The Queen of the Kings: We5Kings of Disney: Magic Kingdom

The day had finally arrived, we woke up early, ate a delicious breakfast and headed to Magic Kingdom. We were all filled with excitement but basically lost it when we saw the park had already been decorated for CHRISTMAS!

As soon as we walked in the park and heard the Christmas music playing, I cried. I couldn't help myself, I was just so overwhelmed with happiness and literal joy. The best gift I could ever receive is watching my kids be happy... well there was nothing like their smiles this morning.

The first characters we ran into were these beauties all in favor of women's rights - there was no way we weren't taking a picture!

This kid even agreed - "Mom, Emmy and Landry need to take a picture with them... they are FOR women!" Gosh, I love that kid.

And then the picture taking never stopped. My sweet family indulged every.single.time. I said, "let's take a picture!"

But how could I NOT take a picture!

We were a little lost this morning because besides being overwhelmingly awesome, it's just plain overwhelming. We had no idea where we were going, how easy using our FastPasses would be, or what we really wanted to do other than EVERYTHING. We walked straight into the Sword in the Stone and all tried our hand at becoming the next King or Queen of the land.

And when we turned around, we saw we were right in front of the Royal Waiting Room (or something like that) that included a 5 minute wait to meet some of our favorite princesses! Cinderella wouldn't let Radley get out of taking a picture and I've never seen my boy blush so much. Rapunzel is one of my favorites so I had to jump in there, too!

And then, well.... we got to visit with Emmy's favorite princess of all time and her trip was made!

I love that you still see some of the old characters walking around... the kids had no idea who Shaker was but Emmy and Rad still wanted to go meet him.

Landry was still recovering from Big Thunder Railroad... poor girl, she was not a fan of roller coasters and we hit that one early. (Plus we still had a few more to go!) The other two, well...

That frown was soon not to be found when we rounded a corner and Miss Kelsey was waiting for us! Kelsey was a student leader in one of the organizations I advise and while my kids haven't met an Aggie they don't love, they especially love Miss Kelsey.

She had arranged to get a FastPass as the same time as us for Ariel's Grotto. As we were walking in the ride, the Disney employee stopped us and asked, "Are you the King family?" The kids looked at me and then her and said, "Yes, ma'am!" She grabbed a bag and said, "Mickey Mouse left these for you! He wanted you to know how excited he was that you're here!"

Y'all.

They LOST it.

I LOST it.

Kelsey winked at me and, my goodness, Disney is MAGIC!

(well, maybe not for the kids behind us that didn't have a bag of Disney pins and lanyards waiting for them!)

Kelsey left to go to work and we headed to lunch at Belle and the Beast's Castle.

We sat in the main dining room under the most gorgeous chandelier but our favorite room to explore was "the west wing"... I know this picture is blurry but it's perfect. As the kids were examining the rose, the loudest growl and biggest flash of lightening ever happened and they almost wet their britches!

We made our way back around for more exploring but couldn't get past these two looking for the next King... sadly, Ryan also couldn't get that pesky sword from the stone.

While we were there, we decided another spin around the carousel was in order. These rides are much more Landry's style.

We never really scheduled any part of our day around watching a show because they seem to just happen non-stop, especially on our first day. Disney was filming ALL of their Christmas specials including parades, fireworks, concerts, etc... in MK that day so we got extra special surprises all day long. My favorite surprise may have been those clouds that brought relief from heat and not one drop of rain!

All smiles, all day long. I couldn't squeeze them enough.

Late afternoon we started getting tired but our resort was super far away from MK so we decided to tough it out and skip out on resting. So the next best thing to a nap is definitely ice cream.

And I'm so glad we didn't because y'all... 98 DEGREES was there!! Having a Christmas concert. In front of Cinderella's castle. How fun is that?!? (And how old do they look?!)

Oh, and I got to hang out with Nick Lachey.

Meanwhile, the kids (who I may have left behind chasing down Nick) were all, "Who's 96 degrees? We want to meet Gaston."

Gaston ended up being the fan favorite of maybe the whole trip. He was hysterical but the best part was that he had no idea how to "handle" Emmy and Landry. His character is on the mark - conceited, chauvinistic, overtly macho. Enter my precious girls...

"You're NOT marrying Belle! She doesn't love you. She loves the BEAST and they are going to live happily ever after!" He was speechless. They were hysterical. And this may be the best picture ever.

Or maybe these were the best pictures ever.

There really was magic around every corner...

and you never knew who you were going to run into.

As the day winded down, we hit some of the most classic rides, including "It's a Small World" which may have been the girls' absolute favorite from the week. We had a blast guessing countries, finding hidden gems in each of the countries and picking out our favorite "people" from around the world.

Then we got an extra magical treat ... I mean, the details they include in your entire experience. And don't worry - they said "bye" to Radley, too... he had a screen all to himself!

As we were heading back to Cinderella's castle to find a spot for the show, Radley noticed that you could go take a picture among Rapunzel's lanterns.