Accident
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2015
When I recently moved here one of the biggest things both my daughter and I wanted to do was to see WDW during ON the holidays. We know it'll be miserable crowded but having never done it before we want to see what it's like to celebrate that way...
July 4th happens to have 2 days with MK fireworks so we decided that since there was new home town festivities we'd head in july 3rd to experience our first july 4th fireworks from MK.. We were tossed between skipping our own towns stuff (we can see it from our porch), heading to the larger Red Hot & Boom event that they try to out do all the theme parks and disney. We were able to score some good fastpasses a few days before the 3rd so that was our plan.... this was actually rough as I love fireworks. I also wanted to do HS the second night but when they announced it wasn't a special july 4th show like it did last year, I knew it was a skip disney on the 4th.
It's also my first time in MK since they changed where the smoking sections were. someone had rumored the new one outside the park wasn't actually opened and I almost completely missed it but I liked that one.. I usually run down main street heading to the adventureland spot and this got my mental need one after traveling out of the way and made main street very different...
It's actually the old ferry entrance path near the buses before they made the larger rope queue to hold everyone when the park closed. It has absolutely no shade though, in fact none of them have shade now and it's miserable.. It was nice to stop here then go in.. it changed my first couple hours at disney from what it used to be.
I was also hoping the muppets talking to you was opened, I thought independence weekend would be a great time to have that working... It wasn't but I think these are the windows it will be happening from..
I also got the see the blanket put over haunted mansion. I know it's only a few week facade work but I'm really wondering what prompted it.. was there any alligator heads or something on the mansion? I think they might just be cleaning and touching it up as that goes all the way to the ground with enough room to work on the entire outside. i'm crossing my fingers for some interactive gothic gargoyles or something.
Lunch
I actually decided to make a table service lunch for this trip.. I wanted to try the diamond horseshoe while it was doing the table service test (that was suppose to have ended on july 1 but still had seating). A thread I made here and I got a stay away warning but Pete and Oliver went there and posted something this week so I figured why not, they didn't hate it..
Overall it was nice, first it was the best air conditioned room disney had in was was miserably hot weather. It's a salad, collection of bbq type items and a browie for desert.. sounds like july 4th to me so it fit in well. I'm pretty sure they are using recipies from 50s prime time and whispering canyon for everything as it tasted very similar to both and reminded me of a mini-version of whispering canyon with their unlimited bbq.. I liked it a lot getting into the park just as it was time to eat not sure how I woul dhave enjoyed this if I was in the heat all morning.. overall, I would go back again and they were taking walk ins (in fact they seemed surprised I had an ADR) so if you need a cold room, unlimited food and like bbq, take it for a whirl.. They do accept tables in wonderland even though the TiW site does not list them.
PinQuest (just started)
From there we decided to do the new pinquest that disney is trying.. I remember doing something younger when pins were new to the parks and this was something I thought would work well on a crowded park day. It's basically buy a map, buy a clue, solve the clue and get a pin. repeat for 6 clues then buy the last pin when you complete the savanger hunt... Total investment is about $80 per person. Watch out some spots you need to go close so give yourself a few hours ending about dinner if you plan to try it. Also I recommend getting your map and first clue as you walk into MK. I forget the gift shop name but it's immediately to the right by tony's where they sell pins and magicbands. this will make ending it not be out of your way..
*** spoiler about pinquest **
your basically going from gift shop to gift shop but the gift shops (most of them) are ones you woulnd't even bother with. a lot were playing which made a crowd in the shop and nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd so many kept coming in to find out why the shop was so popular..
The pins are nice, you end up with 7 pins of steam punk theme (some look like something nearby where you got the clue) and then the mickey steampunk final pin.. it's actually cheaper than normal disney prices for 7 pins + lanyard and it gives you a little entertainment for a couple hours..
*** end of spoiler ***
It took us about 3 hours to complete but we were doing some rides while we were criss crossing the park for this. I did not post any pics as it would give away where things are but you can see the official disney blog for more info.
It's a party day, not everything was disney..
about 5pm suddenly the music changed.. it was only in Frontierland but it was loud and all of frontierland.. It also wasn't the normal disney being more danc eparty like selections, this was an actual dj allowed to dj.. it did hit on the disney tween favorites, but also went over to prince and for a while touched on EDM with calvin and hobes. it was all over the place but a very nice change to disney. It also made people watching a little more fun as they were getting into it and made it a nice little party in this corner. The hub also seemed to do their dance party a few extra times for the holiday.. everywhere else was disney..
The cast members also loved it.. they were dancing.. Woody and Jessie were right by the dj and they were dancing to the music (with correct moves) even more.. I'm sure the guests in line had some of the best photos and it was interesting seeing Jessie dance to beyonce and woody with his white guy dancing.. really added to the party feel as they were just side of the walkway doing this..
Crowded and crowd control.
Something new was how they were doing crowd control that i've never seen. every walkway was turned into stay right with a lot of cast members being in the middle to remind you that your not staying right... The hub was pretty much full by 5 or 6 as well so I wasn't even going to try to get through it.. in fact by about 7 or 8 you weren't allowed in the hub anymore and these exit signs started to appear everything with arrows on what direction to go..
