December 19
Gusty was up before me again, and when I woke up she was stretched out on the foot of our bed, looking out over the Magic Kingdom. She was still wearing her sleeping clothes, so she must not have gotten up that long ago. Maybe her moving around was what woke me up.
I would have thought I'd be tireder from yesterday 'cause we'd seen so much it was almost overwhelming but I felt pretty awake and alert. My legs and hooves were still a bit sore from all the walking I'd done yesterday and I don't think that today was going to make it any better. Maybe it's something that Canterlot unicorns are used to, 'cause they cobble all the roads there, but I wasn't used to it at all, even after being on Earth for almost a whole year. Paved roads and sidewalks made my leg-joints all sore after a while.
I couldn't really stretch out where I was, so I wiggled out of bed and that woke Aquamarine up so she followed me out. Cayenne was still asleep, and I was starting to wonder what it took to wake her up. If there was nopony in bed with her to wake her up, would she sleep all day?
I opened up the balcony door 'cause it was a nice day outside already, and I went out to stretch. I wasn't supposed to fly over the park but nobody had said that I had to keep my hooves on the ground, either, and I thought that as long as I stayed over the balcony it wouldn't count as actually flying.
Not that that gave me very much room, but it was enough to help stretch out my wings even though all I was really doing was short hops from one side to the other with only a flap or two before I got to the other end. I had to make a bit of allowance for my one wing being stiff, and I had a kind of lopsided flight ‘cause I didn’t really have enough room to work it out, but putting my weight on it helped.
After I'd landed, Aquamarine came outside too and took a big breath of air and then stood up and put her forelegs on the balcony rail and looked around, just taking in the view.
We took our turns taking showers and then when everyone was ready we went to The Wave for breakfast, which was another buffet. Mister Salvatore said that none of us ponies were allowed to have eggs and I didn't mind 'cause they had fluffy waffles and the waiter also brought us out a bowl of mixed hay that we could share which was really nice of him. Miss Parker said that Walt Disney World had always prided itself on having something for all their guests and so they were making accommodations for ponies now.
Then we went to the monorail which was a special, sleek train that ran up in the air on just a single, wide track, and I wasn't sure that Gusty would want to ride it but she was really enthusiastic about it and got right on board as soon as it stopped for us. And when it went out of the building and into open air she tensed up a little bit but then she could see Magic Kingdom getting closer and closer and she started wagging her tail 'cause she was so happy.
She was out of the monorail as soon as the doors had opened enough to let her through, and she did gallop off to the entrance and held up her magic band so that she could get in, and the rest of us caught up to her there at least.
Once she was inside the park she slowed down a little bit, 'cause now there was so much to see that she couldn't figure out what to do. I would have thought that she would have memorized the map, but then I thought that maybe she had, only now that she was seeing it and hearing it and smelling it it was a lot different than looking at it from a map. Sometimes something that looks good on a map isn't so good when you see it yourself, and other times something that didn't look like too much on a map is better than you thought it would be.
It was a lot to take in. There were hundreds or maybe thousands of people there already, and everything was decorated for Christmas. It was almost overdecorated, but it was really pretty. And there were signs that pointed to where the different attractions were, and she looked up and down it and I think she was trying to figure out how we were going to see everything before we had to go back to the hotel for the night.
We were still there looking over the sign when a marching band went by, and that distracted her until they'd passed, and then she must have figured out where she wanted to go first, 'cause she headed off for the big central courtyard that the castle overlooked.
She told us that that was the central part of the park and that everything kind of joined up there and all the paths radiated out from it and she'd wanted to go from one side of the park to the other but she'd decided that she had to have a picture of herself in front of the castle first and maybe we'd see Mickey and Minnie there. And she also told us that we were going to have lunch at the castle with the princesses which was exciting and that was why she’d worn pretty clothes today.
She did find Mickey and Minnie there and they had a friend who was with them who offered to take our picture, which was really nice of him. So we all lined up with them and got our picture taken and then we had to decide which way we wanted to go.
