Since I am heading out to Ohio tomorrow morning for a five day visit with my folks, Mark and I decided to make a run to the Magic Kingdom for an early afternoon of pixie dust. The day turned out to be very busy, and alas, we were not willing to wait 80 minutes to ride anything so it was just a nice walking tour today. Fast passes were worthless because the only one available before 8pm was the Haunted Mansion, and it turns out the fast-pass line was backed up so much it would have taken 30 minutes just to get to the entrance!
Don't forget, these are really BIG pics... if you want to see them in more detail, just click.
While Mark was waiting in the 20-minute long Fast Pass Plus Kiosk (!), I noticed that they were finally operating the horse drawn trolleys. They had not been operating them since we arrived in December. I got a nice shot of the horse and his "hidden" (or not-so-hidden) Mickeys.
We wandered on down Main Street where I couldn't resist a few shots of the castle. The sky was amazingly beautiful today, and provided a nice contrast. I am planning on making this my next drawing, so I've been taking close up shots from as many angles as I can so I can really focus on the details when I start to sketch it out. I really appreciated the shiny roof shingles in these photos. Gorgeous.
After we walked through the castle, we decided to check in on progress of the Seven Dwarfs Mine Ride. There was a lot of activity going on, and the Imagineers even waved at us as we invaded their privacy with our cameras!
I walked over to the other side of the same bridge just to take a quick photo. The bridge you see here is the entrance to the Be Our Guest restaurant.
We were ready for a bite to eat so we popped in to Gaston's Tavern and shared a pork shank (Mark's favorite quick-serve item), and a LeFou's brew (which is an apple juice and peach smoothie). We chuckled when we saw this older man entertaining himself by reading his John Grisham novel. You're at Disney World, MAN!
After eating, we strolled over to the Haunted Mansion to use our fast pass... which never happened because we didn't want to wait 30 minutes. The stand-by wait time was over an hour and a half! The shot you see below is the end of the queue to get into the Mansion. I am standing on the stockade in the center of Liberty Square. You can see the line extends past the Mark Twain River Boat entrance, and you can't even SEE the Mansion from here. They had to station a cast member with a pole that said "end of Haunted Mansion queue here".
Moving on, we accepted our fate that we would not be riding any attractions today. Around the corner we ran into a little Cast Member flash mob of sorts. Clarabelle, Horace, three of the Jamboree Bears, and several Frontierland cast members were lip syncing and dancing to a hoe down. It was great fun! They grabbed audience members and do-si-doed around the giant circle, then we watched 100 people dance the Hokey Pokey. Cute!!! It was too hot for those poor costumed characters, though!
From there, we decided to head home. Curiously, someone had arranged for a sky writer to put a message in the sky over the entrance of the park. Here it is as we walked towards the monorail:
As we were travelling on the monorail:
And in the parking lot. The "Jesus Loves U" part was incomprehensible by the time the plane got to "He 4 Giv......... (Gives?) "
Oh, these were my Disney pin trades for the day. I got 4 BIG ones. The Figment pin is glittery, and we are not sure if the bottom left one is supposed to be The Power Rangers. I need to research it. I also got my hands on a really big pin of Cinderella and Snow White, but I gave it to a little seven year old girl who was as cute as a button.
That was our perfect little afternoon. I hope you enjoyed the photos.
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MouseketeerKen and MouseketeerMark
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