Disney World June 2021 Trip Report - Magic Kingdom Part 2

Welcome to day five—our last full day—of our June 2021 Disney World Trip Report. Today we spend a rocky day split between Magic Kingdom and our hotel, thankful that some bad weather didn’t derail a great trip.

Our Many Visits To Magic Kingdom

Before we get into the details of today, I want to point out we planned our Magic Kingdom days with a slight bend toward writing good content, not necessarily experiencing everything. That means we repeated rides and rope drop strategies (we also rope drop Magic Kingdom tomorrow), while if we wanted to experience everything we would always be focused on things we hadn’t done.

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I’d also add that we wound up visiting Magic Kingdom on four of our total six days in Disney World—arrival day, our first “leisurely” full day, today, and our departure day tomorrow. There’s no doubt we could have planned to see even more in the park—we barely saw the cavalcades, for example—had we known in advance that would be the case. But two of our visits—arrival and departure day—weren’t visits we could count on.

As you’ll see, today didn’t go according to plan. For content purposes I wish it had, because a single, great Magic Kingdom day is something I’d like to hand you on a silver platter. But weather would have made that impossible today, and in any case we’re happy with the decisions we made from a vacationing perspective.

When traveling with a small child, I think you’ll generally want to commit two days to Magic Kingdom if you’d like to experience most of the park. Today—with the high waits, the weather, and the unexpected delays—is a good example of why a single day might not be enough.

Rope Drop From Grand Floridian

I knew that for Zoe’s first rope drop at Magic Kingdom I wanted to walk to the park. As I discussed extensively yesterday, you simply can’t rely on the buses to get you to the park in a reasonable amount of time, and other transportation options from outside the monorail resorts aren’t great either.

Was it worth the extra $370 per night to have the walking path from Grand Floridian? I suppose the answer has to be “no” because of course we could just wake up extra early at Pop Century, Uber to Transportation and Ticket Center, and be on the first ferry over to the park. Avoiding that isn’t worth $370. But when you consider the other reasons for a split stay (like simply getting to experience a deluxe hotel for part of your visit), I’m happy with our decision.

Our hope was to be at the park just before 7AM. It was a rainy morning, which we didn’t realize as we first head out, but we luckily had our ponchos from our first day! Without those ponchos we would have survived (Zoe actually had Z’s own poncho that we never used), but we really wanted to walk and it was nice to get some use after we’d scammed ourselves into buying the ponchos back on arrival day.

Gasparilla Grill starts serving snacks at 6AM, which is awesome and two hours before the first park opens should be the standard at all Disney hotel quick service, in my opinion. I swung by and picked up a few mobile ordered snacks and after throwing on the ponchos we departed around 6:51AM.

The walk is about ten minutes from the start of the path to the end of the path at a brisk pace, but from park gate to our room took closer to 15-20 minutes at a leisurely pace. We were in the security line—the second group there (not many walkers in the rain as the monorail is still an option)—around 7:02AM.

I talked to a Cast Member about our bag, which kept getting flagged by Disney’s new security scanners. She immediately recognized it and told me the metal bar in this particular bag would get it flagged every time.

Security opened just before 7:05AM and we were through and the first in line at a turnstile at 7:06AM, a pretty great position for Zoe’s first rope drop, not that Z was impressed.

We ate our snacks and fed Zoe some yogurt while we waited, and at 7:14AM the park gates opened and we were on our way to Seven Dwarfs Mine Train.

We saw a photopass photographer in front of the castle finishing up with a group and decided to make a stop for some quick photos. This isn’t some we’d advise (maybe on a really nice day, which today wasn’t), but for Zoe’s first Disney World trip we decided it would be a nice picture to grab.

At 7:19AM we were in line for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and still very near the front.

The tough thing at this point was the weather. You could clearly hear thunder, which meant there was a good chance of a delayed opening.

There’s not really a right call here, in our opinion. At the very least, it’s worth waiting until 8AM to see if the ride is actually delayed. The other ride lines won’t be that huge at 8AM if you decide to leave then.

Would we leave at 8AM? Probably not, unless the weather was clearly going to be an ongoing problem. I’d wait until about 8:15, probably, before abandoning the line. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train waits get really long later in the day, so it’s worth waiting just a bit in the morning.

We weren’t confronted with that choice, though, because they started loading the ride at 7:51AM. We got a rider switch at the entrance, and Emily was onboard the first train at 7:53AM. Zoe and I rode the Prince Charming Carrousel, which is often running early.

Rope drop strategy at Magic Kingdom has shifted somewhat without FastPass+, with Jungle Cruise in particular becoming more important. We had already ridden Jungle Cruise a few days prior, though, so we decided to take a classic approach of visiting Peter Pan’s Flight on the way “out west” to Frontierland and Adventureland.

