Magic Kingdom- Thursday, February 20, 2025

    Scott was up early and tried his luck again to get into the Virtual Queue for Tiana's Bayou Adventure.  This is one of the more in-demand rides at the Magic Kingdom.  It is a log flume ride with the characters from The Princess and the Frog and its animatronics are supposed to be amazing.  It has only been open since last summer when it took the place of Splash Mountain.  Scott got lucky again and we were assigned to Boarding Group 60.  It didn't do us any good though, because the ride was broken and never opened all day long.  

    It was much cooler this morning and overcast.  Scott, Julie and Abby did eat breakfast outside again like yesterday.  It didn't take us long to decide that it was really jacket weather.  Emma was about to join us when the phone reminded her of something she had to do for school, so we left on the bus for Magic Kingdom without her.  Whatever it was didn't take her too long.  We were delayed getting in when Scott was stopped by security for an extra check.  When we were at the entrance getting our Magic Bands scanned to get in, we got a phone call.  It was Emma, who was in line behind us.  She could see us in front of her, and we waited for her to get in then.

    Once we were in the park, we headed down Main Street and past Cinderella's Castle.  It was a sight that Abby had been waiting to see.  Unfortunately, it has been changed in recent years so that you can't really go through it to Fantasyland like you could before.

    We had Lightning Lanes picked out about a week ago for today.  The first was for Peter Pan's Flight.  We had Abby in line, but when she saw the boats that carry you through, she panicked, cried, and refused to get on.  Emma was good enough to take her out, so Julie and Scott rode alone.  It's probably good that Abby didn't ride, because she would have liked the boat taking off and "flying" and she wouldn't have liked the darkness of the ride, though it never struck us about it before.  It was clear that there weren't going to be many rides that Abby was going to be able to enjoy today.  We did get to see the part with Tiger Lilly and the less racist depiction of Indians that have recently been adjusted on the ride.

    Abby had decided that the Royal Carousel was something she could handle, and rode on it with Dad.  We were surprised to see Cinderella's step-sisters, Anastasia and Drizella come to ride the carousel at the same time.  Abby was laughing at them as they had problems getting up onto the horses.  She thought that they were loud and bossy.  They ended up on the opposite side of the carousel, though, so Abby and Dad couldn't see much of them once the ride started moving.

    We hoped that Mickey's Philharmagic would be something she could enjoy, but we were wrong there too.  It is a 3-D movie that follows Donald Duck as he chases Mickey's magic hat through songs from classic Disney movies.  Abby didn't like the way things came at her in the movie, and she especially didn't like the puffs of air that add to the effects.  She cried through most of it, even though her sister and mom tried to talk her down.  In the gift shop afterwards, we broke one of our biggest theme park rules.  Instead of waiting until the end of the night, we let Abby buy a stuffed Donald Duck in hopes that she could have him as a companion through the rest of the day to help her stay calm,

    The time for our next Lighting Lane had arrived and that was for the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.  Abby could not be talked into trying it at all.  Emma and Mom rode alone, while Dad waited with Abby.

    It was getting late in the morning and we decided to eat lunch then.  We went to the restaurant called Pinocchio's  Village Haus, where we often eat.  Julie and Abby split a flatbread pepperoni pizza and Scott tried one he especially liked- a Buffalo chicken flatbread.   After lunch, Scott still had to use his Lightning Lane in order to try to sign up for others, so he and Emma returned to Winnie the Pooh.  Emma used Abby's Lightning Lane.  It was clear to them that Abby would not have liked either the motion of the honey pot that you ride or the darkness of the ride, so it's probably for the best that she didn't ride.  Emma bought a green Pooh sweater here.  She had seen some that she liked at Disney Springs yesterday, but they didn't have the size that she wanted, so she waited until today to get one.

    We started to make our way to Pirates of the Caribbean in Adventureland.  We made it as far as Frontierland when the Festival of Fantasy parade passed in front of us.  This was something that Abby really enjoyed.  She and her sister sat and watched from the curb as the characters passed.  Most of the floats featured princesses.  We happened to end up on the right side of the floats to see Anna and Elsa from Frozen and they waved at Abby, which made her very happy.  She was holding her new Donald Duck and when he saw the toy from the parade float, he waved at her too.  The only part of the parade that she didn't like was the dragon from Sleeping Beauty, it's probably good that it didn't breathe its fire when it was in front of us.

    After the parade, we made it to Pirates of the Caribbean for our third Lightning Lane.  It was the ride Julie was most looking forward to, but also it was a certainty that it would not be right for Abby.  We rode it in shifts again.  First Julie and Emma rode, and then Emma rode again with Scott.  Julie noticed many of the smells this time because of the Magic Candle Company's candles and soaps that we have tried.  Scott's time was less enjoyable, though, because some very obnoxious kids sat right behind him yelling "Oh my God! I'm scared! It's dead people!" and things like that right into his ears.  He and Emma commented that they sounded like Abby, but they were tweens and should have known better.  One feature that is pretty impressive is that on certain rides, a photograph is taken of you.  If you have paid for the "PhotoPass" (which Scott did), then you have access to the picture.  They get matched to your account either through your Magic Bands or your phone app or something.  Julie and Emma's picture automatically got matched to our account.  Later in the day, the pictures from Space Mountain and the Haunted Mansion were matched to us the same way.  Later that evening, Scott spent some time with the PhotoPass people to get the picture of him and Emma on Pirates of the Caribbean.  Remarkably, they found it.  

    After Pirates, Scott and Emma found Abby eating chocolate ice cream in Advetnureland with Mom.  (Surprisingly, not Dole Whip, though.)  The sun was starting to peek out and our jackets were coming off.

