Part 2
The Parks:
We mostly used the day-after-EE strategy this trip but found that after the parks were open for more than an hour that there were 60 minutes waits at the bigger attractions.
This was especially true at the MK. I was amazed that, except for one morning before 10am, we saw 80 minutes waits for Peter Pan pretty consistently. Even right before the park closed at 10pm. Yikes!
We did do one early entry at the MK (on Tuesday the 26th) because of this and managed to do all we wanted to do in Fantasyland (Dumbo, Peter Pan, Snow White, Pooh, Tea Cups) as well as the Tomorrowland Speedway before the opening of Toontown at 9am where we were on the first ride of the Barnstormer. We toured Minnie's house and caught the train to Frontierand where we rafted over to Tom Sawyer's Island (first time back after 5 years; those caves are fun!) and caught most of the Diamond Horseshoe Revue (first time ever; fun too!). Because we were doing e-ride that night, we skipped the attractions that would be open then. In fact, we never did do any of the Mountains during the day during our whole trip. As we left the park a little after noon to head to lunch at the Poly, people were still arriving in droves. Most of us who follow the advice on these boards accept the short-line-strategy rule: Do NOT go late to the Early Entry park as crowds there will be extra heavy all day. There are still a lot of WDW visitors who should be as enlightened as we are
.
Most of the rest of the time we were at MK was in the evening and into the the very early AM during E-ride nights on the 19th and the 26th. On the 26th, we had arranged to meet friends from home and had fun doing the all the Mountains together. Hi, Sue, Meg, Erica, and Mark! We were also lucky enough to have a "famous Rosemary" sighting at BTM. Hey, G&B!
One of the best memories that we made at the MK this trip was "June meet"ing all the wonderful DIS families on the night of the 19th. It was great to share our excitement and enthusiasm about a place we all spend so much time planning for and enjoying. All of 22 of us going in one boat on the PoC was so cool and a fun time that I will never forget. Thanks to laurenk and nutz4dizny for making the arrangements! I encourage everyone to try to attend a DIS meet if there is one going on while you are in the World.
A couple of observations: Along with MK closing earlier than in past summers, several of the attractions stop operation before closing. The Carousel of Progress closes at 5pm. The Tiki birds and the Hall of Presidents close at 6pm. Tom Sawyer Island closes at 7pm. This combined with the recent closing of Timekeeper, I think, just serves to concentrate the crowds and make the lines long. Also, we really felt like we were visiting during the "off-season", although we were actually there in what Disney deems by their hotel pricing as "regular" season. It seemed that a lot of preparation was being done to get ready for the 100th year celebration that starts in October. Lots of construction walls, scaffolding, and things closed for refurbishment, including the Main Street bakery. There were workers out in plain sight; a painter was busy at work touching up the handrail at the Barnstormer in the queue area as we passed. There was still plenty for us to do and we had a wonderful time, but we noticed!! One of the magical things about WDW, in my opinion, is the seemingly effortless way they have of keeping the shine on the place, which traditionally was accomplished after hours, and the leaving-the-real-work-a-day-world-behind feeling one gets by being there. These illusions seemed a bit tarnished by what we observed.
