Chapter 4: Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain.
You burn the candle at both ends when you visit Disney World.
Ok, some people don’t. Far be it from me to editorialize about other people’s choices during their vacation. It’s not for me to tell them how to enjoy their time. So, if they want to (
waste valuable park time) sleep in, hey—no problem. They’re entitled to (
flush their ticket money down the toilet) their rest. In any case, Julie and I were determined to squeeze as much fun as we could into our long weekend.
I mentioned before that we had tried to plan the getaway with an eye towards doing some things that we wouldn’t normally do while dragging the munchkins around. One of the big items on our to-do list was the Keys To The Kingdom Tour. Considering you have to be age 16 or over (we barely made it) to do the tour, we obviously wouldn’t have been able to do this with the kids.
The tour is a five-hour walking tour that takes you around and occasionally behind the scenes of the Magic Kingdom. The guide gives you lots of history and detail about the park itself and shows you some of the behind-the-scenes operations, giving a little insight into how Disney manages to make such a huge undertaking work as smoothly as it can. On the downside, it’s expensive (slight discount for Disney Visa cardholders), takes half of the day (the less crowded half) and still forces you to use up a day of your park admission. So what I’m saying is: you really have to want to do this.
Julie and I really wanted to do this.
I’d booked the first tour of the day, which was to start at 8:30 a.m. I did this because I knew the park opened at 9 a.m., so I was hoping to get in early and get some of those coveted Empty Main Street photos.
You can imagine my elation when I checked the park hours and discovered that they’d changed, and the Magic Kingdom was now opening at 8 a.m.
Well, Julie and I don’t give up easily. We got ourselves out of bed at 6:30 a.m. and were buying Kona blend coffee from the island outside Kona Café in the Great Ceremonial House by 7:15. Our hope was that if we got to the park gates early enough, they’d still allow us inside due to having booked the tour. Fingers crossed.
We had no issues with the monorail this morning and were soon on our way. By about 7:40 a.m. we were fully caffeinated and standing at the gates to the Magic Kingdom. We followed the directions we’d been given on the tour web page and moved to the far left, looking for a CM with a clipboard checking people in with early reservations. We gave our names and the tour time, and she let us right in.
Cool.
We headed straight for Main St. so we could check out the view of the castle, unencumbered by hordes of people. We turned the corner and found…
Hordes of people. I guess a bunch of people with breakfast reservations had arrived all at once. We decided to stand still for a few moments to let the crowd thin out.
That’s better. From there, it was a simple matter of finding a photographer to get the shot we wanted.
We wandered up further to take in the castle. The Magic Kingdom opening show was well underway at this point, and we could hear the music coming from the train station.
This is when we had the bright idea to try and get another Photopass CM to get our picture in front of the relatively empty castle area. Unfortunately, that bright idea coincided with the end of the show and the Magic Kingdom being officially opened for business. So the poor guy took a look behind him and said, “Ok, we have about 10 seconds, so I’ll just take a few with your camera and if you want to use mine, you can come back later.”
As he snapped the shutter, we could see this coming our way:
And we could certainly understand why the photographer wanted to get out of Dodge. At that point, so did we.
We made our way back to the town square. The check-in for the tour was in the Town Square Theater. Inside, we signed in and were given a nametag and a portable headset that would allow us to hear everything the tour guide said into her microphone as we walked around the park. We also were asked to place a lunch order, as lunch at the Columbia Harbor House was included as part of the tour. Looking through the variety of options on the menu, the choices were: fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, chicken nuggets, and fish. Julie and I are not seafood fans, so we chose chicken nuggets by default.
With check-in done, we hung out and people-watched while we waited for the tour to begin.
Our tour guide collected us promptly at 8:30. She introduced herself as Stephanie, from Austin, Texas. We learned the ground rules pretty quickly. The biggest rule, by far, was absolutely NO photography backstage. Stephanie emphasized that one a few times throughout the morning, begging us not to get her fired. Seemed like a reasonable request. So, we took it one step further. We didn’t bother taking photos throughout most of the tour. We chose to just listen and soak it in instead.
The Keys To The Kingdom Tour is half history lesson, half peeking behind-the-scenes of the Magic Kingdom. We started with a slow walk down Main Street, with Stephanie taking time to point out the various names of Imagineers on the windows, as well as some of the inside jokes (such as one name being M. T. Lott, responsible for land development). We learned why there are so many flagpoles around the Main St. area (lightning rods). And so on. In all honesty, I think I knew a lot of the information just from generally reading and having an interest in Disney World. But we didn’t mind. It was interesting to hear the info while looking at the various details right there and then.
We wandered into Adventureland, and I liked Stephanie’s comment here. She said that she liked to think of the walk through Adventureland as a timeline of Disney’s development of animatronics. You go from Swiss Family Treehouse (no animatronics) to Jungle Cruise (simple pneumatic figures) to the Enchanted Tiki Room (more complex hydraulic mechanics) to Pirates of the Caribbean (figures representing human beings).
We wandered down to the Jungle Cruise (it was December, so it was operating under the “Jingle Cruise” banner) and walked in through the VIP entrance, also known as the exit. Stephanie commandeered a boat and a skipper and we immediately boarded, all while taunting everyone waiting in the line for average peasants.
Ok, not really, but I might have thought about it.
Instead of the usual Jungle Cruise spiel full of Dad jokes, Stephanie took the mike and talked about different aspects of the ride: Hidden Mickeys, the “native” canoes with figures meant to represent Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, etc. She pointed out a face on one of the figures climbing the pole away from the rhinoceros and asked us to remember it for later.
After our cruise, we walked into Frontierland and stood by the gate next to Splash Mountain where the parades typically start. It was time to get our first taste of backstage magic. Stephanie again implored us not to get her fired.
