Anyone been on Discover the Magic Tour?

zandjmom

Mouseketeer
Joined
Jul 25, 2000
Messages
180
I am thinking about taking the tour on our last day with my Mom, niece and nephew.

My nephew is 4, a smart 4 at that, but my concern is that he will be restless or not know what is going on. Doisney says it is recommended for ages 5-9. Does anyone have experience with a 4 or 5 year old going on the tour? Could you give me your advice on this?

It sounds like it would be a neat way to finish off our trip.

Also, the tour includes 6 attractions...which ones and does that mean you can just walk on???

Thanks!
 
Your Nephew will be fine. We went in December and it was just my boys(7, 5, and 1) and two other little girls (? around 4 or 5) They had a blast figuring out the clues. We went on Pirates, Tom Sawyer Island, Buzz, Tarzan's Tree House, Dumbo, and the carrousel. I think we did another in fantasy land too, I just don't remember. All in all it was well worth it. I hope you are lucky and have a small group like we did. :)
 

We did this tour a couple years ago, and my dd (4 at the time) led the tour. She grabbed the tour guide by ther hand and pretty much paraded us from location to location. The CM said my dd would be a great tour guide! ;)
 
Is this tour only for families with small children? Or can kid at heart (young) adults come? Or would that just ruin the magic for the little ones?
 
We went in late November and our tour included a few different attractions than mo3bys did. We were lucky enough to be the only family that day doing the tour and it was a blast. I hope we get the chance to do it again someday.

Prettyprincessbelle, the tour is geared toward young kids but dh and I had fun. I don't think it would ruin the magic for kids if other adults were there. You can still have lots of fun and let the kids do the "hard" work. Heck I did more of the silly stuff than my kids did.
 
We did this a few weeks ago after doing it on our prior trip in September 2005.

The most recent tour was not as good as the one two years ago.

Here are the six 'attractions' we went on:

Railroad from main street one stop to Orleans Square stop!
Ride Pirates of Carribean
Tarzan's Treehouse
Ride Buzzlightyear
Get an apple juice (this is the snack they refer to)
Ride the carousel with everyone else.
Visit Mickey in his house at Toontown.

Did you count the six attractions?

There were no character interactions apart from meeting Mickey at the conclusion of the tour.

The same tour 2 years ago was conducted by two very animated guides. The tour involved much more character interaction than attractions. Commenced the tour with Goofy and Pluto. Met and photographed with Wendy and Peter Pan in the treehouse, we rode the carousel (only those on the tour) with Mary Poppins, Bert, Peter Pan, Wendy, the Wizard, just us and the characters whilst everyone else looked on and the kids were able to spend plenty of one on one time with them. Had lunch at the Rancho restaurant with Woody. Kids got to wear pirate scarves and went to find treasure on Tom Sawyer island. The tour 2 years ago had a much better story line than the current one which I would have to describe as 'lame'. We have some great photographs from this earlier tour.

I am sorry to say we were very disappointed with the current tour - just our view though.
 
We did the tour during the first week of December, 2007. It was a full group with kids from 4 to 11. We all had a great time, maybe :confused3 because we did not have any other time to compare it to.


Our tour guide was awesome! She was soo silly and great at involving each kid at some time during the tour (either making them walk in the front and leading the group, reading the clues, finding the treasure box, etc). Even the oldest kid, 11, had a lot of fun. He was worried that it would be too baby-ish....:rolleyes1

It was great to be on the tour because the park was sooo crowded and we were able to go on the rides with minimum wait. It was a lot of fun for us, especially since we were meeting our family that lives in SoCal. They go to DL all the time (yawn) and their kids have done EVERYTHING, except for this. :) It made it fun for all of us, especially my kids.
 
I just booked the tour for myself and my 6 year old son. It is our first time visiting Disneyland :wizard: Since we usually vacation in Florida.
We are going over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend and heard the park is quite crowded during that time. So... I booked us a Minnie's character breakfast before the park opens and the Discover the Magic Tour (to make sure we can ride some rides... just in case) we will not be spending the "whole" day there.... :sad2: since we are visiting my husband who is working in California at the moment. He gets off of work at 7pm... so we would need to get back to see dad! I am just hoping and wishing that this tour lives up to out expectations!:scared:
 
I just booked the tour for myself and my 6 year old son. It is our first time visiting Disneyland :wizard: Since we usually vacation in Florida.
We are going over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend and heard the park is quite crowded during that time. So... I booked us a Minnie's character breakfast before the park opens and the Discover the Magic Tour (to make sure we can ride some rides... just in case) we will not be spending the "whole" day there.... :sad2: since we are visiting my husband who is working in California at the moment. He gets off of work at 7pm... so we would need to get back to see dad! I am just hoping and wishing that this tour lives up to out expectations!:scared:

Can you book Minnie's before the park opens? Do you eat prior to opening too? or just start your breakfast?:confused3
 
From what the CM on the phone told me, the park opens officially at 9am. We have 8:10am reservations for Minnie's and will be allowed entry to the park at that time for our reservation. I do not believe that rides will be open, but we will be able to stroll down mainstreet without crowds in the morning! We did this at Walt Disney World when we had early reservations at the Crystal Palace! It was great!!:woohoo:
 
lbwalsh101, would you post your experience with the tour in Jan? I am going the 1st of Feb and am interested in the tour. I would appreciate any insight that you may glean. Thanks!!!
 
