granddaughter coraline

granddaughter coraline

grandson mason

grandson mason

grandson jaxson

grandson jaxson

Sunday, November 27, 2016

26NOV16 - Disney World, FL (magic kingdom)

Early Saturday morning it was off to Magic Kingdom, always the busiest & most crowded of the four parks comprising Disney World.  At the other parks you park the car & ride a tram to the entrance.  Cars arrive at the Magic Kingdom parking area, then you take tram a to another area, & then choose between a ferry boat or monorail to the Main Street entrance.  Recommendation – don’t take the ferry.

Upon entering Main Street we encountered a small (four floats) “X-mas” parade.  Even though early, Main Street was wall-to-wall people not going anywhere fast.  As we noted in our DEC 2009 BLOG, you are further impeded by countless strollers; often carrying older kids who should be walking!  (not to miss a money making opportunity, Disney rents single strollers for $35/day!).
Something we did not notice in 2009 that has significantly increased the congestion in the park – is cellphones!!!  Now every other person has there nosed glued to their cell phone & are constantly impeding everyone else.  To make matters worse is that you strongly encouraged (dare we say coerced?) by Disney to download their APP “My Disney Experience” to plan your entire visit, & then to monitor & modify your visit (if necessary) while in the park.  So now countless visitors are constantly looking at their cell phone to tell them where they are, what is happening in the park at this moment, next Fast Pass event, & most importantly – the latest Disney “good deal” just for them!
After fighting our way thru the Main Street crowd, we met Rebecca, Raymond, Jaxson & Mason at Tomorrowland for the Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin ride.  On this ride you try to it as many targets as you can with your laser.  For some reason the ride stopped for a minute?  At this point one of the targets was right in front of Dan; Dan immediately locked in on it & ran his score up.  Needless to say, Dan outscored everyone.





Tomorrowland Speedway – this is the classic go-cart ride that originally introduced at Disney Land decades ago


Mad Party Tea – spinning tea cups, also another Disney Land classic

The Barnstormer – roller coaster suitable for kids

Disney World Train – this is a train using a real steam engine that encircles the entire park; with stops at Fantasyland, Frontierland, & Main Street.  We thought the grandkids would enjoy it & it would be relaxing way to get to other side of park without battling the crowd of walking cell phone zombies.  Big mistake!  It was relaxing & everyone was enjoying it, until we got to Main Street station.  There we stopped, & sat & sat & sat.  Turns out there was a Disney character parade scheduled for Main Street & the floats have to cross RR tracks to get to the staging area.  Disney constantly touts there planning & imagineers in creating the best place on earth, but we were not impressed that no one foresaw daily the bottleneck?
After sitting there for 20 minutes & being told we could not watch the parade from the train platform because of safety (can you say BS?), we headed down to Main Street to watch the parade.  Dan noted the following Disney movies represented in the parade – Beauty & the Beast, Frozen, Tangled, Little Mermaid, Peter Pan, Brave, Alice in Wonderland, Pinocchio, Dumbo, next to last was Donald & Daisy, & last was Mickey & Minnie.  The only one Dan didn’t know was some “steampunk”, fire breathing, mechanical dragon – maybe from an Oz movie?  We then re-boarded the train only to sit & sit because the parade floats were now crossing the tracks back to their garage!




Splash Mountain – which combines a log flume ride with the story of Br’er Rabbit


Next was a late lunch at Pecos Bills, where Dan decided to try his new economy meal plan by not ordering anything.  Dan’s plan is based on the fact the kids & grandkids are getting four pre-paid meals (2 adult, 2 child), & Corrie would order something.  Out of those five people, only Raymond would probably finish his meal.  Dan’s theory was correct, & he had more than enough to eatJ

That afternoon we walked some more thru the Magic Kingdom before heading toward the Peter Pan’s Flight ride.  Our Fast Passes for this ride were not good for almost two hours & the wait in line time was 70 minutes.  So we decided to just get in line, because everyone was ready to go home as soon as possible.  Thankfully the grandkids were pretty good during the long time in line, but next time we will probably just leave the park & give up a Fast Pass.
So we all boarded the monorail & headed back to the parking lot trams to go "home".

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