Disney's Magic Kingdom

We woke up early for our last day in the parks; this time at our favorite, the Magic Kingdom. The morning wasn't too hot or too crowded so we could go right through Space Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean and Splash Mountain without any wait.

Parades in the Magic Kingdom are my favorite. The first one we watched was a short one with songs from Camp Rock blasting through the speakers.

All the characters dance along but I also love seeing everyone in the crowd mouth the words, kids going crazy, Disney Cast members mouth the words without even thinking about it because they've heard it so many time.

With every ride, every store, every turn of the park Katie and I have a story of being there with our parents when we're little or with our cousins Kevin and Eric or me with Arielle in High School. Now we've got new stories and we get to introduce Linc to the best of the park for the very first time.

For the most part he really loved it. He's going to be a Disney kid.

We snagged good seats for the Dream Come True parade and ate lunch on the sidewalk before it began.

You point out your favorite characters and hope that they wave at you or that you can reach out and touch their hand as they walk by.

Linc was a trooper in the hot park but we decided for the sanity of everyone involved we would head back to Westgate for a couple hours in the afternoon. Linc got to take a nap inside, we laid out by the pool, read our books, had a snack and watched the end of a really old camp movie, and recharged for the rest of the night.

The two things Katie really wanted to do were to have Linc meet Mickey and to ride Dumbo with her child. We went back on a mission. After waiting for only twenty minutes we got to go back into a special theater room to meet both Micky and Minnie for a couple minutes.

It was pretty awesome.

While Nick and I ran to use our Fast Pass on Splash Mountain, Katie and Linc got in line for Dumbo. We got back just in time to watch them go up and take pictures.

Linc loved going up in Dumbo, he also really liked playing with the seatbelt.

Our last ride of the night was Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blaster--my favorite. With two special Fast Passes we got to go twice in a row which was great but didn't really help my score improve. I think the Toy Story Midway game is more my strength.

Linc was a pretty good shot. Nick got the high score like usual.

At night the castle is another shade of beautiful all lit up. We snagged seats early on the sidewalk to watch the fireworks and then waited with a book and a waffle bowl of ice-cream.

We could see the electrical parade over the tops of people's heads-- a new collection of floats all lit up with thousands of lights.

There was a really incredible new show that projected images, color and movies onto the castle itself like a giant screen. Words can't really describe how cool it was, you're just going to have to see it yourself. The grand finale of the night was a fireworks show behind the castle with music and clips from Disney movies all about wishes and dreams coming true.