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The Chronicles of America: Our Itinerary | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 |
In today’s post, I’ll be writing about the 2 wonderful days I spent in Magic Kingdom, arguably my favourite of the 4 parks (with EPCOT coming a close second)!! We spent 2 out of 5 days at Magic Kingdom since it’s the park with the most rides and shopping, plus it holds a lot of sentimental value for me: it’s been almost 9 years since my last trip to Disneyworld, and even back then as a 12 year old, Magic Kingdom was my favourite.
We were still really jetlagged and our body clocks were running on Singapore time, so we woke up at 4am and watched TV until it was time to head to our hotel lobby’s shuttle pickup point. We hopped on the first bus (at 8am), and it dropped us off at the monorail station after a 15-minute bus ride. Thankfully, the monorail queue was fairly short and we made it to the park entrance before opening time.
It was a bright, sunny but unexpectedly chilly Monday morning, and I was shivering despite wearing a jacket. Thankfully it was the only day in Florida with such chilly 13-degree weather; the weather on the rest of the days was pretty hot.
With Disney’s new FastPass+ system on the Disney Parks app, we were able to book FastPasses (for 3 rides) before even reaching the park (up to 30 days in advance!), which means we could skip the queues right away! After using up your first 3 FP+, you can keep booking FP+ via the app for the rest of the day, which means you can keep getting new FP+ immediately after you finish using the previous FP+. There’s really good wifi coverage in the park to make surfing and using their app a breeze.
To make the most of your FastPass+ (FP+), these are the rides I would recommend getting FP+ for:
- Peter Pan’s Flight (it almost always has a 60-minute long queue)
- Pirates of the Caribbean
- Tomorrowland Speedway
If you’re a thrill ride seeker, then these are your best options. Wait times for these 3 rides were insane (around 60 mins) on the days we were there, especially for the Seven Dwarves Mine Train.
- Seven Dwarves Mine Train (FP+ for this ride were unavailable a week before we went, so we didn’t manage to ride it)
- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
- Splash Mountain
Our first day at Magic Kingdom
The first ride we ran – yes, a lot of other families were also running – to was Peter Pan’s Flight, so that we could be the first ones in and avoid the long + slow-moving queue that often forms within 10 minutes of the park opening. We didn’t have to queue at all!
After that, we headed to my favourite ride: Haunted Mansion. I love the ride because of the dark humour + harmless spookiness and because it’s ghost/death-themed. 🙂
The cast members at this attraction make puns like “Please step into the dead centre of the room”, and the decorative tombstones scattered in the queue are always amusing to read. It’s pitch black inside the ride perfect for photophobic creatures like myself, and the doom buggy (the ride vehicle) takes you through a mansion haunted by 999 ghosts. The props, animation and effects used on the ride are amazing, but they might be scary for little children.
After the ride, it was time for our Tomorrowland Speedway FastPass+, so we headed over there to drive in tiny cars and inhale diesel fumes. I’ve always loved this ride; the first time we were here in 2009, I drove/went on this attraction over 20 times!
After that, we watched the Carousel of Progress (an animatronic show created by Walt Disney himself in 1964) and rode on the Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover, a very relaxing ride to rest your tired legs and get a tour of Tomorrowland.
We headed to Columbia Harbour House in Liberty Square for a quick lunch. I had a lobster roll for $14.99, and it was well worth the price, with huge juicy chunks of Maine lobster in the bun.
After lunch, it was time to use our Pirates of the Caribbean FastPass+. The normal queue was 35 mins long, so we were only able to ride it once that day. (It was nearly empty on the second day we were at Magic Kingdom, so we rode it 5 times on that day instead!)
For dessert, we headed to Aloha Isle in Adventureland, a dessert kiosk dedicated to selling Disney’s famous pineapple Dole Whip. I ordered a Dole Whip Float ($5.49), which was pineapple soft serve with pineapple juice. I kinda regretted that decision, since I’m not a fan of pineapple, and the weather that day was ridiculously chilly.
The wait times for rides were getting longer in the afternoon, plus the effects of my jet lag were making me really sleepy, so we walked around the park and visited all the gift shops instead of going on rides.
I bought my Frozen Mickey Ears at a gift shop in Fantasyland (more pics of the ears in the next post!), and walked around wearing them like the overgrown child that I am. What I love about Disney is that so many adults and children alike were wearing their Mickey Ears and dressed in Disney garb from head to toe: age is irrelevant and you can be yourself with no fear of judgement.
As always, Disney makes desserts and pastries that are too cute to eat, from caramel apples with marshmallow Mickey ears to character cupcakes. I’ve never bought a single Disney dessert from any of the parks because they aren’t exactly value for money…so you’ll just have to admire these beautiful confections from these low quality pictures.
We then hopped on the Walt Disney World Railroad and took a ride to Main Street USA where we did a bit more shopping, and then we used our FastPass+ to skip the queue for the Jungle River Cruise, which was as punny and enjoyable as always.