Gusty thought that we could start in Fantasyland so we took a path that went off that way and we went to a little garden which had banners hanging up around it and there was a woman with curly red hair who was called Merida who we could meet. And she had some bears who were her friends but we had to call them out 'cause they were hiding behind a wall and they were fake bears that didn't smell bearish at all. And she signed a book that Gusty had and we all got our pictures taken with her and then her friends helped us shoot bows at a target. They had an earth-pony bow there for us and it didn't work the same as a pegasus bow 'cause you had to use your forehooves on it, but we all made it work and hit the target, and I was really proud of myself 'cause I'd done the best with my shot.
Then we went by a pavilion that had a tea party and went to ride a mine train and it rolled around a little bit and then went through a mine where there were singing dwarves and Gusty knew all their names, which mostly sounded like pony names. They were getting big gems out of the walls, and Cayenne said that she knew that that was made up, 'cause no jewelry store she'd been into had any gems that size, and we agreed that there weren't gems like that on Earth.
The train stopped in front of a little cottage where all the dwarves and Snow White were singing, and then it went back to its station and we got out and went across the street to Ariel's Grotto.
She was the mermaid from before and it was kind of like a cave inside but I wasn't scared 'cause I knew that it was actually a building. And Ariel was sitting on her throne and she signed Gusty's book, too, and we got our picture taken with her, and then we went to the undersea ride which I was hoping would be on a submarine 'cause that might be fun. It would be kind of scary but I knew that all the rides here were safe even if they seemed scary.
We went through a big grotto that had water falls around it and when we got inside there were bits of shipwrecks and there was a sign saying that crabs sometimes brought things that didn't belong and we had to point to them and they’d take them away, and then we saw a little blue crab who was stacking up plates and waving at people, and he was behind glass and sometimes he’d bring something that wasn’t a plate and then carry it off again when you pointed at him. He was kind of slow, and didn't always realize he was being pointed at right away.
There was an albatross who was talking to people but not really paying attention to what they said to him and then when we got closer I saw that he was fake, too. Gusty said that he was named Scuttle and he kind of reminded me of Albie.
The cars were like seashells and when we got in them there was another Scuttle who was playing a concertina and told us about Ariel and then we went 'underwater.' It wasn't really underwater but it looked like it, and it was kind of like being in the ocean and they even had fake fish 'swimming' around which was neat.
And then we saw the bad morays and it got dark and we went by Ursula and even saw magic tracing a heart around Ariel and the Prince and even though it was fake human magic, I liked it.
A little ways past that we went to the Small World ride, which had a weird white village that we passed through on our way in, and then we got in boats to take us around.
It took us past robots who were wearing costumes from all different parts of the world, and they were all dancing and singing in their languages and we were trying to guess where they were supposed to be from, and that was hard 'cause it was so stylized and cartoony. We thought that we'd gone through Europe first and then Asia and then Africa and the Pacific Islands and then our ears all turned when we heard singing in Equestrian and there was a little scene with ponies which was really neat, but also kind of strange to see. And they had greetings in several languages at the end, as well.
Right across from that was Peter Pan's flight and I thought that would be fun but that maybe Gusty wouldn't want to, but she did. And we got into little ships and they didn't really fly but hung from a track instead. But it looked like they were flying and kind of felt like it, too, by the way that they moved everything else around—it was sort of like being in the airplane simulators, and I kind of wished that I'd had a control yoke so I could make it do things, but all I could do was ride along with it.
Me and Aquamarine got our chance to go Go-Karting before lunch, 'cause Gusty wanted to see the Enchanted Tales with Belle, and Cayenne wanted to shop in the Big Top souvenirs, so we agreed that we'd meet back up in front of the castle for our lunch, and so we went off to the Tomorrowland Go-Karts and they weren't quite as fun as I'd thought because they had guide rails so you couldn't go wherever you wanted with them like you could with real Go-Karts and we had to wait for the person in front of us a couple of times when they stopped ‘cause we couldn’t go around them.
But that was okay because Aquamarine was driving and she wasn't very good at it. I guess she'd never had a chance to drive a real car before, and the extra guidance helped her.
While we were on the track, I heard a steam whistle and looked around but I didn't see any trains or steamships that might have made it, but it was close, 'cause when we got a little bit further down the road I heard a distinct chuffing, and Aquamarine did too.
