However, we did start our week at the Magic Kingdom. It was much less crowded than we expected. A cast member told me later that the park attendance for the first part of the week was about half of their usual number, and they weren't sure why.
Being Disneyland veterans, the Magic Kingdom was familiar to us. We did our favorites: Pirates of the Caribbean, Thunder Mountain Railroad, Space Mountain, It's A Small World. I made the kids sit through the Hall of Presidents, which I remembered from the early Disneyland days. The animatronics have improved; it is hard to remember that those are not real people sitting on the stage.
Our first Disney meal was a fast-food lunch at the Starlight Cafe in Tomorrowland. We happened to catch a special Disney promotion that saved us a boatload of money. By booking a 7-day stay at a Disney resort, we got the "Disney Dining Plan" for free. This gets you one snack, one counter service meal, and one table service meal per person per day. This is a fabulous deal. We tracked the actual prices during the week, and found that we would have spent just under $1,300 on meals had we not had this plan.
As a general rule, the counter service (fast food) meals end up averaging $13 per person, and table service meals average from $30 to $45 per person.
The Disney meals are expensive, but the food is good, and unquestionably plentiful. On the dining plan, each meal includes an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert. When dining out, we almost never order appetizers or desserts, so right off the bat we were getting more food than usual. Plus, the entrees are large. We spent most of the week stuffed to the gills. At that first lunch, my 13-year-old son got a double bacon cheeseburger, and could not finish the brownie. We had to take it with us.
As it turns out, we got so much food at the meals that we barely used the snacks. By Friday, we still had 20 of our 28 snack credits unused. The snack credits can be used to buy drinks and packaged snacks as well, so we used the last on items to take with us to the airport.
We had our first table service dinner at Tony's Town Square, themed after the restaurant where Lady and the Tramp have their spaghetti and meat ball supper. This was a delightful place, and the food was great. We got seafood, steak, and pasta, and all of it was very good.
One of the advantages of staying at Fort Wilderness is that one can take a boat to the Magic Kingdom. The boats were less crowded and more relaxed than the busses or monorail.
