Day 4 - Part 1 - Magic Kingdom and Columbia Harbor House
My parents have been annual pass holders for the last couple years now, so they decided to come up and spend the day with us and activate their new AP. Driving over from Clearwater they ran into a bit of traffic. They weren't going to be to BCV until around 8:30am which gave us an excuse to have a bit of a lay in. Scott went down to the Beach Club Marketplace for coffee and picked up a couple hot breakfasts for the kids. Mickey waffles and bacon. Alice caught up on some school work and I got to lay in bed and drink coffee and watch the Today Show.
Back home there was a HUGE snowstorm while we were gone. Like, 3ft of snow in 2 days no lie. They closed the place where I work which has only been done three times in 30 years. It was crazy. Thankfully we have awesome neighbors that sent plows over and shoveled for us. That snowstorm also brought some pretty chilly temps through Florida. That morning was 48 degrees and only supposed to get up to 60. I was glad to have a couple extra sweatshirts from Disney Springs to put on the kids. It was going to be a cold day.
My parents met us at the bus stop and the kids were SO EXCITED to see them. We live in the same town and see my parents at least once or twice a week. So not seeing them for 2 weeks was a big deal.
Why yes! That IS a gold tooth!
We arrived at about 9am and the difference in the line to get in was ASTOUNDING. I always thought Monday was the day to skip MK, but this was a cold Tuesday morning and it was a complete mob scene. Very stressful to get in. I asked my parents about whether or not they activated their passes, but my mom said she didn't think they needed to because the passes were showing up on her
MDE account. I have no clue about APs, so I just focused on getting my family through the hoards of people.
Well, sure enough, we go through security up to the turnstiles and my parents MB's didn't work. So they had to go to Guest Services to activate their APs. We said we would meet them on Main Street and thought we would jump in line to meet Pluto!
Usually I don't get in with characters (except Baymax because, who doesn't want to hug Baymax?) but Pluto waved me over. Why not lol.
So that was a huge long line and my parents FINALLY were done with the AP nonsense. My mom was complaining endlessly about the weather. 2 weeks in FL thinned her blood right out lol. We were trying to make our way down main street when we saw the little trolley show
And while this show is absolutely adorable and quite enjoyable, it also totally jams up Main Street.
Pretty much sums it up. Lol. My husband has a pretty low threshold for crowds and people in general.
Our first FP was to meet Tiana and Rapunzel
Next up was Peter Pan, Under the Sea with Ariel and an early lunch at Columbia Harbor House. I find that if you eat between 11-11:30am, you have less shenanigans to deal with. Plus I didn't eat breakfast so I was pretty hungry.
We brought a couple of small bottles of water for the kids, and ordered one large bottle of water, 2 hot cocoas, one chicken and fish entree for the kids to split, I got the pot pie and Scott surprised me by ordering the shrimp mac and cheese. Total for lunch was $40.44
These are all pics from disneyfoodblog.com mostly because I was annoyed at my kids and didn't take any pictures of the food. My pot pie came with nice steamed broccoli. So I took the chicken and fish, split it up and gave each kid like, 4 pieces of broccoli. YOu would have thought I was trying to poison them. Alice made a huge scene about it and I was like "I know you're not trying to yell at me in the happiest place on Earth, right?" I must've been making crazy eyes because she simmered right down and reluctantly ate her veggies.
Anyway, it was all pretty good! The fish and the nuggets were hot and crispy (another advantage of eating upon opening) and Scott seemed to enjoy his mac and cheese. My pot pie was great! It was really cold out, so it was the perfect comfort food to warm me up. It was VERY rich and a deceptively large portion. I ate about 3/4 and was really full.
We thought at this point we would split up for a while. My parents would go with my sister and her family for a couple hours and we would reconvene after our 2pm FP for the Jungle Cruise. My plan was to steal my parents and take them to World Showcase for a do-over of our rushed afternoon over there.
We decided to head through Liberty Square again, through Frontier Land and over through to Adventure Land. As we were leaving, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a big white hat with a red ribbon...which can only mean MARY POPPINS. She is forever on my list of characters I want to see in WDW. Plus I wanted to check and see what her going rate is for whipping my kids into shape.
Cont. next page
45 minutes!! That is awful. I've heard the buses aren't too great there. I definitely would've been the same way if I had kids that were going stir crazy!
