Magic Kingdom, Valentine's Day

Walking into the Magic Kingdom with Nate was something that I had been looking forward to for, literally, years.  Ever since finding out that he hadn't been to Disney World, I'd been planning this; during the long hours grading tests I imagined us going to Disney World to keep me focused and working hard.  So, as we walked down Main Street USA, I couldn't quite contain my excitement.  I tried to take in everything at once; the smells, the sights, the sounds.  We were here.

The first thing we did was find a souvenir shop and commit to some t-shirts.  We'd been hunting the entire trip, and decided that we weren't going to find something perfect so we'd get something that was good enough.  Nate picked a steel blue shirt with Mickey, I found a pink one that had fireworks and all of the parks represented.  We went to the bathroom to change and then straight over to get photos with Mickey.

As an interesting aside, when we got in line, we were handed a yellow tag.  The staff member explained that they wanted to know how long the line would take, and could we carry the tag through the line?  I'd never seen that before, but it was fun to be a part of the system.

We waited a while, chatting with the people in front of us; two couples who were friends and had seven kids between them.  Then when we got to the front of the line we were escorted into a hallway with a number of doors.  As we entered the room with Mickey we noted the people in front of us weren't there. "Oh, how smart, a bunch of different Mickey rooms," we said aloud, and the guide briskly reminded us that there was only ONE Mickey.  She was very serious about it, and we started giggling together as soon as she was out of sight.  We primped, posed, Mickey told us a joke, and we were off!  Pictures: check.  Time for the park.

First up: Tomorrowland.  More than any other day, Magic Kingdom was dictated by our fast passes.  It was a Friday and also Valentine's Day, and the crowds had descended.  I love being prepared and having  plan, and it was finally my time to shine!  We started with Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, where you climb into a pod with lazer guns and help Buzz battle the evil Zorg.  You score points for hits, and we successfully saved the universe.  Phew!

We were right near Space Mountain, so we waited through the line for that.  It was really the first time we waited in a long line the entire trip, but they had some interesting interactive games on the way to keep you distracted.  The ride is a roller coaster that hurdles through the dark with minimal lighting.  Nate enjoyed it; I stepped through the car straight away and met him at the exit.

Our next fast pass was Pirates of the Carribean, so we headed towards Adventureland.  I love Jungle Cruise, not only for its adorable animatronics but also for the pun-filled commentary from the guide.  We laughed, we cried, we escaped a Hippo attack, and stayed mostly dry.  Next up was time for Pirates.  Argh!  They had retooled some of the scenes and Jack Sparrow to match the Johnny Depp movies, and so there were fun new surprises for me too.  We barely escaped with our lives - dead men tell no tales.  Pirates of the Carribean remains a classic and a favorite.  As we were exiting, a line was forming at the Tiki Room next door, so we joined in the fun there.  I forgot just how many seemingly inanimate objects in there spring to life, and of course know the song by heart.

North to Frontierland.  We had lunch, looked at the wait time for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad (too long), took a quick tour of Splash Mountain (closed for cleaning), and waved to the bears at the Country Bear Jambouree before heading back across the park.  On the way there was clearly something going on at Cinderella's Castle.  A Princess Party!  Seriously.  We stopped and watched the festivities; dancing, singing, lots of colorful fun.  As I write this it sounds cheesy, but you're so immersed in the Disney experience it was just fun. Every park had its share of random events that you would just stumble upon, and each helped make the experience more delightful.

Fantasyland was one of our last stops.  Much of it is created for younger kids, but Its a Small World was one that I didn't think we could miss.  Its probably one of the most dated rides, and the song gets stuck in your head in a terrible way, but its a Disney classic.  There are a few other fun things there, and they were building a new mine cart roller coaster based on the mine from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but we had a FastPass for the Haunted Mansion, and had to jet.

Liberty Square holds both the Haunted Mansion and the Hall of Presidents.  We did both, in that order.  Haunted Mansion doesn't take itself too seriously.  Pods travel through various haunted locales, and there are various optical illusions that make you do a double-take to check if you actually saw what you'd though you did.  I wasn't super excited about the Hall of Presidents, but ended up being very impressed.  It started with a film talking about the founding of America and how its greatest strength is the ability for the people to improve the democratic process over the years. Then an animatronic Lincoln sitting center stage gave a speech.  Later he was joined by all of the American Presidents. As new Presidents been elected their animatronic dopplegangers have been added.  Each was introduced and made a small gesture to draw your eye to them.

We were hoping to have a nice dinner, something romantic for Valentine's Day.  We tried 'Be Our Guest', which was a new Beauty and the Beast themed restaurant set back in a mountain.  Apparently you can ask to 'try the gray stuff', it's delicious.  Unfortunately they were full.  Reservations booked weeks in advance full.  We wandered about the park trying all of the sit-down places.  Full.  So we made our own date, got some burgers, and found the most romantic bench we could in Tomorrowland.  After looking for a place to eat, things were getting late, so we scarfed our food down (romantically) and headed back for the center of the park in front of the castle to get good spots for the evening's grand finale.

