Day six was a Sunday, and after the full day the day before, we decided to sleep in a little. Cynthia left us sleeping and went to retrieve breakfast from the counter-service restaurant at the hotel. We ate in the room and watched our daily allotment of Disney cartoons.

After getting dressed and meandering over to the main building around mid-morning, we caught the next monorail over to the Magic Kingdom. Michael and I were lucky enough to score a ride up front with the driver.

Once we arrived and checked in through security and the biometric turnstiles, and obtained a stroller for Madison, we began to wander down Main Street. We noticed that it was getting steadily colder, and decided that today we’d need some additional “coverage.” So Cynthia and the kids found the main souvenir store, The Magic Kingdom Emporium, and bought a couple of blankets and a beanie for Matthew. I went across the street in search of a watch shop.

The evening before, after arriving back at our hotel, Madison accidentally knocked my wristwatch off of the table and one of the pins holding the band popped out, bent. I located the Mickey Mouse Watch store and found a jeweler there who was more than happy to have a look. He tried several different pins, but couldn’t find a match for the apparently specialized pin in my watch. I thanked him for his time and met the family back out on Main Street.

We wandered towards the castle, making a right and heading into Tomorrowland, with the goal of obtaining a fast pass for Space Mountain. Next, we worked our way around to Fantasyland and took a ride on Cinderella’s Carousel. Next, we went to see Mickey’s Philharmagic. Like the Muppetvision 3D show at the Studios, this is a 3D presentation with additional effects elements in the theatre (smells, wind, Donald Duck flying through the back of the theatre). It was well done and entertaining, and like most other attractions at Disney, exited into a large souvenir shop. Ah well.
After leaving the shop, we found ourselves on the West side of the castle, near Liberty Square. We found a funnel cake stand and decided to partake. We made a complete mess, but that’s sort of the point with funnel cakes. We paused after our messy snack for a snapshot with the castle as our backdrop, on the bridge over the moat back to the center of the park.

The time for our fastpass to Space Mountain was approaching, so we hightailed it over to Tomorrowland and did the kid-swap approach: Cynthia and Michael rode while Matthew and I waited with Madison, then Matthew and I took a turn. Fast and twisty as always, Space Mountain was a blast.

Although it constituted backtracking, a practice I generally try to avoid, we headed directly back to Frontierland to locate a suitable spot to watch the afternoon “Share a Dream Come True” parade. Seeing as we were about 45 minutes out, we were able to secure a front row seat just as the ropes were being deployed. The temperature seemed to be dropping (or the wind was picking up), so Cynthia and Madison bundled up, and the boys and I went looking for hot chocolate. We returned with about five minutes to spare before the parade started.

This is my favorite afternoon parade of all in the WDW parks. Floats with giant snowglobes with every Disney character you can think of. We had a great spot and enjoyed to sights and music.

Once the parade wrapped up, and the ropes were rolled up, we decided to grab a showing in the Hall of Presidents before our late lunch appointment at the Crystal Palace. A very patriotic show, inspirational and fascinating from a technical standpoint, I always enjoy the Hall of Presidents, even if it’s a little “boring” for the younger kids.
After our seating with the Presidents, it was time to make our way back towards Main Street and our appointment with the crew from the Hundred Acre Wood: Pooh and company at the Crystal Palace. We’ve done this character meal before, and really had fun with it.

The Crystal Palace is a buffet style meal, with more food than you can possibly eat, of all varieties. Pooh, Tigger, Piglet and Eeyore wander around amongst the tables for pictures and autographs, and there’s even a “conga line” of sorts every half-hour or so where the kids can dance in a line behind Tigger around the restaurant. It’s one of the better character meals in the parks.

We got a cast member to snap a picture of the entire family on the way out, in front of topiaries of the characters.

After our late lunch, we walked over the bridge into Adventureland, where we found Rafiki and Timon (from The Lion King) hanging out across from the Swiss Family Treehouse.

Autographs and pictures, of course, then we took a spin on Aladdin’s Magic Carpets, which is essentially a remake of the Dumbo Ride but with giant camels that randomly “spit” on you as you fly by. I sat out and took pictures and video while Cynthia rode with the kids.

Next we did the Enchanted Tiki Room, which is running a new show that mixes in Iago, the annoying parrot voiced by Gilbert Gottfried from Aladdin. It’s a fun show, with tons of audio-animatronic characters, flowers, birds, tiki heads on the wall, etc. By the end it seems everything in the room is moving and singing along with the show.

Next was Pirates of the Caribbean. This is one of the Disney Classic dark rides, a masterpiece, especially considering that the original is over 40 years old. It still is amazing to experience, even after the release of the major motion picture based on the ride.

After our tour on PoC, and the requisite stroll through the gift shop (where we acquired some gloves for Cynthia and the kids), we moved on into Frontierland and caught one of the last showings of The Country Bear Jamboree. Again, like the Tiki room, it’s a fully audio animatronic extravaganza, but it seems a little more dated than most other attractions in the park. It’s still charming in it’s own way, but a little creaky by today’s standards.

After our visit with the Country Bears, we scoped out a spot for the Spectromagic parade, ending up at almost the exact same parade spot we had for the afternoon parade. I again went for hot chocolate and this time managed to scare up a few pretzels as well.

While a little more slick and a little less charming than the original Main Street Electrical Parade, Spectromagic is still a favorite of mine. The whole way they carry off the lit parade floats, synchronized music, staging, etc. of this Parade make it a fun way to end the day at the Magic Kingdom.
We chose to not wait around for the fireworks this evening, but instead headed out Main Street and under the train station to catch a monorail back to our hotel. Madison fell asleep on the way out and I ended up carrying her all the way back to the hotel.

As our monorail rounded the Contemporary resort on the way towards the TTC and the Polynesian, Wishes began over the Magic Kingdom. Watching the fireworks across the Seven Seas Lagoon was a fun new perspective.

The kids (and Cynthia and I) were practically walking zombies by the time we got to our room, so it wasn’t hard to get everyone in bed for the night. Tomorrow was going to be an early day, so the lights were out early.

Well, after a short (ha!) hiatus, I’m back in the blogosphere.

Things have been busy, but I’ve managed to rework the site entirely into WordPress. The layout is very similar to the old one, but CSS-based, not table-based.

I’ll be picking up the story of our Disney trip with day 6, and writing additional entries to catch things up to the present.

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Also, I’ve started enabling comments on the posts, so comment away. WordPress uses an authentication scheme, so your post may have to be initially approved. I’ve also included a Captcha plugin to prevent comment spam, so you’ll have to decipher the letters in the little images. Annoying, to be sure, but it seems to be one of the best ways to prevent automated spambots from flooding the comments on blogs.