Day 1: The Not-Quite-President's-Day Trip Report

We walked into the Magic Kingdom for our Liberty Tree Tavern ADR. It was crowded--more crowded than we're used to--but we figured we were arriving on Saturday at 1:00pm along with a full ferryboat and a full monorail, so it should probably seem crowded. Here's a shot of the new Celebrate lamppost banners:

Then it was over to LTT, where I got a couple of shots of the under-renovation Hall of Presidents:

While we waited for our ADR, I noticed the doors to the Diamond Horseshoe Saloon Revue wide open and people streaming in and out. Went to check it out and found that it's functioning as a counter service restaurant at the moment. I'm guessing this is temporary while Pecos Bills is closed:

Into LTT for our meal, where we had our favorite Ooey Gooey Toffee Cake for dessert. It's now the "Celebrate Today" (or some such) dessert and highlighted on the LTT menu, so they put Mickey sprinkles and some strange strawberry sauce on it for color.

Here's LTT from "above" (where the bathrooms are!):

We'd gotten fast passes for Splash Mountain before lunch, so headed over that way for a ride. (Wait for Splash stand-by was about 25 minutes--not bad for the weekend before President's Day.)

On our way out of the park, I took a couple of shots of the newly refurbed french fry counter service, now called "Golden Oak Outpost." The lines were CRAZY there all day. Not sure exactly why, but we have a theory I'll put into another post. Here're pics of the lines and the menu:

And here's a lovely little memory for you all:

Next up: Dinner at Nine Dragons, Wishes on the Balcony, and the luxury of "running into the Magic Kingdom to ride a few things before it closes."

Thanks SF No kidding about the diabetic coma. I'm pretty sure I went into one, because we went back to the hotel, and despite our more honorable intentions of going to work out, we instead spent the next hour sleeping!

We finally woke up from the impromptu nap (in our defense, we'd only gotten about 5 hours of sleep the previous night) and got ready for a little time at Epcot. Here are some pics from beautiful World Showcase and our dinner at Nine Dragons:

Next up: End of first day--Wishes on the balcony and Magic Kingdom

After Nine Dragons we headed back to the Contemporary to watch Wishes from our balcony. It was incredible to be able to sit on our balcony and see the fireworks show (who gets to do that?!?).

But the vantage point makes the show very different from watching it from the hub in front of the castle, or even from the Polynesian. At the Contemporary you're watching the show from the side, and because the fireworks are set off almost a mile behind the castle, they don't even seem to be a part of the show going on in the park. Also, you can't really hear the music from the Magic Kingdom (only very faintly and delayed because of the distance), which makes the show less cohesive. I think it'd be great from California Grill, though, as the music is piped in!

We�d discovered that the Magic Kingdom was open until 10 that night, so after Wishes at 8 we put on some warm clothes (it's chilly in Orlando right now: 40s and 50s at night) and monorailed into the Magic Kingdom for some end-of-the-night rides.

Tomorrowland was busy, so we headed over toward Liberty Square, which was empty! We rode a few rides, including the Haunted Mansion�with no wait, then walked onto Splash Mountain with 30 minutes left in the evening.

We rode through three times without de-logging until they finally told us that the park was closed and we had to leave. Cold and soaking wet, we climbed out of the log and headed back to the Contemporary. For a Saturday night before President's Day, crowds were non-existant! We started to have hope for the rest of the week.

Here are a couple pictures of the mailbox at the end of main street: