Magic Kingdom

We spent our first full day at the Magic Kingdom.  We headed there with James, Regent and their two girls Naomi and Lily.

Here's a cute shot of Olivia and Naomi as we were waiting for the shuttle.

Here's some shots of our magical day in the magic kingdom.

  The happiest place on earth, right?

Even though he didn't sleep as much as I would have liked, he was a trooper most of the day.  Such a good baby!

Noah at the Indy Speedway

Olivia met several princesses, and was in heaven!

Olivia and I happened to be walking by during one of the shows in front of the castle.  We stopped to watch, and saw lot of princesses, Mickey, Minnie, Peter Pan, and lots more.  Olivia was very worried anytime a villain made an appearance.

We hit all the must rides on everyone's list: space mountain, big thunder mountain, it's a small world, the carousel, winnie the pooh, dumbo, jungle cruise, tom sawyer island, mikey's philarmagic, buzz lighter's space ranger spin, monster's inc laugh floor, to name a few.

My one piece of advice for people is to learn about the fast-pass system and rider swap.  We hit all these rides, several multiple times, and I think the longest wait was ~20 minutes.  For the big attractions, we only waited like 5-10 minutes because we only went with fastpasses.  The boys were able to go on the Buzz ride four times, and never waited in a line.  We are also really strong advocates of getting to the park on time.  The boys (Sam, Harrison, Noah) rode 5 different rides between 9 and 10 am.

One thing we did do while at the magic kingdom was get silhouettes of the kids done.  This was one thing I remember getting done when I was kid at Disneyland (I need to find mine next time I'm at my parents house).  It's pretty amazing how they do it - they just cut the silhouette right from paper while you sit there.   And you get 2 copies mounted for $8, which I think is a steal.  And while we were having them done, the kids enjoyed watching the glass blower in the shop next door.

 The Magic Kingdom was amazing, but a bit overwhelming.  I think if we ever go again, we will try and spend more than just one day here, and take it a little more slowly. But since we were only there for four days, we did a park a day.  We had a great time, but we pushed through all day, and by the end of it all we were even more exhausted.  Here's a video of Olivia in the evening.  As you can see, she was having a ball.  And, yes, I did spend $15 on a Tinkerbell balloon, but I don't regret it at all.  It was the only thing she asked for all day, and it surprised us by lighting up when it got dark.  It became a great toy all week as it floated around the villa, and we took it home (sans helium, folded up in our suitcase).  It now hangs on Olivia's wall in her room.
 Levi lost it there at the end, and so we left just as the fireworks were going off.  Harrison was disappointed  but we could kind of see them as we waited for the bus.  Someday I'd like to see what Disney is like without an infant...


 Levi didn't sleep much during the day, so I was hoping he'd crash that night.  No such luck.  We had another sleepless night, and then headed to a much calmer day at Hollywood Studios.