{day 2} the magic kingdom

on thursday we woke up early and ATTEMPTED to take advantage of the extra magic hour that is afforded to those who are staying within the boundaries of the disney resort.  due to our efforts, we were able to enjoy a whopping 15 minutes of that extra hour.  but that is neither here nor there (especially since there are basically no lines and no waiting on a thursday in january at disney world!). 

as we entered the gates of the magic kingdom, there was squealing, giggling, jumping up and down, and attempting to go in 1,000 directions at once.  and the kids were pretty excited too ;)  

we went straight for fantasyland in true beeline fashion. we also hit up frontierland and some of adventureland.  there was winnie-the-pooh, 

(all of the interactive things they had while you went through the line for winnie the pooh were so cool.  this was a honey screen that you could touch and it looked like you were really spreading the honey!)

the teacups, 

dumbo's flight, 

playgrounds, 

even the haunted mansion (which hannah SWEARS did not scare her, but when i asked her if wanted to go again, she gave a pretty resounding "NO!"), 

and of course, the carousel!  we basically rose everything.  it was awesome, wrapped in amazing, and sprinkled with spectacular!  have i mentioned that we will never ever EVER go to disney in the summertime again?  you really can't go back to the heat and the crowds once you've experienced off-season disney.

we also took some time on this day to acquire the mandatory mouse ears for ava and chan (chandler refused to allow me to procure photographic evidence of his mouse ears.  and i'm a little more than sad to admit that he chose the ones that had a big bat right on the front of them.  #suchaboy).  

and character meet and greets?  ummmm, can you say "we did them ALL"?? when we came down for hannah's 4th birthday, we stood in line for eleventy forevers to meet the characters.  this time?  the longest ones we waited on were tinkerbell and periwinkle....and that was still only about 20 minutes.  all of the other characters were basically 15 minutes or less on the wait.

chandler refused to "meet" the fairies & princesses and hid behind austin's leg the entire time.  he was cool with all of the other characters though.  as we left mickey, chan looked at me and said, "was that the REAL mickey?  or was that a person dressed up as mickey?".  and of course i told him it was the real mickey.  we were at disneyworld weren't we?!?!

to wrap up magic kingdom day 1, we found ourselves a prime spot on main street for the light up parade.  we were front and center,

AND we had a spectacular view of cinderella's castle all lit up for the evening!

after consuming the most expensive hotdogs known to mankind and watching the amazingness that is the spectromagic parade, we lugged our weary bones to the buses and made our way "home".  we had some serious resting to do in order to be able to get up and do it all over again the next day!