Date:10/31/2020-11/8/2020
Destination: Orlando, Florida
Goal: Orlando Parks, Cape Canaveral
Distance: 961 Miles
Means of Travel: Flight
Potential Credits: 24
Day 4
This day almost went very differently planning the trip. Magic Kingdom was a park that, to me, was almost all kids' stuff. Meanwhile I'm a tech nerd that enjoys international culture and is genuinely afraid of kids. This should be a no brainer, fuck Magic Kingdom and do Epcot, right? That was the plan for a while. However, Ben informed me that Epcot was almost completely under construction, and after watching The Imagineering Story and seeing how much we missed at Magic Kingdom when I went as a kid, I wanted to take care of the unfinished business there, so that became our choice.
Every kid's dream is to drive through this and head into that park and see Cinderella's Castle up close, I'm in for the most magical day of my life! Right?
We got parked and headed in, Ben informed me that you could pick between the boat and the monorail...but there's no wait for the busses they had so we picked that. But how we got there was irrelevant, the important thing was that we were getting aboard transport to be whisked away to a magical land away from the earthly realm surrounding us...right?
There were enough white girls on Main Street USA to sustain the Starbucks corporate empire. You get in and instantly have to make your way through the "stop and get a photo" crowd with Cinderella Castle in the background. I was so thankful I had elected to mask up because it was pretty slammed in there.
Our first ride was one I straight up missed when I came as a kid: Peter Pan. We had just done E.T. yesterday so I kind of knew what I was getting myself into, and while it's not as good, I did like Peter Pan. That scene with the Native Americans has got to go but it's a good, classic dark ride with some fun effects scattered throughout. Glad I was able to do it.
Ben wanted to do Haunted Mansion and considering how I had just watched the bad Eddie Murphy movie drunk a few weeks ago for Halloween, I wasn't going to object to that. It's a campy Disney classic, sadly the stretching room was out of commission and the socially distant queue just cut right through it, but I really enjoyed it! The impressive thing here was that it could take a queue that was spaced six feet per party, spilling out onto the midway, and just gobbled it right up in twenty minutes. As for the ride itself, this thing tricked the hell out of my brain as a kid. A ghost riding home with you, spectral see-through figures in the ballroom, when I was 8 the smoke and mirrors that make this ride what it is were legit magic to me, I could not wrap my brain around them. But as an adult? It felt like the flip side of the coin that was just as important. I felt nostalgic, remembering when this and that blew me away as a child.
Walking around Frontierland, I noticed something. Yes, that part of the lagoon was drained for maintenance, not gonna hold that against the park. But right in front of Hall of Presidents, The Contemporary was just casually poking out of the treeline. Wires were running up to the path lights designed to look like gas lanterns. There was a pipe, you aren't supposed to see that. Now, is that a ridiculous thing to have an issue with, seeing the bare bones that make the park work? Of course! Nothing can run on magic, it's a park just as much as Kings Island or Cedar Point. But when something constantly gets hyped up as this magical land that's so magical you have to travel by monorail to get there? Where Imagineers hide everything and make it totally immersive? I was getting "no war in Ba Sing Se" vibes very fast.
First coaster of the day was my favorite Magic Kingdom ride as a kid: Big Thunder Mountain! The queue house was a little surreal in that it was an already somewhat enclosed space that's usually packed full of people that now has all these glass walls everywhere. It very much had a confusing maze feel to it but because Disney ops are lightning fast, we got on in no time.
And it's good! I didn't remember it as being extremely intense because it wasn't, it just feels like a mine train. That being said, it feels like a very good one. The theming is cute, I loved the little tilt they added to the lift, and while there were spots you could see the rest of the park most of it was pretty immersive. I give it a golf clap!
And what's this? Ride along Big Thunder with Ben and I, I took my GoPro on it!
Next up was a farewell to another ride here I loved as a kid: Splash Mountain, as its days are numbered as it awaits rebranding as Princess and the Frog. In keeping with this theme on this trip, I hate getting wet, but Ben assured me I wouldn't, so I threw my GoPro on and took a crappy video that didn't come out. All in all, it's a cute ride, and Zippity Do Da is a timeless earworm that you can hum all day whether you're 8 or 80. But I did agree with the complaint that the characters on this ride sound like racist minstrel performers, and the source material for this ride I think has been problematic for long enough now. Plus, Princess and the Frog is an awesome movie and I think it'll make a great new theme for this ride.
My stomach was making the rumblies. That only hands could satisfy. Ugh, fine, fajitas would do as well. So here I am, I'm at Magic Kingdom. Magic Fucking Kingdom. The happiest place on earth. The most magical place on earth. Everything here is supposed to be absolutely amazing and top-notch. People travel from literally all over the world to come here. So naturally, I was expecting to get treated to an incredible meal as magical as the park. And what did I get? Fajitas that tasted like they came from a theme park. It wasn't offensive, or anything. I enjoyed them, veggies were a little underdone for my taste but they filled me up and I didn't mind eating them. Just normal, generic fajitas that clearly sat on a steam table for a hot minute before getting scooped into a plate. Nothing wrong with that at all, but it was no better than Mexican food you can get at a Cedar Fair park with a dining pass. Hell, my local Mexican place's fajitas are better than these. The frozen strawberry limeade was good and refreshing to go with it. Did I enjoy it? Absolutely, it hit the spot. But could I get better food for the same price elsewhere? Absolutely. And when you're at the most magical place on earth, the Disney lore says these should have been the best fajitas I ever ate. And it definitely fell short of those tall expectations.