Epcot: I really, really enjoy this park and was thrilled that this trip Joanna fell in love with both the movie in France and Off-Kilter. She bought their CD and had it autographed, well, actually I went to get it autographed as she was too embarassed; she did get to meet them though when they called her over. She has also developed an appreciation of the British Invasion after becoming a Beatles fan by listening to their CD "One". So it was much easier to spend time in the World Showcase than it has been before. Max was a good sport. We saw Blast the first night we were there. Great show! Got good seats right after the performance had begun but that might have been because a serious rain had just ended. When we were there, crowds never seemed heavy. Even at Tapestry of Nations and Illuminations time. We sat on the steps of Japan, ate our Kaka Goris to watch the parade and were lucky to get a great table at the Rose and Crown and watched Illuminations from there. Our dinner at the R and C had an interesting twist to it as we almost didn't make it. This was the night of June 21st and we were killing time until our 7:30 PS. We had never seen the ride at the Imagination Pavilion and decided that a no-wait sit down attraction was just what we needed, no matter how lame we had heard it was. I guess having very low expectations helped, because we all thought it really was OK. We got stuck twice while on the ride, once for what seemed like almost 10 minutes. When we got off, there were CM's where we disembarked directing us into the Honey I Shrunk the Audience theater. I asked what was going on and was told that there was a bad storm coming this way. I asked the young CM who was escorting us to the theater just how scary was this storm, and she said that there was tornado activity in the area. Well, being from New Jersey, where we have to deal with other types of natural (and unnatural) disasters, I was pretty panicked by images of Spaceship Earth being lifted from its moorings and flattening the park. The theater was SRO so we were kept in the HISTA preshow area. We picked a doorway into the theater to huddle under. It was a interesting sight to see all these people sitting all over the floor in there and we felt a little like we were in a disaster movie. The CM's tried to keep things light by having some of the children come up and tell jokes; we felt pretty safe where we were but had no idea what we might face when we finally emerged. We were keep there for about 45 minutes (not really sure but it seemed this long) and came out into some light rain and wind but everything looked intact. Later on the local news, they showed some downed trees and damage to houses, but luckily enough, we and WDW escaped any serious effects of the storm.
I neglected to write that we spent less time in Future World than we usually do partly because it just seemed so desolate without "my" fountains in operation. I went to Guest Services the first day of our trip and offered to assist in the repair/refurbishment so that I would have a chance to see my favorite attraction in Epcot before we left 10 days later. Sad to say my offer was rejected and the fountains were still not running when we left (or even for the 4th, which was the projected re-opening day, according to recent posts)
. Max and I did Test Track using the single rider line again (worked great: 15 minutes from start to exit) and saw the Anacomical Players at the Life Pavilion for the first time. They did a great job with the audience member they had chosen to participate who turned out to be either intoxicated or quite a character and not very cooperative. They handled the situation well and the show was very funny. We were in Future World in the late afternoon and except for the Land ride, which we skipped due to a 60 posted wait time, everything was a 10-15 minute wait at most to a walk-into-the-next show.
Part 3: AK and MGM
The Parks:
We mostly used the day-after-EE strategy this trip but found that after the parks were open for more than an hour that there were 60 minutes waits at the bigger attractions.
This was especially true at the MK. I was amazed that, except for one morning before 10am, we saw 80 minutes waits for Peter Pan pretty consistently. Even right before the park closed at 10pm. Yikes!
We did do one early entry at the MK (on Tuesday the 26th) because of this and managed to do all we wanted to do in Fantasyland (Dumbo, Peter Pan, Snow White, Pooh, Tea Cups) as well as the Tomorrowland Speedway before the opening of Toontown at 9am where we were on the first ride of the Barnstormer. We toured Minnie's house and caught the train to Frontierand where we rafted over to Tom Sawyer's Island (first time back after 5 years; those caves are fun!) and caught most of the Diamond Horseshoe Revue (first time ever; fun too!). Because we were doing e-ride that night, we skipped the attractions that would be open then. In fact, we never did do any of the Mountains during the day during our whole trip. As we left the park a little after noon to head to lunch at the Poly, people were still arriving in droves. Most of us who follow the advice on these boards accept the short-line-strategy rule: Do NOT go late to the Early Entry park as crowds there will be extra heavy all day. There are still a lot of WDW visitors who should be as enlightened as we are
.Most of the rest of the time we were at MK was in the evening and into the the very early AM during E-ride nights on the 19th and the 26th. On the 26th, we had arranged to meet friends from home and had fun doing the all the Mountains together. Hi, Sue, Meg, Erica, and Mark! We were also lucky enough to have a "famous Rosemary" sighting at BTM. Hey, G&B!
One of the best memories that we made at the MK this trip was "June meet"ing all the wonderful DIS families on the night of the 19th. It was great to share our excitement and enthusiasm about a place we all spend so much time planning for and enjoying. All of 22 of us going in one boat on the PoC was so cool and a fun time that I will never forget. Thanks to laurenk and nutz4dizny for making the arrangements! I encourage everyone to try to attend a DIS meet if there is one going on while you are in the World.