We didn't have a lot of time left before lunch and Gusty would be really upset if we were late so we didn't try to get on any more rides, but we did look around for the train. And we didn't find it, but we found a train station that was not too far from us and that was where the train stopped. It made a big loop around the park so you could get from one side to the other without having to walk all the way and I really wanted to ride it.
And then on our way back to the castle, we saw a moving Equestrian banner and it took us a little while to catch up to it, and it turned out that it was a flag that a woman was wearing on a harness and she had a couple of ponies with her. She was a tour leader who was in charge of the group that Golden Wheat and Arctic Lily were in and they weren't with her. She said that she didn't know where they were, but she thought that they'd been planning to go to the Animal Kingdom today.
But we did meet the ponies who were with her, who were Pumpkin Twizzle, Buttercup, and Java Bolt. And they were all from Baltimare and I didn't know any of them but I knew Pumpkin Twizzle's mom sort of 'cause she sailed on the Red Jacket which went up and down the coast and was a pretty old ship that used to sail across the ocean but didn't any more.
We talked with them a little while and would have liked to talk a bit longer but we had to get to the castle so we all hugged and nuzzled and then we trotted off to meet with Gusty. And we had to wait a little bit to get inside because we were early for our reservation but that was better than being late and there were lots of things to look at in the castle anyways, and Gusty was a little bit late which I hadn’t expected, and when she showed up she was wearing a new dress and had had her mane and tail done. She said that she’d gone to Bibbidi Bobbidi and had a Princess makeover and she was dressed up like Jasmine and she was really pretty.
And then we went up a spiral staircase and got greeted by Princess Cinderella and she had a beautiful dress and she was really nice. And Gusty got her autograph and we all got a picture with her and then we went inside and the room kind of reminded me of the dining hall in Harry Potter but it was a lot more ornate. Cayenne said that the dining halls in the Royal Palace looked a lot like this, too.
They had lots of food for us and we got plates with spiced hay and cheese (Cayenne didn't want any of that) and I had fish to eat and I shared a little bit of it with Aquamarine but she didn't like it as much as I did. And there were other princesses there—Snow White and Rapunzel also both came over to meet us and Gusty got their autographs, too.
It was nice to sit down and have a relaxing meal before went back out in the park.
We didn't want to do anything too exciting right after eating, so we convinced Gusty that it would be fun to ride the train, and went back to the Fantasyland train station. The train locomotive was just like an Equestrian steam locomotive but it was bigger like most human things, and it was a really pretty red and green.
The cars were open, and so we could see and smell everything around the park, and the conductor told us where we were and what we were seeing. And we went by the Go-Kart tracks and then past Space Mountain and we had to wait at Main Street Station so that people could get on and off, then it went to Frontierland which was where we wanted to go.
We got on a riverboat called the Liberty Belle that took us on a tour of the important rivers of America, and we got to see some of Frontierland and the Thunder Mountain ride and there were also little scenes around on land like a Native American village with people working on canoes, and a cabin and we saw some mooses that were probably fake, 'cause they didn't run off when they saw us. And we saw the steam train pass by while we were sailing, and a little cave with a boat by it, and a wooden fort and it was a lot of fun and really relaxing.
After that we went to Thunder Mountain and it was a made-up mining camp and we stopped to look at the wagon they had that was put there as scenery. Aquamarine said that it wasn't complete, 'cause it didn't have any brakes on it at all, not even drop chains. She said that maybe if it was empty, it wouldn't need brakes, but when it was full just a breeching strap wasn't going to be enough to stop it. And we got to go past a couple of little frontier buildings that had fake gold and lots of lanterns and you could stand on your hind hooves and look out the windows and see the train going around.
The train started off going through a tunnel and climbing up a hill and there was a cave in there that looked kind of like the one I'd seen in Colorado before I got scared and ran away. And then we almost got splashed before the train went out of the cave and started rolling around the tracks and it was a lot of fun to ride.
