Wednesday 9th August

We are committed. It’s Magic Kingdom, it’s rope drop time. We need to get to the bus stop by 7am, our alarms are set for 6am, the only thing that can derail the plans is Nathaniel everything.

When you wake at 6am and need to get the children dressed, backs packed and suncream on, you need to look for tricks and shortcuts to make life easier. Mummy created a clever trick, put the cereal (raisin bran) into a plastic cup and let the boys eat it, the way they like it (dry) on the bus ride to Disney.

As Magic Kingdom is a decent bus ride from All Star, they can take their time eating the cereal. We head to the bus line just before 7am, the bus leaves at 7:10 and we can sit in the air conditioning for 10mins, perfect!

As we head to Magic Kingdom the bus passengers range from families, teenagers, grandparents and couples. Some wear sunglasses inside the bus, some are asleep.

About 10mins into the ride, Elliott decides to drop his entire cup of cereal all over the bus floor. The sound of crashing raisin and or bran hitting the cold bus floor awakes the audience.

Elliott immediately starts crying, Mummy asks the people around us “It’s our first time at Disney what should we do?” the lady with a “Not my first time” badge answers “just do your best”. No pressure.

Daddy leaps onto the floor with two Disney Junior Ranger books and starts scooping the cereal into the empty cup. As the bus swerves and swings we look like two retired limbo dancers trying their best. We scrap most of the cereal into the cup and get back into our seats. Mummy looks at Daddy and smiles.

We are only 5mins away from the Magic Kingdom after spotting the Contemporary Resort. Nate comes over to Mummy for a drink, the bus turns. Mummy drops the cereal cup. Two times. On the floor. The bus provides a collective oooohhh.

Daddy returns to the bus floor. When discussing my sabbatical with work, the themes of relax, recharge and reconnect came up numerous times. I’m not sure what category this falls into but Daddy cleaned the raisin bran off a bus floor again.

We arrive! Random American lady exiting the bus, sums things up perfectly “I hope your day gets better” We all do…

We arrive in the first group, after a quick bag check there are 20 people in front of us to scan tickets. Mummy gets held up with a faulty scanner but we are still doing well.

We sprint down Main Street USA and notice a lone photographer in front of the Disney castle!

We asked for a special photo and weren’t disappointed!

Now we are in the park, but we are not allowed to queue for the rides. We approach the “rope” around 8ish, the early access is from 8:30, the unwashed masses arrive at 9am.

What we didn’t account for was between 8am and 8:25 standing shoulder to shoulder with other people in the baking Florida sun with no shade. Sweating that much at 8:15 isn’t good and we were very close to the front.

But there was a decent amount of people behind us. Time moves very slow. We thought they would let us through at 8:15, nope! Not till 8:25 – decent amount of people had joined us.

They dropped the rope and we (literally) ran to the Peter Pan ride. It’s one of the most popular rides and one that is best done early. We enjoyed the ride, it’s very well done, but the no queue turned into an 85min queue when we walked back a little later. We ticked off some quick wins with the carousel and Jungle Cruise.

Then we moved onto one of Mummy and Daddies favourite films Aladdin. Spitting camels!

Just need to mention the elephant in the room. The heat. It’s unrelenting, we are up to 35c (temperatures will come in celsius from now on to keep Mrs Hyde happy) with a slight breeze. Finding shade is essential, and the only difference between the sun and shade is not getting heat stroke. Going into an air conditioned ride or shop is heaven!

We rode the magic carpet ride, three times in a row and tried to avoid the spitting camels!

After checking the Disney app we noticed that Aladdin and Jasmine where making an appearance! We had timed it well and only waited for 10mins!

We watched another kiddy show with some animatronic bears (prob needs to be scraped) that wasn’t that amazing. Another tiki show with singing birds that the boys liked, then we headed for the steam train back.

Unfortunately at this point, Mummy had developed a pretty severe migraine. Daddy looked across the train and saw Mummy asleep and both boys looking knackered. We called it a day and headed back for some rest, swimming and lunch.

It turned out to be a good idea as Mummy headed back to the room and fell asleep for another hour. We grabbed some lunch and more swimming, giant chess and shuffleboard.

We survived the heat, and had an awesome first day at the Magic Kingdom. Tomorrow we are heading to a water park Typhoon Lagoon for some more fun and games!