#RockYourDisneySide 24-Hour Party, Part 1

I was thrilled, excited, and a little worried when I found out that our first day in Walt Disney World just happened to fall on the 24-hour #RockYourDisneySide summer kick-off party! I knew that there would be all kinds of fun things to do and see, but would it be a good idea to start our vacation off exhausted? We knew that it would be tough, but we also knew we had some beach days at the end of our vacation to "recuperate", and we knew we wouldn't arrive at Magic Kingdom until 4 or 5 pm, so we decided to go for it, and just see how long the kids would last. Guests were invited to "show their Disney side", and dress as their favorite hero or villian, and I have to say that I say saw some AH-MAY-Zing costumes, so good that I wasn't quite sure if it was a park character or someone dressed up. I saw a dead ringer for Cinderella, and one for Jasmine, as well. I had a red polka dot dress, so I decided just to go for it and dress as Minnie Mouse.

It was lots of fun, and even though I felt a little silly at first, I am glad I did! I saw lots of Minnies in the park!

This is our first view of the Castle, as we walked down Main Street, USA:

 

Beautiful, and with an extremely crowded park. Despite the crowds, we were able to ride lots and lots of rides with no more than a 25 minute wait for anything, thanks to the fast passes that I had prescheduled. At this point, the kids weren't interested in meeting the characters, they just wanted to ride the rides! So, after a few castle shots, and one of Caitlin and I by the Mickey clock,

we headed to Adventureland.

We "got spit on" by the camel:

(Which felt really good-it was 98 degrees out still!)

And we headed to the Pirates Of The Caribbean for our first fast pass:

As soon as Eric saw how many people we were able to bypass with the fast pass, he was hooked! Pirates is a really dark ride (and cool, so that felt great!), so pictures inside were next to impossible, but here are a few from our phones:

Eric and Cecilia tried out the "pirate look":

After which we headed to Tortuga Tavern for dinner, quick-service style.

I had the taco salad:

 

I have to say, this was my least favorite meal at Disney World. I must be spoiled by all of the excellent choices for Mexican food that we have here at home, because I was a little disappointed by this meal. The toppings bar was fun, and it was great to choose how much lettuce, cheese, and tomatoes I wanted, but, the meat and shell weren't hot enough for me (I like hot food piping hot, and this was far from that). And I would have liked the option of guacamole on the toppings bar. But all in all, it was still pretty good, and we were starving after the seven hour drive from Atlanta, so this definitely filled me up and refreshed me for the rest of the night.

While we were eating, we made the decision to tackle as much of Adventureland and Frontierland the first night, and save the majority of Fantasyland and Tomorrowland for our second day at Magic Kingdom. We saw the Swiss Family Robinson's Treehouse ( I remember seeing it when I was ten, so I was excited to go through it again to see if it was how I remembered it-it wasn't scary at all this time ;-)  ):

And we did a couple of the "mountain" rides: 

Splash Mountain:

(Hello goofiest picture ever! Can you tell Eric hates getting wet on rides?I just didn't want my ears to fly off)

And Big Thunder Mountain (no ride camera, but a few shots I took as we were walking up to the ride):

And I think this is where I will leave our Disney story for now, since this is getting to be a rather long post already.