Our Evolving Journey Through Magic Kingdom
Each one has been different but no less magical than the one before it
In Mission: Wanderlust, I write and podcast about our family’s travel adventures and the things that we have learned along the way.
The first time I ever visited the Magic Kingdom, I was already a married woman.
It wasn’t my first trip to Disney. I was born in southern California and we lived there for a year before my parents moved me to Michigan. I had visited Disneyland by the time I was six months old. When my parents somehow scraped enough money together to take our family on vacation to California when I was nine, they took the three of us girls to Disneyland for a day of magic.1 Then in college, when we got to pick one Orlando Disney park as part of our May choir tour, I decided on Hollywood Studios (at the time MGM), because it was something different.
I didn’t visit Magic Kingdom in Orlando until I was 28. We traveled down to Florida with Jeff’s whole family to stay in the timeshares that Jeff’s parents have had since they were all in high school. We danced and drank at Pleasure Island, took our very small niece to Animal Kingdom, and enjoyed a night at Cirque du Soleil.
Then we spent a day at the Magic Kingdom.
I didn’t know. I didn’t know that I would fall in love with the rides and the characters. I didn’t know that there was magic on every corner. I just didn’t know.
But by the time the smoke from the fireworks cleared away into the night sky, I was forever in love.
And somehow, we kept going back.
The spring I was pregnant with our son, Jeff took our daughter with him to Orlando so that she could spend time with his parents while they vacationed in Florida, and he went to a tech conference. Because she was still young enough to be free, he took her to the Magic Kingdom for one day, and I missed our daughter’s first trip to Disney.
Two years later, I wasn’t making the same mistake.
Just months before we would make the decision to purchase our first camper, we took up Jeff’s parents on the offer to stay in the second bedroom of their timeshare and took the kids down to Florida for Spring Break. We were on a limited budget, but we also had one kid that was still free for most things, so we made the decision to take the kids to Magic Kingdom for a single day. Going to the Magic Kingdom was magical as an adult, but as a parent I began to see the park with fresh eyes, a new kind of magic emerging in front of us.
We stopped for street shows and character photos. We scared our daughter at the Haunted House and ended up in “it’s a small world” just to cheer her up. I took the kids on Aladdin and Dumbo and the Spinning Teacups. And we carried two very tired children back to the condo where they slept happy dreams.
Four years later, we returned for the “vacation of a lifetime.”
From the moment we came home with our new travel trailer, Jeff had dreamed of taking our whole family to Disney and camping at Fort Wilderness. The magic changed again. Our daughter laughed at the Haunted Mansion and fought pirates in a stage show. Our son squealed with delight at Splash Mountain and spent far too long looking for the perfect pirate sword. And we took advantage of every single minute until the park kicked us out.
By the end of that Disney trip, we had made the mistake of promising that we could return again, this time when our daughter was entering her first year of high school. Six years went fast, and in July we dedicated our first day of Disney parks to the Magic Kingdom, the perfect place to start. This time, my whole family started the day by joining me on the Seven Dwarves Mine Ride, six years after every single one of them had refused me. We enjoyed the lighter than usual crowds as we raced through the line for the Haunted Mansion and sat out a Florida thunderstorm in the line for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
We jumped on the Jungle Cruise before the post-storm crowds exploded, ate lunch at the Starlight Cafe, “raced” on the Speedway, and giggled along with Mike Wazowski on the Laugh Floor. We traveled to the Carribean, fought off Zurg with Buzz Lightyear, enjoyed the 4-D of the PhilharMagic, and returned with Ariel under the sea. We raced through our Italian-inspired dinner at Tony’s before we all stood in line for TRON, our son and I being the only riders at the end because our daughter decided she couldn’t do it.
We exited TRON as the fireworks started, and for the first time ever, we experienced the show underneath the flashing lights, explosions happening all around us. It was surreal and magical and everything I needed the end of our day in Disney to be. Once the show ended, we raced through the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh before our kids begged us to finish off the night inside “it’s a small world,” our 12-year-old son slowly traveling through the children’s ride with his hands over his head, acting like he was back on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
The magic was not lost on our kids. They were no longer small children. They had no interest in visiting their favorite characters and were game for nearly everything we suggested. They wanted excitement, but they also weren’t afraid to just be children, embracing their younger selves, even if it was to torture us.2 They were old enough to explore the park without us, but they wanted to do it as a family, even if that meant occasionally standing in line only to never ride, as Jeff and our daughter did with TRON.3
The magic of Magic Kingdom really came home when we returned for our last night in the Disney parks. We took advantage of the park hopper on our third day and returned so we could watch the fireworks show from the front of Cinderella’s Castle instead of behind. I don’t know what it is, but even in my mid-40s, this show chokes me up every time.
It was a perfect end to the Disney portion of our trip, capped off with a race to take one more ride on Pirates of the Carribean before taking the ferry back to the campground, sadly waving goodbye as the park faded across the lake.
It is probably the last trip to Disney as a family before our kids are out of the house, and it was everything I wanted it to be and more, no regrets.
The link to the Reel for our day can be found here.
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My baby sister would be born two years later.
Jeff made the mistake of telling them that, in high school, he and his fellow bandmates had ridden “it’s a small world” up to eight times in a row because the weather had cleared out the park.
Hands down, the best ride in the Magic Kingdom. I was so happy to finally ride the Seven Dwarves Mine Ride, and I wanted to get back into a line that never got shorter, but TRON was definitely the best of all of them. Also, Splash Mountain is currently closed for the exciting new changes to make it Tiana’s corner of the park.
What wonderful photos!!