We boarded Peter Pan’s Flight at 8:01AM and then Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at 8:14AM. With Splash Mountain not opened yet (unknown why), Emily went ahead and used her rider switch pass right away and we were done with the ride at 8:28AM.

Had Splash Mountain been operating, the timing would have been perfect for Emily to nurse and get Zoe to take a nap while I rode the long-ish ride. Unfortunately it still hadn’t started for the day. We knew we were risking a meltdown, but we headed to Pirates of the Caribbean anyways, and within a few seconds on the ride Emily was nursing (she stopped during the photo).

We considered riding Jungle Cruise again, but we weren’t confident enough that its posted 40-minute wait would actually take 40 minutes and we saw no reason to risk waking Zoe early. Instead we headed across the park to Space Mountain, which has rider switch and had a posted 40-minute wait as well. I boarded at 9:31AM after waiting 30 minutes.

After Space, we waited ten minutes (posted 5) for PeopleMover, boarding at 9:52AM. By the time we were off at 10AM the park was in full swing:

A S-L-O-W Late Morning

At this point we each were sitting on a rider switch pass—me for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and Emily for Space Mountain. We’d ridden Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, which left Splash Mountain, Tomorrowland Speedway, and Barnstormer as the rides with height requirements that we hadn’t made it to yet.

Realistically at this point none of those was likely. Splash Mountain would have waits of an hour-plus at least until we left the park. We were sans Zoe, I would have planned to ride it closer to park close. Tomorrowland Speedway and Barnstormer are low priority for us.

I grabbed coffee from the Tomorrowland Joffrey’s (11 minute wait, Starbucks line looked way longer) while Emily changed Zoe’s diaper at the nearby Baby Care Center. We decided to head the Dumbo queue, which has a play area.

It was silly to grab the coffee first because beverages were currently banned in queues, and I don’t think they’re ever allowed in the play area. Emily sat outside with the beverages. I waited about 5 minutes to make it to the the part of the queue with the play area.

The play area has a sign saying its for ages 2 through 8, but no one said anything about Zoe being there. You’re also supposed to keep shoes on—it is very slippery without them. Zoe didn’t have shoes, but I kept a hand on Z the entire time anyways. Next time we would definitely bring shoes.

We hung out there for 20 minutes before heading to lunch and encountering our second really poor experience with mobile order. At this visit to Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Cafe, it took 37 minutes from when we tapped “we’re here” in our phones for us to be seated at our table with food. About 30 minutes of that was just waiting for the order to be done (the other ~7 were checking in and waiting in line to retrieve the food from the pickup spot).

What’s most frustrating about this is that Disney already has timeslotted mobile ordering. If the next available time was 11:30AM, they could have just closed the 11-11:30 slot. Anyways, the entire ordeal was worth it for this baby to see Sonny Eclipse again:

Around noon, I went and used my rider switch at nearby Seven Dwarfs Mine Train while Emily finished her meal. I boarded at 12PM after a 6 minute wait.

This means we spent about two hours (10AM to noon) on feeding Zoe, Zoe playtime, coffee, and lunch. It’s not the worst way to spend two hours midday (10AM is a tad early to be moving this slow, though), but it’s obviously going to cut down on what we accomplished that day.

Look, as a blogger who has made a living writing about ways to maximize your time in Disney World, I don’t love burning two hours like that. But as a parent who wants to see his kid have fun and thrive, giving Zoe time to play (and watch Sonny Eclipse) is more important to me. (And the 30 minutes lost to just waiting for our mobile order weren’t our fault.)

I don’t think everyone is going to have the same priorities every day. If this were our only Magic Kingdom day, maybe we’d have pushed a little more. If it were a shorter trip, maybe Zoe would have been fine with less free time each day. But if you’re looking at a trip of more than a few days and you like to keep your little one active, you’re going to find yourself losing large chunks of time on occasion.

At this point we decided to change our plans. Waits were high across the park, Zoe was due to nap, and we had a room at a pricey hotel just steps away. So we decided to walk back to Grand Floridian with Zoe napping and to spend some time in the hotel before returning to the park later.

