Mark9

Return to the Magic Kingdom, 1st October 2012 - Part 3 It was now onto my least adventured area, Adventureland. In comparison to the other areas, Adventure holds the least amount of attractions that capture my attention. Part of the problem is that none are particularly note-worthy or special. The Magic Carpets of Agrabah for instance is just Dumbo with flying carpets, Pirates of the Caribbean is an okay ride but slightly short and besides, I rode Europa Parks and Drayton Manor equivalents before Disney's which slightly skews my opinion. Jungle Cruise The Difficulties of this kind of attraction are quite apparent from the moment you board the boat. The whole experience moulds around just how cheeky and funny the operator of the boat is. Have one that can't make a pun or a funny comment and the whole rides becomes dull and lifeless. On the other side, have someone who is too happy and you just wish for them to shut up. For our ride this time, we had someone who lies between the two pillars. He could make a joke and make it work but he knew when to be quiet such as when the boat travels into a dangerous cave. If you are unaware of the history of Jungle Cruise, I'd recommend looking into the original attraction at Disneyland, as despite my misgivings, it's a ride that should never be removed from Disneys roster. Jungle Cruise - Graded C+ We then had a go on Pirates of the Caribbean before going off to get a pineapple float. Unfortunately my camera didn't get a nice photo of this marvellous snack. Lets just say it is absolutely gorgeous. Chris devoured his in minutes. Our next destination was the Tiki Room. On our last visit it was closed due to a fire and Disney had taken the decision to revert the Enchanted Tiki room to its original incarnation, albeit slightly shorter. Now, it's not the biggest crowd pleasing attraction, however it is a nice diversion from the hustle and bustle of the park. It's essentially a show where birds sing and as the show continues all parts of the room join in with the main group. It's a rather quaint show but as I say its not everyone. If I prefer your thrills slightly bigger I'd suggest other areas. My camera has a dark moment now so I am unable to show any pictures of our adventures. We witnessed the Presidents of America show in Liberty Square. It's basically a big patriotic show, letting us all know that Americans and their liberty rule the roost. As they burn a British flag. It's enough to make this London resident blush. Our next stop was one of my favourite attractions The Haunted Mansion SHED! What I love about it is how cheeky the ride is. Sure it's supposed to be a haunted house but the ghost host never takes his role seriously with many hilarious puns throughout. Some of the effects on show are obviously awesome, such as the dancers in the dining room scene or the graveyard scene which is fantastically atmospheric and full of fun. The Hitch-hiking scene which ends the ride always raises a smile for me. I love a ride that doesn't take itself seriously. I also am rather in love with the cast members uniform for the attraction. Sexay. Whats this?! Splash Mountain is now open but with a 60 minute queue. Ouch. So we grabbed a fastpass (which was for half an hour later. ) and get a few goes on Big Thunder Mountain which despite displaying a 30 minute queue, was more like ten minutes. Did I mention it's an enormous people shovel, BTM. With night-time descending all around us, it was time for the night-time festivities to begin. We tried to grab the best position possible to watch Wishes, the night-time show about dreaming upon a star. It is a lovely show but it does tend to repeat the same fireworks over and over again. A highlight is Tinkerbell flying from the top of the castle and over the plaza. We grabbed a few more rides on Big Thunder Mountain and Splash Mountain before settling down for the Electrical Light Parade I know some Disney fans tend to hate on everything Disney does in Orlando, but I am so glad I got the chance to watch this awesome parade at all as I think it's absolutely beautifully designed with amazing parade vehicles. The characters like all the parades, really get into their roles and it is a wonderful way of finishing a night at the Magic Kingdom. And with that the first day of Florida was done and dusted. With queue times ranging from 10-60 minutes, we managed to grab a go on 22 rides over 14 hours of theme park fun. The park was open from 9am in the morning till 1am the following morning. It makes you think the amount of strain each Disney attraction is put on each day as it's not like it's a rare occurrence. To only have two rides closed for a period of time is nothing when you compare to how long they have to run all all year. Disney engineers deserves mountains of praise.

Maybe Thorpe are putting the fright back into fright nights.