    It was around this time that Emma left the group to go off on her own.  She was the only one of us to venture into Tomorrowland.  She rode Space Mountain on her own and used the Single Rider line to cut down significantly on her wait time.  She also went to the Carousel of Progress (and texted us not to take Abby because of one dark part and one thunderstorm).  The real reason that she left us, though, was that she had to do a virtual meeting with some group members of hers from school, so she went back to the hotel to do that and returned to us around dinner time.

    We looked for something that we could do with Abby, and Scott suggested Tom Sawyer Island.  It was a bit of a trick convincing her to get on the raft to get there, and once we were in line, she said she had to go to the bathroom.  While we were at the Frontierland bathrooms, we saw the Walt Disney World Railroad train arriving at the new station there, and thought that might be a good way to spend some time.  Abby had her headphones and we sat in the back so the train whistle wasn't much of an issue.  We rode the railroad all the way around.   In the past, that would have been when her sisters would have taken a nap, but Abby didn't want to let herself do that.  As we passed Big Thunder Mountain, we saw the work that they were doing on that railroad, "all the livelong day."  It's being redone, and the large crane that they have there now is visible throughout the park.  We passed under the new Tron ride and we had some sort of delay when  we were at the Main Street station, but we stayed on until we were back in Frontierland.

    We got back into the line for the raft to Tom Sawyer Island.  It will be the last time that we will ever be able to go there because the are redoing that side of the park.  It and the Rivers of America  that the riverboat is on are being plowed under to make a new Cars themed land and a Villains land.   Abby wanted to go to a playground and we told her that the whole of Tom Sawyer's Island was like one big playground.  Julie sat in one of the big rockers while Dad and Abby explored.  We didn't get to the part of the island with the most Mark Twain references because Abby was having a good time exploring "Fort Langhorn."   She went up to the parapet several times, and each time Donald Duck jumped up the stairs in front of her.  She liked shooting the fake guns at "the bad guys in the trees."

    We were getting hungry again and it was around 4:00, so after the raft brought us back to Frontierland, we went to the Pecos Bill Cafe where we had dinner.  We've eaten a lot in this place before, but it has always been standard theme park burgers and fries and that sort of thing.  The menu has changed to more of a Tex-Mex and barbecue theme.  Julie had a nacho bowl and Scott had a double barbecue bacon cheeseburger, which he liked.  We waited here longer than we probably would have otherwise because we got word that Emma was on her way.  We got her a steamed tamale that was waiting for her when she arrived. 

    As we were getting ready to leave Scott saw a smaller parade starting. This one had a lot of different characters that weren't in the previous larger parade. Abby watched from Dad's shoulders as he tried to take pictures and video of some of her favorites like Stitch.  

    We then went to the "Country Bears Musical Jamboree- New!"  They recently redid the classic version of the show.  They re-furred all of the bears, but more significantly, they changed the music.  Now they mostly sing country versions of Disney songs.  The result is kind of blah, especially when compared to the original.  The new Big Al sings, "Remember Me" from Coco.  The finale is "Bare Necessities," which didn't come as a surprise.  Scott has always argued that the original worked for the same reason that Hee Haw worked-- There may be a veneer of absurd silliness, but they took the music seriously.  This new version might be better than the other times that they redid the Country Bears for their Christmas and vacation shows, but still it feels like someone is saying, "Haha.  We just sang a song from Frozen in a country music style.  Isn't that funny?"   It lacks something of the soul of both as a result.  Probably the important thing here is that Abby liked it, once she saw what it was and especially liked when Big Al came back after the finale.

    Scott had paid a lot for PhotoPass today and really wanted to get a picture of the family with it before we split up again.  We went back to the front of the castle and waited for our turn.  Then we went down Main Street to the Town Square Theater to meet with Mickey Mouse.  Julie sat down out front to rest her knee while the rest of us met with Mickey.  Although we didn't have her autograph book, Abby did enjoy meeting Mickey.  She gave him a hug, of course, and we got several pictures taken there.  

    Then Julie and Abby left the park to get a bus back to the hotel.  After waiting for a long time, they got on a crowded bus.  Abby sat next to a woman while Julie stood nearby.  She heard Abby talking excitedly about her day for the entire ride back.  Abby said she liked the movie with Ariel and Donald (even though she didn't seem to like it at the time).  She liked the parade a lot, but not the dragon.   She liked the fort but not the boat she had to use to get to it.  She liked Big Al.  So she seemed to have a good day in spite of everything.

    Scott and Emma then were on their own in the Magic Kingdom again, like they were the last time we were here.  They had a Lightning Lane for Small World, so they rode that.  It was actually about two hours old at that point, but it worked.  We knew that Abby wasn't going to get on the boats without a fuss, no matter what we told her so we had put that off.  The 8:00 fireworks were coming up, so Fantasyland was cut in two.   They had talked about riding the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, which neither of them have before or using the Lightning Lane for Ariel's Undersea Adventure, which they knew was too dark for Abby, but both of these things were on the wrong side of Fantasyland from where they were.  They didn't really want to see the fireworks.  

    They had a Lightning Lane for the Haunted Mansion at 8:15, and it was only about 7:45.  When they arrived at the Haunted Mansion early, they stand-by line was shorter than waiting for the Lighting Lane to come around, so they ended up going on that early.  They saw a couple of the new additions to it, most notably the "Hat Box Ghost" and the more animated hitchhiking ghosts at the end.   They decided to go to the Jungle Cruise as well to see what that was like at night.  Emma liked our skipper a blonde girl who had several running jokes.  One actually was a running joke, about how each animal we saw was the fastest one in the jungle, running at speeds up to 33 miles per hour.   After that, they both decided to call it a night and headed to the bus stop to catch a ride back to the hotel.  They stopped and bought Abby Stitch's girlfriend, Angel, at the hotel gift shop.  Angel was laying next to Abby when she woke up.