Walt Disney World - Day 1 - Magic Kingdom
I recently mentioned having gone to Walt Disney World and now I can take some time to go into some detail. :)
Our plans were merely our imagination as we should always be aware that there are bigger plans out there. In our case, we were lucky enough to have scheduled our flight so that we could arrive in Orlando at about 10pm and go see Pirates of the Caribbean 3 with my cousins at the midnight showing. The storms locally conspired to delay our flight by 3.5 hours so we arrived at about 1:30am. So we missed the movie.
My Uncle Mark picked us up (Aunt Linda would’ve been with Mark except she was picking up Rachel who got off work at 1am) and took us to Doobie and Rebekah’s place (they merged their names into one nickname because their friends thought they were attached at the hip; so they go by Doobekah). We basically went to our guest room, setup our beds and crashed for the night. We were physically and emotionally exhausted.
Our first day was spent at the Magic Kingdom with my cousins, Rachel, Megan and Daniel. Rachel and Megan picked us up at Doobekah’s place and we had “breakfast” at Chick-Fil-A (I say it that way because we were minutes late for breakfast and had to settle for lunch). We then went to park the car and took the tram to the transportation hub of the Magic Kingdom.
We were able to ride in front of the monorail and got a great view of the park. Once we got in, Megan took our passes and set out to get some Fastpasses for us for Space Mountain as we meandered on over to the Jungle Cruise. We got in a few photo ops on our way over there and Amy was already drooling over the gift shops (her thirst was quenched by the end of the five days).
We followed the Jungle Cruise with the Country Bear Jamboree (we only discovered they had reflective captioning after it had started) and then Pirates of the Caribbean. I got my official Mickey ears (as you’ll see in the photo slideshow below) and Amy updated to a basic Walt Disney World visor cap.
We broke for lunch as the afternoon parade passed near where we ate. It was gone when we finished our meal and we moved on in our guided tour. Megan and Rachel were just chock-full of Disney trivia about the parks, the rides, the movies and Walt Disney himself (they were also full of chili-cheese fries they had at lunch as Amy and I drooled while we ate our salad and chicken nuggets and fruit). Megan had taken a detour herself to get us Fastpasses for Splash Mountain.
We immediately went to the Haunted Mansion and I spotted one of the tombstones outside the entrance had the name Martin (all of them commemorated the Imagineers who designed the ride). Then it was time for It’s a Small World. After Amy did a little more shopping to kill some time before we could use our Fastpass for Space Mountain, Rachel left us not feeling very well.
Megan continued the tour with us as we did Space Mountain and then the Tomorrowland Transit Authority. Daniel was then able to join us and we went on Splash Mountain together. We wandered back around to see Philharmagic and this was when Disney’s support of the handicapped was made evident.
Since Amy is deaf in one ear and has limited hearing in her good ear, we always try to get movies with closed captioning and such. We’ve found movie theaters are finally getting smart and providing the captioning in theater. Disney is well along on the curve to supporting hearing impaired visitors. Just like Country Bear Jamboree, they had reflective captioning for Philharmagic. So we were seated in the back where she would have easy access to see the captioning with the small stand they used that held up a large piece of smoked glass that would capture the reflection of the captioning.
When seating us, the usher was forced to move some kids who were in the handicapped seats. A large family of ten were taking advantage of the “bonuses” of having someone along in a wheelchair. However, Disney policy only requires they seat up to 3 guests with the handicapped individual. The other kids could easily have sat anywhere in the theater, even the row in front of handicapped. Needless to say, the mother pitched a fit, but rules are rules and we were allowed to sit.
It later turned out that Amy said being in the back row was actually too close to the captioning so it would be better next time to be further forward (a few other rides did seat us where it was convenient for Amy to use the captioning devices).
There was only two things left to do before sunset and the Sabbath arrived. We went to get a Dole Whip Float (pineapple soft serve in pineapple juice) and then the gift shops were I bought one item I had already determined to get before I came: a Disney themed Hawaiian shirt (you’ll see me wearing it in the slideshow accompanying the post for day 2).
We returned to Doobekah’s for pizza, salad, and fruit. An enjoyable ending to a very busy day. We end up getting a real night’s rest in comparison to the previous night.
(to be continued in Day 2)