Return to the Magic Kingdom - 1st October 2012 With dinner finished, it was over to The Barnstormer - Featuring the Great Goofini. Unfortunately I had some camera issues so didn't get any photos of the rollercoaster. It was closed during my visit last year so it was another coaster credit. Yay. Anyway, despite the shortness of the ride I was astounded by how the rides trains never stacked outside the station. On and off so quickly really is testament to the rides hard working staff. The ride itself is your atypical Vekoma kiddy coaster. Quite smooth but nowhere near the quality of Pegasus. Once finished it was off to Tomorrowland like there's no tomorrow. Through the holiday we learnt the key to the area was to get fastpass for either Space Mountain or Buzz Lightyears Spaceranger spin and use the time in-between to try the other attractions in the area. Rather madly, Stitch's Great Escape was not open. This scared us, two attractions closed at the same time?! With that, we grabbed out fastpasses for Space Mountain and used the time to queue for Buzz. I lost my mind a little bit here. The queue-board did say 15 minutes and even though I knew it was longer, the queue just felt exhausting because of the amount of fastpassers streaming into the ride building. I feel this is one Disney attraction where the distribution is to high even though it is technically an omnimover. It doesn't help that I don't really like the ride anyway and don't see the point of two rides in Orlando now themed around the Toy Story franchise which do pretty much the same thing. If anything, Buzz is worse because the ride feels so cumbersome and lacks any kind of pace as you slowly move through the baren landscape of cardboard scenery. We then had a ride on the People-Mover, essentially a transport system around Tomorrowland. The ride is an oddity but I really like it because of its length and the fact it travels in and around all the attractions and shops of the area. I especially appreciate the ride going through the middle of Space Mountains two lift hills. The thing also loads more like an omnimover so rarely has a long queue. It was now time for our Space Mountain fast pass. The queueboard said 60 minutes for the stand by. Now I normally hate the idea of skipping queues but the thing with Disney is that the system is available for everyone to use. Where you win on something like Space Mountain you lose on Splash Mountain or Space Ranger Spin. It is a much fairer system then other parks. So onto the ride. Seated like the Black Hole used to seat, you are in a much more vulnerable position with your legs ahead of you instead of sitting like on a B&M or Intamin ride. You get dispatched into a long straight tunnel representing the launch into space. It should be boring but it isn't because blue lights go towards you in the tunnel making it seem faster then it actually is. You turn an abrupt corner into your sides lift-hill. From there on in your sense of direction is all over the place as the train travels in complete darkness with only the odd bit of small lighting on the rides roof giving you any insight into the direction you may head into next. The ride uses sound too to give you the feeling that you are that close to hitting the walls or flying off of the rides circuit. It is such a simple attraction and yet is genius because the only sense you can rely on during the 90 seconds is sound. The ride features some amazingly steep drops that got me every single time, even though I knew they were coming, I could never remember when they were going to happen. All I could feel was my bag starting to fly towards the sky. What amazes me is that this is no spring chicken, opening in 1975, it has seen near continuous operation (ignoring the odd refurbishment) and rides beautifully. It shows the young whipper-snappers how its done and outdoes much taller rides to boot. Out of interest, at the entrance of most rides was a staff member surveying people on what they thought. One woman gave Space Mountain 10 out of 10 and described it as the most out of control ride she'd ever been on. I don't know what other rides she'd been on but its irrelevant. For a ride of this type to give that impression is nothing short of impressive. Space Mountain - Graded A* It was approaching 3 o clock now and time for the Celebrate a Dream come true Parade. What astounds me is that people actually wait around the parade route for over an hour for prime viewing locations. We strolled up at about 2:55 and got a great spot instantly. The parade itself is very optimistic with Mickey and the gang making magic memories to some cheesy music. Lots of fun. We headed back into Tomorrowland where Stitch had now opened. And just in time too. The parade tends to displace people around the park and with the parade going right past Tomorrowlands entrance, everyone leaves the parade and heads straight in. Stitch went from a 0 minute queue to 30 minutes in about 120 seconds. The same happened to Monsters Inc Laugh Floor and I can bet Buzz was a nasty old queue as well. For Stitch, it is the definition of a marmite attraction. It can be enjoyable but some will find it lengthy and tiresome for what it actually does. The Stitch animatronic is very impressive and managed to move convincingly. It just doesn't appear for long enough as the ride is often plunged into darkness for the effects to work. Rather interestingly we were given one of these cards quite frequently during the holiday. Essentially, cast members scan them at the entrance, give them to guests who then have to give them to a cast member when they board the ride which then changes the length of stand by queue board. It is a system with flaws because it doesn't equate for times when the parade ends and people stream into a queue but fortunately the cast members were giving them out quite freely to keep the queue board as accurate as possible. I like the idea behind it, it doesn't just let staff take wild guesses at queue lengths.

Better food and very affordable prices. Mark likes this.

