Day One - The Magic Kingdom

 Entering the Magic Kingdom

Whenever I talk about the Magic Kingdom, I say Disneyworld.  Well, Disneyworld refers to all the Disney parks and The Magic Kingdom is one of them.  We noticed that The Magic Kingdom did not have a Matterhorn, Indiana Jones or Star Tours.  Indiana Jones and Star Tours are at other Disney parks within Disneyworld.  I have to say I like Disneyland better, but I enjoyed the differences between the parks.  I did like The Magic Kingdom's Jungle Cruise more, it was longer and different, but the same!

 Katie found this little button as soon as she sat down on the tram.  How appropriate!

 To get to The Magic Kingdom, you have to board a ferry and cross a lake (that took three years to dredge) or you can take the Monorail.  Michael is excited!

 The Magic Kingdom comes into view.

 In front of the train station.  I had 4 different people take this picture.  I took theirs first and got the pic with the whole train station, I asked them to do the same for me and none of them did.  

 I took this pic because Disneyland does not have a Theater on Main Street that looks like this.  It's very pretty.

 The Castle

The back of the castle.  There is a restaurant here and you need to make reservations 6 months out.  I'm sure it's awesome.

We really lucked out and there was hardly anyone at the park on the Thursday we went.  We didn't wait longer than 10 minutes for any ride.  It did get really hot about noon, so we went back to our hotel and came back later when it had cooled off some.

 This is Liberty Square.  Disneyland does not have Liberty Square, but they have New Orleans Square.

I felt The Magic Kingdom had a lot of prop buildings and not a lot of substance.  Every inch of Disneyland is used.  

 The first ride was Splash Mountain, at ten in the morning it was a welcome relief from the heat.  

Katie was our navigator.

A lot of Fantasyland was under construction. I think they are building a "Cars" land like California Adventure.  

The Haunted Mansion

It was also different inside.  There is a longer lead up to what would be the beginning of the one in Disneyland and there were small changes that were cool.  At the end of the ride, the ghosts sit with you, on top of the doom buggy and sometimes your face is changed to a ghostly face.  Fun!

 Having a little fun.

We stayed and watched the Electric Light Parade at 11:00.  It was a shortened version of the original.  As I was watching it, I realized that a lot of the kids would not know who any of the characters were except the princesses and Peter Pan. The parade's focus is older characters.  I would love to see an updated version with Belle, Ariel, characters from Cars etc, but still keep the older ones in for a bit of nostalgia.

There is, of course, so much to see and I couldn't capture everything.  I tried to get pics of some of the things that were different, plus when it is so hot, it is hard to get the family to cooperate for pics.  It was a fun day and we enjoyed the park.