PreBaby Family Vacation April 2016 Day 3

April 11th
On Monday we slept in a bit (by which I only mean 7), had our school breads for breakfast, and walked onto our bus to the Magic Kingdom. There were a lot of people headed that way, and it was a little crowded going into the park, but we went into the Emporium and walked down Main Street through the stores, and it was practically empty. We went around teh castle on the left and made it into Fantasyland without too many people. We had a 10 minute wait for It's a Small World, then used our Peter Pan fastpasses. DS asked to ride the Autopia (he had asked on Satruday, but the lines were too long). Our local friend had given us a couple of the paper fastpasses that cast members can hand out that are good for any ride for up to 5 people. So we decided we would use a fastpass for that so that DH and DS could go on it.

A few weeks ago, it occurred to me that although I had little interest in Be Our Guest's Menu, I really wanted to see the inside of the restaurant and I check daily to see if I could get a reservation. The Thursday before we left we were able to get an 11:10 reservation, so we figured we'd do a mid morning snack and get cupcakes, which were pretty good, not fantastic, but good. Worth getting a peek inside, though.

One of the things that I loved so much about this trip was DS’s ability to express what he wanted to do, and having distinct opinions, and not necessarily just about things that we had suggested to him, so I was really happy that he and DH were able to ride Autopia, which they loved.
Dumbo is a definite favorite, so we were back that way after some time in Tomorrowland. The wait was listed at 30 minutes, but we basically walked into the play area and the buzzer went off before DS could even play. So we decided to stay and play for a bit before going out. While we were watching Dumbo vidoes before the trip, DS had asked about Barnstormer in the background. When we got off Dumbo this time, he asked to ride it. We used one of our paper fastpasses for the boys to go ride. DS was cautious. He wasn't sure how he felt about it. He did bump his chin right as the ride started, but he said it was fun. Then he said it wasn't. We hadn’t done the Ariel ride when we were there over teh summer, so we gave that a try. I’m glad we did, it was an enjoyable diversion.

We went off to Columbia Harbor House for a late lunch to discover that their fryer was down, so we went off to have lunch with Sonny Eclipse instead. We did a lot of zig zagging around the parks this trip. I’m not sure we were the most efficient planners, but we sort of went with wait times on the app and DS’s requests. He requested the carousel after lunch, so we were back to Fantasyland for that, then off to Adventureland via Liberty Square. DS saw the Magic Carpets and asked to ride them. Had to make sure we got a Dole Whip float and took a break in a quiet corner near Pirates before letting DS loose in the pirate store...which may have been a mistake. We managed to limit him to one Jake sword and a pirate coin medalion so that he had something to hold on to since we were sending the sword back to the hotel. We decided to use the final paper fastpass to ride the Jungle Cruise, DS didn’t love it. He wanted to go on the safari at AK instead. Then we were back to Tomorrowland to ride Buzz, and DS was excited to "catch all the bad guys". When we got off the ride, he saw Buzz nearby and asked to meet him, but his line was closed, so we had to promise him we'd find him another day. He was very disappointed, but we were able to distract him. Then he asked to ride the rocket ships (the astro orbiter), so we decided to ride that. DS and I rode together and he told me that he wanted to go "up and up and UP". We had a fastpass for Dumbo afterwards and when we told him where we were going, he got foot stompingly excited. After we rode, he asked to go again so that he could play. They were sending people straight through, but we asked to play and he spent about 20 minutes in the play area before we head off for another ride. We tried Gaston's Tavern for a late (late) dinner, and picked up some beef stew for us and took it to the Fastpass area for Wishes! and watched the fireworks. DS LOVED seeing Tinkerbell fly, and liked most of the fireworks, but he did say he doesn't like the loud ones (it didn't help that we were standing near one fo the speakers for the music). We basically walked onto the bus, although it was crowded. DS fell asleep halfway back to the hotel and was so tired that he kept sleeping through being transferred into bed.