MAGIC KINGDOM
Ahhh, the classic and quintessentially “Disney” park. This was the first place for us to hit. My husband and I took a redeye flight after work from LAX and arrived in Orlando the next morning around 5:45am. We took the Disney shuttle to our hotel (about 20-30 minutes), dropped off our bags, freshened up in the hotel lobby restroom, hopped on a bus to Magic Kingdom and were ready to go at 8:30am!
Main Street opens before the rest of the park, so we eagerly made a beeline for Starbucks to get some much-needed coffee. After this we took some quick photos by the castle, then explored Liberty Square.
Liberty Square is an area that is unique to Magic Kingdom, which is why we made the colonial town a priority. We wandered through the air-conditioned gift shops to escape the heat and looked at the Liberty Bell. Eventually we made our way over to Splash Mountain, which was refreshing and much-appreciated on this hot day. We looped through Frontierland to get to Fantasyland and watched Mickey’s PhilharMagic to escape the heat. The exact same show exists in Tokyo and Hong Kong, but it was nice to rest our feet.
From there, we went to Tomorrowland and used our Fast Passes to hop on Space Mountain.
After this, we lined up for our 12pm lunch reservation at Be Our Guest. This Beauty and the Beast-inspired restaurant is nothing short of magical and perfectly decorated. We loved our experience here, and I was thrilled to find they had gluten-free options for me. We ended up getting a French Onion Soup (GF without bread), croque monsier (on GF bread), French dip sandwich (not GF for the hubby), “grey stuff” (not GF) and a lemon-filled cream puff (GF). We were extremely satisfied with our meal!
We then hit up Big Thunder Railroad, walked through Adventureland and then said goodbye to Magic Kingdom as we headed off for Animal Kingdom. Click here for a summary of our half day in Animal Kingdom!
