Riding in the Magic Kingdom | DisjointedImages Blog

Now it’s time to ride!

We have a Fastpass so make our way over to the other side of the park. On the way out of lunch, I spot this balloon, and boy was I tempted to get one of my own.

We didn’t have time to stop to talk with Belle, but I love the sign. The windmill moves the gears which makes the candlestick ‘arms’ dance.

Rapunzel’s tower is still beautiful.

I managed to come around in time to catch the Liberty Belle and the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad lined up.

Speaking of BTMRR – that’s our Fastpass destination!

I grab an awkward shot from the ride before we take off…

Now this is a ROUGH ride. I can’t bring the camera all the way up to my face or else I’ll end up with a black eye (I’ve learned that one on past trips). Because of that the focus isn’t always where I expect it, but amusingly it ends up coming out looking like the most intentionally perfect Disney commercial photographs for whoever was seated in front of me. If only I knew who they were.

See what I mean?

Off the runaway train, I stop for some safe shots.

Video of our ride:

From here we move on to my mom’s favorite – as on the way over we saw it had a 5 minute wait. Splash Mountain!

The sign says you may get wet.

It is then repeated. I’m suspicious of the may part.

No exiting for us!

Well… we almost exited. We thought we could sit ok side by side, but my knees just couldn’t do it with the short leg room in the boats and the mighty 6 foot frame of Chris next to me too. So we had to extract ourselves, and started to exit. The CM Kristy however, was a superstar, and all but threw herself in my path to make me stay and gave us the very next boat to ourselves. I am very grateful to her as it made a so-so experience (it wouldn’t have been the end of my day, but it would have been a bummer) a fantastic one instead.

Away we go!

About that “may get wet”….

This is what happens when you go to take a picture and the boat lurches forward. Trippy!

I may have squealed in delight when I saw our shirts glowed here – never realized there was blacklight in this section.

HERE WE GOOOOO!

We are definitely past the “may get wet” stage….

More boat lurching trippy-ness.

Wanna know what it looks like when two camera-philes get their photo taken and forget it’s going to happen? The nerdiest and most boring ride photo in existence, that’s what.

Ah, much nicer.

Speaking of trippy – a few times Chris turns the shutter speed a little too low… and things get funky in the video:

Now there’s one more part to this that makes it even more awesome. Just after we got off our successful boat ride, we stopped to make sure everything wasn’t too soaked, and to give our legs a second to regain feeling. We hadn’t yet walked down the ramp to the gift shop / photo area (we could still see the loading unloading area but were off to the side).

A mom and her little girl, maybe 8 or so, stopped in front of us and mom gives her the “go ahead” nudge. She asks if she can trade pins. Ohmigosh. I don’t know if it’s where we were standing, or the VIBRANT tie dye shirts, or all of the above but I think I just got mistaken for a CM. Or at the very least a safe Disney fan to ask.

Luckily I do wear all traders and was only too happy to accept. I’ve heard stories of some people being less than magical about random trade requests, so it was awesome that I was able to know that anything she picked from me wasn’t an issue. She beamed when she saw a Duffy on my lanyard and said she’d like that one, as he’s her favorite. She opened her little pink purse, and announced matter of factly “I keep the ones I don’t like in here!”. :rotfl: Tell it like it is, kiddo!

I was on cloud 9 for a while after that – pixie dust for a younger generation of Disney nuts.

Off to another favorite – the Haunted Mansion.

I was especially excited as I had another new camera to test out in one of the most difficult to capture rides in Disney. It performed exceptionally well, and I had quite a few more good photos this time.

Madame Leota and those candles look amazing. Especially compared to last year.

This is the first time I was able to get the ballroom at all.

While I’m happy to see how crisp and perfect I got the bride – I’ll always have a fond memory for my poltergeist version of her.

As always, Chris shot video. Which is awesome because I could not get the camera to focus on my buggy ghost in time, and you can see him in the video.