1st October 2012 - Return to the Magic Kingdom Having changed how I view theme parks in 2011, returning was a different kettle of fish. Over time your own memory builds reputations that rides sometimes just cannot match up to. So how would it face. The opening ceremony is in itself a thing of beauty. It is pure fun regardless of whether you're young child or old woman. The steam train coming around that corner is just theatre. So into the park we went and just like before, we headed straight to a ride that I think is pure theme park perfection. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad When Theme Parks add a ride aimed at everyone they quite often shy away from doing the ride justice. Rides like Dragons Fury and Thirteen are great rides but something always seems a little off. Whether the ride be unthemed or whether the whole ride lies on an unconvincing gimmick, something just seems wrong. Big Thunder Mountain is not this ride. In my view this is the perfect family attraction. I know that in theme park circles, the Paris version is seen as the pinnacle. I am yet to ride the French version. I'm here to discuss this throughput focused, themed giant. The ride has recently seen a lengthy refurbishment in which many of the effects have been fixed and the ride repainted all over and the queue line re-roofed, re-organized and sorted it with new wooden fencing. It looks absolutely fantastic, testament to Disney's continuing effort with their theme parks. The ride itself has so many positives that I'll probably forget some but hey ho. + The ride has so many staff working absolutely flat out to get you on that ride as quickly as possible. There's little to no faff, with you batched and seated nearly as soon as you enter the station + The ride is a throughput giant, five trains and two stations running continuously. Even with fast pass and a full queueline, you can bet your life that your maximum wait will be around 30 minutes. That is staggering for a park regularly achieving over 70,000 people gate figures a day. + Thunder Mountain is now 29 years old. And it looks fresh out of the box. Part of that is the refurbishment but its also the love and attention that Disney have given the attraction. They have looked after the ride properly. + The ride itself is pretty damn fun. It has its dull spots such as the section after the third lift hill but I can hardly downgrade a ride much based on its finale in the same way that thrill coasters live or die on layout alone. It's a fun packed layout with things to spot around every corner. Big Thunder Mountain Graded A Our plan was to have a go on Splash Mountain but in a rather shocking turn of events it was closed. Considering we scarcely saw a closed ride in 2011, this was rather strange to see. With a heavy heart we left Splash and went towards Fantasyland. We grabbed a fastpass for Peter Pans Flight (knowing how busy it gets) and went for a ride on The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh I find this such a charming ride in its own right from its interactive queue line to the way the ride does the three adventures from the film such justice. Sure it is slightly showing its age and some of the audio was slightly off key, but it still does the job in such a lovely way that I do find myself favouring a ride on this then other rides at Magic Kingdom. We next had a go on Philarmagic, one of Chris's favourite attractions. Not much can be said particularly about this because it has changed very little since last year. It has a humour all of its own and is completely under-rated as an attraction. Onto Peter Pans Flight which was an attraction that I didn't really like. And I still don't think that much of it. The problem really is down to the ride racing through the story like a monkey on speed. The worst part though has to be the queue for it. If we hadn't got any fast-passes then we wouldn't have bothered because the length of the ride doesn't compare to the length of the queue. It saw queues regularly over 30 minutes. (My favourite fast-pass) It's a Small World Over my years of theme park love, I've never really seen much love for this ride. It's often spoken badly off because of its irritating theme tune or the way the ride is sickenly optimistic. To tell you my view is to say that I think it's the kind of ride that the UK so desperately needs. Sure, it's a roomy attraction and one that has a very specific target audience. But it's a people eater, it's a long ride giving you a good queue to ride ratio and its just so happy. It has a message that one day all nations will get along.. it definitely deserves its place in Fantasy Land for this reason alone. Back into the realm of madness, we went to ride Dumbo, a ride we never made it to in 2011. Now moved into a new position and paired with a clone of itself the ride certainly impresses more then it ever used to. Sure, it is just a simple round ride with elephants but it looks lovely with each elephant sporting a different colour around its neck. The childrens area in the tent is also an inspired idea, we saw a lot of kids crying when their time to leave and go on the ride occured. Strange children... Over the holiday, new parts of the Circus opened. Before our Holiday, Casey Junior had just opened, on day one, the big top opened, on the Sunday the meet and greet opened and on the final day, The Little Mermaid had its first rehersal day. And for the final part of this bit of the trip report, dinner. Now on our last holiday we learnt that having a sit down meal in the evening is an awful idea. So we decided to have dinner at lunch time and for our first destination we chose every girls favourite, Cinderellas Royal Table. To be frank, this was not Chris's favourite restaurant because of the meet and greets. With the others, you can escape the fact there are people in the outfits because they don't talk to you and you can pretend they really are Mickey or Dug. But not with the Human characters. Here we had several princesses coming round to each table. Each was introduced to the room via pre-recorded announcements. We had Snow White, Belle, Aurora and Ariel. Chris's face before the character walked around. I adore how each character stays completely in character. For instance, Ariel asked us how long it took for us to swim from London to Orlando and Aurora asked us if our Queen at the Jubilee was an evil queen. Belle dropped a hint that her new restaurant may open before we leave...