We went to Splash Mountain next which looked about the same before the ride—it was also made up to look like a frontier town—and we got to ride in a big floating log and we went around a big thorn-patch where you could look over at people riding down on the other side. And it went slowly around through a desert and there was a little garden there with big fake plants and a strange little house in a tree and Cayenne said that she thought it might be a pegasus house and I stuck my tongue out at her. And we went through a tunnel and past some singing birds who probably lived in the treehouses, and a bear and rabbit that waved at us, and they had houses that looked like Earth Pony houses sort of. And then we went into a tunnel and saw that the bear had gotten his muzzle stuck in an bee's nest and it sort of sped up and we got into rapids and went by singing frogs that weren't Kermit. And there were lots of signs telling us to go back but we couldn't and some eagles taunted us and if I hadn't been belted in I would have flown up there and told those eagles what I thought of them.
We had a really nice view of the park just before we tipped over the edge, and then we all got splashed. Gusty was a little bit mad 'cause her clothes got wet but the rest of us didn't mind being wet, 'cause it was a warm day.
We went over to the Pirates of the Caribbean next and while we were waiting in line we saw our friends from before, so we introduced Gusty and Cayenne to them and it was fun because we could talk for a bit and then the line would move so we weren't across from them anymore and then we would be again.
And we got in little boats and it was kind of scary because sometimes it was almost completely dark and Gusty lit her horn but she wasn't supposed to and some of the other people in the boat yelled at her for it and I thought that was mean of them.
We went by a pirate ship that was shooting cannons over us, and past a little town and then by a burning building, and we saw Jack Sparrow in a rocking chair and I heard Gusty give a happy sigh when she saw him, and then Cayenne asked if she had a crush on Johnny Depp and she said so what if she did.
It hadn't been quite what I was expecting, but it was fun and then the gift shop had lots of pirate things and sailing things and so I wanted to look around at that some because maybe I would find a good Hearth's Warming present for someone, and so I stayed behind with Miss Cherilyn and Mister Salvatore while everyone else went on their way.
Most of it was fake and just meant to look nice but not be used on an actual ship, but I did find a book about pirate ships that I thought I could give Zucche and maybe she could put it in the tavern where everypony could enjoy it. And it had lots of pictures, so even if they couldn't read it they'd get an idea what human pirate ships were like. And I thought about getting a pirate flag, too, but it was bad luck to put somepony else's colors on your ship.
When I was done looking, Mister Salvatore called Mister Barrow to find out where they were and he said that everybody had split up and Gusty was going to the Country Bear Jamboree and Cayenne wanted to see the Christmas Shop, so they'd gone off that way and that they had Aquamarine who was going to go on the Jungle Boat Ride.
Well, that sounded fun to me so I wanted to go there, too, and Aquamarine was really nice and waited for me so that we could do it together. And that had a kind of Daring Do theme and we got on boats with canvas tops and chimneys that went right up the middle of them and if they were real boilers it would have been really dangerous, 'cause you could get burned if you touched them by mistake.
Our tour guide made a bunch of bad jokes and puns and there were a lot of them that me and Aquamarine didn't get but we could tell by Mister Salvatore grinning when he had. And Miss Parker just groaned at some of them, like when he said that giant butterflies were the rulers of the Amazon 'cause they had twelve-inch wingspans.
Most of the animals we saw were fake, but the plants were real. And there was a jeep that was on its back and a little bit further there were a bunch of lions eating a gazelle. Mister Barrow said that it used to be a zebra there but after they'd found out that there were sapient zebras in Equestria they changed it and that had made a lot of people mad who had said that Disney shouldn't bow to pressure from ponies, even though ponies hadn't even known about it. Which was kind of confusing. We all knew that there were lots of monsters and animals that would try to eat us if they got the chance, and you had to be smart and not let them.
We had to lean over so that the boat would miss a waterfall, and then it went past a wrecked airplane to a pool with hippos in it and past some headhunters who had skulls on their boat, and then we went into partially-sunken temple, and when we came out we went through a bunch of Indian elephants who were all bathing in the river. And that sounded pretty good to me, too, 'cause it was pretty hot and I wouldn't mind soaking in the water for a bit. We weren't supposed to get out of the boat and swim, though.
