Check-in and Magic Kingdom
After getting up at 4:00am to get on the road by 5:00am, mom and I made the drive down from Raleigh, NC to the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, FL. We made a few stops for gas/bathroom, but cruised down to Lake Mary, FL before stopping at Fishbones for an early dinner. This is a must do on our roadtrips and is always so delicious! Afterwards, we finished the last hour of the trip and made it to Disney’s Polynesian Resort.
Fishbones dinner featuring clam chowder, asparagus, and lobster tail. Not shown: cesar and house salads!
Checking into our hotel was simple, self explanatory, and a breeze using the My Disney Experience app. I completed the check-in process about a week before hand. When completing this process on the app, you are able to make room requests (first floor, near bus stop, etc.) as well as adding your card for your room charges and setting up a PIN for that. Did you know that if you are staying on Disney property, you can set up your magic bands to charge food/merchandise to the room? It’s so convenient!
Our room was located in the Rarotonga building, which is located directly next to the main building (literally 20 steps away). This made it so easy to go get a drink/snack and extremely convenient to access both the monorail and the buses in just a few minutes from our door! Because we checked in using the MDE app, we went straight to our room and were able to get in using our Magic bands-no need to even go to the front desk.
We got settled and I unpacked before changing and headed out to Magic Kingdom for a few hours. This was a little stressful because check-in for me and Ryan’s cruise just happened to fall at midnight that night and I needed to be ready! IYKYK that you want to check in ASAP to get on the ship as early as possible. I will go more into this process in another post!
After I made sure everything was ready, I walked next door to hop on the monorail and go to the Magic Kingdom! There was extended hours for Deluxe Resort guests this night until 1am, so there were plenty of people headed there as well, even though it was 7:45pm. Fireworks started at 8:15pm and I knew that mainstreet would be crowded and I wouldn’t get a good spot by the castle at that time, so I decided to watch them from other places in the park! I booked it to the back of the park to take the magic shot with the lantern from Tangled while the line would be shorter (since everyone was at the fireworks).
This turned out to be an amazing idea because I got to watch half of the Enchantment fireworks show from under the floating lanterns and it was BEAUTIFUL! After having my picture taken, I made my way over to Big Thunder Mountain while watching the fireworks over the riverboat (also beautiful) and beating the post-fireworks rush of people getting in line. I rode in the back car (of course) and it was definitely the wildest ride in the wilderness!
At this point, I was pretty exhausted from the drive down, eating a delicious and huge dinner, and speed walking around the park. I decided to take it easy and make my way back towards the exit while admiring all of the Halloween decorations at night and utilizing photopass photographers along the way. If you have not been to Magic Kingdom while it’s decorated for Halloween before…I highly recommend it!
I left the park around 10:15pm and got back to the room by 10:40pm, so it was a very quick and easy trip to the park and back. I showered and got ready for check-in at midnight (which went super smoothly) and went straight to bed. Stay tuned for the next blog post to find out which celebrity we spotted at Magic Kingdom…
