! Both big kids really, really love it! It’s a pretty awful line to wait in b/c there is no part of it that is inside. All outdoors for the whole thing and you’re hearing the sounds of the cars the whole time. We waited a good 30 minutes but, again, the kids did great! Rock, Paper, Scissors helped 😉
One positive thing about waiting in long lines is that you will be EXTRA pumped for the ride once it’s finally your turn haha I had THE most fun on this ride. We all three actually wished we could ride again. I trained the girls in the art of being a “woo girl” haha We would shout out things we saw and then throw our hands in the air and yell “WOOOO!” It was awesome and so fun!
A GREAT event that there is NEVER much of a crowd for is the Incredibles Dance Party. It’s super fun and super chill and we all love it (well minus Zach who hates dancing). I have three videos: 1, 2, and 3. It can be a quick stop or a longer stop depending on your agenda (or how tired you are haha)!
Since we ate lunch at Be Our Guest I had planned for us to grab something quick for Zach and I and we packed the kids dinner. My plan was to find a spot to sit and then just stay there for Wishes. Wishes is leaving in May for good so I wanted to make sure we had a GOOD viewing spot of it this time since we won’t be back as a little family again before it leaves!
It was a bit of a cluster. It was SO CROWDED that it was hard to walk. Legit. Zach wanted a hot dog from Casey’s (first time having one and now it’s a favorite for sure for him!) and I wanted a pretzel from Tomorrowland so I kept the girls and got what I wanted and then went to meet Zach to find the spot to sit. We weren’t able to get in touch with each other and trying to find each other was impossible. Next time we will have a pre-decided meeting place 😉 He thought I was finding a spot to sit and I thought I was supposed to try to find him and then all find a spot to sit together haha. Like I said…it was a cluster.
We finally got to sit and finally got to eat. And even cold…it was still SUPER yummy. We realized this trip that Kye is a lot like Zach and truly ENJOYS food. I think we need to start factoring in buying legit food for him while on these trips rather than packing all the time. He really wanted to get something so he got the mini corn dog bites and said he loved them too 🙂
Even in all the chaos. Even on the most crowded day at the parks we’ve ever experienced in our trips. I was still just SO HAPPY. I told Kye that there was no where I’d rather be in that moment except right where I was. I guess it just really does show that my love for Disney runs deep and that no matter the circumstances, it’s MY place. We’ve had some tough emotional stuff going on the past few months and it was such a perfectly timed escape. I felt the stress and anxiety and emotional overload ness just completely wash away while being there.
Zach would def not agree with this haha if I’d said “let’s go” at this point of the night (and probably even earlier!) he’d totally be down to get out of there.
Are these glow in the dark crowns not SO CUTE?!?! Walmart find!
Watching Tinkerbelle fly and Wishes!
We had the PERFECT view of her!!!
Kye was super tired and struggled to stand the whole time and it was just a sweet moment where he wanted his mama. I love snuggling him and love that even though he’s 8 now that he still wants ME 🙂
I had him stand in the stroller and lean on me so he didn’t have to fully stand. Sweet moment with my sweet, sweet boy.
(Yes, I cried)
(Yes, I may have tears now while typing this)
Of course this girl couldn’t let me be away for too long from her 😉
We hadn’t gotten to meet Talking Mickey on our last visit and I really wanted to this time! We went right when Wishes ended and lucked out when a cast member took us on a little short cut. We bi-passed a TON of the crowds and didn’t wait too long at all to meet Mickey! I took three videos: 1, 2 and 3. We have had him sing Happy Birthday in the past and, of course, it being Kye’s actually birthday we were hoping for that to happen again. But it didn’t. I think us having so many kids makes it hard for cast members to always recognize pins and such! Kye was gracious about it though and was still happy with the meet and greet 🙂
We did a bathroom break and then hopped in line for Tinkerbelle. She was a SUPER short wait (like I was yelling for Zach to hurry from the potty to make it!) which worked out great and she’s one who Tess hadn’t met yet either! She and Mickey both stop meeting and greeting at 10 so I think being so close to the end of their times helped us get in quickly. I do think the rushed feeling took away some from our Mickey experience but we were probably some of the very last people Tinkerbelle met that night and she was AWESOME. She didn’t seemed rushed one bit and soaked us in and was really such a great experience! I have two videos of her (sidnote but Britt is VERY specific with who she lets sign her letters for her room and WHERE she wants them to sign which is pretty hilarious): 1 and 2.
