Girls Christmas Trip to Disney Day 2 Park Hopping!

Girls Christmas Trip to Disney

Day 2

Park Hopping!

After our yummmmy lunch at 50's Prime Time Cafe, we headed out of Hollywood Studios to catch a bus over to the Magic Kingdom.  As we were waiting, I happened to see an Epcot bus pulling up and thought, let's jump on that bus, then hop on the monorail to the Magic Kingdom area.

So we did.

While we were on the bus, I thought, what if we just ran into Epcot, rode Spaceship Earth, and then hopped on the monorail to the Magic Kingdom area.

So we did!

We took the bus to Epcot, went through the bag check line, tapped our Magic Bands to get in the park, and headed straight to Spaceship Earth.

And stayed on to ride again!

After a run to the bathroom, we hopped on the monorail to the TTC (Ticket and Transportation Center), then switched to the express monorail to the Magic Kingdom.

After going through another bag check (one draw back to park hopping at Walt Disney World), we probably went to the bathroom again, then walked back to Tomorrowland.  I got some water from the Lunching Pad, and we headed over to the Carousel of Progress until it was time for our Space Mountain FastPass.
  

Space was really fun!  It's funny how different rides feel to me on different trips.  Space Mountain was one of my favorite rides this time, an--shocking--so was Expedition Everest! Anyway.  

After Space Mountain, we stopped for a Mickey Ice Cream Sandwich.  

Then it was time for one of my all time favorite rides--the PeopleMover!  For the first time EVER--we had to wait in line for the PeopleMover!  And it was too crowded for us to stay on and ride it again!

After the PeopleMover, we got in line for Monster's Inc Laugh Floor.  We'd barely made it 2 feet into the line when I got a text from our friends saying they were in the park and heading to Tomorrowland.  We jumped out of line and went to meet them near the Tomorrowland Terrace.  It was so good to see them!  They moved from here over the summer, and I know Iza was really excited to see her friends again.  (You may remember that they showed up in our last Disneyland trip as well!)  

We walked around for a bit, and ended up at the Mad Tea Party.  Iza finally got to ride this the proper way--spinning completely out of control!  Next we went to "it's a small world" and had a very short wait before we were off on the "Happiest Cruise That Ever Sailed".  

I love how much faster lines seem to go when you're talking with friends you haven't seen for a while.  

Columbia Harbor House was next, since it was nearby and had something that everyone liked.  I had the fried shrimp, Iza had the chicken, and we had fries and got waters to drink.  My notes say I had tea, so I guess that must be true.  I'm sure I got water too.  After dinner, we went to Big Thunder Mountain, but I think only the kids rode at that time.  

After that it was time to start making our way back to the front of the park, with a stop at Aladdin's Flying Carpet first.  

Then we were at Main Street, and since our friends still had school the next day, they headed out.  We'll see them again on Saturday!

Iza and I headed to our first ever ride on the brand new Seven Dwarfs Mine Train!  It was so much fun!  The swaying of the cart didn't bother me at all, and the ride was so smooth.  We loved it.  There were some bigger drops than I expected, but nothing too scary (I'm kinda wimpy on roller coasters after all).

We took a little break near the Tangled bathrooms to give my phone a bit of a charge, then we shared a bag of popcorn and headed over to Big Thunder Mountain and used our FastPasses to ride.  The line was short, so we jumped right back in and rode again with standby.  

About that time, the Main Street Electrical Parade was ending, and there were people everywhere!  We made our way to Main Street, but it was just chaos with all the crowds, and part of the Hub is closed for construction right now.  We wanted to see the Celebrate the Magic projection show on the castle, but there just wasn't anywhere to stand.  We fought our way down Main Street instead, cutting through the Emporium when we could.  

We headed out of the park, and took the monorail over to the TTC.  And then realized that we'd just made a huge mistake.

HUGE.

We had arrived at the Magic Kingdom that afternoon by monorail from the TTC.  When we travel with Kyle, we usually have a car, and we have to go to the TTC.  This time we had no car, and we weren't taking the monorail, we were supposed to take the bus.

Which was back at the Magic Kingdom.

And Wishes had just ended.

And there was no way we were heading back into that crowd.

We had a couple of options, like take a boat to a different resort, and make our way back to All Star Music from there.

Or, I could just throw some money at the problem and take a cab.

I chose to throw money at the problem and opted for the cab ride.

The good news is that I'll never make that mistake again, and my identity appears to have not been stolen so far.

The bad new is that it cost $28 including tip.

But, we made it back to our resort quickly, which was good because by this time we were really tired!   We'd only gotten about 4 hours of sleep the night before, and it was really starting to catch up to us.  We made it back to our room, took showers and went straight to bed.

We did 3 parks in one day, a record for us!



And what was the total miles according to the FitBit?  Leave a guess in the comments, or back on Facebook!