Disney Day 1 Continued . . .

So after Dumbo I passed on the news that neither the Haunted Mansion nor Pirates of the Caribbean had Fast Pass options, we decided to stroll around for awhile, and stopped in a Princess themed shop behind Cinderella's castle. Even after years of buying the stuff, I was blown away at the sheer scope of all the Princess related items for sale in the world . .

(by the way - in the movie Cinderella marries the Prince, thus inheriting the title. How is it the castle's in her name?)

We also stopped to watch a show in front of the castle where Donald Duck defeats Melificent by having the crowd chant "Dreams come true!" over and over.

After a few minutes we decided to bite the bullet and head over to PhilhaMagic, the event for which I had FastPass tickets. I should say I was reluctant - Lisa had read about it and was gung-ho.

And brother, she was right! It's a 3-D movie starring Donald Duck. Donald loses Mickey's Sorcerror's Apprentice hat, setting off a wild search for it across scenes from famous Disney movies. Trust me, that description fails to do it justice - it really was excellent and a joy to behold! We were quick to say we wanted to see it again.

The most magical part: watching LuLu reach in vain to catch the objects 'headed' towards us from the screen!

We then headed over to the It's a Small World Ride, which Lisa was disappointed that I didn't remember from our honeymoon. In truth, after viewing the ride I did remember bits and pieces of riding it in '96, but by then the damage was done.

The ride's very kitchy, and you have to steel yourself against 5 straight minutes of the "It's a Small World" melody, but the kids liked it a lot, and I thought the Oriental section was very sharp.

As the streets began to be blocked off for the evening parade we took advantage of the roadblocks by heading over to the now near-empty lines for Snow White's Scary Adventures, a ride which recapped some of the scarier moments from the 1938 film.

 

It was rather dark, certainly darker than you'd expect for a Snow White ride, until you recall how somber parts of the film were - there were different expectations for kids back then I guess.

It was an attractive ride, but LuLu was terrified and I spent most of the ride calming her down. Afterwards YaYa was quick to volunteer to go again (I think mainly to torture LuLu) and Lu just freaked out! She and I stayed behind and browsed a nearby shop while my two oldest Ladies headed for a return visit.

Then it was on to The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.

It was really quite good, with a hypnotic Dali section based on a dream sequence, and a neat 'bouncing' effect when you encounter Tigger. Thumbs up!

We headed back into PhilharMagic for round two, this time sitting in back. It was just as good the second time!

We finally headed over to Pirates of the Caribbean only to discover it had been shut down in the last hour because of technical problems! Man, the one thing I wanted to see!

So we kept walking through AdventureLand and wound up above the park in the Swiss Family Treehouse. I only saw it at night, when the view is anything but great, so my opinion of it might be flawed. Even so I thought it was kinda lame (even though it's right up my alley) but YaYa seemed to like it.

Lotta stairs, let me tell ya.

By this time we were starving, our last meal having come . . . well, I don't know when.

It became kind of a pain finding something to eat, but we stumbled across a place that offered halfway decent casual fare with a Spaceship feel called Cosmic Ray's Starlight Café.

On the way out the door the nightly fireworks show started.

The kids loved them

 and they were some of the best I've seen - and Milwaukee's a big fireworks town.

The fireworks closed the park for the day and we found ourselves at the tail end of thousands of people leaving for the day. The incredible weight of people was overwhelming, as was the long wait for our bus.

We got home to the hotel, watched some TV, and that was it.

Our first day of vacation was over.

Oh, one last thing I'd forgotten to mention: on the way to the park, these words came out of LuLu: "Hey, guys, I got an idea. Let's find Mickey Mouse and all take a picture together!"