Hi ho! Hi ho! To the only new credit of the day we go! Seven Dwarves Mine Train was built after I came here so it was the shiny new hotness by Magic Kingdom standards, and despite the Six Flags western area fences reaching around the ride's queue, the queue itself was cute. And it better be, we had a forty-five minute wait to deal with. There's some great views of it in the round as well, you can walk around this thing and get some great shots of it.
This ride I might not have had such high expectations for, simply as it's literally the only thing here I consistently hear negative things about. It doesn't swing, it's not intense, the layout just meanders around, the like. However, I always thought it looked well-presented with the cool animatronics and dark ride section. The only real Disney magic violation I saw were the catwalks clearly cut into the rockwork adjacent to the track.
I might still be the only enthusiast with a soft spot for it after riding it! It's a family coaster, there's nothing that thrilling about it at all, but I found it plenty amusing. That drop out of the dark ride section has a bit of kick to it, but for the most part it's just a fun ride that's mildly amusing. There's not much pacing to it, but what's there works really well with the foliage and rockwork, it really feels like you're cruising around the mountains of Bavaria (minus all the people standing around watching on the concrete but we don't talk about that). But that's all it needs to be. It's perfect for the world's largest kiddie park.
You bet I took my GoPro on!
We passed from the Middle Ages of Fantasyland to a time not yet reached in Tomorrowland, with our first ride being Carousel of Progress. Like Peter Pan, I didn't do this as a kid, sadly. And honestly, I don't think I'd have gotten it. I rode Spaceship Earth on that trip and I barely remember what it was about. As I've grown older, one thing I've learned to appreciate is the progression of technology that happens right in front of me every day as I live out my little blip of time in human history. When I first came here, my dad had this cool new thing called a Blackberry that he used to push buttons on a keypad and get news that there were power outages in major cities around the US. Now I had a simple slab with a screen that turned on when it recognized my face. Needless to say, as dated as Carousel of Progress and its creepy animatronics are, this ride was instantly special to me simply for how much I resonated with the message. There's a great big beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day!
Up next was what Ben had claimed was the best ride in Magic Kingdom: Space Mountain. It's the one you constantly hear about, you think Disney coasters this is usually the one that comes to mind, and let's not beat around the bush, it's cool. As a kid, I liked it. I didn't love it, but I liked it. The stars and infinity mirror illusions were cool and the ride was nice and intense.
Soooooo...what in the Elon Musk drinking and driving a Falcon 9 is going on with this crazy coaster??? So here we are, three grown men crammed in this little bobsled coaster car, in-line seating, heartline is like thirty inches from the track assuming there's even a heartline at all. 26 mph is what RCDB says, yes. But when you're getting that close to scenery, you can barely see shit, and diving into little tiny tubes, I legit felt like if I put my hands up I'd lose an arm. This thing messes with your perception of speed like crazy! THIS is Disney magic right here! THIS is the "WOW" moment I dropped Epcot off the trip for! Add in the fact that you actually get some nasty ejector dipping down one of the drops and it's almost like a retro Railblazer in space almost. For the second time this entire day, something I didn't quite get as a kid I got as an adult.
Next up it was time to pay mah boi Johnny Depp a visit on Pirates of the Caribbean! Rode this as a kid, had no idea why Disney decided this campy pirate boat ride would translate well into a serious film franchise that brought home serious bacon, but it obviously worked. This being said, there were plenty of cool things on this ride I didn't remember...and judging by this photo the camera placement was clearly part of that. But I also didn't remember the smelling of the burning town as smoke seemed to fill the air. But even crazier, I know Johnny Depp sometimes spontaneously goes to children's hospitals as Jack Sparrow and also hangs out around the ride at Disneyland in character. So when I see a very lifelike Jack Sparrow animatronic creeping around on this ride, I had to do a double take to make sure it was really an animatronic!
Anybody that knows me knows, from the pineapple button-downs to the home tiki bar in my apartment to my love for a good season of Survivor, I love Polynesian culture. So naturally, I wanted to do Enchanted Tiki Room. As we waited on the show, no Disney trip is complete without a spot of Dole Whip! Of course I got it in the souvenir tiki bowl to take a piece of Disney magic to the tiki bar back at home. I've had Dole Whip at Fiesta Texas and Holiday World before but you gotta get it at Disney!
This was so fun! I mean yeah, you can hear the gears click and servos whine on the animatronics, you can tell it's dated, but this put a huge smile on my masked face. Just seeing everything in this room, from the birds on the ceiling to the totem poles on the walls behind you come to life and start singing was just so unexpected and fun. But my favorite part? When the rain starts pouring out the window and the volcano starts smoking. There used to be a Polynesian restaurant called Kahiki Supper Club in Columbus that was themed to the teeth, and while it was torn down in the early 2000s, this took me right back to those special meals with my family and grandparents chowing down on volcano meatballs and watching colorful birds fly around in the restaurant. It does great justice to the tiki culture craze of mid-century America.
