Walt Disney World Part 1 - Magic Kingdom
Ah, I should address that last time I wrote here with any enthusiasm, I was covering my last trip to Washington State. Three months ago. Ah...that's a bit embarrassing, isn't it? Well, here's a quick wrap-up. Friends and I, we went to Pike Place Market and found the metal pig statue. It was very crowded and rainy. Some guy was playing "In Your Eyes" on his guitar, which was awesome. I achieved my goal of finding a good memorial sweatshirt (Seattle Rain Festival Jan 1st - Dec 31st) and after wandering the market, we got fancy pants cupcakes and excellent pizza.
We also had sushi from a conveyer belt sushi joint and visited IKEA. And then I flew home, sad to leave. As always.
Okay! Glad I got that finished. So, Walt Disney World, which I'll call WDW from here on out, if you don't mind. Shawna, my dear sister, has been working her tail off for Disneyland for...about three years at this point. Continued employment with the Disney company looked good, so she decided to cash in some of her Cast Member benefits - complimentary tickets to the WDW theme parks, and deeply discounted hotel room rates. Born and raised in California, we had Disneyland to go to if we could afford a Disney vacation - WDW was pretty much out of the question. But now, with Shawna's discounts and the offsprings' ability to buy their own plane tickets, the possibility of a WDW pilgrimage came into view. We were advised to visit in February, and so we bought plane tickets. The September before, in my case. We waited and waited and finally, February arrived.
Flight, Orlando Airport, meeting up with the family, bus trip over to WDW - all not very interesting. We were all too tired to really notice where we were being driven on the Magic Express bus, and it was quite late by that point anyway. We'd elected to stay at Fort Wilderness Resort, which consists of a campground (mostly for RVs) and cabins. The cabins have two rooms and a full kitchen, which worked perfectly for a family of four adults who didn't want to eat at Disney restaurants for every meal of every day. Indeed, half of what I packed was food - dried soups, pasta, breakfast foods, snacks, crackers, and other pantry staples that could be whipped up in short order to provide us with theme park fuel at a small fraction of restaurant prices. The cabin (they are all pre-fabricated units similar to intensely themed mobile homes) was the cleanest cabin we'd ever seen, and very low on Disney theming. Oh, it was there: hidden Mickeys in the bedspread and curtain fabrics, concept art of Frontierland hung on the walls, soaps stamped with Mickey Mouse, who grins happily no matter what part of your body you're scrubbing. With a bunk bed and double bed in the bedroom proper and a murphy bed in the living room, it offered lots of sleeping space. The cleaning staff even washed our dishes when we were feeling too rushed to put them in the dishwasher ourselves. We admired all of this and then fell asleep as quickly as we could. For it was off to the first theme park early the next morning, and it was the mother of them all - the Magic Kingdom.
Now, we knew the property of WDW was large. We didn't quite understand how large. WDW is huge, and to my untrained eyes, there's a lot of open land. And in many ways, that's a fantastic thing. While on property, we could not see a smidgen of the outside world. This approach is of course used (pioneered, even) in Disneyland, but here it's taken to a whole new level. No buildings over the trees, no freeway noise, no fences, and very very few access roads or "backstage" structures. The thick pine forests have a lot to do with this. WDW seems to have been built in the middle of a slash pine forest and swamp, and it seems that much of it wasn't tampered with where it could serve a screening or atmospheric purpose. WDW is so big that it doesn't just hold abandoned buildings, it holds entire abandoned theme parks (a water park and a small animal-themed island with exhibits and shows). But good luck getting to them, as the buses, monorails, and boats don't go there, and you simply can't get anywhere by walking unless you're very determined and good at hiding - pedestrians aren't allowed on the roads linking the parks. And the distances are just too great. The small Fort Wilderness campground area is a mile long. Campground buses were a must to travel just in our lodgings, and visiting the camp store could take an hour or more if we timed the buses incorrectly. I can see why Fort Wilderness is not recommended for first-time guests with small kids: getting to a theme park requires a walk, a bus ride to yet another bus or a ferry boat. It took about an hour to get from cabin to gate and while that was fine with us, any 6 year old would be a basket case by then. Talk about getting away from it all, though! I was expecting the smells and sounds of campgrounds mostly inhabited by motorhomes - generators, failed and smoking campfires, smelly latrines. But I need not have worried, this was Disney, after all. The motorhomes could plug into outlets in their campsites, open campfires are actually not allowed so I don't think many people even bother, and the bathrooms are spotless. We awoke to a humid and warm Florida morning, enclosed in the pine forest, and took our bus down to the shores of Bay Lake.
