Spontaneous Disney Trip 2018: Day 3 – Magic Kingdom

Spontaneous Disney Trip 2018: Day 3 – Magic Kingdom

The 3rd day of our trip was my husband’s 1st full day of meetings, so my mom and I spent the day together at Magic Kingdom! This was the 1st of 2 days of just me and my mom in the parks, and I was pretty excited because, despite the majority of the trips I’ve taken being with my mom, they were never just me and my mom. It was always my dad and sister, too, and now my husband and I go on trips together.

Anyway, we got to Magic Kingdom and got the use the Annual Passholder line, which was still a total thrill for me. As we were walking in and spotted some of the Main Street vehicles in front of the train station, waiting to take people to the castle, my mom commented that she’d never ridden in one before. I hadn’t, either, so I suggested we take one! I mean, why not? We love doing new things in Disney, especially since we’ve been fortunate enough to visit as many times as we have. Plus, my mom’s knees are not great so any walking she can save herself, the happier her body will be. It was so cute and fun, but there was a lot of honking of that tiny little horn for folks to move out of the way and we obviously moved very slowly, but I’m so glad we did it.

Since it was still pretty early and the park wasn’t too crowded, we took some pictures of each other in front of the castle.

Then we headed for another first: Sleepy Hollow for breakfast! There happened to be a PhotoPass photographer standing right there, so we paid him a visit before grabbing breakfast.

I’ve seen the waffle sandwich with Nutella and fresh fruit, which is something my husband would love, but my mom and I both went for a Mickey waffle with strawberries and whipped cream and it was delicious!

After breakfast, we went over to the ticket office in Liberty Square for our complimentary Annual Passholder Magic Bands. I have a millennial pink one I bought but I have so much red Disney stuff, I figured a red band would be perfect. I will confess I was disappointed that they were out of the little Annual Passholder sliders to go on the bands, but it’s really not a big deal. Extra accessories are totally my thing, tho, so I was still happy for another color to coordinate with.

We really planned our morning’s activities perfectly, in a geographical sense. By the time we were done in Liberty Square, it was time for our Haunted Mansion FastPass, which is right next to Liberty Square.

Haunted Mansion has always been a favorite of mine. My dad does this really awesome evil laugh and my sister and I used to fight over who got to ride with my dad because he’d do the laugh on the ride.

After Haunted Mansion, it was time for a pit stop. I normally wouldn’t be sharing that detail, but the Tangled restroom area is so well themed and detailed, especially considering it’s just bathrooms.

As we were wandering by, we saw It’s a Small World had a relatively short wait, so we figured we may as well hop in line.

By then it was definitely time for more coffee, so we made our way back to Main Street for some Starbucks and some shopping. I honestly had very few items in mind that I wanted to buy on this trip, but I seriously love Main Street and love seeing all the cute Disney stuff in all the shops.

We made our way over to Tomorrowland since we had a FastPass coming up, and I just had to stop by the Galactic Purple Wall for a picture before we continued on.

When we got to Tomorrowland, we made a beeline for The People Mover, which is hands-down one of my favorite rides ever. It’s so mellow and simple and not a big deal, not a thrill ride or roller coaster, but it’s so nice to relax and you get amazing views.

After our little bit of relaxation, we used our Space Mountain FastPass! I still love this ride so much, even after riding the one in California. In fact, I didn’t like the Disneyland version at all, so it was almost a relief to be back on the familiar one in Florida.

We were a little hungry, but not really ready for lunch, so we headed to Adventureland because I was on a mission to find the mac & cheese spring rolls I’d seen The Pixie Traveler / Oh Look More Food post about.

They were worth the hunt! They’re at this ice cream cart across from The Tiki Room and we SO delicious. 1 order comes with 2 and we shared them, so I wasn’t super filled up, but I could probably have made a lunch out of 3 or 4 of them.

Since we were right there, we checked the wait time for Pirates of the Caribbean and it said 35 minutes, so we got in line. In reality, we only waited 20 minutes, which was pretty amazing! Pirates is another ride that I lump in with Haunted Mansion – it’s an oldie but a goodie. It’s not an overly exciting ride but I’ll always love it.

We checked the app and saw that Big Thunder Mountain Railroad only had a 35 minute wait, so we figured we’d chance it and head over. It still said the same time by the time we got over there, so of course we got in line, but again we only waited 20 minutes!

Earlier in the day, while we were in line for Small World, we were noticing the windows above the ride that looked like they were part of a restaurant. I was thinking about what was around and realized it was probably Pinnochio, so we decided we’d check another item off our list of firsts for the trip and make sure to grab lunch there later on. And I’m glad we did! It’s a quick service spot with a ton of tables, both inside and out. My mom and I managed to get one of the tables in the window, which was cool. I had tomato basil soup and some breadsticks for dipping and it wasn’t bad.

After lunch, we popped into Mickey’s Philharmagic, which pretty much always says it has a 10 minute wait because it’s a short show. We probably just missed it because we did wait at least 10, maybe even 15 minutes, but it’s all good.

We originally had our 3rd FastPass of the day for Thunder Mountain, but I changed it for Buzz since we already rode Thunder and had another one for the next day, too. So we rode Buzz and I totally destroyed my mom!

It was getting later in the day and we knew we would have to get going relatively soon. My husband had meetings all day, but he thankfully did not have a dinner commitment, so we were going to pick him up for dinner. So, we headed to Main Street to do some shopping. Yes, again. Totally not sorry. We figured that would pretty much round out the day in the park.

As we were heading over there, we spotted a PhotoPass photographer without a line! So you know we had to take advantage of that.

She even gave us one of my favorite photos of the trip and all-time favorite photos of me and my mom! She had us give each other a hug and I just love the way this one came out!

After our photo, we finally headed in to shop. While we were in The Emporium, it suddenly occurred to me that we’d used all our FastPasses for the day and hadn’t even checked the app to see if we could get anything else. I opened it up and managed to grab another Thunder Mountain FastPass that started in 5 minutes, so we headed back over to Adventureland for one last ride of the day!

Then it was time to grab the monorail to the Transportation and Ticket Center to get the car and head back to the hotel to get my hubby.

While we were heading out, my mom and I realized we’d really done an incredible amount of stuff that day. We originally planned to spend both of our days together at Magic Kingdom, but we’d done all the rides in this 1 day that we had FastPasses for over the span of both days. While we were on the monorail, we canceled our Magic Kingdom FastPasses for the next day and instead grabbed Living with the Land, Spaceship Earth, and Soarin’ and decided to get to Epcot in the morning for rope drop and head straight to Test Track.

Dinner that evening was at The Edison, which I believe is a new restaurant and none of us had eaten at before.

The whole vibe of this place is really, really cool. It’s supposed to be an old electric company and I think they nailed it with the theming.

My mom and I both had the Fall Celebration Salad and I also got the mac and cheese. The hubs got one of the specials, a surf & turf burger, which he said was really delicious. My salad was good but I was underwhelmed by the mac, to be honest.

After dinner, we headed over to the Christmas Tree Trail. My parents have done this a few times (both last year and 2 weeks prior for their trip together) but my husband and I somehow never managed to see it on last year’s trip, so we were happy to finally get the chance. It was really cute! The trees each have their own theme, and you know how well Disney executes on that.

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We did a little shopping after that, but that was basically it for the day. Thanks for reading along! Come back next week to read about our our mother/daughter day at Epcot!