Leaving one of the biggest theme park capitals of the world is a very hard thing to do. Both Chris and I left Florida last year with a large amount of sadness, the thought of how long will it be until you go back. Well, Chris felt we needed another go and so forth a trip for 2012 was planned. With all the experience you gain, your trip is bound to be better planned. And there we were, off on the 30th September. 30th September 2012 - Flight Day. Despite the disasters of the Uk train system, we arrived at Gatwick with time to spare. We went to see our carriage, a nice refurbished 747 with touch screen entertainment system, yay. Long flights do bore me slightly, luckily Virgins system had a large range of films and comedy. So I watched a bit of Brave, some Modern Family, and a few other bits of stuff. So upon arrival we checked in and then whats this, torrential rain?! Back in 2011 we saw rain for an hour on one day. This year saw several thunderstorms, long periods of torrential rain for all the first week. We ran to our room pretty much. It was essentially the same as our room at Port Orleans, except it had a pair of wooden doors in place of curtains, that Chris adored playing with every day. We made our way to the Pepper Market where you essentially choose whatever food you wish from an area and eat it. Very 21st Century. I had a chilli burger which was good enough and Chris had a burrito. Very nice. We saw some decoration and then went back to the room for sleep and some time adjustment. One thing to say about Coronado Springs as a result is that it has a large place with nearly 2000 rooms on site. The place has four bus-stops and several restaurants and a far superior, regular bus service then Port Orleans. We rarely had a more then ten minute wait to get to the parks.

Thats just Journey to Atlantis.

Yes Liseberg, Yes Mack! I for one am so glad that another park is going for Mack's fantastic launch rollercoasters. it was slow for a while but now they've really taken off. Fantastic.

Mickey's not so scary halloween party for me. Don't really enjoy the atmosphere of the parks at Halloween.

Adding new rides (particularly flat rides) doesn't do that.

Playing devils advocate here, if Thorpe gave up on Slammer, I'd guarantee that maintenance budget would just go back to upper managements pocket and not back into other rides at the park. The fact that the park is desperately trying to keep it running shows that Thorpe do seem to give a damn about their rides.

100% agreed, Paris really is a city where the culture emanates from every area. Such a stunning place to be.

Interchangable theming to be honest.

Love the positivity Astro

I didn't see a shed (although someone posted a picture of some tiny bit of metal sticking out above the restaurant on a WDW website) Let us not repeat the great Harry Potter and the great Journey of his white shed until I post the trip report okay

Why do your posts always have a hint of moody teenager about them tpkabz, it really gets me down.

That would be fine if jjh123horry hadn't mentioned spinning track unspoilered.

Why are you reading them then? Thanks for the reports Benin, as you know, I am a HUGE fan of Pegasus and I agree that its criminal they haven't sold more of them.

I can understand why the park would see why The Swarm would be a flop. In my eyes its the best roller coaster we've seen for nearly 20 years and to me, it doesn't matter one bit what financial gain the park got from it.

I was very lucky to be at the Magic Kingdom yesterday for new Fantasylands first dress rehearsal. I love the atmosphere around attractions when its their first time with paying guests. Staff are enthusiastic, guests are willing to queue however long to get a go. It's just magical. And so the area. It's a stunning piece of work to look at it, the Beasts castle overlooking the entrance plaza, Gaston's statue in front of the pub, all the staff welcoming you with a bit of bonjour and Lafoues brew being Disneys answer to butterbeer. I prefer the brew, its like an apple slush puppie with cream on top. The Little Mermaid, well to be honest with you I liked it a lot. It suffers from the same issues as Peter Pan and the Little Mermaid show at Hollywood Studios in that half the story gets blown away in favour of the songs. Thats essentially all that comes out of Magic Kingdoms ride but as the theme is so gorgeous and the queueline is beautiful to queue in, it would take someone who was ridiculously critical and cold to not enjoy the ride on some level.

There was rumours of a park, been open for ooh.. 30 years that ran out of food last year. Point being, Walt Disney was attempting something that had never been done before with rides and themes, Paramount have experience in this field so I wouldn't worry that much about the South Korea park. Can't see the Spain one opening on time.

Just one thing. Thorpe Park Mania started out as two teenagers sharing their interest in Thorpe Park. If we had received this kind of bullying by people we'd have closed up shop immediately. Regardless of the methods being used by Theme Park World, no one has really reported any of his posts or made their feelings known to the admin team in private.

Anyway, yay for Slammer. Thorpe deserve an amazing amount of credit for bringing it back from the dead. Regardless of what we think of it, they deserve the ride to give them less problems because their persistence is pretty amazing.

I think we're pretty light about Thorpes problems. We are far more realistic about Thorpe Parks problems on TPM then Disney fans are about any of the Disney theme parks. Not that people who constantly bash Thorpe are any worse, I just think credit is given when Thorpe make a good move (Swarm, opening half an hour earlier, The work done on Slammer) and we say what we think when Thorpe do bad.

Blue Fire, the perfect launch rollercoaster. Adore it.