Orlando, Post #3

The next day (Monday, for those keeping track) was all about the Magic Kingdom.  We started in the morning with the myself, Jess, and Tyler, and then continued in the evening with Shannon and her family, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

We got there nice and early, and the park was largely unoccupied.  We took the opportunity to go on a Buzz Lightyear ride a few times.  You get a zapper and get to zap bad guys along a big, indoor track.  Tyler got 1200 points, which isn't bad until you consider that I got nearly 200,000!  I am the best at shooting things!  I didn't brag at Tyler too much.  We went on the ride twice cause there was no line.  My favorite way to do Disney rides: quickly.

We also went on the Tomorrowland Peoplemover, which was a nice tour of the area.  Another ride in the middle that's essentially just the Dumbo ride again (there are a lot of those, but Tyler does like them) and then a track where you can drive a car, though there is a guide bar in the middle so you don't crash into anything.  That ride was terrible, everytime Tyler hit the bar, it jerked the wheel out of his hands.  I took over the steering eventually and got us back home, but we were done with that one.  Also, gasoline powered cars in Tomorrowland?  Lame.

Mickey's Philharmagic was nice.  It was a 3D show with some puffs of air and a lot of classical Disney tunes.  The music was, as always, great to hear, even if the 3D was wonky.  Tyler's favorite part was where Donald got shot at us at the end of the movie and when the house lights came on, you turned around to see an animatronic Donald Butt stuck in the wall.  He laughed at that.

Small world, Tyler may have even remembered that one from before.  We saw the big clock at the end chime and tell the time.  Tyler wanted to have that happen every time, but we never got the timing right again.

We got some lunch (Disney is really, really good at feeding lots of people) and then Jess and Tyler went on a carousel while I wandered around and looked at stuff.  I ran into a parade in the central area that was quite insistent that 1) it was time to party and 2) you needed to put your hands up.

Then we went on a Roller Coaster with Tyler.  Definitely the most extreme ride he'd ever gone on, but he *loved* it.  We went on it twice.  He had a huge smile and kept saying "whee" as we zipped around corners.  It was called "Barnstorming", in case you're curious to look it up, but Tyler was a huge fan (and just tall enough to ride on it.  40 inches turned out be a magic number for him, lots of fun rides at that height.)

Then we went on Pirates of the Caribbean, which Tyler liked, and then Splash Mountain, with may have been his favorite ride of all, surprisingly enough for us.  He really liked the big drop at the end, though he closed his eyes because he "didn't want to get wet".  The main reason he didn't get wet is that he is pretty short, and most of the water just went right over him.

We were exhausted at this point, and because we took a shuttle in, we just took a taxi back.  We left the kids with Grandma, and, because we are crazy people, took the Hall family and went right back for a evening of more Disney.

It's called "Very Merry Christmas", and they limit the number of people that can go and keep the park open till midnight, which means you can go on lots of rides very quickly, if you want.  They also have free Cookies and Hot Chocolate, which we got right after we got some coffee, because we needed the energy.

Also, we ended up having a waffle with Nutella for dinner.  Not well balanced, but we had rides to do.

We did all the fast rides that Tyler wouldn't be able to do: the new 7 Dwarves ride which was not terribly exciting, but had a lot of neat things to look at.  We did all three of the 'Mountains' (Space, Thunder, and Splash) twice each.  I think I liked space mountain best, because Shannon kept shrieking at all the twists and turns.  The longest time was involved in simply walking from the exit back to the entrance again.

We were outdoors for one of the fireworks displays and took a moment to observe and wonder.  We had a nice spot, in between all the sites where they set off the fireworks.  Some of them were so big and so loud that I could actually feel them a little bit when they went off.  A fantastic finish and we even gave them some applause before running off to the next ride.

We completed the evening fully exhausted, doing a few last rides before piling into the truck to head back to the hotel.  We fell asleep on the drive home, but didn't get to sleep until about 1:00 in the morning.

Casey was hungry at 4.