Unimaginatively-named Bay Lake is at the upper end of the campground and has a white sand beach, which I learned was created when the entire lake was drained and the muck cleared out. Under seven feet of lake slop was pure white sand which was used to build the beaches of the resorts surrounding the edges of Bay Lake and man-made Seven Seas Lagoon which is attached to Bay Lake by a narrow channel that runs above the road. Say what you want about the architectural wonders of Spaceship Earth or Space Mountain, it's the road that goes under the lake which I find absolutely amazing. What's even more fun is that you don't really even notice any difference, except that boats must travel with no wake in this area. To get to the Magic Kingdom, we boarded a cute but plain ferry boat to take us over to the entrance plaza.
The Magic Kingdom is reached by walking, by boat (and there are many to choose from), and by monorail. I'm sure there are roads going to the Magic Kingdom, but they're out of sight. We presented Shawna at the front gates, she waved her cast member ID card, and we had our first of many free tickets to the magic.
It should be said right off that the Magic Kingdom is a copy of Disneyland Park. Not down to every detail, not by a long shot. But there were times throughout the day when I really believed I was back in California, and then was distressed to not see the Matterhorn, as the Magic Kingdom does not have one. They do have a very large castle (Cinderella's, in fact) which is big enough to hold a restaurant and the Magic Kingdom's version of the Dream Suite, and from this hub, the familiar lands open up in every direction. Adventureland, Fantasyland, Main Street with perplexingly taller buildings, Tomorrowland which...looks completely different, and hey - where is Frontierland? Oh, it's on the other side of...Liberty Square. Where's New Orleans Square? Well, it's Florida - the real New Orleans isn't too far away. As we were there in Florida, and therefore in the off-season, many things were under construction. Not that it detracted that much - large covers expertly printed to match the facade of the other buildings were strung over Main Street buildings getting a facelift, and Fantasyland was undergoing a large amount of construction, but being from California, we have the original Fantasyland Classics back home, so didn't need to ride the re-creations out in Florida.
We started by taking the train around the park to get the lay of the land, and discovered that it only has two stations at the moment - Main Street Station and the closeby Frontierland Station. There are no dinosaurs and no Grand Canyon - we mostly looked at trees and the backside of Fantasyland's construction projects. But we at least got the feel for how big the Magic Kingdom is. It's...a bit larger than Disneyland, perhaps. More spread out, but not enthusiastically so. It's still intimate and friendly. We next headed over to Adventureland, which is the land that Shawna is most familiar with back in her home park. But here, Pirates of the Caribbean is part of Adventureland and the Swiss Family Treehouse has remained (and rightfully so!) the Swiss Family Treehouse. We toured the tree, rode a cute Dumbo-esque ride themed around the magic carpet from Aladdin, went on the Jungle Cruise (longer than the one back in Disneyland as it has a journey through a flooded Indonesian temple, but the jokes and presentation aren't nearly as nice), and went on Pirates of the Caribbean, which is in many ways exactly the same as Disneyland's, but has no bayou show room and only one waterfall - possibly because Florida's water table is so close to the surface. There was also a big difference in this ride that I noticed on many other WDW attractions - load and unload are in different parts of the attraction. Haunted Mansion in Disneyland is like this, and it is the same in WDW, but the same concept is applied to Pirates of the Caribbean, Space Mountain, and other individual-vehicle rides. Everyone gets out in the exit room and the vehicles are pulled around to the loading station, empty and ready to receive the next guests.
Splash Mountain is similar to the Disneyland ride, though with less animatronics and more space between scenes (Disneyland harvested the America Sings animals for their Splash Mountain). Same nice drop, though. Same soaking effects. We visited the Haunted Mansion and its amusingly interactive graveyard, marveled at both familiar and unfamiliar effects in the not-very-worrisome haunted house, and then had lunch in Liberty Square at a disappointingly dry tavern. Delicious food, though. We had to check out Country Bear Jamboree, which was a favorite show when Disneyland still had a version - you've got to love an animatronic bear singing Blood on the Saddle, but the sound was turned way down for the performance and it was rather hard to hear what the poor bears were singing. We didn't much care. Hooray, Country Bears! Across the park, then, for Tomorrowland and Space Mountain. First, the People Mover.