The next ride we did...I did not think of as favorably. Jungle Cruise, or Jingle Cruise as it was now, something I didn't do as a kid, was our next target. We got on pretty easily, navigated the maze of plexiglass dividers in the boat, and sat down. Our skipper was this nice but quiet older gentleman that had a very dry, crunchy delivery on the jokes, which works perfectly with this kind of humor. Now I'm okay with dad jokes, don't get me wrong, but I can only hear someone crack a few at a time before I stop finding them funny. This was a solid ten minutes of bad joke after bad joke after bad joke, and at some point it just became predictable. As for the theming itself, it was as if someone took Dinosaurs Alive from a Cedar Fair park and swapped the trail out for a creek with a boat in it. Rubber animatronics, some of which were torn with foam sticking out. And then there's that god awful indigenous people scene that portrays native cultures as savages banging spears on the floor of a wooden shack, I found that very uncomfortable and dated, though it's fortunately been announced it's being removed between this trip and me writing this report. If someone were staggeringly offended by that, I would completely get it.
Next we made our way back to Tomorrowland (cutting through a very Six Flags section near the teacups), where I realized just how gorgeous this area is. Ben mentioned he didn't really care for Buzz Lightyear but it had no wait, so we did that, and honestly I didn't hate it. However, that dark ride is acceptable for a Cedar Fair park, not a Disney park. It's cheap, it's fun, its mouth unhinges like a snake to eat crowds, but it didn't feel like a legendary Disney dark ride.
Oh yeah. Space Mountain. We got back in line when I felt like checking the election results, which were at a standstill since last night. Wisconsin was on the verge of flipping from red to blue! I kept my fingers crossed that Trump wouldn't win as we boarded again. And again. And again. I think we rode Space Mountain a good two or three more times, each just as fun as the last. By the time we got off, the early November sunset had blackened the sky, turning Tomorrowland into a kaleidoscopic wonderland lit up with every color imaginable.
We began to make our way to the front of the park, but Tim and Ben suggested we stop around Cinderella Castle and just kind of chillax and wait for the crowd to clear out and get some good night shots of an empty midway.
Gonna be honest, I was impatient and getting tired but 6 o'clock means 6 o'clock and we had nowhere to be. So I just turned down my shutter speed, got my steady hand ready, and shot away.
This was actually a designated Nikon photo spot but I didn't see the sign, I just saw this fountain with the castle and decided "hey this is a good angle" and got this.
As I hung around and attempted to get decent night shots without a tripod, people crammed into Main Street USA to squeeze their way out, totally throwing six feet to the wind. But once they were gone, I saw exactly why Tim and Ben wanted to stick around...
Main Street USA at Christmastime, folks. Almost not a soul in sight. Photos don't do it justice just walking down this in the dead quiet of night almost completely alone.
I couldn't tell what was the better focal point, the tree or the castle.
On the way out, I had been frustrated with these photos since we made our way to the gate but I finally got this one, which I liked enough to leave satisfied.
Disney's Walmart for putting this up when they did but hey, in 2020, Christmas can come as soon as it wants.
On the way out, we took the ferry back to the parking lot. Tim and I were hanging out on the poop deck (idk if it was the actual poop deck but I didn't know the name for that side of the boat) chatting as the boat made its way across the lake. Our conversation was completely normal, we were talking about the new Borat movie, when the boat bumped into the dock. I looked down to see the docking device, just curious about the equipment used to hold it in place as usual, it was just a V-shaped dock of rubber buoys with spiked tops. "Don't fall over the edge and land on one of those," Tim joked with me. So I just joked back, "hey, if I fall and impale myself it's community service." And Ben and Tim both got so mad at me for joking like that, and in the moment I just shrugged it off and said "k" but as of later, that's one of those things where I didn't realize it in the moment but it really touched me.
Am I going to sit here and complain that I went to Disney World? Hell no! I had a great day with two amazing people and rode some great coasters and dark rides. Tomorrowland really blew me away in a way I didn't expect it to, and Space Mountain became a new favorite Disney coaster of mine. The Tiki Room was so happy and fun, Big Thunder is a campy barrel of laughs, Peter Pan is a nice classic slice of Disney nostalgia, and Seven Dwarves was also a fun little coaster. However, I'm also not going to lie that this product isn't nearly as good as the fanboys make it out to be. It's not total immersion, it's not top notch quality, it's a park for kids and parents built with a sizeable budget. Nothing wrong with that at all, it's fun, but not obsession-worthy. But if people want to use Disney as their happy place to get away from their problems in life, you do you. Especially in these times. Maybe I'm a bit jealous of those people.
I for one fear I've outgrown the magic.
UP NEXT: The three of us get behind the joystick of a spaceship from a used car lot, the best Italian food ever, and Florida 2020 takes things off the tracks!
