Magic Kingdom

We did a big Orlando trip this January with a little more flexibility in Chris' schedule this year. We flew down on a Thursday. The weather was beautiful the day we arrived. We stayed at Disney's Port Orleans - Riverside for the week, and the grounds were beautiful. The room was covered in princesses and the grounds looked like a southern plantation. The first evening the girls and I took a boat ride from the hotel down to Disney Springs just for fun. We didn't really do anything at Disney Springs, but the boat ride there and back was nice. 

We spent our first day at Magic Kingdom. The girls had never ridden roller coasters so we got warmed up with Magic Kingdom rides. It was raining in the morning with the highs only in the 60s. It felt great to us, but Floridians were freezing. We were able to get into Magic Kingdom an hour early, and we made the most of it. We were the very first people to ride Peter Pan and then we did about 5 more rides (including the infamous It's a Small World) before the park officially opened. We had reservations for an early lunch at the Beast's Castle. The food was delicious, we got to see the Beast, and it was a chance to rest and gear up for the afternoon. Our first real roller coaster type ride was Seven Dwarfs Mine. That was a bit of an eye opener for the girls with the speed and hills. Then we went to Space Mountain. Addi did not want to ride, but to her credit she said she would try it. She was behind me on the ride, and I didn't hear a thing after the first big drop. I was wondering if she was still there when I heard "That wasn't so bad." When we pulled back into the entry, she said as she got out "Can we do that again?" After that, she was hooked on the roller coasters. Alexia tolerated the roller coasters but as Minnesotans say, "they weren't her favorite." Neither of the girls really liked Splash Mountain. Getting wet was not appealing. We stuck around for the fireworks. They started late but were pretty impressive. My one sad thing about the day was that Thunder Mountain was closed that week for refurbishing. That is one of my favorites. However, we noticed after the fireworks that it had opened up. We hurried over there, and in fact they did open it for a short period and we didn't have to wait long to ride. It was the last ride of the day, and we were all exhausted!