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".