This is another vintage concept that was removed from Disneyland but lives on in the Magic Kingdom. These People Movers have no canopies, but zip along with decent enthusiasm under speaker-laden overhangs that comment down at guests about what there is to do in Tomorrowland. There are Autopia cars, but no Submarines. There is indeed Space Mountain, and it's gigantic compared to the thrilling but comparatively un-mountainlike Disneyland version. While Disneyland's current take on Tomorrowland is white and metallic with all-edible landscaping (very nicely executed, too), WDW's Tomorrowland is metallic blue, neon green, and has metal palm trees, though it's not unwelcoming. The look is much more Futuristic Airport, perhaps. You can reach it by large footbridge, which is nice. Tomorrowland also has the classic Carousel of Progress which has the innovative design of an immobile circular stage divided into wedges in the middle, and multiple theater rooms that rotate around the stages. That way, the ride can be loaded in large groups. One room is loaded while the one behind it empties, and the other compartments are enjoying their segments of the show. It's an animatronic journey through time starring a family who never seems to age but is instead gifted with better and better technology. This ride has gone though many versions (the first at the Worlds Fair was, I have heard, about an hour long. No wonder people tried to escape) but still includes the song "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow". You thought Small World was the song that stuck in your head the worst? You haven't met this Sherman Brothers classic. But it may stick so well because it's actually a good song. We sang it over and over as we progressed through the rooms, finally arriving at a Christmas scene that appears to be updated with the current batch of new technology (flat screen TV, voice activated lights), though the family members and their fashion sensibilities are stuck firmly in the early 80s. Ending back up where we started, and before Space Mountain, we stopped by Monster's Inc Laugh Floor. Monsters in Tomorrowland? ...Sure, why not. Using some of the same technology as Turtle Talk with Crush, this show relies heavily on hidden cameras which pick people out of the audience to gently mock ("Here's the fellow who can get you free churros! Seriously! Churros on him! He has connections!") I can't quote jokes at you as they're all situational, you really have to be there. Regardless, it was hilarious. A good laugh does wonders for the spirit.
And so does a good roller coaster, for that matter. Space Mountain is a pretty decent one! This Space Mountain has two separate tracks and no on-board ride soundtrack. Well, I guess there is supposed to be, but the speakers alongside the track have a lot to compete with. Essentially, there's drums in space, from time to time. Whatever, it doesn't matter. While Space Mountain Disneyland is all stars and galaxies, this Space Mountain has asteroids, comets, planets, and sound effects. Your photo is taken at the start of the ride, even before the lift hill (odd choice) and the ride itself is like a smoother version of the Matterhorn Bobsleds. Except, you know, in the dark. We tried both tracks and decided we liked the Fastpass side (left side) better. Again, the ride exits in a different spot than it loads, prompting the guests to take bit of a hike in order to get back to Tomorrowland. At least there are some green screen areas where guests are projected into alien scenes to make what would be a very long and boring corridor quite entertaining.
At some point, we watched the parade. It was...okay. We thought we'd secured nice seats (stands?) for the performance, but of course we had not. The parade was heavy on characters and light on float design, but then, we have odd priorities and enjoy float design perhaps more than seeing Mickey pretend to drive said float. Fantasyland...we didn't do much in Fantasyland as the lines were far too long for Winnie the Pooh or Peter Pan to really be worth it. Small World had no line, though, and we soon understood why. It's not as good as the original (if that counts as "good", your personal preference plays a big part in deciding this) and is all inside which is decidedly odd when you're used to the outdoor splendor of Disneyland's Small World, which is almost a second castle in its own right. This Small World is condensed and shorter, to the relief of some. There was a boy who was watching us board our boat from an adjacent restaurant. He was shaking his head and motioning for us to turn back before it was too late. But we'd been through the turnstiles and once you've been through the turnstiles, the family rule is that you have to get on and ride the ride, so into the world of singing dolls we went. It seemed that the animation was all turned up a bit too fast, but was cute enough. And we finally were able to catch Liberty Square's longer-running attractions - the Liberty Belle paddle wheel boat around Tom Sawyer's Island (which we did not visit, but I'd probably get stuck in the kid-sized caves, anyway), and Hall of Presidents. The former is a beautiful if unexciting slow ride, and the latter is a show featuring all past presidents in robot form, and Robot Obama giving his oath of office and a short speech. But that makes it sound cheap. It's not. Disneyland has Lincoln, Magic Kingdom has Lincoln, Washington, and Obama giving speeches as all the other presidents look on. Even if they do not talk, these past presidents nod or wave when introduced, and can't help fidgeting from time to time or whispering to each other while they wait for their names to be called. It's an amazing technological achievement. It will be interesting to see how quickly a new animatronic will be put into place, either in November or four years from now, when we get a new president. Will the new commander-in-chief give the same speech that Obama does? It will be interesting to experience as the times change.
