Third day, third disney opening show.

The alarm goes off at 645 again this morning ready to hit the day. Is this a holiday or a Disney boot camp? Our sharp strategy now includes a heavy duty breakfast, to sustain us through the key early part of the day when the rides are less occupied. We were at the turnstiles at 8.30 putting on our suncream ready for battle. All the Disney parks start just before or just after the turnstiles with a little show. 'The Griswalds of Kentucky' or similar help by waving and shouting hurray. Once again 'The Reads of little old England' were not selected as the beautiful people. Nor did we get to ride later on the safari wagons for the parade. Life is bitter.

Of course we are pretending to listen to the opening "Mickey and Pluto" bit but actually we are eyeing up those who might attempt to get to the Everest ride before us. We saw the brilliant Indiana Jones stunt show yesterday and have studied some of the moves. Nationality is a bind of course, when the opening welcome is over and the ropes lifted we must speed to the first ride, but being British we can't actually run or be seen to deliberately elbow others out of the way. Instead we go for a lolloping not quite a run kind of walk. As we speed past wonders of entertainment that would slow down weaker spirits. Eventually spurred on by some unseemly running on the part of the colonials I am pushed forwards to 'Go get a fast pass we will catch you up'. I am now forced to go notably faster than the other family members otherwise what would be the point and yet must resist starting a panicked stampede. This is probably where the sport of speed walking came from. As it happens I get the Fast Passes (a sort of come back later and we'll let you to the front of the queue ticket) among a state of rising confusion as Everest ride was currently out of commission causing confusion in peoples' day plans.

Rachel is of course prepared for this type of thing and merely reaches for the envelope marked 'Only to be opened in the event that the first ride of the day is closed for an unknown length of time'. This directs us to Dinoland.

We have a couple of spiny round Primeval rides on a little roller coaster thing, then decide to tackle a dinosaur roundabout thing. Where as at the Magic Kingdom I didn't think the insanely popular Dumbo ride was worth the candle I was prepared to take a shot at this identical (albeit dinosaurs rather than elephants) ride. However once sat in place the thing failed to launch and having sat there for a bit we were ordered off to seek other pleasures. Reach for envelope marked "Plan C".

This is the fourth time that a broken ride has deflected our plans in three days. Perhaps this reflects the long days that Disney works for. Open over 12 hours a day 7 days a week (Euro Disney opens later and closes earlier).

We eventually went on the Everest ride (someone else's video of the rider www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyU_uGlRn0s) which was great and we all loved, we've captured a rough video of the boys impressions. As always however the boys first reactions are best and they don't bother to repeat them either to the second adult home after a day at work or in this case on demand to video.

There were lots of great bits to the day which I won't list here. The other top hit was the Nemo Show a 30 minute mini musical which was great. We also did the Lion King Festival and while this was brilliant the boys and particularly Sam were disappointed that this wasn't the show that they were familiar with and have participated in. They were both disappointed that songs had been cut short. The show is a sing, dance and acrobatic spectacular and not a cut down version of the stage musical.

We survived a couple of family pressure points today. I was feeling a bit queasy and tired at one point (I am now 40 you know) and we all sat down on a seat for a break and a round of fizzy drinks. Sam having just been told to use both hands dropped his litre of sprite on my leg. I resisted throwing him to the lions.

The other moment was when we lost the car somewhere in the Unicorn parking lot. Having parked three times now, the parking lots do all start to look the same. Perhaps if we had been an hour longer in the park heat there would have been a family melt down at this point however we managed to keep our cool. In the cut and thrust of family dynamics it is a question of not letting the stress rise to high. In general travelling is hard on the kids as they are excited, tired and in public all at the same time meaning they get quite a lot of push back from their excited, tired and in public parents. [Rachel says I should say how well the kids are doing]

But tomorrow is another day, we shall see how far we can push it.

Johnny x