Magic Kingdom

The timing of our journey meant we were on the Skyliner at sunset, which was very pretty. We stopped off at the room to drop off our bag and then headed to Magic Kingdom by Disney bus. We chatted to a gentleman who was headed to the Villains after hours party that was going on that evening.


We had only a couple of hours before the park closed, but we managed to get through a decent crop of attractions, including several we hadn’t gotten around to this trip. We rode the Tomorrowland Transit Authority People Mover, and got a rare look at Space Mountain with the lights on (as it was temporarily stopped for a fault). We took a picture with the Tron light cycles lit up for night.

As fireworks time came around we headed to the newly reopened Splash Mountain, which we were able to get on almost right away, we even managed to see quite a lot of the fireworks from the ride. We followed that up with Jungle Cruise (on which we had particularly good skipper) and Pirates of the Caribbean.

To finish out the night we had a rushed dinner of plant based sloppy joes and strawberry/lemonade slashies that gave us brain freeze at Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Cafe (sadly Ray himself was not in, as his show is on temporary hiatus). We chose Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin as our last ride and slipped in at a few minutes to park close.

We made our way out slowly, and caught a distant glimpse of some of the special Villains after hours entertainment (which we might have considered grabbing tickets for if we weren’t so tired). We decided it looked cool enough that we would probably want to do it on a future trip. As a final little surprise, we were directed into an area that is (technically) backstage to exit the park, bypassing mainstream USA through a staging area for parades.Read more