I never got my waffle filled with Nutella and strawberries. In fact, I can't remember what I had for dinner. No matter, it was time for fireworks! Before fireworks, though, the castle was used as a giant projection screen for "Magic, Memories, and You" which features photographs (and stock video) of guests. If you're lucky, you'll show up on the castle. Okay, there were photographs, that wasn't the interesting part. The interesting part was that the castle, which is not flat from almost any angle, is acting as a screen for very bright and very high quality projected effects. Fancy projections seem to be Disney's new thing, and I enjoy it very much. And then...fireworks! We had picked a viewing spot in the extensive and mostly unpopulated rose gardens just to the side of the castle so while we were off-center and the fireworks did not appear to erupt right behind or above the castle, they were still highly enjoyable. And loud! Some of the shells are very large, and seem to be shot higher than Disneyland fireworks.
And then we decided we'd had enough. We took our boat back to Fort Wilderness and our bus back to our cabin neighborhood, and crawled under the Mickey-decorated duvets for some quality shut-eye. Verdict? Excellent park. Nice and spacious, beautiful landscaping, and while many things were familiar or downright copies of Disneyland attractions, they're all highly enjoyable. Lines were minimal or nonexistent for most everything we wanted to ride and if there was a crowd, fast passes helped us avoid waiting longer than a few minutes. Off-season is wonderful. The level of detail is intense, and even getting to the park (by boat! Much better than taking HWY 5) is entertaining. As it should be. That's the point.
Next time, photos! The time after that, EPCOT! Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow...except not really any of those. Still wonderful, of course.
We also had sushi from a conveyer belt sushi joint and visited IKEA. And then I flew home, sad to leave. As always.
Okay! Glad I got that finished. So, Walt Disney World, which I'll call WDW from here on out, if you don't mind. Shawna, my dear sister, has been working her tail off for Disneyland for...about three years at this point. Continued employment with the Disney company looked good, so she decided to cash in some of her Cast Member benefits - complimentary tickets to the WDW theme parks, and deeply discounted hotel room rates. Born and raised in California, we had Disneyland to go to if we could afford a Disney vacation - WDW was pretty much out of the question. But now, with Shawna's discounts and the offsprings' ability to buy their own plane tickets, the possibility of a WDW pilgrimage came into view. We were advised to visit in February, and so we bought plane tickets. The September before, in my case. We waited and waited and finally, February arrived.
Flight, Orlando Airport, meeting up with the family, bus trip over to WDW - all not very interesting. We were all too tired to really notice where we were being driven on the Magic Express bus, and it was quite late by that point anyway. We'd elected to stay at Fort Wilderness Resort, which consists of a campground (mostly for RVs) and cabins. The cabins have two rooms and a full kitchen, which worked perfectly for a family of four adults who didn't want to eat at Disney restaurants for every meal of every day. Indeed, half of what I packed was food - dried soups, pasta, breakfast foods, snacks, crackers, and other pantry staples that could be whipped up in short order to provide us with theme park fuel at a small fraction of restaurant prices. The cabin (they are all pre-fabricated units similar to intensely themed mobile homes) was the cleanest cabin we'd ever seen, and very low on Disney theming. Oh, it was there: hidden Mickeys in the bedspread and curtain fabrics, concept art of Frontierland hung on the walls, soaps stamped with Mickey Mouse, who grins happily no matter what part of your body you're scrubbing. With a bunk bed and double bed in the bedroom proper and a murphy bed in the living room, it offered lots of sleeping space. The cleaning staff even washed our dishes when we were feeling too rushed to put them in the dishwasher ourselves. We admired all of this and then fell asleep as quickly as we could. For it was off to the first theme park early the next morning, and it was the mother of them all - the Magic Kingdom.
