Friday, August 22, 2008

Chapter 6 --The Magic Kingdom.


Well, our second full day. It's a Thursday, and I am so looking forward to seeing the Magic Kingdom again, and really taking my time and seeing EVERYTHING. We start off the day again with breakfast in the "Pop" main building. The eating area is cafeteria style. Several different types of places to choose from. I have become very fond of their breakfast pizza. That along with some grapes and apple juice, and I'm ready for the day. After we finished, we headed for the bus stop labeled Magic Kingdom.

The Walt Disney World Resort is very big. It is really hard to describe how big. But, the only way I can really explain it is, if you were looking down on Orlando from , say, Google Earth, my resort hotel was quit south of the property, while the Magic Kingdom was north. It took 30 to 35 minutes to reach The Magic Kingdom, a long ride, but on the way, we were able to see such Disney landmarks as Spaceship Earth at Epcot, the Hollywood Tower of Terror, along with seeing some of the other beautiful resort hotels. Finally we reached that wonderful, colorful sign "The Magic Kingdom". The bus took us to the bus drop off, which is only steps from the entrance. That is one of the perks of being a Disney guest. If we were driving, we would have had to park our car in the enormous parking lot, hop on a tram to take us to either the monorail, or ferry to get across the Seven Seas Lagoon, and then you are to the gate.

Right away, I started taking pictures and taping on the video camera. Everything was just so beautiful. After we presented our ticket, we had pictures taken in front of "City Hall". It is there you can board the Walt Disney railroad. There is a walk through under the railroad that gets you into the town square. It was a buzz of activity. Characters signing autographs, people taking in the sites. The buildings looked like old Georgian or Victorian buildings, very beautiful. In the center was a beautiful garden, there stood the American Flag, and a brass statue of Roy Disney with Minnie Mouse. It was so lovely. We could hear singing, there was a street show going on at the top of Main St. USA. As I approached, I knew I was going to finally get to see the Castle, Cinderella's Castle. My sister had never seen it before, except for pictures of course. I was in the lead, and all I could say was "there it is!" Oh it was even more beautiful than pictures, than in my memory. We stood there and admired for a few minutes, the we spotted a photo pass photographer. Needless to say, we had a few pictures taken. On Main St. there are some fabulous stores. We strolled though pretty much all of them. We worked our way up to the front of the Castle. What's this? another photographer? This time, the statue called "Partners" was our background, along with the castle of course. After the pictures were taken, we headed for Fantasy Land. We decided to take a path just to the side of the castle. Oh look, a bench. I had to have a break. I still hadn't caught up on my sleep from the travel down. I stared at the castle for a bit, and then we went again. Took more pictures, saw Belle reading to a group of children, and finally found the Tea Cups!

My sister chickened out! Ok, so spinning makes her nauseous. I got on by myself, but it wasn't for the joy of the ride, but the nostalgia. She did take a picture of me in a cup! We walked through fantasy land, saw Dumbo, the old carousel, and tried to remove the sword from the stone. We also ran into Cinderella's step sisters and step mother! Lets check out the Haunted Mansion next. We left fantasy land, and headed for the haunted mansion. What a scream! How they can do that is amazing. It really looked like there were ghosts. Not scary ghosts of course. One even joined us in our seat! Too funny.

We then went on to wait for the 3 O'clock parade. While we were waiting, I looked at my sister and asked if it would be ok if we went back to the hotel when it was over. A look of fear almost came over her. She knew I had to be on my last ounce of energy to want to leave the Magic Kingdom so early. We watched the beautiful parade, and headed out. Don't get me wrong, we didn't make a sprint to the bus. It may have been 2 or 3 hours before we got back. There were a few stops to make on the way out. But the rest of the rides would have to wait until tomorrow.

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