She let us through the gate and we crossed the railroad tracks and started walking down the road. There is a white line painted on the ground a few feet back from the gate, and this turned out to be the line marking when CM’s are considered to be “on stage”. Once they cross that line, they must be in character at all times. Even though it’s not generally in view of the guests, people riding by on the train might catch a glimpse of a CM on the road, so that line ensures that the guests’ experience is not interrupted.
Down the road, we entered a large industrial-looking area full of sheds and warehouses. It was amusing to see how quickly it transferred from perfect manicured grounds to dusty, functional working space. Ahead of us, we could see a large open-air building that housed the floats for the various parades. To our left was a large rectangular, unremarkable building painted light green (Stephanie called that shade “go away green”—it’s meant not to draw attention). To our right was a large rectangular unremarkable beige building. The green building housed Pirates of the Caribbean. The beige one housed Splash Mountain. Given how far you have to walk between the entrances of these rides in the park, it was fascinating to see how close the actual ride buildings were to each other. Check it out on Google Earth sometime.
We got a good view here of some of the façade on the Splash Mountain building. Imagineers build only what they need to build. So the parts of the building visible from the park get an elaborate, detailed façade that fits in with the theme of the ride. Everything else is functional and minimal beige.
We got a peek inside the parade float building and could see workers checking and replacing light bulbs on the Main Street Electrical Parade floats. You know how these things are—one goes out, they all go out. If I were them, I’d personally check each and every bulb.
Actually, they do. It was interesting to see how well organized the space was. Every float had a specific place in the garage. The bulbs are checked daily. Everything has to be perfect in a Disney production.
One of the coolest parts of the tour was the chance to walk up to the Splash Mountain building and see all of the water running underneath as it cycled through the ride. The roar made it hard to have a conversation. I believe Stephanie said it took 45 minutes to drain the entire ride.
We eventually re-entered Frontierland through the same gate, and had a chance to wave to passengers on the train as it passed by. Julie was going to flip them the bird, but I told her it wouldn’t be Disney-like—and we didn’t want to get Stephanie fired. She seemed nice.
By about 11:30, we had walked to Liberty Square and entered Columbia Harbor House. We were led straight upstairs where our food was already waiting for us on the tables. Julie and I lucked out with a seat with a view of the Haunted Mansion.
We each had a name card at our seat, and inside the name card was a special Keys To The Kingdom Tour pin that was ours to keep. And our chicken nuggets were perfectly fine.
From there, we were led to the VIP entrance (i.e., the exit) of the Haunted Mansion. We went through a side hallway not frequented by the peasants (but still in theme, with the mansion wallpaper, spooky lighting, etc.). The only difference was that there was a side door that led to an employee break room, so it was a little jarring to stand in the Haunted Mansion and then see a door open to find people hanging around a fridge, benches, whiteboard with daily tasks, etc.
Before long we got to head inside and ride this one with little wait. I tried a few photos in the dark.
When I took this one, I thought it was going to be too dark, but I actually like how it turned out.
I’ve never gotten Madame Leota in focus before.
And the inspiration for Fatal Attraction.
Once the ride was over, we re-convened and walked back towards Main Street. We took a path between Casey’s Corner and the Crystal Palace and were once again invited to play “Let’s Not Get Stephanie Fired” as we went backstage behind the Emporium.
It was a parking lot.
But that’s all right. This was the reason everybody takes this tour in the first place. We were about to see the famous Utilidors—the labyrinth of tunnels underneath the Magic Kingdom that CM’s use to get to their work stations without interrupting any of the show up above. They comprise the actual “first floor” of the Magic Kingdom, as they were built at ground level. You can’t go underground in Florida due to the high water table—nobody wants to swim through the Magic Kingdom with alligators. So the utilidors are at ground level and the actual park is on the second floor.
Just to our right in the parking lot, we could see some lush trees and waterways. Once again, we were struck by the use of space as Stephanie pointed out that it was part of the Jungle Cruise river.
We were led to a stairway at the back of the Emporium and then headed downstairs. We gathered in the Utilidor.
“Well?” Stephanie asked. “What do you think?”
“It’s magical,” I replied.
Plaster drywall. Concrete floors. Fluorescent lighting. The Imagineers had gone all out once again, carrying out incredible detail in the “commercial workspace” theme.
Still, I found it fascinating. Walls were color-coded to help CM’s understand where they were in the park. I loved studying the guide maps. There’s a long, long tunnel that extends from Main Street all the way up somewhere in the north end of Fantasyland. The tunnels are wide enough for forklifts to drive through, and there were little bits of Disney history displayed on the walls at various points. Every storage area, once again, was highly organized and detailed, and I was still amazed at how such a large organization could maintain that level of detail in their operations. There was even one room called the “Pin Replenishment Center”, where CM’s who ran low while pin-trading with kids in the parks could go to get new supplies for their lanyards. Stephanie had us all greet the lady who manned that booth as we walked by.
That was basically the end of the tour. We went back upstairs and re-entered the park by the gate next to the Firehouse on Main Street. We concluded our tour under the railroad station, and Stephanie wanted to know if the magic of Disney had now been ruined for us by being backstage.
I can only answer for myself: of course not. Being an engineer, I’m fascinated by how things work. Especially on a scale like that of Disney World. I thoroughly enjoyed the tour and was glad we had taken the time to do it. If anything, I think Julie and I would like to try some more!
Coming Up Next: They say you should avoid the Magic Kingdom on Saturdays in December when there’s no Mickey Christmas party. Guess where we are?
at the Starbucks crack.
Is it safe to come outside yet? Is it over? That sounds like a total wastee of perfectly good chocolate.
I just didn't want to be Mufasa.
