Orlando 2010, Day 2: Magic Kingdom

April 27, 2010

Alternate title: The day it poured.

On our first day at the Disney parks, we figured we'd start with the one everyone thinks about - Magic Kingdom. As we started driving towards the park, Nathan still had no idea where we were going. He figured we'd be going back to the beach again. But we neared the entrance and more and more pictures of Mickey and friends popped up. So we told Nathan to look around to see if he could figure it out.

Maybe it was a little bit of miscalculation on our part. We had never really "taught" Nathan that some of the movies he was watching were "Disney movies" and we never taught him that Mickey = Disney, or those movies = Disney. Finally, Andrew had to spell it out for him, but when Nathan realized he would get to see Mickey, he was pretty excited.


Just like the first time we came, we let Nathan choose how to get across to the park - monorail or ferry boat. He chose the ferry boat... again.

("I have a thing for ferry boats." Where's that quote from?)


Once we got over, he was so excited to see the castle! He kept yelling "There's the castle! There's the castle!" So we headed in towards the castle. We saw a whole bunch of characters and that's when Andrew and I decided to buy an autograph book for Nathan. Not just any ordinary autograph book. We bought the one with photo sleeves which, as it turns out, has less pages but costs twice as much.


Then, because the sky started to turn grey, we had to get a strategy in place to maximize our time there, in case we had to leave early. We mapped out the rides we wanted to go on, got FastPasses when we could, filled in our wait times with nearby rides and filled in our times waiting in line eating.


So we wouldn't have to stop for food later.


Nathan got to fly a space ship...


And drive a race car before the rain started to really come down.


We found shelter in some indoor rides and thought we could wait it out. It gave us a little chance to dry off a bit and rest our tired feet.


But the longer we waited, the more it rained. After being at the park for about 6 hours, we decided it was time to leave. The rain wasn't letting up so we decided to make a run for it. I really wished there was someone else to document us running for the front gates. At one point, I was running with the umbrella out to the side, getting soaked trying to shield Nathan from the rain but apparently I wasn't even close to covering the poor guy. At the same time, Andrew was running with the stroller but his glasses were fogging up, causing him to yell in distress as he ran through the mammoth puddles.


I'm sure we looked absolutely ridiculous. And what a bad day to wear white!