Disney World February 2012 Trip Report Part 4

After leaving Disney’s Animal Kingdom we had to head back to BoardWalk to grab warmer clothing. After all, it was in the 40s, which converts to about -35 degrees elsewhere (so I guess Florida is somewhat like Canada, in that regard). Unfortunately, we didn’t have a bus to ourselves, and this bus was planning on stopping at half the resorts on property near Epcot, so we got off at the first stop at the Swan or Dolphin and walked from there to BoardWalk.

It boggles my mind that many Deluxe Resorts share buses, yet Pop Century has its own bus. If I regularly stayed at Deluxe Resorts, this would irritate me. I also find it odd that there are separate stops at the Swan and Dolphin, and it takes like 5 minutes to travel between the two by bus. It’s quicker to walk, and the two are so close together that there’s no need for two bus stops. I guess Disney assumes that rich folks are really lazy?

We weren’t in the room for long before heading out to the Magic Kingdom. I don’t think we’ve ever taken a trip before this one where Magic Kingdom was the last park that we visited. Granted, we still visited it on the second day, but it was odd to have been everywhere else before visiting the flagship park. We were walking down Main Street by 10pm and immediately met up with Cory and Ryan from Disney Photography Blog and co-hosts with me on the ISO 5571 Disney Photography Podcast.

Much to my surprise, Ryan and Cory each only had one camera and one lens, and no backpacks or tripods. I can only assume this is because they felt intimidated in my presence…or something like that. Actually, they had been shooting all day and were taking a break. Lazy bums. We rode TTA with them and then tried to figure out what to do next. Neither of them had experienced many attractions (they also had been eating their weight in cupcakes that day, just like us!), so they were game for just about anything.

We started with Pirates of the Caribbean, then hit Haunted Mansion, followed by “it’s a small world.” The park was fairly uncrowded at this point, and we’ve found that it’s best to hit attractions like these when the crowds are lower because they don’t have FastPass, so even though their lines rarely exceed 30 minutes on a moderately busy day, you still have to wait in some line for them. I don’t know about you, but 30 minutes in line is too long for me! This may seem like a counter-intuitive strategy when we could have ridden Peter Pan’s Flight with a 15 minute wait, but we have the option of getting a FastPass for PPF on a busy day and waiting less time than that. We never have the FastPass option for Haunted Mansion or Pirates. Following this trio of attractions, we experienced PhilharMagic and Snow White’s Scary Adventures.

We always gravitate towards Tomorrowland at night, so we did exactly that once again, heading to Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor. Ryan had never experienced this glorious attraction, and we were a bit shocked by that. Afterward, I could tell he didn’t much care for it. It’s not for everyone, but I always find myself disappointed when we take someone who has never been to MLF and they don’t like it. I guess Sarah and I just have overly dry or corny senses of humor!

After Monsters, we parted ways with Cory and Ryan (they have a midnight curfew) and continued on in Tomorrowland for our last hour in the park. Space Mountain didn’t seem to have much of a wait, so we did that. Afterward, the park was nearing closing time, so I started taking some photos.

I didn’t want to hang around too long that night because I was freezing and could barely feel my fingers, but things didn’t work out that way. I kept wandering around taking photos until finally we ended up on Main Street. The worst part was that not many of the photos were any good, so we could have just as easily left early, gotten out of the cold, and gone to bed. The lure of “more photos” proved too strong to resist, though!

We did wander around the Emporium, something we rarely do, to warm up before heading back outside to the frigid weather. I took photos of a bunch of the collectibles and souvenirs inside, which was actually pretty fun. Rather than buying a lot of these toys after which I lust, in the future I think I’ll just take pictures of things I like. It’s certainly a lot cheaper!

Short installment here…probably should’ve just lumped this with the previous installment. I’ll be back soon with the next day from Epcot!

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