Me and Aquamarine met up with the unicorns at the Diamond Horseshoe for dinner, and Gusty rushed her way through dinner 'cause there was still a lot that we hadn't seen yet. And so we went across the central courtyard to Stitch's Great Escape, and Gusty told me that Stitch was a genetically engineered creature who escaped and got to Earth where he made friends with a girl named Lilo and so we got to see how he'd made his escape, and he splashed us with water some and when he burped it smelled like when Cayenne farted and I blamed her for it.
And then we went to Space Mountain and we had to go through a big long corridor to get there and it was almost all dark inside so we didn’t know what was going on at all except that we were going up and down and turning and then we went through a corridor of flashing lights and it was really disorienting and I didn't like it all that much. Cayenne said it was like riding the subway but darker and faster. I was really glad when we got back outside in the open air.
We were gonna see Winnie the Pooh next but then Gusty saw Donald Duck and so we had to gallop partway across the park so that she could get his autograph and get a picture of him and I didn't mind 'cause it was nice to be outside after that last ride and let my insides settle down some. It had been too much like getting caught in an updraft inside a cloud and getting disoriented by it.
It really smelled like honey when we got over close to there, too, and I was curious where the scent was coming from so me and Aquamarine started sniffing around until we found a little vent that had honey-smell coming from it. I thought that maybe there was a really big beehive behind it, so we didn't get too close, 'cause we didn't want to get stung.
We got to ride in a really big honeypot, and there were pages from a book on the wall that we could read, and the first one said that the East Wind and West Wind had switched places and I said that if I had a big enough team of pegasuses I could make that happen.
Winnie had decided to go floating off on a balloon which maybe wasn't so smart, and his friend Eeyore who was a donkey didn't look too happy about that. Gusty said that Eeyore was always moody 'cause that's how donkeys were. And at the very end of the ride there was a picture of Winnie riding Eeyore, and he didn't look too happy about that, either.
We passed by a quartet singing in the street and then we saw a show called PhilharMagic and we had to wear 3D glasses for that. And Donald was pretty yelly at the orchestra and I thought he was more of a goose than a duck. He messed up trying to conduct an orchestra and lost his magic hat and keep trying to get it back, and it was really confusing 'cause he kept winding up in new places but I guess that can happen when you teleport wrong. That never happens when you're flying. And maybe that was why Gusty and Cayenne seemed to be following along better than me and Aquamarine were.
Our last ride of the night was Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, and he was one of the toys from Toy Story. And the ride was a lot like the Midway Mania 'cause we had to aim lasers and shoot them at targets, and we got to wear special hoof-hooks again so that we could use them on the aliens who were called Zurgs. And when we got to the end and compared our scores I thought me and Aquamarine had done the best until Mister Salvatore and Mister Barrow got out of their car and they had a much better score than we did and they were all braggy about it until Miss Cherilyn and Miss Parker told them how they'd done and they'd gotten the highest scores of all and were Cosmic Commanders, and Mister Salvatore was pretty grumpy about that, especially after Miss Cherilyn and Miss Parker bought pictures of each of them with their scores. She said that she was going to hang them up in the office.
The whole park had gotten lots prettier after dark with all the Christmas lights everywhere, and we got some ice cream and sat down and admired it while we were eating our ice cream, and then we went to the main courtyard to see the closing ceremonies. And they had the castle all lit up and then we saw Tinker Bell flying around, and I wanted to go up there and fly around with her, but I wasn't allowed to.
Then they started shooting fireworks up in the air around the castle and that was really beautiful to see. I'd seen fireworks on the Fourth of July but not like this—there were lots more of them and they were really pretty and exploding around it in all sorts of different colors, and they had lights on the castle to make it look different colors and it was really amazing to see.
We were all kind of tired when we were walking back to the monorail. My wing was stiffening up again and I did some flaps to help stretch it out, and Cayenne had a little bit of a limp. And we saw a lot of parents who were carrying their children and a few yawns from people. But Gusty was still pretty hyper and full of energy, and when we got to the Monorail and all were resting on the seats she had her hooves up on the windowsill and was looking out at the park still.
When we got back to our room, she was the last one in bed—she waited until everyone else had gotten ready before she went into the bathroom to change into her sleeping clothes, and Cayenne was already snoring before she got into bed, and I was almost asleep myself. It had been a really fun and really long day.