It’s the worst day of every Disney World trip—departure today! Zoe woke us up early for one last visit to Magic Kingdom, and then we headed home!
Other Posts in this Trip Report
Disney World June 2021 Trip Report — Arrival Day (Incl. a Magic Kingdom Visit)
Disney World June 2021 Trip Report — Hollywood Studios and Epcot
Disney World June 2021 Trip Report — Departure Day (Incl. a Magic Kingdom Visit) (You Are Here)
A Bonus Magic Kingdom Visit
When we originally booked the trip with five-day park hoppers, we planned to just relax on our departure day. After upgrading our tickets to annual passes back on day one, though, we decided to at least grab parks pass reservations at Magic Kingdom in case we wanted to use them…which we did.
In the past my practice was to book late flights home to maximize our time in the parks. With Zoe at this age we didn’t want to find out what getting home at, say, 11PM would look like, so we booked a midday flight that departed at 1:50PM. We’d received our Magical Express letter the day before, confirming a pickup at 10:30AM.
Zoe woke us up around 5:30AM, which gave us some time to do some packing. Leaving the room around 6:50AM, we took the walking path from Grand Floridian to the park and were probably the fifth or sixth family in line for security at 7:03AM. We were through the park gates at 7:12AM.
We decided to stop for two photopass photographers. First, we didn’t have to get on any ride immediately. Second, I like to sometimes slow down our mornings so our advice might be useful for people who, e.g., don’t walk as quickly as us. I had hoped the clearer morning sky today would make for better pictures, but I don’t think it mattered too much.
We wound up in line for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train at 7:18AM. (We used rider switch today, but I’m not going to go into the details since it wasn’t strategic at all.)
We wound up with the following ride schedule:
7:40AM Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
7:50AM Peter Pan’s Flight
7:59AM Prince Charming Regal Carrousel
8:15AM Astro Orbiter
8:24AM Magic Carpets of Aladdin
We picked those last two rides because it meant that Zoe would—depending on what you count—have ridden all the rides without height requirements a Magic Kingdom on this trip. This doesn’t count the railroad (under refurbishment), the rafts to Tom Sawyer’s Island, or Carousel of Progress (which rotates, so some consider it a ride).
Emily and I didn’t make it onto Barnstormer (which we’d never really planned on) or Splash Mountain. Splash was an unfortunate miss, but when it isn’t operating the one morning you’ve dedicated to the park, and you’re visiting in the summer, you have to endure a long afternoon wait to get on it.
I’ll also add here that Astro Orbiter can be a real pain to schedule. We often ride it last in our day because the waits during the day get really long and during FastPass+ times it didn’t have FastPass+.
If you do a rope drop strategy that focuses on Tomorrowland, it fits in well in the morning. But if you’re heading out west early, which we usually are, it’s a drag to stop in Tomorrowland first just for an aerial carousel. The ride can’t ever be a true walk on because of its elevator loading system—always plan for 10 minutes from getting in an empty line to getting off the ride.
Finally, I forgot to mention this was the first day that masks weren’t required, except on transport, for vaccinated guests. The result was that masks were incredibly rare, even among children under 12.
I don’t really want to add my voice to the litany of commentary on this issue. I’ll say that we simply never counted on what was left of the mask requirement when make the decision to visit, so losing it didn’t impact how we felt.
Back to Grand Floridian
Emily got Zoe to fall asleep while I got some last-minute photos for the blog, and we got from the park gates to our room at a leisurely 20-minute pace, arriving back in the room at 9:09AM
I really wanted Emily and Zoe to get some swimming in, since they missed out on it yesterday. So I offered to pack all our stuff while they swam.
Well, I was only half planning on seriously packing. I knew Magical Express would get us to the airport with plenty of time to fix our packing before going through TSA, so mostly I just needed to shove our stuff into any number of bags, which is basically what I did.
The feature pool and its splash area didn’t open until 10AM, so Emily and Zoe went in the secondary pool (the “Courtyard Pool”). I was able to come see them for about 15 minutes and grab some pictures.
Emily and Zoe changed in the lobby bathroom (unfortunately even with two of us, one of us had to stay with the luggage, so Emily changed out of her swimsuit and then I changed Zoe), and we were waiting for Magical Express by 10:20AM. It picked us up at 10:33AM, and we were at the airport at 11:19AM.
Back to Chicago
As promised I took some time to rearrange our bags for the flight. There was no line for TSA PreCheck. We also have CLEAR, which has been really nice in the past when there are lines at MCO (they can get quite long), but we didn’t need it today.
You can grab food at MCO before security, but we typically like to get through security ASAP. The airside food options at MCO vary by which gates you’re at. Our best vegetarian option at Gates 30-59 was Nature’s Table.
There are two lounges we’d have access to through Priority Pass—The Club MCO (Gates 1-29) and The Club MCO (Gates 70-99). Coincidentally, both of those concourses also have Burger Kings, so we’d probably prefer impossible whoppers to the club food in any case.
You can somewhat easily hop between gates on your side of the airport. After security on our side were separate shuttles to Gates 1-29 and Gates 30-59. The shuttle is just a few minutes, so you could figure <10 minutes travel time from food court to food court.
The timing for Zoe was absolutely awful, as Z was due a nap just before boarding was scheduled to start. With a lot of fight, we got Zoe to sleep, but we wound up splitting one of our salads since there wasn’t enough time for us to actually both sit down and eat. The other one just went to waste.
There was no staff at the gate until well after scheduled boarding, and we wound up departing the gate only 15 minutes late at 2:05PM. I was slightly more efficient at getting us in our seats this time, and the car seat fit with the same snugness on Spirit’s A320 as it did the A321. I put in a little more oomph to get it into slightly better positioning than the previous flight.
With typical Florida thunderstorms in the area, we sat just off the runway until 2:38PM, when we took off.
The flight was, all around, quite awful. The teenagers in the two rows in front of us were clearly sick—it sounded like a common cold, and based on our next week, that’s what it was—but didn’t much care to keep their masks on.
Zoe could not find any chill. It was bad waiting for takeoff, and once we were in the air the white noise seemed to calm Z a bit. But keeping Zoe from outbursts was a full time job for the both of us all flight. We did manage a short nap (30 minutes) in there, before the screaming started again.
As we approached the airport we finally just played some video on our phone, and that calmed Zoe to the point of falling asleep again right as we landed at 4:05PM (Central time). A lesson for another trip, I suppose. Baby still had plenty of love for the train ride home, though. We were back at home around 5:50PM.
The flight was bad enough that it had me saying “never again”, even though I know the only way things will get better is with practice. At the core, Zoe just isn’t used to being in a car seat for hours. Zoe’s still young enough to be a lap infant, but, safety issues aside, Zoe also is currently in a phase that doesn’t involve calmly sitting on our laps very long.
In any case, the novelty of screenz still seems to have some effect on Zoe, so in the future I imagine we’ll be a little more aggressive about using a screen to calm Zoe. It’s not ideal, and I’d still try anything else first, but we’ll see how it goes.