A couple of observations: Along with MK closing earlier than in past summers, several of the attractions stop operation before closing. The Carousel of Progress closes at 5pm. The Tiki birds and the Hall of Presidents close at 6pm. Tom Sawyer Island closes at 7pm. This combined with the recent closing of Timekeeper, I think, just serves to concentrate the crowds and make the lines long. Also, we really felt like we were visiting during the "off-season", although we were actually there in what Disney deems by their hotel pricing as "regular" season. It seemed that a lot of preparation was being done to get ready for the 100th year celebration that starts in October. Lots of construction walls, scaffolding, and things closed for refurbishment, including the Main Street bakery. There were workers out in plain sight; a painter was busy at work touching up the handrail at the Barnstormer in the queue area as we passed. There was still plenty for us to do and we had a wonderful time, but we noticed!! One of the magical things about WDW, in my opinion, is the seemingly effortless way they have of keeping the shine on the place, which traditionally was accomplished after hours, and the leaving-the-real-work-a-day-world-behind feeling one gets by being there. These illusions seemed a bit tarnished by what we observed.
Epcot: I really, really enjoy this park and was thrilled that this trip Joanna fell in love with both the movie in France and Off-Kilter. She bought their CD and had it autographed, well, actually I went to get it autographed as she was too embarassed; she did get to meet them though when they called her over. She has also developed an appreciation of the British Invasion after becoming a Beatles fan by listening to their CD "One". So it was much easier to spend time in the World Showcase than it has been before. Max was a good sport. We saw Blast the first night we were there. Great show! Got good seats right after the performance had begun but that might have been because a serious rain had just ended. When we were there, crowds never seemed heavy. Even at Tapestry of Nations and Illuminations time. We sat on the steps of Japan, ate our Kaka Goris to watch the parade and were lucky to get a great table at the Rose and Crown and watched Illuminations from there. Our dinner at the R and C had an interesting twist to it as we almost didn't make it. This was the night of June 21st and we were killing time until our 7:30 PS. We had never seen the ride at the Imagination Pavilion and decided that a no-wait sit down attraction was just what we needed, no matter how lame we had heard it was. I guess having very low expectations helped, because we all thought it really was OK. We got stuck twice while on the ride, once for what seemed like almost 10 minutes. When we got off, there were CM's where we disembarked directing us into the Honey I Shrunk the Audience theater. I asked what was going on and was told that there was a bad storm coming this way. I asked the young CM who was escorting us to the theater just how scary was this storm, and she said that there was tornado activity in the area. Well, being from New Jersey, where we have to deal with other types of natural (and unnatural) disasters, I was pretty panicked by images of Spaceship Earth being lifted from its moorings and flattening the park. The theater was SRO so we were kept in the HISTA preshow area. We picked a doorway into the theater to huddle under. It was a interesting sight to see all these people sitting all over the floor in there and we felt a little like we were in a disaster movie. The CM's tried to keep things light by having some of the children come up and tell jokes; we felt pretty safe where we were but had no idea what we might face when we finally emerged. We were keep there for about 45 minutes (not really sure but it seemed this long) and came out into some light rain and wind but everything looked intact. Later on the local news, they showed some downed trees and damage to houses, but luckily enough, we and WDW escaped any serious effects of the storm.
I neglected to write that we spent less time in Future World than we usually do partly because it just seemed so desolate without "my" fountains in operation. I went to Guest Services the first day of our trip and offered to assist in the repair/refurbishment so that I would have a chance to see my favorite attraction in Epcot before we left 10 days later. Sad to say my offer was rejected and the fountains were still not running when we left (or even for the 4th, which was the projected re-opening day, according to recent posts)
. Max and I did Test Track using the single rider line again (worked great: 15 minutes from start to exit) and saw the Anacomical Players at the Life Pavilion for the first time. They did a great job with the audience member they had chosen to participate who turned out to be either intoxicated or quite a character and not very cooperative. They handled the situation well and the show was very funny. We were in Future World in the late afternoon and except for the Land ride, which we skipped due to a 60 posted wait time, everything was a 10-15 minute wait at most to a walk-into-the-next show. Part 3: AK and MGM
