Day 2: The Magic of the Kingdom is Hard Work!

JW and I took to Disney World with a conquering attitude thanks to the inexpensive advice of Tour Guide Mike. We followed his advice and itineraries as much as possible to maximize our time there. As I look back at our 800 plus pictures I can now clearly see why we were all pooped by noon!

Here is Eliana modeling her Disney couture (which was completed the night before we left town, of course!) while waiting for the opening ceremonies to kick-off. We always arrived at least 30 minutes before opening at all of the parks! Which meant waking up at 6am for showers, clothes pressing, breakfast, primping and extensive packing! Like I said, capturing Disney’s magic is hard work!

Eliana’s outgoing spirit seemed to grow exponentially while being surrounded by thousands of strangers! Once again she is getting her groove on to the sound of the park’s music. Her pants were also specially made for our trip however you can’t see them in these pics. They are denim ruffle pants!!

Eliana’s Minnie bow was finalized minutes before we left for Magic Kingdom that morning! It is my first puffy bow. Because I loved that bow so much, I kept tabs on it obsessively the whole 6 days! Eli would throw it and I would run to catch it and tell her to hand it to me next time. I guarded that bow the entire time but then I got careless on the bus back to the airport. Yep, we lost the bow just hours before the end of our trip. Very tragic. But thank goodness I can make her another one…

Behind Eli & Dub is a shot of the Main Street USA Railroad Station just moments before Mickey & friends arrived.

You can’t really see it but we had just been given Pixie Dust to throw when Mickey arrived. Thanks to the kindness of a cast member we came home with lots of Pixie Dust but more on that later.

This banner decorates the entry gate of Magic Kingdom.

At last the opening ceremony! I didn’t get any good shots of this because we didn’t want to lose our place in line in front of the gate. But seeing the characters even far away was exciting. Just ask Eli!

This is one of my favorite pics of our trip. Her face says it all!

As JW pushed Eli in the stroller I clicked away attempting to chronicle every step of our way! Here we are making a mad dash to Dumbo, just like Tour Guide Mike said to!

Main Street USA!

Alas! The castle!

The reason Dumbo was our first stop is because this is one of the rides at MK with the slowest moving lines. And the longer in the day you wait to ride it, the longer the line will get. So if you plan to do it, do it first. Since we are all Dumbo lovers in our home, it was a must do!

This is just before take-off. Eli was very excited to see her friend in person!

Here is one of the views from Dumbo—beautiful! Eliana was sad to leave Dumbo and cried for a little. But who can cry for long if the follow-up to Dumbo is Winnie the Pooh?

Winnie the Pooh was one of my favorite rides! One thing Disney is good at is making movies come to life and putting you right in the thick of it all! The Pooh ride was beautiful! They even had wind for the blustery day, it was awesome! And here is a classic image of Winnie that I closely identify with:

This image of Winnie reminds me of how I got with fudge during my pregnancy!! Here are Eli and Dub getting off the hunny pot:

Next up was Peter Pan! Here are Eli and Dub leaving the ride. I didn’t get great shots from inside. But they make it seem like you are flying through the movie!

Then we hit Snow White:

We were warned to tell Eli about the witch throughout the ride. To Eli all witches are, “Ahhh-bee!”, funny! However she is referring to the Spanish word for witch, “bruja”, not the English word for witch!

Ahhhh-bee!

Prince Charming’s Carrousel was one of Eli’s favorite rides. I know this because she cried the hardest when we got off of it!

Yee-haw! Or as Eli says, “Chee-co, chee-co!”

The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party was surprisingly thrilling to me and surprisingly creepy to JW! I wanted to go faster and faster but JW started getting dizzy! And poor Eli was completely oblivious to any danger!

After this ride we were done with Fantasyland (booohoooo!!) for the day so we waited for the train to take us to Adventure land. We waited for a few minutes and since Eliana loves trains…

She became supernaturally ecstatic when she heard the “Choo-choooooo!!” and saw the train coming to us!! It looks like she is crying but she is actually laughing with glee!

She was so excited and she definitely wasn’t hiding it! One of Eli’s cool Disney moments…

While Dada went on the longest ride in the world (Splash Mountain) Eli and I had time to hang out in a playground and ride Aladdin (much like Dumbo).

This is the cool view from Aladdin’s Magic Carpet.

Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Pirate’s Life for Me! After we ate lunch at Pecos Bill we rode Haunted Mansion & Pirates (with Eli). 18 years ago when I rode Pirates, Johnny Depp was not part of the ride. In my opinion because of the new addition, Pirates is much more enjoyable!

We did disobey Tour Guide Mike on our first day. Eli fell asleep on us in the stroller around 11am, oops! So we let her sleep and pushed through our agenda. As a result we stayed later than we were supposed to and were exhausted! Here we are at Mickey’s Philharmagic, one of my favorite shows simply because it smelled amazing!

And on the way out we couldn’t resist stopping for the 3pm parade!

You can see from Eli’s face that we should have left hours ago!

One of the highlights of the day (for me) was getting Eli a new baby, a Dumbo baby! This sweet little elephant provided much comfort and happiness to Eli the whole trip and don’t worry we did not lose him!

After a quick diaper change Eliana found this fountain and was the happiest baby in the world!

We let her splash to her heart’s content.

Can you see the castle behind her?

This pic concludes our first Magic Kingdom day! Since we stayed past the reasonable time we were too tired to do much else the rest of the day. We had lights out by 8pm!! I hope we are smarter the next time we visit!

I think this was my favorite day at a park because we did so much and Fantasyland is the best! I almost forgot that we did Space Mountain sometime after lunch and let me just say, “Don’t ride in the front seat!” It is terrifying because you can’t see anything in front of you!!!

And one more thing! I completely forgot about Eliana's bona fide Magical Disney Moment! Before we exited the park we went to the hat store in Main St. to buy matching embroidered Mickey hats. While we waited for our names to be embroidered, Eliana was hard at work charming everyone in the store.

When we looked over at her she was in front of a mirror with some cast members who were having fun trying on the fancier, more expensive Princess mouse ears. She looked really cute in the Aurora and Cinderella mouse ears but we had already bought the classic ears and I had my heart set on those anyway. Later one of those cast members and I were talking and when she found out that Eli's birthday was Friday she decided to gift Eli the Cinderella mouse ears! I guess cast members are allowed to do that sometimes so Eli walked away with 2 sets of mouse ears! Sorry I have yet to get a pic of her in those ears! I'd better work on a matching cinderella dress to go with those cute ears...