Sure! I will definately post our tour experience! :cool1: So far reservations says we are the only 2 on the tour, so we will see how it goes when we get there! I just hope it is worth the money!:scared:
 
I just got off the phone with Vacation Planning and while we're not within 30 days from our trip I was told that the tour is currently only being offered on weekends and it's been that way for quite some time. Our days are Mon~Thurs.
 
Since this tour is still a current offering, I don't feel badly resurrecting this old thread! :-)

Soo... anyone done this recently? I'm hoping to do this the end of July during our visit with our 8yr old grandson, and just was wondering if there were differences in it from the last few reviews I've seen (all dated before 2010)...?

Thanks!! :-)
 
My DDs (8 and 11) are WDW veterans and have said they cant wait until they are older so they can take one of the behind the scenes type tours. We are headed to DL for the 2nd time and I would like to surprise them with this tour. Any recent experiences? Worth the $?
 
Sorry - meant to get back and provide some feedback after our trip, but life just got in the way! lol

Anyway, yes - we actually did do this tour with our 8-yr old grandson and he had a blast! It was fun watching him - and the tour is definitely for kids...
However, I certainly would not do this unless you have a youngster with you. (Some pre-teens might be even be almost too old and most teenagers would likely just find it a bit corny...) Just depends on your group's makeup and how "into the act" you want to play it!

It starts out with the opening of a treasure chest and finding a clue... or a map fragment... or something like that. There were so many kids in our group - none of the adults actually got close enough to actually SEE the contents, let alone hear the spiel being said/read, but the kids were excited and having a blast with it!
The two tour guides were absolutely wonderful and handled the children really well... while the parents/grandparents just basically tagged along for the entire time. I REALLY think it could have been done as a drop-off/pick-up thing instead, but we did get a kick out of watching our grandson help solve the clues, etc.

SPOILER ALERT:

Basically, you are moving around the park the entire time going to various areas to solve the clues on map pieces you are collecting.
There are a few rides included which you get to - Pirates of the Caribbean, the Railroad Train, Buzz Lightyear, and something else but I just cannot recall right now... You get clues from something you look for while on the rides and put the info together to figure out where to head next... etc.
This was all centered on the children - and the adults had a hard time even getting close enough to figure out what was being said/read, but it was fun watching the kids.
There is a LOT of walking from point to point - it covers practically the entire park (including going up through Tarzan's Treehouse!) so if you aren't pretty mobile at a fairly upbeat pace this is definitely not the tour for you.
It eventually ends up in ToonTown (at least our tour did) with a special meet and greet with the group... (we got to be with the Mouse himself!) :-D
This was a really wonderful surprise and *would* have been a huge highlight of our entire trip... yet the room was so tightly packed since we had gotten such a large tour group - and with the weather being sweltering (mid-July) - we were almost more anxious to just have it be over with! Agh!
Afterwards, we were treated to some frozen flavored icee/smoothie of sorts which really was awful (and even many of the kids didn't like - most went in the garbage). :-P
I would rather have had a coupon or a selection of choices... sigh...

Now... would we do it again? Probably, but only because the grandson did love it VERY much. (But never again in the summertime heat!) LOL!
I would also just hope that we would get lucky and perhaps have a smaller group... Maybe if we had had more children in our family, it might have been more fun too since some of the families with us had multiple kids...

A wonderful side note which we will never forget... Our grandson had never found an interest in reading before taking this tour. On the plane ride down, it was a struggle just to get him to keep interested in line by line of a book.
The tour includes having the children take turns reading the map segments that are found. When it came time for our grandson's turn - he truly struggled with each word... but then he got to see the other children (some girls... some younger...) also read when it was their turn.
... On the plane ride home... He was a totally different child!!! The very same book that was so "disinteresting" on the ride down took on a whole new appeal to him and he literally has been improving on his reading every day since!! (Just last week, he has checked out the first Harry Potter book and is determined to read it himself... only 6 months later!!)

So for us... this tour meant way more than just meeting the Mouse... it was the beginning of a love for reading for our grandson!! What a wonderful bonus treasure we got to discover!! :-)
 












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