It's early entry day for our incentive group. Well, even though we hit the hay early the night before, it was a bit of a rude awakening to get up at 5:30am Eastern, especially when our bodies were probably still thinking it was 4:30am Central.
And it was going to be a steamy one again. Here's the photo from our room doorway as we left around 6am:
It was red shirt day today. As we headed to the ballroom for our buffet breakfast, it was a sea of red shirts.
The family sitting down to breakfast. Yep, Stefan was not awake yet.
I saw my friend, Laurie, and her family but as you can imagine, there were a lot of people there.
After breakfast, we headed down the hallway to get on special buses that were taking us to Magic Kingdom. We got on about 6:30am and arrived at MK just before 7am. They were just opening the turnstiles as we got up there.
We entered and I had to take a castle pic:
It looks more crowded than it was. Seriously, we walked on to everything.
We didn't have a specific plan. Being veterans, we've done just about everything. We headed toward Adventureland since, as usual, everyone else headed for Tomorrowland and Fantasyland.
We came up to Aladdin's Magic Carpet Ride and Stefan decided we needed to do this.
This is tradition. Stefan and Bryan ride in the same magic carpet vehicle and Stefan tries to get the camel to spit on his dad.
I had to stop and take this picture:
In all my years of going to Disney World, even when we've been there at rope drop, I have NEVER seen a ride that says it has a ZERO wait time! I needed to document that for posterity!
Once we got off of that, I used my coupons and got two bottles of water. It was already steamy.
We headed through the tunnel to Frontierland and who did we run into: Jessie & Woody! As face characters! First time for that one!
Here's one of me and Woody - terrible, I know - that's how humid and icky it was.
Stefan wanted to hit the shooting gallery so Bryan waited with him while Cate and I made a beeline for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad (BTMRR). It wasn't up and running yet. So we jumped on Splash Mountain and walked right on. It was refreshing to get wet, even that early in the morning.
We got off and got on to BTMRR and then met the boys as they had gotten on the train just before ours.
We decided to head to Tomorrowland since the kids wanted to do Space Mountain.
We got a little sidetracked and had to walk on to Buzz Lightyear. After I scored 700,000+, Bryan wanted to go again and try and score higher. So the kids went off to Space, and he and rode Buzz again. 5 times. Seriously. We just kept walking on.
Bryan, the little snot, maxed out at 999,999. I took a picture, but my flash makes it hard to see. His console is the one on the left:
and mine at 809,000
We took a break to watch for the kids and then Bryan had to go meet Buzz Lightyear
We finally met up with the kids and they decided they wanted to ride Buzz again. So we rode two more times.
Then it was approaching 8:30am and we needed to use our coupons before 9am. We headed over to Cosmic Ray's and got some water and juice.
Even by 9am, it was so humid. We decided we'd just do two more things: Jungle Cruise and Mickey's Philharmagic.
On the way to the Jungle Cruise, we saw the "other" Woody and Jessie, and the Lotso Bear from the new Toy Story 3. (Honestly, I don't know how long Lotso will last in the parks once people see the movie.)
Then Alice toodled by and said we were going the wrong way and we should follow her for all the fun!
We headed off and did the Jungle Cruise and Philharmagic. Then we headed for the bus area to head back to CSR.
Once we got back, the housekeeping elves had been there and had Bear and Kitty all waiting for us.
We had a pool break and then decided we'd head to the Pepper Market for lunch.
Not a fan of the PM. It took them 10 minutes to get me a burger. I should have ordered the Shrimp Paella that Cate had because it was ready and it looked fabulous. But I didn't. The boys had something Mexican and were happy. Overall, I felt it was overpriced. Even for Disney. I miss my villas kitchen.
Yeah, I'm a hotel snob and not afraid to admit it.
We decided to hang in the room and just watch some TV. It was truly too hot and humid for us. Plus, having been up since 5:30am, we were ready for a break.
Dinner time was much better this time. We headed to the Crossroads and went to Sweet Tomatoes. I had head a lot about this place online and thought it would be okay to try. I was a little worried because I have teens...teens who are meatosaurus-like. I wanted to make sure they were full.
I had a coupon for BOGO...could I find it? No. At least not until after we came home.
Everyone agreed that it was good. Thankfully, there was more than rabbit food once we got through the salad bar or my kids would have disowned me. But even Bryan, who's not a huge vegie fan, thought this was a good place.
We headed home and packed it in for the night.
Next up: June 15 - Animal Kingdom and the big party at MGM Studios!
