Mark9

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.

Why sleep in Colosseo when you could be cramped into a Sleepbox next to Surrey's finest renamed town. I know which I'd rather choose.

Thorpe Staff can also try out the new old bar and have a good time in the Snooze bedroom with the finest Thorpe luxuries. So critical Benin.

Whats the problem with them having a preview? We had a preview of the Chessington hotel in 2007.

Ridiculous decision if true. Wild Mouse is a bona fide classic, part of the rich tapestry of the Pleasure Beach. What precedent would this start if Wild Mouse got removed. Would Wind Machines be removed by a Star Flyer, would an Rita clone be thrown at the space that Grand National currently sits in. Really hope this rumour is untrue.