Tess’s most talked about ride from her first visit to Disney has been Pirates. Random, right? But she talks about it a lot and how she wants to ride it again. With the crowds as insane as they were I pushed it to the very end of the night. Typically the park clears out a TON after Wishes ends (I mean we’re always the people leaving at that point too!) so I assumed we’d run over to Pirates (which is more of a long walk over than a run) hop on, ride, head home.
Welllllll. We got there and the line was filled to the brim inside and started in the outdoor line area. Again, a first time experience for us. Zach wanted to leave but he also didn’t want to make the call on that. It was one of those moments where he wanted ME to want to leave. Which, duh, I didn’t want to. The kids were pumped for pirates. We’d just walked all that way from Main Street to get there. We asked the kids and they all agreed they wanted to wait, no matter how long the line took. Typically I always try to revolve Disney planning around Zach as much as possible. I’m going to be happy no matter what b/c I’m at Disney! But if I work things out where he’s also happy, then I’m even happier too 🙂 But this was not a time where things were how Zach would prefer them. Sometimes you can’t control everything and I couldn’t control the unexpected crowds or the under predicted wait times (even on our walk over to Pirates the apps all said around a 20 min wait! LIES!). I couldn’t have the kids end their night (or Kye end his birthday) on a negative note. Zach’s options he gave me were either leave the park or wait in the line for the ride. So we waited.
And guys. Let’s remember that the day prior we arrived at Hollywood Studios at 8 am and didn’t leave the park until 8 pm. No naps. Then on that day we arrived at MK at 8 am and the kids got a 90 min nap. It was at that moment 10 pm. We waited in the Pirates line for a FULL HOUR. Longest wait of our lives for a line. And at the latest hour Tess has ever seen. And they were INCREDIBLE. I have joked that during that line Zach was the toughest to deal with haha. The kids were awesome. No fits, no complaining, no tears, no bickering. No issues.
We read up on some Hidden Mickeys
And practiced our pirate faces 😉
And hung out in this room an extremely long time haha
And when we got to the front we found out WHY our wait was so bad. 1) They were letting MASSIVE amounts of FP people in and then just a few regular line people and then more MASSIVE FP people 2) They only had half the loading area open. So every other boat was running through the ride EMPTY.
While Zach was still annoyed by having to wait in the line, he did appreciate at least knowing WHY it’d been so awful!
By this time we were all sleepy and silly and SUPER pumped for PIRATES. AND we got the first row which was a first for me and was legit so, so awesome. If you have the option for first row seating: TAKE IT.
So it was 11 pm. The park was closed. And we were off on our 8 minute pirate adventure 😉
How awesome is this? I mean probably not worth the wait but still super cool!
My favorite part of the ride is the foot 🙂
Um. I will def take any chance I can get of snuggles like these! She was wore out on the monorail!
We got back to the room and got the kids in their beds and I walked out and saw that it was past midnight! Def the latest our kids have EVER been up!
On the monorail we found out that it was the first day of Florida’s Spring Break. Which is CRAZY early. The first week of March? It does explain why the predictions were for much lower crowds because I’m sure the people who predict crowd levels had no clue that the area schools would be out so early in the season.
It also made more sense for the crowds that late at night too. We saw mostly older teens and college kids and they don’t mind late nights so it makes sense that they’d all stick around and create longer wait times as well!
Even though all the craziness made for a tougher afternoon, I was SO THANKFUL for it when I knew we were going back during our Spring Break with Zach’s family. Seriously this day at the parks completely and totally changed the way I organized our plans for the family trip. And I truly believe that this day is the reason the family trip went so well! #silverlining
It was so interesting to have both our BEST Disney Day EVER and probably our worst in the same trip haha. I wouldn’t say it was a BAD Day but it was for sure the most crowded and made for some pretty flustering and frustrating moments. Kye had an awesome birthday though and any day at Disney is a GREAT day. I’m so thankful for our crew. I love that Zach pushes through when many, many men would just leave. I’m so thankful that Kye is so flexible and understanding and easy going about everything. I’m so thankful that Britt doesn’t mind lines ONE bit and never complains about them (which is a big deal for her as she’s typically our biggest complainer in other areas of life). She always wears such a big grin at Disney and I truly believe we share that same deep love for the parks. I’m so thankful for Tess. For being so amazing on such little sleep! She was a trooper and was so cute and adorable and silly and I’m so thankful she was her normal self for this trip rather than feeling sick like she did in Nov!
We all CRASHED hard and were thankful for a lazier start to our last day of vaca the next morning!
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