Our start of our vacation got off to a bad start months before we actually left when previous booked flight times changed which made me find new ones that i thought would work but ended up being just as bad. I had originally planned for us to leave at midnight and arrive to Disney World around 8am, but what after all the rebookings we left LA at 9:00pm and landed in Orlando at 4:30am and arrived at our hotel just after 5:00am. We now had hours to kill before the parks opened up and with little to no sleep for everyone it wasn’t a very pleasant start to our day.
We made the most of it by exploring Pop Century and the neighboring Art of Animation Hotel, and grabbing some breakfast at the on property dining location. Pop Century is broken up into multiple three story motel style buildings with a large pool in the middle and smaller pools at either end. There’s a lake surrounding the property, with a bridge that will soon have a skyliner to take people to the parks. 
Around 8am we all got changed for the day and caught a bus to the Magic Kingdom that took somewhere around 20 minutes to get there. The weather was warm and balmy with a slight breeze to keep the humidity to a comfortable level. The crowds at the security and front gate made it hard to appreciate the moment but finally once we were through and out of the train tunnel i think we were able to take a second to appreciate where we were at.
If you didn’t know Magic Kingdom is Disney’s World Disneyland representation. It shares the majority of the same rides but with slight twists on ride dynamics and ride layout, but also lacks the Matterhorn. Also instead of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle they have a larger Cinderella’s Castle that has a restaurant inside of it which we were dining in later in the week.
We spent the morning a some of the afternoon mainly exploring Fantasyland, riding on Seven Dwarves Mine train and taking pictures with Daisy and Pluto. Most if not all the characters are all hidden away in their own photo location which can come with hour wait times. We were lucky enough to only wait 20 minutes or to see both.
Again bad planning on my part as i thought we would still be on West Coast time and planned lunch at 2pm but by noon the kids were hungry and so we had to feed them, but at the same time it worked out because i wasn’t really a fan of the food at Be Our Guest. Breakfast and Lunch are more of a casual affair with you ordering at the counter (or on the app ahead of time) and finding a seat where ever you can which made it much more like a cafeteria setting. The food was ok, but nothing to rave over, and the different rooms were interesting to look at but not really worth the wait or the reservation to dine in. Lunch was the end of our first day in the parks and we were finally able to get into our hotel room.
I knew i was going to have some biases being a long time Disneyland goer but after the first day at the park i couldn’t quite put my finger on why Magic Kingdom irked me.
