Night Magic Kingdom

One more bunch of pictures in the Magic Kingdom from our recent Disney World vacation.

Of course we have to get standard vacation picture alpha, Walt and Mickey in front of the castle. Sooo cliche.

Splash Mountain was back and open in time for our Fast Pass appointment. There's a much higher chance of getting wet on the drop for this ride, they were giving out Ziploc bags for the occasion.

We don't remember there being awkward lap bars on this before, and my very tall friend who just had knee fixin' could not quite comfortably or safely fit into the seat. We hesitantly continued and decided to grab some pictures on the ride.

This poor rabbit gets captured and later is seen tied up in a ridiculous amount of rope right next to a cooking pot. Kids have got to be thinking that there is NO WAY he could escape. No way. I couldn't get a picture of that because it's right before the big drop.

The boats jammed up a little here so we got a picture of the nice waterfall on the wall. Wouldn't it be neat if there were wall waterfalls everywhere?

Is the boat a little high up above the surface? Or is the water wheel on the side of the paddle boat supposed to look like half a circle? Did you notice that before I pointed it out?

There's Br'er Rabbit safe at home. Plenty of sunshine headed his way. We'll never know how he managed to escape the impossible amount of rope he was tied up in, but he did and we're glad he's safe. Did anybody before point out his visual similarity to Bugs Bunny?

I just thought of this now, but maybe next time we'll check if you can get little bluebirds to put on your shoulder somewhere.

It's night time and you can see Rapunzel's Tower off in the distance. Check out these lanterns here. There were lots of people taking pictures of the lanterns, it was such a moving scene from the Tangled movie.

Fireworks about to start. All eyes on the magic castle soon.

We decided to eat some dinner at Cosmic Ray's and got some window seats. Since it was kind of chilly outside, we thought this would be a good spot to "chill" inside and catch the show from.

Got a picture of the funny zip-a-dee-doo-dah Ziploc bag. That's some brilliant brand synergy. The new phone is water-resistant so we didn't really need this thing for the ride.

Cosmic Ray was on the other side of the restaurant, but we wandered over to see a minute of the show and get a picture. 

We got a side-castle view of the show. The main fireworks are behind the castle over to the right of this picture. Not the best view of the show, but it was nice and warm here.

The reflection on the glass of the restaurant inside made it a little hard to see the show, but was a neat effect anyway. Does this look like a ghost castle?

Holding up a napkin was like some kind of shadow window that made the view perfect! It was a little tricky getting this picture to show that. Just relax and watch the show!

After the fireworks, we quickly rushed over to It's a Small World. Which is a classic ride strategy because everybody's watching the fireworks and thus no lines for the ride. You can usually jump on one before the lines queue up again. Almost like a bonus Fast Pass!

How long until somebody gets that balloon down from up there? No doubt that kid got a Disney Magic'd extra balloon.

 Determined to "enjoy the ride" and not get distracted with taking pictures. Except the very reason we like this ride so much is that we rode it during a time when we got our first "digital" camera with a giant memory card. Before that, cameras were limited to rolls of film that took like 24 pictures only. The digital camera could literally take a thousand pictures and we had a ton of fun taking pictures of every little part of this ride.

Relaxing and enjoyin' the ride, my friend points up to notice the missing ceiling tiles. Well. We got to get a picture of that now.

 Okay, at least we have to get a picture of our favorite Tiki Mask guys. I still think we would have had more fun taking the tons of pictures like before. Maybe next time.

The boats kind of piled up near the end, so we were stuck here for a minute. Noticed the pink anime hair on that dancer over there and thought we needed a picture of that. My friend also pointed out that this last part of the ride has everybody together in a bright white room like they all died and went to Heaven. Big party up in Heaven y'all! Haha.

 They're not in Heaven, they went to Outer Space! See that one dancer with a space ship on her head? Where? That one, right there! Which culture on Earth has space ship hats? Did this ride come before or after Star Trek? Everybody living happily together in space!

 On the way out, and my friend says stop, he needs to get some water. We thought he was going to drink out of this fountain? Oh, there's a regular drinking fountain in front of it. Clever. You get the small illusion that you are actually drinking from the bigger water fountain.

We're in front of the castle and another show starts? Not as much fireworks, but the technology of projecting images onto the castle is very cool. Only one quick picture, we were enjoying the show.

 After the show, the icicle lights for the castle turn back on. It's amazing to think that those lights were there the whole time the show was being projected on to the castle. The images were so clear. 

 A nearby lower building has those lights, but much closer so you could see them better. My friend points out some of the show's projectors are on the roof of this place.

 Almost back to the entrance and everybody has to get one last turn-around look at the big castle riding above the sea of people.

 Main Street! Browsed the gift shops for a little bit before headed out. Today was probably the most-packed I've ever seen this park. But thanks to clever planning we still did a ton of cool stuff both new and favorite.