Aurora's Blog

Continuing from part 1 –

I had somehow made it through the crowd into the Magic Kingdom. My everything was tired – my brain, my body. I felt like they should almost have finisher medals for people who made it through the whole day!

I was incredibly single-minded when I walked into the park. Must have funnel cake. Must. have. funnel cake. Somehow I fought through the crowd to Liberty Square. Once I had my food, I just melted into a puddle of a person, hunching over at a table, picking at it.

I didn’t mention this before, but earlier in the day I’d been a contestant in the American Idol thing they do inside the park. You should’ve been there! Let me tell you, I left all my energy out on that stage. I was dancing, running around, crawling around.

I think on a normal night perhaps I would’ve been less tired – on a night where I’d been fighting for your life/love (on the American Idol Experience stage), it made me all that much more ready for a nap!

My phone had died hours earlier, so the party trio had made a plan to meet at out locker at 1am. I killed some time riding some long, chill rides (such as Carousel of Progress). Then I headed over to the locker (plopping down on the floor in the process).

Wendy and Marty showed up with Doritos! Mmm, mmm, mmm. They are such sweethearts, aren’t they? (Talk about people who deserve participant medals from this night – the ones who dealt with the 24-hour, refuse-to-sleep, crazy, more-crankypants-than-usual people – are the most deserving of all (especially when they come bearing Doritos.))

Marty asked how I was doing toward hitting every ride in the Magic Kingdom. I said I’d only done about three. When he asked how that was possible since I had been there for about 4 hours, I realized that a large part of my night had revolved around that funnel cake – time to find it, a crazy humongous line that curved all the way into another store, a long time to wait for it to actually be made, then some time picking at it…

A little after 3am, one of my friends from high school(!) got off work (at Disney), and we met her at Space Mountain (my favorite ride). We rode it 3 times in a row! (I can’t believe I didn’t even know there were 2 different tracks in it until she told me.)

Before we rode it, Marty said he didn’t like roller-coasters. After the ride, he said he actually kind of liked it. (In fact, he liked it enough to ride it twice!)

After that, we ran over to It’s A Small World and were able to get on the very last boat of the night! (A bunch of rides closed at 4am. Small World was one of them.)

We checked out the People Mover (and since Space Mountain had closed by that point, we got to see it WITH THE LIGHTS ON! Can you even believe it? I couldn’t.

My friend Alison reminded us that Snow White’s Scary Adventures was closing in May, so we made sure to hit that. Before you knew it, it was 6am and the park was closing. I often times see children leaving Disney basically sleeping while “awake,” but I finally saw adults walking out like zombies as well. Disney did it. They finally tuckered out the grown-ups.

Some people just did not want to leave. A few minutes after 6, there were still people in the middle of the park just sitting there. Maybe they wanted to be the very last ones to walk out. Maybe they were just too tired to move one more muscle. Who knows?

I wonder if anyone did all 24 hours then when straight back at 9am when the parks opened again…

We went straight from the Magic Kingdom to truly the happiest place on earth – Planet Smoothie – since it was morning time and businesses were open.

Later that same day, I left for New Orleans.