Now, we knew the property of WDW was large. We didn't quite understand how large. WDW is huge, and to my untrained eyes, there's a lot of open land. And in many ways, that's a fantastic thing. While on property, we could not see a smidgen of the outside world. This approach is of course used (pioneered, even) in Disneyland, but here it's taken to a whole new level. No buildings over the trees, no freeway noise, no fences, and very very few access roads or "backstage" structures. The thick pine forests have a lot to do with this. WDW seems to have been built in the middle of a slash pine forest and swamp, and it seems that much of it wasn't tampered with where it could serve a screening or atmospheric purpose. WDW is so big that it doesn't just hold abandoned buildings, it holds entire abandoned theme parks (a water park and a small animal-themed island with exhibits and shows). But good luck getting to them, as the buses, monorails, and boats don't go there, and you simply can't get anywhere by walking unless you're very determined and good at hiding - pedestrians aren't allowed on the roads linking the parks. And the distances are just too great. The small Fort Wilderness campground area is a mile long. Campground buses were a must to travel just in our lodgings, and visiting the camp store could take an hour or more if we timed the buses incorrectly. I can see why Fort Wilderness is not recommended for first-time guests with small kids: getting to a theme park requires a walk, a bus ride to yet another bus or a ferry boat. It took about an hour to get from cabin to gate and while that was fine with us, any 6 year old would be a basket case by then. Talk about getting away from it all, though! I was expecting the smells and sounds of campgrounds mostly inhabited by motorhomes - generators, failed and smoking campfires, smelly latrines. But I need not have worried, this was Disney, after all. The motorhomes could plug into outlets in their campsites, open campfires are actually not allowed so I don't think many people even bother, and the bathrooms are spotless. We awoke to a humid and warm Florida morning, enclosed in the pine forest, and took our bus down to the shores of Bay Lake.
Unimaginatively-named Bay Lake is at the upper end of the campground and has a white sand beach, which I learned was created when the entire lake was drained and the muck cleared out. Under seven feet of lake slop was pure white sand which was used to build the beaches of the resorts surrounding the edges of Bay Lake and man-made Seven Seas Lagoon which is attached to Bay Lake by a narrow channel that runs above the road. Say what you want about the architectural wonders of Spaceship Earth or Space Mountain, it's the road that goes under the lake which I find absolutely amazing. What's even more fun is that you don't really even notice any difference, except that boats must travel with no wake in this area. To get to the Magic Kingdom, we boarded a cute but plain ferry boat to take us over to the entrance plaza.
The Magic Kingdom is reached by walking, by boat (and there are many to choose from), and by monorail. I'm sure there are roads going to the Magic Kingdom, but they're out of sight. We presented Shawna at the front gates, she waved her cast member ID card, and we had our first of many free tickets to the magic.
It should be said right off that the Magic Kingdom is a copy of Disneyland Park. Not down to every detail, not by a long shot. But there were times throughout the day when I really believed I was back in California, and then was distressed to not see the Matterhorn, as the Magic Kingdom does not have one. They do have a very large castle (Cinderella's, in fact) which is big enough to hold a restaurant and the Magic Kingdom's version of the Dream Suite, and from this hub, the familiar lands open up in every direction. Adventureland, Fantasyland, Main Street with perplexingly taller buildings, Tomorrowland which...looks completely different, and hey - where is Frontierland? Oh, it's on the other side of...Liberty Square. Where's New Orleans Square? Well, it's Florida - the real New Orleans isn't too far away. As we were there in Florida, and therefore in the off-season, many things were under construction. Not that it detracted that much - large covers expertly printed to match the facade of the other buildings were strung over Main Street buildings getting a facelift, and Fantasyland was undergoing a large amount of construction, but being from California, we have the original Fantasyland Classics back home, so didn't need to ride the re-creations out in Florida.
