Magic Kingdom

We just got back from a great week at Disney World, Gavin's 1st visit. Jake's parents flew in from Colorado to meet us there, and we all stayed in a nice 3 bedroom, 3 bath condo less than 2 miles from the entrance to the Disney World property. We got a great deal on the room through Armed Forces Vacation Club (afvclub.com), and our Disney tickets were half priced due to the military salute promotion currently being run. Yay for military discounts! We chose to go this time of year so that the crowds would be lower, it would be cooler, and the Christmas decorations would be up. Our first park day was at the Magic Kingdom. I had done a lot of studying prior to going to Disney, no longer can you just show up and walk around deciding what to do as you go. Nowadays to avoid long lines you have to have a well researched and calculated touring plan in place. I had one ready to go (memorized) and it worked out well for the most part. We never had to spend more than a few minutes in line. We had planned to spend 2 days at this park, but we were able to do most of what we wanted in one day so we added Epcot to the itinerary for later in the week. At Magic Kingdom Gavin most enjoyed all the animatronics on the rides: the small world dolls, pirates in the Pirates of the Caribbean, Tiki Room birds, talking moose head on the wall of Country Bear Jamboree, etc. He also really liked Dumbo. He was freaked out by the dark parts of the rides - all of Peter Pan, the part of the people mover ride that goes through space mountain, and the beginning part of Pirates of the Caribbean. The highlight of the day for me was sitting next to Gavin at the Carousel of Progress, a show with an animatronic family depicting various decades in the 1900's. The family had a dog, and each time the scene changed and the animatronic dog appeared Gavin would ask me, "Is that dog real?'