We used FP+ again to get on It’s A Small World, and I accidentally fell asleep on the ride, since it’s identical to the one in Hong Kong Disneyland (which I’ve been to far too many times) and I was still suffering from jet lag. We decided to call it a day at around 3pm, and headed back to our hotel to rest and get reenergised before going to EPCOT the next day.
Our second day at Magic Kingdom
Our second day at MK was on a Thursday, and we were thankfully no longer jet-lagged and more able to enjoy ourselves that day. We got there bright and early; it was a really sunny and hot day (too hot for my liking tbh, it was as bad as Singapore’s eternal hellfire heat).
We waited eagerly for the daily opening ceremony/performance to end, and once the cast members opened up the rest of the park, my dad and I joined the deluge of parkgoers who were also headed towards the Seven Dwarves Mine Train. My mum was off sitting on tamer rides and doing some shopping. The FastPasses+ for this kid-coaster are very elusive, and we didn’t manage to get them, so we intended to be the first in line in the normal queue…but turns out a couple hundred people thought the same way too, and the line was already an hour long by the time we ran to the end of the line (the queue was outside the attraction by the time we ran there, it was that long).
We didn’t want to waste precious time queueing, so we ran to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad instead, which is a huge upgrade from the kid-coaster. Being the huge scaredy cat and thrill-ride avoider that I am, I wanted to get off the ride the moment the lap bar went down. I thought it would be motion-sickness inducing or extremely scary, but it turned out to be more tame and enjoyable than expected.
It was soon time for our Pirates of the Caribbean FastPass+, so we headed in that direction. The park was considerably less crowded on Thursday, so the wait time for the ride was less than 5 minutes (basically the time taken to walk through the queue to reach the boarding area). We didn’t have to use our FP+ since the queue was uselessly short, so we went through the normal queue 3 times and rode it a 4th time using our FP+.
To cool off, we went to a dessert kiosk (Sunshine Tree Terrace) nearby that sold orange flavoured Dole Whip. It was a lot nicer and tangier than the pineapple one, and the serving size was huge!
After I took a good 20 minutes to finish the soft serve, we headed to Fantasyland to use our FP+ for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. The queue area for the normal queue had many small games for the kids waiting in line to fiddle with, and it was so innovative and cute compared to the boring waiting areas in other Disneylands.
The sun was unbearably hot at this point, so we decided to take a lunch break. We bought 2 jumbo turkey legs from a kiosk and headed over to Tomorrowland’s cafeteria to fill our tummies and rest our legs.
We then went on Tomorrowland Speedway (bad decision, the seats were burning hot under the midday sun), rode the PeopleMover again and then went on Buzz Lightyears’ Space Ranger Spin to escape the heat.
We went to Main Street USA to do some shopping, since the ride times were getting longer (as they always do in the afternoon). I walked past the Plaza Ice Cream Parlour and caught sight of people eating ice cream out of a Mickey sink, so I was naturally tempted and walked right in to see how much it cost. Needless to say, I gave in and bought the sundae, which came with 2 scoops of ice cream (lots of flavours to choose from!), caramel sauce (they gave far too much, it was slightly sickening) and a heap of whipped cream.
We then went on Journey of the Little Mermaid, a really slow but fairly enjoyable ride. Maybe I’m finally outgrowing childish rides, because I wasn’t particularly excited during the ride…
We then walked over to Splash Mountain to check out the queue, but it was 2 hours long at this point so we had to skip it.
We decided to call it a day and took the Walt Disney Railroad back to the Main Street USA station, and took a ferry across the lake, back to the monorail station.
We took a monorail to Epcot from the monorail station, since taking a bus would have brought us to Animal Kingdom to pick up other guests before dropping us back at the hotel, a 45-minute detour which wasn’t worth our time. The monorail to Epcot brought us over the park (Epcot), so we got a chance to see the park and the stunning topiaries (more on that in my next post!) one last time. :’)
There’s a direct shuttle from EPCOT to Disney Springs that commences at 4pm everyday, and it was an option for us since our hotel was just a stone’s throw away from the shopping district. We hopped on it and headed to Disney Springs for dinner and yet another round of shopping, and so we’ve come to the end of my 2 days’ worth of adventures in Magic Kingdom.
In the next post, I’ll be showing you around EPCOT! To get notified when I post new stuff, be sure to follow my Insta or Facebook page. 🙂
The Chronicles of America: Our Itinerary | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 |
xoxo,
Faith
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If you’re interested in exploring my blog, click here for an index of all the posts I’ve ever written (travel, doctoring, psychology, random musings), or check out my most read series below:
- the Chasing Dreams series: a series chronicling my thoughts, dreams & changing ideals over the years (since 2018), including burnout, quitting the rat race, migration and trying to find my path in life
- the (not-so-definitive) guide to doctoring: Getting into Med School & FAQs | Surviving your Clinical Years | MBBS Tips | Life as a M1 // M2 // M3 // M4 // M5 during COVID // Life as a Doctor (monthly series) | Chasing Careers series
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