Day Two: Walt Disney World Trip May 2011

Lake Buena Vista, Florida: An early morning rise got us ready for the second day of our trip. Today we were going to the Magic Kingdom, the best park in Walt Disney World for kids.

The day began with a bus ride to the Magic Kingdom. We booked the 8am bus ride on the complimentary bus that ran from the resort to Disney. The bus shared the route with the Animal Kingdom park as well but despite this being the first bus of the day and both parks opened at 9am, the bus was pretty empty. The bus dropped us off at the Transportation and Ticket Center and then we took the monorail from the TTC to the Magic Kingdom.

We made it to the park in time for the opening ceremony as we watched Mickey and Minnie arrive to the Main Street Train Station with all his friends to open the park to all the guests that have accumulated at the park entrance. One the ceremony was over and the rope dropped, we headed straight to Tomorrowland.

Our first goal once we reached Tomorrowland was to ride the Tomorrowland Speedway. While it does not pack the same punch as Space Mountain, it is one of those rides that if you do not get there early enough, the line gets extremely long and not worth the wait. So we hopped on the race cars and headed out on the track.

When the ride was over, we headed to Space Mountain only to find out it was closed due to a malfunction. So my wife had the idea of jumping on the Tomorrowland Transit Authority to take a look at Space Mountain with the lights on. Her plan worked, when the ride went through the Space Mountain building, the service lights were on and you can see the entire track. It doesn’t look so tough when you can actually see the track.

After we got off the Transit Authority, we rode Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin where my wife scored her highest score ever on the game. I on the other hand was too busy taking pictures to play the game. We then went to Stitch's Great Escape before heading out of Tomorrowland.

From there we headed clear across the park to Frontierland and another family favorite, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. After two times on the coaster, I then took our son on his first ever ride on Splash Mountain. They sat us in the front row and it was a blast. He wanted to ride again but the time it took us to go through, the 5 minute line had grown to over 30 minutes, too long to wait for a ride the whole family couldn't enjoy.

We then broke for lunch at the Columbia Harbour House. We tend to eat here most of the time when we are in the Magic Kingdom, mainly out of convenience. It seems we are always in this area of the park come lunch time. Plus they have really good fried seafood.

After lunch we headed next door to the Haunted Mansion. This was our first time through the renovated line queue. They did a nice job with the renovation, adding a few new tombstones with witty eulogies as well as some interactive ones. We found it took longer to go through the line due to playing around with them rather then the actual wait.

Then it was off to Fantasyland. But this is where we hit the only roadblock of the day. By the time we reached Fantasyland, it was packed. There wasn't a ride line less then 35 minutes. And with the temps reaching the mid to upper 90's, it wasn't worth being elbow to elbow with stranger's body odors for that long. While in Fantasyland, we were able to catch a glimpse of the castle being built as part of the Fantasyland expansion scheduled to be open in 2012.

So we headed towards the Main Street USA train station for a train ride and a touring re-evaluation. On the way there, we stopped in from of Cinderella's Castle to watch the end of the Dream Along with Mickey stage show on the castle stage.

Afterwards we boarded the train for a complete trip around the Magic Kingdom. As we arrived back at the Main Street Station, we stayed on and headed to the Frontierland Station where we got off and headed to ride Pirates of the Caribbean.

We then had enough of the crowds and the head so we started to make our way to the park exit and the 2:20pm bus back to the hotel. We boarded the Walt Disney World Railroad back at the Frontierland station and took it to the Main Street Station where we got off and headed to the park exit.

From there we hopped on the monorail that took us back to the Transportation and Ticket Center where we met up with the bus back to the hotel. We were the only people on the bus leaving at 2:20 and then we headed to Animal Kingdom to pick up a few more people before heading back to the Nick hotel.

Finally back at the hotel, it was pool time. A chance to cool down from the intense central Florida heat. We hit the pool and slides before the daily mass sliming at 4:45.

After pool time was over, it was time for dinner. We had dinner at the Nick Toons Café in the hotel again. We had the all-you-can-eat buffet which tonight featured Asian specialties.

When dinner was over we spent the evening getting autographs and taking photos with the Nick characters in the Mall before taking an night-time stroll around the resort before heading back to the room for the night.

View the slideshow below for photos from today and be sure to check back later for more from the trip.