We started by taking the train around the park to get the lay of the land, and discovered that it only has two stations at the moment - Main Street Station and the closeby Frontierland Station. There are no dinosaurs and no Grand Canyon - we mostly looked at trees and the backside of Fantasyland's construction projects. But we at least got the feel for how big the Magic Kingdom is. It's...a bit larger than Disneyland, perhaps. More spread out, but not enthusiastically so. It's still intimate and friendly. We next headed over to Adventureland, which is the land that Shawna is most familiar with back in her home park. But here, Pirates of the Caribbean is part of Adventureland and the Swiss Family Treehouse has remained (and rightfully so!) the Swiss Family Treehouse. We toured the tree, rode a cute Dumbo-esque ride themed around the magic carpet from Aladdin, went on the Jungle Cruise (longer than the one back in Disneyland as it has a journey through a flooded Indonesian temple, but the jokes and presentation aren't nearly as nice), and went on Pirates of the Caribbean, which is in many ways exactly the same as Disneyland's, but has no bayou show room and only one waterfall - possibly because Florida's water table is so close to the surface. There was also a big difference in this ride that I noticed on many other WDW attractions - load and unload are in different parts of the attraction. Haunted Mansion in Disneyland is like this, and it is the same in WDW, but the same concept is applied to Pirates of the Caribbean, Space Mountain, and other individual-vehicle rides. Everyone gets out in the exit room and the vehicles are pulled around to the loading station, empty and ready to receive the next guests.
Splash Mountain is similar to the Disneyland ride, though with less animatronics and more space between scenes (Disneyland harvested the America Sings animals for their Splash Mountain). Same nice drop, though. Same soaking effects. We visited the Haunted Mansion and its amusingly interactive graveyard, marveled at both familiar and unfamiliar effects in the not-very-worrisome haunted house, and then had lunch in Liberty Square at a disappointingly dry tavern. Delicious food, though. We had to check out Country Bear Jamboree, which was a favorite show when Disneyland still had a version - you've got to love an animatronic bear singing Blood on the Saddle, but the sound was turned way down for the performance and it was rather hard to hear what the poor bears were singing. We didn't much care. Hooray, Country Bears! Across the park, then, for Tomorrowland and Space Mountain. First, the People Mover.
This is another vintage concept that was removed from Disneyland but lives on in the Magic Kingdom. These People Movers have no canopies, but zip along with decent enthusiasm under speaker-laden overhangs that comment down at guests about what there is to do in Tomorrowland. There are Autopia cars, but no Submarines. There is indeed Space Mountain, and it's gigantic compared to the thrilling but comparatively un-mountainlike Disneyland version. While Disneyland's current take on Tomorrowland is white and metallic with all-edible landscaping (very nicely executed, too), WDW's Tomorrowland is metallic blue, neon green, and has metal palm trees, though it's not unwelcoming. The look is much more Futuristic Airport, perhaps. You can reach it by large footbridge, which is nice. Tomorrowland also has the classic Carousel of Progress which has the innovative design of an immobile circular stage divided into wedges in the middle, and multiple theater rooms that rotate around the stages. That way, the ride can be loaded in large groups. One room is loaded while the one behind it empties, and the other compartments are enjoying their segments of the show. It's an animatronic journey through time starring a family who never seems to age but is instead gifted with better and better technology. This ride has gone though many versions (the first at the Worlds Fair was, I have heard, about an hour long. No wonder people tried to escape) but still includes the song "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow". You thought Small World was the song that stuck in your head the worst? You haven't met this Sherman Brothers classic. But it may stick so well because it's actually a good song. We sang it over and over as we progressed through the rooms, finally arriving at a Christmas scene that appears to be updated with the current batch of new technology (flat screen TV, voice activated lights), though the family members and their fashion sensibilities are stuck firmly in the early 80s. Ending back up where we started, and before Space Mountain, we stopped by Monster's Inc Laugh Floor. Monsters in Tomorrowland? ...Sure, why not. Using some of the same technology as Turtle Talk with Crush, this show relies heavily on hidden cameras which pick people out of the audience to gently mock ("Here's the fellow who can get you free churros! Seriously! Churros on him! He has connections!") I can't quote jokes at you as they're all situational, you really have to be there. Regardless, it was hilarious. A good laugh does wonders for the spirit.