We sat down on a curb next to a family with a young girl, maybe six or seven years old.  We also made friends with a young couple that was sitting near us, who lived about an hour away and had come up for the day.  As we were conversing with them, I was listening to things going on around us.  The young girl asked her parents if they had any food, she was hungry.  I turned to Nate and asked if we had any more granola bars, who handed one to me with a raised eyebrow.  I turned and gave it to the girl with a smile, who also looked surprised.  I realized that I was listening to them talk in Spanish, so Nate didn't know why I wanted the bar and the girl was surprised I had known what she wanted.  We laughed together, and found out that they were visiting from Argentina, and it was her first trip also.

Then the show started.  Its difficult to describe the feeling, except that it felt a lot like being at the Rally to Restore Sanity and Fear, with thousands of people who had come together in love of something and were all enjoying it together.  Everyone beamed.  Things kicked off with a projector show with the castle as the screen.  Wreck it Ralph climbed the towers, shattering the windows as he went, and Fix It Felix followed behind to save the day.  The snow swirled around Elsa as she sang, and the crowd sang with her.  We were united.

The fireworks started with one white flare that arced behind the castle, recreating the iconic Disney logo.  The music swelled, and the sky was filled with light and color and sound.  Nate wrapped his arms around me, and we just watched.  It was the perfect end to a perfect week.

Disney Day 4: Hollywood Studios

With all the glitz and glam of old Hollywood, Disney's Hollywood Studios is a great place to spend the day.  This was a smaller park, so we slept in and took some time packing for the day.  MGM/Hollywood Studios covers everything movies, from animation to stunts, classics to current and everything in between.

Once in the park, we headed straight for the Great Movie Ride.  Located inside Grauman's Chinese Theater, you guide walks you through all the great movies.  Riders travel through set after set after beautiful set, and experience the magical, the historical, and the creepy first hand.

Next we headed across Echo Lake to the sci-fi section.  Stunt men and women walk you through a sampling of stunts and set pieces from the Indiana Jones films in the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular.  In true Disney fashion, the performance started out with a massive set that replicated the famous rolling bolder scene and then broke apart into 3 pieces to reveal an even more elaborate set beyond.  Next we hopped on a transport with C3P0 and R2D2 to help run a mission to defeat the Empire in Star Tours.  After, Tatooine Traders was a must, where you can build your own droid or lightsaber.  We refrained, but only after some serious consideration!

Continuing to the back of the park, we stopped by Muppets 3D.  Statler and Waldorf heckled the cast as they presented their Muppet Magical Extravaganza.  The usual clever Muppet humor was in full force during the show and they a great job mixing the on-screen effects with physical effects in the theater (such as smoke, projectors making it look like parts of the wall were falling away, and characters popping up on the balconies).  Traveling through the gift shop after the show, much time and effort was put into the gifts that we would be bringing back to our recently-married, Muppet-loving friends the Gaspers.

While in Muppet Plaza, the call went out that a show called Lights, Motors, Action! was about to start next door.  This show was new since the last time I had come, so it was a fun new experience for both Nate and I.  We filed into stadium seating overlooking a huge movie set styled to look like a quaint European town.  Before long the silence was interrupted by a red car zooming around the set getting chased by several black cars.  I couldn't believe all of the things that they could do with these stunt cars!  Backwards, forwards, reversals at high speeds and barely missing the scenery and props, it was clear that these guys really knew both their cars and their craft.  Stunts included cars, trucks, motorcycles and jet skis, as well as dangerous personal stunts.  Between stunts a production crew explained the technical aspects of the last scene including some of the clever tricks the drivers use to make their stunts work.  I'm not generally a car fan, but the perfectly timed stunts kept me riveted all the way through.  And we kept thinking how much Alister Bell would have enjoyed the whole thing!  The photo below is one that Nate took (notice the red car in the middle of the two trucks.)

They had another new experience called The Legend of Captain Jack Sparrow, which was in the testing phase and didn't have fast-passes yet.  In order to take part, you would be given a card with a specific time on it and were asked to come back then to take part.  Our time was about 40 minutes away,  so we wandered into Walk Disney: One Man's Dream, a museum like biography of Disney and timeline of how Disney came to be.  We were fascinated, and came back there even after Jack Sparrow (during which we were sworn in as pirate crew, but little else happened).  Disney's original plans for Disney World were especially interesting.  He wanted to build a city that would promote innovation and attempt a new way of sustaining an intentional community.  This plan was called Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow, or Epcot for short.  In the end Disney passed away and his ambitious plan turned into a new park with the same name.  You can still see traces of that original plan in parts of Epcot.

