Disney World 2023/Day 3, Part 2/Magic Kingdom

After we got a good laugh from seeing the Mine Train picture, it was time for us to hit "Space Mountain" - which I had lightning lane reservations for. The lady who had been sitting next to Doug on the rollercoaster was also heading there with her husband and son. I felt pretty good about our strategy at that point.

It was off to Tomorrowland...

Doug and Bri rode Space Mountain the last time we were at Disney, but I opted out. I was determined to ride it this time. I was nervous I admit...

I did like that there were three seats so we could all sit in the same car.

Here we are on the ride...

(If you missed what I said in my last post, I'll repeat it. I checked PhotoPass and realized I had access to my attraction photos. I read something that said Disney is now giving access to attraction photos if you purchased Genie+ - hich we did daily. Score! I downloaded a bunch of photos without the logo!)

My face didn't really show it, but I did not like Space Mountain. I really didn't like it. And I know that lots of other people really like it, but I'm just not one of them. It wasn't really because of the darkness - it was just so jerky. It rattled me from side to side. I was bracing quite a bit trying to keep my head from bobbing around. When I got off the ride, my shoulder hurt for a while. It just wasn't the ride for me. I can say I did it now, so I am glad I did it. I just won't ride it again.

Once we scanned our magic bands for Space Mountain, that freed up lightning lane access. So, Doug grabbed us reservations for Winnie the Pooh (which was actually getting kind of crowded at that point, so I'm glad he did it). We had a little time before we could get on it, so Doug and Bri decided to ride the teacups. That was fine because I needed a little break.

"Mad Tea Party"...

We still had some time to kill before our Winnie the Pooh lightning lane, so we thought we hop over to the PeopleMover back in Tomorrowland...

 

 Some of the darker parts of the PeopleMover - Bri's ears glowed...

We got a glimpse of the new Tron ride (there was a soft opening, only annual pass holders invited)...

Unfortunately, the PeopleMover kept stopping. Over and over. It started off ok, but toward the middle of the ride, it would go a few feet and then stop again. It happened 5 or 6 times. We started thinking we were never getting off of there! 

We had a few rides stop on us at Magic Kingdom that day - luckily most of them started up pretty quickly again. We also had some issues with rides closing for a while so we couldn't get on them and then opening back up again after an hour or so. Not sure what was going on that day, but it happened with a number of them.

We finally got off PeopleMover and headed over to "The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh."

Pooh and Tigger sighting...

Once we scanned our Magic Bands, we grabbed lightning lane reservations for Jungle Cruise. It is a super popular ride with one of the most difficult lightning lane reservations to get at Magic Kingdom for some reason. We got a good time for the for the evening. Our plan was to take a break in the day, head back to the hotel for a while and then come back. So, it worked out perfectly.

I had reservations for lunch, and we had some time for just one more ride before then. We chose the standby line for "Under the Sea: Journey Of The Little Mermaid"...

Here are a few videos...

 

 

We stopped on this ride for just a minute, but then it started back up pretty quickly.

Once we got off, we still had a little time before our reservation, but not enough time for another ride.

So we grabbed a Lefou's Brew from Gaston's Tavern...

It was just as delicious as I remember from 9 years ago!

Finally, it was time to walk over to the "Be Our Guest" Restaurant for lunch...

We ate at "Be Our Guest" when Bri was 7, and we wanted to check it out again - this time for lunch...

 

This visit, we got to sit in the main ballroom...

 

We saw the Beast come through a couple of times...

We had the nicest waiter (he liked talking about Atlanta when we told him where we were from - he had visited several times) and the food was delicious. I ordered chicken, Doug ordered beef and Briana ordered the pork chop. It was all yummy, but hands down, Briana's was the tastiest of them all. And the desserts were so good...

After a delicious lunch, we wanted to stop one more place before heading to the hotel for a well deserved break.

One of my favorite attractions in Tomorrowland is the "Carousel of Progress"...

There are four different acts to this rotating animatronic stage show which talks about the progress of our nation. Unfortunately, there was a problem/blip with this attraction too. The audience didn't "rotate" after the first act and we ended up having to listen to the first act twice. Oh well.

It was getting pretty warm outside and it was really crowded, so sitting in the quiet, air-conditioned theater was nice. Once the show was over, it was the perfect time to take a break and head back to the hotel. 

Every two hours, we were allowed to continue picking lightning lanes, so we picked a few more rides to go on that evening - Haunted Mansion, Thunder Mountain and Pirate of the Caribbean. Having multiple lightning lane reservations at the same time is called "stacking" (I learned some Disney speak during my study sessions).

Back to the hotel we went...

Well deserved afternoon rest...

We rested a couple of hours and hopped back on the monorail to go back to Magic Kingdom. Magic Kingdom is a lot of fun in the evening (and a lot cooler)!