Monday—Magic Kingdom

Today we had hoped that most of the crowd had gone home and the parks would be more empty. At breakfast, though, there were hordes of people including not a few speaking various foreign languages. So it looks as if many of the Americans have gone home and heaps of Europeans and possibly South Americans have arrived to take their places. Drat! Still we’d delayed visiting the Magic Kingdom to this week so we had to get on with our plans.

Once again we arrived at the park just as it was opening. We seem to be doing well with this without really trying. We took the train all the way around as we always do at Disney parks then walked down Main Street to Frontierland. Unfortunately Splash Mountain is closed for two months so that left our thrill-seekers with only Thunder Mt. Railroad as their thrill ride. Jade and Paul went on it twice because the wait time was only 10 minutes. Then Jarrah went on with them as well.
We went to Tom Sawyer’s Island and explored there which Jade said was boring. Then we did the Hall of Presidents which was another animatronic stage show similar to the one at Epcot but this one focussing on a few of the more interesting Presidents then finishing with all 44 figures standing and moving in the final display. To finish Barack Obama gave a speech about his vision for America.

We did some of the Fantasyland rides but by this time the crowds were pretty big so we weren’t able to do Peter Pan’s flight or Snow White’s adventure or the Haunted Mansion in Liberty Square or Pirates of the Carribbean in Adventureland. We’ve got our work cut out for us tomorrow when we return to the Magic Kingdom to try and get these in before the crowds build up again.

The crowds now seem to be made up of more European tourists as we’re hearing a range of languages as well as British accents. I guess the Americans with kids have mainly gone home so the kids can go back to school and other nationalities have arrived to take their places.