I was really sad to find that the Backlot Tour was closed for maintenance.  Actually, that and the Great Movie Ride were the ones that I had gotten really excited about with Nate that morning, so he was bummed too.  We grabbed some dinner, settled in for a live performance of Beauty and the Beast (highlights), and then explored The Magic of Disney Animation.  There was an animation studio where one of the animators would teach you how to draw a mystery character, and you had to guess  as you were going what it was.  This was much too much for our curiosity, and we had to stay and draw.  Turned out to be Alien from Toy Story, which we both reproduced quite well if we do say so ourselves.

This put us a little behind to get into the theater for Fantasmic, the evening show.  We ended up a bit around the side, but there really isn't a bad seat in the entirety of Disney parks.  And the show did not disappoint!  Based around Mickey's Fantasia, the creators combined water projections, pyrotechnics, stunts and some Disney magic to awe and amaze the audience.  We loved every minute!

After the show we followed the crowd back to the bus, stopping in a few stores along the way to check out their shirt selection.  The next day we would go to Magic Kingdom and get our photo with Mickey.  We were thinking that this would probably be our Christmas photo, which makes me laugh now.  Its amazing how much has changed in the last 7 months.  It's fun to think while we were busy enjoying Disney World, our baby was just getting his start.

Phew, one more to go!

-J & N

Disney Trip: Day Three

Hey All!

So, I am sure that everyone is super excited about hearing about how things are going with the pregnancy, and we want to share that information too!  But the over-achiever and completionists in us insist that we finish out the Disney series before we move forward.  But I am vowing to be better about updating more often, and we're going to head through Disney a bit more quickly than we might have otherwise so we can get on to news that is a little more current.

We planned the second day at Animal Kingdom because we had Extra Magic Hours (because we stayed at a Disney resort) and were able to get into the park half an hour early.  After a tiny snafu getting through the gate, we went straight to Kilamanjaro Safaris.  "Jambo!" our guide greeted us, and we were on our way through the wild animal park.  We wanted to get in early, hoping that the animals would be more active in the morning when it was cooler, and we were able to see a number of different species on the tour.  One of the most interesting things is that, with the exception of the predators, the species are able to just wander through the provided habitat, and you never know where they will be.  It very much reminded Nate of Jurassic Park which was interesting since the book came out 8 years before the park! We had a great time!

After we wandered a bit.  Rafiki's planet watch had a number of smaller exhibits, and a lot of sustainability information.  We got to meet a Pied Falconet (see an example below), the smallest falcon on the planet.  The bird was a rescue, and took a long time for the handler to tame, so we weren't able to photograph it.  But this was the first of a number of things that day that reminded us that we want to get our falconry license!



Next was Asia.  The day was a bit cool, so we decided the skip Kali Rover Rapids.  Some of the people leaving the ride were decently dry, but others were soaked!  It was right about time for their bird show, Flights of Wonder, to start so we headed in and found seats.  The bird show was not only avian-impressive, but also made us laugh.  In the show various birds performed amazing stunts before the show was interrupted by a "tour guide" looking for his lost tour group (the audience). He was invited to help out with the show and his added banter was hilarious! After the show they brought out a few of the birds and we got to see them more close up.  Then the Maharajah Jungle Trek, a walking tour through the ruins of an old Indian palace that houses tigers, bats, gorillas and more.  The animals were amazing and the setting was beautiful.  As always with Disney, no detail overlooked.

One of the things that I was most excited about was taking Nate to Dinoland USA.  We checked out the Boneyard playground, and Nate got to rescue a dinosaur on one of the wild rides.  We grabbed a quick bite to eat, and realized that we were pretty close to Flights of Wonder and we has some time to kill before the parade, so we headed back and caught the show a second time.  They switched up the handler and the birds but the "tour guide" was the same excellent personality with slightly varied jokes, so we got to see some different birds and stunts.

We knew that we wanted to stay for Mickey's Jammin' Jungle Parade, which started at 3:45.  So we headed to Its Tough to be a Bug!, a fun 4-D adventure.  After, we realized that Flights of Wonder is just about to start again, so we hurried back to Asia.  And we watched the bird show. A third time.  It. Was. Awesome.

The Animal Kingdom closes earlier than the other parks and doesn't shoot off fireworks (for the animal's sake on both accounts).  Instead, they have an elaborate parade to close out the day. We grabbed a sweet spot for the parade and jammed with Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and the whole gang.  The whole park had a Lion King-esque feel, and the parade built on that in a major way.  Huge jungle animals danced their way down the streets, jammed to the rhythms, and Justine danced right along with them with Nate grinning and laughing.



After the parade we headed back to the hotel.  We intended to do more at the hotel, but we ended up just getting dinner at the cafe and relaxing, then falling asleep early.  Disney is both amazing and exhausting and we needed the sleep!

Whew!  Three down, two to go!

Love!
N&J