Emily used her rider switch at Space Mountain (12:24PM after a 7-minute wait) and we headed out, getting back to the hotel at 12:50PM. It turned out our decision to leave was definitely right. More on that after a recap…

Recapping Our Magic Kingdom Morning

6:51AM Depart Grand Floridian (via walking path)
7:02AM Arrive at Security (not open yet)
7:14AM Park gates open
7:53AM Emily on Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
7:53AM Kenny and Zoe on Prince Charming Carrousel
8:01AM Peter Pan’s Flight
8:14AM Big Thunder (and rider switch Big Thunder)
8:41AM Pirates of the Caribbean (posted 5, actual 5)
9:31AM Space Mountain (posted 45, actual 30)
9:52AM PeopleMover
Change Zoe, Feed Zoe, Give Zoe Playtime in Dumbo Play Area
11:35AM Lunch at Cosmic Ray’s
12PM Seven Dwarfs Mine Train rider switch
12:24PM Space Mountain rider switch
12:35PM Depart Park
12:50PM Back at hotel

A Few Hours of Relaxation

I wish I could take credit for having looked at a weather forecast, but the truth is I just made the “lucky” call to leave early, because bad storms his and started knocking out rides—some indoor rides even had power problems—for the next few hours.

Unfortunately this meant our main goal for back at the hotel—swimming—also wasn’t going to happen. It was still a fun time, though. We gave Zoe time to crawl around the hotel room, which we noted was more spacious than the Pop Century room. That’s not a shock, but we’ve never cared about space before. Seeing Zoe crawling back and forth with such a big smile certainly had it on our mind.

We walked the main building of Grand Floridian, stopping in the shops. I found this great set of miniature buses as a gift for Zoe. I was warned by a follower that the wheels are a choking hazard, luckily I wasn’t planning on opening them anyways. Zoe and I ride the bus and train together during the week on occasion, so I thought this was a fun gift. It also has a Magical Express bus, which won’t be around much longer.

We stopped by Gasparilla Grill for an afternoon treat—a strawberry shortcake, specifically. Then we took some time to pack (departing tomorrow, after all) and let Zoe take a nap. By 4:45PM the weather was…well, not great, but the rain was at least intermittent, so we headed back to the park.

Evening at Magic Kingdom

At this point we were pretty sure we’d be back the next morning, but this was still our last guaranteed free time in the parks, so we wanted to make sure it count. We had one big thing we had to do—Zoe’s first Mickey Bar! On the monorail at 4:50PM we were in front of the castle with a Mickey Bar in hand at 5:09PM.

The three of us were done with the bar in about ten minutes (you don’t get much longer with those things in the Florida heat), and we decided to check off some of our remaining rides. We waited 23 minutes (posted 15, with a short ride breakdown) for Buzz Lightyear, riding at 5:44PM. Then Mad Tea Party (posted 15, actual 5, 6:19PM), “it’s a small world” (posted 10, actual walk on, 6:29PM), The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (posted 20, actual 14, 7:06PM).

Zoe enjoyed “it’s a small world” the most out of those. The slower pace and lighting kept it from being overwhelming in the way other dark rides were. Zoe really seemed taken with some of the sets.

A New Level of Bad Bedtime

We knew we were asking a lot of Zoe, and we weren’t back in the hotel room until about 7:30PM. Bedtime was awful, as I could hear Zoe screaming while I sat in the foyer of our building (granted our room was second floor, about two rooms from the foyer, but still).

I went and picked up dinner from Gasparilla Grill hoping we could enjoy our last night on the balcony, but we discovered midway that we couldn’t hear Zoe crying (or perhaps Zoe wasn’t crying that loud and the timing was coincidental) with the door closed, and attending to such an early wakeup really drained our spirits.

Something as simple as using one of our phones to listen to Zoe could have helped with this, but honestly I just felt bad at this point for pushing Zoe so consistently, particularly when Emily is the only one of us currently capable of doing bedtime with Zoe (again, a consequence of my being a “stay at home Dad” by day and a student / blogger by night, and something we’ll be changing going forward).

Conclusions

For being such a…plain…day, this is probably the day with the most lessons of the trip. Putting our “full” Magic Kingdom day late in the trip proved a bit silly because we’d tired of waits by early afternoon and left the park. But it worked out fantastically that we had other Magic Kingdom visits this trip because that afternoon would have been rained out anyways.

It’s also unsurprising Zoe had Z’s worst bedtime on a day late in our stay when we were back and forth between the hotel and the parks. It’s easy to forget that at home Zoe has this strong mental map of our space and time together. At Disney World, everything is constantly in flux, I’m sure it’s hard for Zoe to keep up.

The flipside is that this morning was yet another showing that Zoe can definitely handle rope drop. This drives me to the conclusion that in the near future I want Zoe’s trips to be tilted toward mornings at the parks with a mid-afternoon return to the hotel to wind down and have a set bedtime routine (we kept the core of Zoe’s bedtime routine from home, but I think adding, say, an hour of hotel room wind-down could be helpful).

There are plenty of reasons that wouldn’t work for everyone. If you’re visiting from the west coast and keeping your kid on pacific time, you might not be at the parks for rope drop. If your baby is older, or younger, or if you just have a different parenting style than us, you might be fine staying out later.

OTHER POSTS IN THIS TRIP REPORT