I’m still early in my trip/race report, but in case you missed the first two parts you can read them by clicking
HERE for Part 1
HERE for part 2

Saturday, February 21, 2015 was my first full day at Disney World. My friends Shari and Cynthia both arrived on Thursday and my friend Maria lives in Orlando so they’d had a couple of days to have fun at the parks already. I was ready to get my own fun started!

We woke up early and headed from Coronado Springs to the Magic Kingdom.

The park was supposed to open at 8am, but we arrived before 8:00 and they were already letting people into portions of the park. So we made our way towards Cinderella’s castle and over to The Crystal Palace for our breakfast reservation. I’d never eaten here before and quite honestly I love breakfast foods, so I was ready for this! But we were early so we took in a few sites while we waited.

Cynthia wanted to look through a couple of shops on Main Street since we still had some time to kill, so she and I headed to the shops. My friends had already joked about leaving me or about me being left behind because I kept taking pictures and video on our way to Magic Kingdom that morning, and even as we shopped I had my camera in my hand. But for some reason, it never occurred to me to get a picture or video of what happened next.

We were all wearing Celebration buttons that morning. It was Maria’s birthday, so obviously that’s what she was celebrating, but I told Cast Members (CMs) who asked that I was celebrating my first half marathon! I asked a CM in one shop a question and she asked what I was celebrating. As I told her, I realized there was a woman walking towards me also asking what I was celebrating. I just remember seeing the white dress, red corset, big white hat, the parasol…. It was Mary Poppins!

I don’t regularly do meet and greets with characters, but I immediately got excited that Mary Poppins was just walking up to us in the shop and talking to us. When I told her Cynthia and I were running our first half marathon the next day, she ever so elegantly said, “Good for you! I never run, unless chased!” She wished us luck and was on her way.

I felt like a little kid again. I was excited and shocked all at the same time, and I stood there the entire time holding my camera but it never crossed my mind to get a picture with Mary Poppins or at least shoot some video of her. D’oh!! I looked at Cynthia and noticed she looked unimpressed. Turns out she was trying to figure out who Mary Poppins was. She knew it was a character but she couldn’t remember who. This was Cynthia’s second visit to Walt Disney World and though she enjoys it, she’s not Disney World Obsessed like I am. So even though she was all smiles after she realized who we’d just encountered, she wasn’t as super Disney Nerd excited as I was! Hahaha!

It was getting close to time for our reservation at The Crystal Palace, so we headed back to find Shari and Maria near the restaurant. After a few minutes, the staff came out to welcome everyone and to start getting everyone seated and ready for Winnie the Pooh and Friends to visit during our breakfast!

 

I ate way too much, but it was delicious! The Pooh’s Puffed French Toast was my favorite! I ate almost all of it before I remembered to take a picture. Oops.

Pooh, Tigger and Piglet made their rounds in a timely fashion and of course we all had photos with them! For some reason Eeyore skipped our area the first time through and he randomly came back right after we’d already settled our check and were about to leave. We stayed at the table to get a quick picture with him too but I’ve managed to lose it somehow…Here are my character photos:

After we left The Crystal Palace, I asked if anyone wanted to wait in line with me to go on Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. I really wanted to ride this and the wait was about 45 minutes according to the My Disney Experience app. I knew the wait would only get longer later and I was going to have to leave Magic Kingdom later that afternoon in order to go to the race expo and get my race packet. So we went ahead and got in the line.

I liked this ride, but it was really, really….really short in my opinion. I felt like the long lines for this aren’t worth it. If you can catch the line when it’s short or get a FastPass+ for this, do it. Otherwise, you might be disappointed in the long wait for the really short ride time. I’m still going on this again with my kids in a couple of weeks, but we won’t be waiting in a long line for sure!

By now, Maria’s brother met up with the group and he had her grandson with him. We had a FastPass+ for Peter Pan so we went to fly with Peter! I took no pictures of this endeavor. Get used to this theme.

Once we got done here, Cynthia and I split up from everyone else for a bit. The next chapter of my trip report will start there! Now I have to go do grown up, real world stuff. How boring… :p

See Ya Real Soon!