May 2011 Walt Disney World Trip Report - Day 5

Day 5 – 5/25 - Magic Kingdom & PhotoPass Phun

After staying out late the night before watching fireworks, we slept in a little this morning, got ready in a leisurely fashion and arrived at the Magic Kingdom around 10:00. We grabbed some FastPasses to see Mickey Mouse at the Town Hall, and headed straight for Frontierland to see what kind of waits were in store at Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

We grabbed a FastPass for Splash Mountain and hopped on BTMRR. This time DD was much better about holding the ‘big arms” a little longer…

…but not too much longer.

From here we made our way over to the Haunted Mansion. We hadn’t had a chance to check out the new interactive queue, which had just opened. We had DD pose near the busts. Apparently, by reading the inscriptions and solving some kind of riddles, you’re supposed to be able to figure out who killed whom. But when it’s 90-degrees and sunny, playing Encyclopedia Brown wasn’t on the agenda.

 The new “hitchhiking ghosts” portion of Haunted Mansion is really cool. The way they’re able to make it appear that the ghost is removing your head – it’s pretty cool technology.

After Haunted Mansion we walked through to Fantasyland, grabbing FastPasses for Winnie the Pooh and riding the Carousel.

It was about lunchtime at this point, so we headed over to Cosmic Ray’s. As per usual, it was a mad house. DW and DD secured a table while I went to the different stations to get the food. I like that there’s a wide selection of menu items, but it gets so crowded in there.

After lunch I grabbed some FastPasses for Buzz, in case we came back to MK later in the evening, and we headed over to use the Pooh FastPasses we had collected earlier. From there we used the Splash Mountain FastPasses, and headed into Adventureland.

One of the attractions DD read about and wanted to try was the Swiss Family Treehouse. So while DW wisely waited in the shade below, DD and I climbed the gajillion steps and looked at what the Robinsons had built. I hadn’t been up there before, so it was kind of neat. DD absolutely loved it. When we were just about all the way to the top, I looked back down and noticed this:

Under that pavilion is an overflow queue. I *never* want to be at WDW when that overflow queue is needed for Swiss Family Treehouse. It’s a nice enough attraction, but really.

On our way out of the park we went in to see Mickey and Minnie at Town Hall with our FastPasses. What a great system! It’s so easy and quick to see them now. It used to be a long wait in ToonTown to get a picture with Mickey, but this new procedure is so much better.

It was when we were going to hand our PhotoPass card to the photographer that DW realized that she couldn’t find it. She searched through everything but couldn’t find it. We got a new one from the photographer, and then headed to the PhotoPass counter in Town Hall to see if they could help us out.

We had been using the card we lost for most of the trip, and it had all of DD’s Jedi Training Academy and Star Wars Weekend pictures on it. By telling the CM at the PhotoPass counter the time and location of one of the pictures, we was able to identify our card number and pull up all of the pictures that had been on it, transfer those over to a new card, and we were back in business.

He left us with this advice – take a picture (with a regular digital or cell phone camera) of the number of your PhotoPass card. That way, if you lose it, you’ll still be able to load the pictures into your PhotoPass account when you get back home.

With this lesson well learned, we headed back to the hotel for a quick rest, before cleaning up and heading over to the Poly for dinner. The Poly reminds us of a Las Vegas resort. It kind of smells like the Mirage or Treasure Island. The foliage inside is beautiful and they do a great job with the overall themeing.

Kona Café is one of our favorite restaurants. The food is wonderful – we’ve never had a bad meal there. It’s our usual “date night” place, when we drop DD off at Simba’s Cubhouse. But tonight we decided to bring her along.

After dinner it was back to the hotel. Tomorrow is DD’s birthday, and we’ve got to get to Hollywood Studios for Rope Drop in the morning!