Day 11 - An early early morning or Day 2 at WDW

Is it really time to get up already?
I think all of us felt that way this morning when we got up.
Hubby and our train loving boy were off to a "Behind the Steam" tour of the Magic Kingdoms trains, and the little lady and I had breakfast reservations at the Castle - dining with princesses, what a way to start the day.
They boys had to leave about 40 mins before us so they took the car. And we took the resort bus. It worked out great, even with getting to the stop later than planed. We arrived at the MK and walked in the side entrance for people with tours or reservations for breakfast. Our dining time was about 30 mins before the park opened. So very few people were on Main Street!

So empty before the park officially opens

Breakfast at Cinderella's Royal Table was very  much what we expected. We dined here once before for dinner. So other than the difference in fare, it was a similar experience. Which the little princess loved!
5 princesses - no waiting. Nice!
After breakfast she and we wandered over to the New Fantasyland. We rode the Ariel ride, which is exactly like the one in California, except this one has a cooler que area. Then we went on to check out Belle's Enchanted Tales". This was more fun that I was expecting. In part because it was just us girls and we like this type of thing more than our boy does. And part because out little lady was a part of the story. She was selected to play Belle's father Maurice in the story. Such fun! Great new attraction.
When we came outside we found hubby and the boy waiting for us.
Now that we were all together again we could get down to the rides. We grabbed fast passes to Winnie the pooh and then went on Small World and Mickey's Philharmagic. Then it was time for Winnie the Pooh - which is a favorite of both kids.
From here we went to Tomorrowland, making a stop to get refreshments and grab some Buzz Lightyear FP.

Sharing a frozen lemonade

We had time for two rides/attractions before our Fast Pass was good. So we did the Peoplemover - Which I love.. always have, don't know why. And then The Carousel of Progress. This is a favorite of our boy, but today it was a bit grumpy. Twice during our viewing it didn't turn when it was supposed to and we saw those two rooms twice. Which was upsetting to the boy. But we all survived.
Buzz Lightyear was good fun and somehow at the very end our boy found a magic spot to shoot and bumped his score by 100,000! He beat me for sure :)
At this point it was lunch time and we needed to eat. So we headed the monorail and went to the Contemporary for lunch at the Contempo Cafe.
We decided to take a rest at this point. We hope to stay at Epcot this evening until the fireworks, so a mid day break seemed wise.

Back in the room some of us slept a bit. The rest of us read or just rested. Then we were out the door to Epcot!
As we pulled into the parking lot the rain started - similar to yesterday's storm, just a bit earlier in the day. Well, we weren't dressed for it really. I mean it wasn't cold out, so we would have been fine.. but it was raining HARD. And we would have been .... well, what is wetter than soaked? We would have been that. So we waited it out in the car. After a few minutes trying to track the storm with our phones... gotta love technology, I looked at the cars around us, and we weren't alone. Several other cars were full of people waiting out the storm.
We waited about 30 minutes before venturing outside. It had let up quite a bit and we were seeing people coming out of the park. So we made our run for it.
We made it to bag check before it open up on us again.
We hung out there for about 10 minutes... and once again we weren't alone :)
Then ran for the turnstiles. Hooray!

View of Spaceship Earth from the bag check 

Ahhh, the rain

wet - but no lines ;)

We found a mostly covered path to Spaceship earth and went on it. When we got off things had mostly dried out. So we headed over to the Imagination Pavilion for that ride. Being still mostly dry when we got off we began to walk over to the Mexico pavilion. Somewhere along the way it started raining again. My shoe this afternoon was a flip flop... what was I thinking? Well, they are amazingly comfy flip flops and I could easily wear them all day... however, get them wet and the footbed gets a wee bit slippery. So by the time we got to Mexico I was fighting with my shoes with each step.
Once inside we began to dry off and rode the Three Caballeros boat ride. This is a favorite for our family and gave us all a chance to dry off.
We ate right across the path at the Mexico counter service. It was very tasty.
Again it had dried out and we moved on... to Norway for their boat ride.
Despite the fact that our Little Lady has been on this ride a handful of times before... she was convinced she didn't like it. But once we got going... It became the "Best boat ride ever". Such a silly girl.
From Norway we moved on to Germany and some wonderful caramel squares. Sooo good.
Our last attraction of the day, before the fireworks was The American Adventure. This is hands down our boy's favorite Epcot attraction.
It ended and we had about 10 minutes until Illuminations started.... so we were walking quickly. We have often watched from a distance... in part because of the crowds and in part because we had a kiddo who wasn't sure about fireworks. She has since grown to love them, tonight our motivation for watching from the Odyssey was more location when it was over. Hubby planned to take the international gateway exit and walk down to the Studios for a few roller coasters before bed. While the kids and I headed back to the room for bed. This location gave me a slight head start on the crowds leaving the park.
When we parted ways Hubby walked upstream from there to HS (think salmon), The Studios were insane. He spent over an hour in single rider line for RnR then 30 minutes in line for ToT. And finally took bus home
The kids and I left Epcot, found the rental car and drove back.  The Little Lady wanted to fall asleep in the car, but I encouraged her not to.  She fell asleep within 5 minutes of getting ready for bed, our boy was less than 10 minutes later.