And so does a good roller coaster, for that matter. Space Mountain is a pretty decent one! This Space Mountain has two separate tracks and no on-board ride soundtrack. Well, I guess there is supposed to be, but the speakers alongside the track have a lot to compete with. Essentially, there's drums in space, from time to time. Whatever, it doesn't matter. While Space Mountain Disneyland is all stars and galaxies, this Space Mountain has asteroids, comets, planets, and sound effects. Your photo is taken at the start of the ride, even before the lift hill (odd choice) and the ride itself is like a smoother version of the Matterhorn Bobsleds. Except, you know, in the dark. We tried both tracks and decided we liked the Fastpass side (left side) better. Again, the ride exits in a different spot than it loads, prompting the guests to take bit of a hike in order to get back to Tomorrowland. At least there are some green screen areas where guests are projected into alien scenes to make what would be a very long and boring corridor quite entertaining.
At some point, we watched the parade. It was...okay. We thought we'd secured nice seats (stands?) for the performance, but of course we had not. The parade was heavy on characters and light on float design, but then, we have odd priorities and enjoy float design perhaps more than seeing Mickey pretend to drive said float. Fantasyland...we didn't do much in Fantasyland as the lines were far too long for Winnie the Pooh or Peter Pan to really be worth it. Small World had no line, though, and we soon understood why. It's not as good as the original (if that counts as "good", your personal preference plays a big part in deciding this) and is all inside which is decidedly odd when you're used to the outdoor splendor of Disneyland's Small World, which is almost a second castle in its own right. This Small World is condensed and shorter, to the relief of some. There was a boy who was watching us board our boat from an adjacent restaurant. He was shaking his head and motioning for us to turn back before it was too late. But we'd been through the turnstiles and once you've been through the turnstiles, the family rule is that you have to get on and ride the ride, so into the world of singing dolls we went. It seemed that the animation was all turned up a bit too fast, but was cute enough. And we finally were able to catch Liberty Square's longer-running attractions - the Liberty Belle paddle wheel boat around Tom Sawyer's Island (which we did not visit, but I'd probably get stuck in the kid-sized caves, anyway), and Hall of Presidents. The former is a beautiful if unexciting slow ride, and the latter is a show featuring all past presidents in robot form, and Robot Obama giving his oath of office and a short speech. But that makes it sound cheap. It's not. Disneyland has Lincoln, Magic Kingdom has Lincoln, Washington, and Obama giving speeches as all the other presidents look on. Even if they do not talk, these past presidents nod or wave when introduced, and can't help fidgeting from time to time or whispering to each other while they wait for their names to be called. It's an amazing technological achievement. It will be interesting to see how quickly a new animatronic will be put into place, either in November or four years from now, when we get a new president. Will the new commander-in-chief give the same speech that Obama does? It will be interesting to experience as the times change.
I never got my waffle filled with Nutella and strawberries. In fact, I can't remember what I had for dinner. No matter, it was time for fireworks! Before fireworks, though, the castle was used as a giant projection screen for "Magic, Memories, and You" which features photographs (and stock video) of guests. If you're lucky, you'll show up on the castle. Okay, there were photographs, that wasn't the interesting part. The interesting part was that the castle, which is not flat from almost any angle, is acting as a screen for very bright and very high quality projected effects. Fancy projections seem to be Disney's new thing, and I enjoy it very much. And then...fireworks! We had picked a viewing spot in the extensive and mostly unpopulated rose gardens just to the side of the castle so while we were off-center and the fireworks did not appear to erupt right behind or above the castle, they were still highly enjoyable. And loud! Some of the shells are very large, and seem to be shot higher than Disneyland fireworks.
And then we decided we'd had enough. We took our boat back to Fort Wilderness and our bus back to our cabin neighborhood, and crawled under the Mickey-decorated duvets for some quality shut-eye. Verdict? Excellent park. Nice and spacious, beautiful landscaping, and while many things were familiar or downright copies of Disneyland attractions, they're all highly enjoyable. Lines were minimal or nonexistent for most everything we wanted to ride and if there was a crowd, fast passes helped us avoid waiting longer than a few minutes. Off-season is wonderful. The level of detail is intense, and even getting to the park (by boat! Much better than taking HWY 5) is entertaining. As it should be. That's the point.
Next time, photos! The time after that, EPCOT! Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow...except not really any of those. Still wonderful, of course.