Alright! Last park of the day. We were headed into this park feeling slightly refreshed from our snacks at Epcot, but as our clothes were drying Grizzly was starting to feel slightly chaffed. Poor guy. He toughed it out though. With my obsessive time keeping I noted that it took a mere 18 minutes to travel from Epcot to the Magic Kingdom via monorail. We left Epcot at 5:29 pm, and were in line for Merida at 5:53. The Merida line was surprisingly short, and although we needed to wait for the next showing, we were second in line for that. Overall just 23 minutes for Merida which I didn't think was bad given what her lines used to be like. I guess we have the Anna and Elsa line to thank for other short princess lines. Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Tinker Belle all had ridiculously short lines as well. It's almost like all the parents said "Ok sweet princess loving lady, you can choose only one princess," and then every kid jumped immediately in line for Anna and Elsa.
At 6:30pm we used our very first Fast Pass of the day, Tinker Belle. She was quite enthused by my huge pixie dust bag and wondered where I had gotten it.
Okay, now we had some real decisions to make. We weren't sure what we had time for, and we also couldn't for the life of us figure out if Pete's Silly Sideshow was open for Extra Magic Hours or not. Three different sources each said something different! So we did what seemed best and headed for Buzz. His line looked long but moved fast:
Then we bit the bullet and waited for Tigger and Pooh. And waited. And waited. And then we waited a bit more. 45 minutes after entering the line we finally got to meet them. I can't imagine waiting that long if you weren't doing some ridiculous challenge where you were trying to see as many characters as possible in a single day. What were these people thinking? Probably something along the lines of "I must get as many characters as possible to sign my picture frame and hat and autograph book." Yes, I'm still bitter.
We finally emerged from Tigger and Pooh with just enough time to run over to see if Princess Tiana was out. She was not out, which proved to be excellent because in her place we found Prince Naveen with absolutely no line. We both let out an unexpected whoop when we saw Prince Naveen standing all alone. He was genuinely surprised that we were so excited to see him.
With our first and only prince under our belts we headed off to our Anna and Elsa Fast Pass. I had heard horror stories of even the Anna and Elsa FP line taking a very long time, but the cast member assured us it would only take a few minutes, 15 at most, and she was right. They have really nailed down the FP+ system since it began. I'm liking it more and more with each trip. So we met Anna and Elsa for the first time. The most impressive thing about Elsa was how incredibly flowy her dress was. It was magnificent how it flowed and ruffled through the air. Grizzly even commented on it, and he's a guy who cares nothing about princess dresses. He reminded me he was a guy a few moments later when he stepped on it! Other than her dress though Elsa was pretty dull. She said since she likes cold she would like NY, but Olaf likes summer, so to be in Orlando she has to make him a really really big flurry. Anna, however, was AMAZING! I could have sat and listened to her talk all day long. They should make a little eavesdropping booth! We asked Anna if her boots were from Olkin's Trading Post, and then she told us this great story about how Olkin is trying to get into summer products now, and that he sells sun block, but he doesn't really understand sunblock, so he makes it in rainbow colors, and Sven has been running around bright blue.
I must have gotten tired at this point, because I don't have any notes on the order of things that happened next, but I think we went to see Minnie and Daisy at Pete's Silly Sideshow. For around 8pm at night this line was REALLY long. It took us about 45 minutes for each side. I wasn't expecting these lines to take so long. While in line I got to overhear a glorious conversation between a boy and his dad. It went something like this:
Boy: Dad, my feet hurt Daddy. (Not whining or anything, just stating that his feet hurt)
Dad: No they don't. (I just about died! How could he possibly know if his son's feet hurt or not)
Boy: They do Dad, they're really sore.
Dad: Well are they wet?
Boy: No
Dad: Then they don't hurt. (Really really confused by this logic, but okay.)
I'm all about acknowledging my kid's feelings, so this conversation just struck me and made me feel really bad for this little boy. Eventually we made it through the long line and met Minnie and Daisy. I still think both Daisy and Donald's outfits make them creepy:
We then repeated our line waiting feet to meet Donald and Goofy. Shockingly, Goofy did not have us hold up our ears.
Alright! We had gotten 4 of the fab five at all parks, all we needed now was Mickey, and he was our last remaining FP. Our FP window started at 9:00 so we headed down there after finishing with the side show. This was our first experience with talking Mickey, AND HE WAS GREAT!!!!!!! So cool! All I wanted to do was bring my son back to see him. Mickey took the time to tell us a joke about pirates and the type of socks they wear, but my FAVORITE part was when he was talking to the spanish speaking family in front of us. He told them he had been learning a few spanish words, and he told them his words he had learned. I don't remember what they were, but they were somewhat random and funny. At picture time though, well after the whole I've been learning spanish conversation, the photographer said "Say Cheese" and Mickey replied "Queso!". It was great! The whole room was laughing. If you haven't been to see talking Mickey yet, he's definitely worth a visit. He was pretty awesome.
Finally we had our fab five in all four parks. The only characters still left out in the Magic Kingdom were Cinderella, Rapunzel, and the Little Mermaid. So we went to visit them.
Rapunzel was by far my favorite of the group. She saw our llamas on our shirts and went nuts! She told us how much she LOVED llamas. As a llama obsessed person myself, I was quite smitten to have found a fellow llama loving princess. I loved Rapunzel!
Finally, we headed up and saw Belle. We knew we had to be in the show in order to get our picture taken with Belle, so we were quite happy when the CM picked both of us to be the suits of armor. Let me tell you. This show is much more enjoyable if you are actually in it. Be in the show! It's way more fun than watching other people in the show. I still have to load in our Belle picture, but rest assured we saw her too.
And that was it! We headed out of the parks completely tuckered out, barely able to walk, and completely exhilarated at the same time. My phone said we had walked over 18 miles. I think we stopped for a Mickey Bar and some popcorn on the way out. Be briefly discussed riding the TTA before leaving, but both of us were just too exhausted to even ride our most favorite ride. But now to find our car and get back to our hotel. The adventure continues next as this night is not nearly through.
We added 16 characters at the Magic Kingdom, bringing our grand total to 53 character meetings in a single day! Total score tally coming up. Anybody want to take on this challenge too?
The current time: 1:00am
Number of Characters Visited: 53
Number of Parks Visited: 6
Up Next: Heading Back to the Hotel, Getting Lost, and ANGRY husbands