You can't tell from this picture but they light up, change colors and really fit into the park well. The kicker here though is they wanted everyone to walk around the entire park and over to the backstage pass between the plaza to get to the main street exit.. even if you were standing next to the hub, you couldnt walk over the crystal palace and had to go around the long way.. this did lighten up as it got less people but for a good 5 hours or so, it was very strict where you can stand, how you should walk and exit the place..
We expected the crowds, had our couple fastpasses and did our pinquest so we had an amazing day even though it was crowded.. If you come prepared for mass line and people you can be prepared to do it..
ITS HOT.. REALLY HOT
It was hot hot hot hot hot out.. everyone was drenched in sweat, carrying around towels and water like it was going out of style.. ice cream, ices, anything they could find to cool off. Disney didn't have the a/c cranked and peoplpe had 5-10 bottles of water in their hand walking around trying to keep the family cool.. This really pisses me off to crank of the water price and then make everyone roast in the parks to save money on a/c.. or is this a disney way to get mega bucks from us bordering on the edge of medical unsafe heat and air conditioning...
It really hit me hard.. it took about an hour after we ate for it to really impact me but once it did, it was bad.. bottles of water and powerade weren't helping.. I eventually just needed to sit down in a quick service (I did pecos bill) and my daughter grabbed a ton of ice water.. after about 60 minutes cooling off, hydratying and being normal (keep in mind, I had 3 power ades before getting ot pecos bill minutes earlier) I finally felt semi-normal again.. about an hour later we had to repeat it but this time for my daughter.. the rest of the night we stayed on top of it but we lost 5-10 pounds in sweat.. everyone looked soaked.. this wasn't fun and shame on disney for having the air conditioning like this so nobody could stay cool and had to buy more things trying to cool off...
There as more adults in the water play area near bigtop then children at one points.. people just needed to cool off..
It was so hot I even went into small world when it was 10 minutes near the end of hte night just to get some air conditioning that worked..
It's amazing what this ride looks like when your dazed and confused with heat.. I enjoyed it a lot more than I remember it. We did get to see the storytellers ending which was broken the last time we went on so that was nice..
Fireworks
The fireworks themselves started promptly at 9pm and lasted about 14 minutes.. I didn't take any photos and just enjoyed.. I was behind the carousel near my normal spot but they had viewing areas taped out.. It was a great spot and there was heavy over our head, bigger than ever behind the park (including using the 2 side road launch sites to make it fill the sky 3 times wider).. They also had a barge in the seven seas lagoon so there was fireworks coming from the front of the park in the lake.... Very well done, loads of excitement.. finale used all the launch sites making it a 30-50 second everywhere they can fire lots of fireworks from at the same time they did ending... Very happy to have seen this in person and very happy where I stood to get that 360 view including overhead. It's the only place in the world I know you can be a visitor and see fireworks this way. we picked the right place to see july 3rd fireworks from..
This was the crowd behind the castle about 10 minutes before they started..
More New things..
I never really got close enough to red what this carriage was but it was near pinochos (and the back bathrooms there).
you could take your pic in front of it but not in it.. I looked around for a new popcorn bucket as I know disneyland had one that was this color but alas, there was none at the closest popcorn vendor.. (and she didn't run out, they didn't have them).
Disney was also testing out a new technology for picture taking. It wasn't very fancy but you stand still and they move a bar past you.. Being july 4th this is what the end result of the photo looks like.. you can also see how miserable from heat I was.. I'm not a huge fan but the technology can do other things so I'm curious what might be coming.. this was literally the first night they even tried to see if it would work for photopass so I don't think we'll see it out this summer except for special events and it didn't have a name (I asked).
I started a thread on just this if you want to read and see more pics of it in action..
Parades and things..
they had a whole lot of stuff to see.. there was a couple electrical parades and a couple celebrate the magics after the fireworks. basically every hour something happened... the crowds did thin a little back to normal really crowded but we got out of there a little early before everyone from other parks and resorts decided to do emh that ended at 3am...
something I did end up skipping because I didn't notice it was an option was riding the train around disneyworld. It was still going at 12:30 when we walked out and I've never seen the trains out when it was dark so we've never done it.. I wish I noticed I would have went for a whirl but by the time I wwas outside the gates, I didnt' care enough to come back in..
Things I couldn't find.
I was also on the lookout for the new cameras for photopass that you control on your own. I assume it was just too crowded to have it out.. also if it takes a cast member to tell you how to work it, how is that better than having a photopass photographer just take it?
I did find the aligator signs in MK but they aren't in your face and makes me wonder why have them in the first place. they were in spots that made sense like the dock for the boat to tom sawyer island and one in the smoking area next to it. other than that, I didn't see much and the rest of disney had existing barriers from the waters so probably wasn't really needed. I didn't find them out of place either and they were different enough to not look like a disney touch and a real warning.
Conclusion....
Overall we liked it.. the heat and nowhere to really cool off did take it's toll on us.. we're just miserable the next day and we live here, it's not like we haven't been in this weather before.. We're very happy we did this and had a wonderful time, especially doing the pinquest and having somethign different that was crowd friendly.. We love the pins, I love steam punk..
If you were there you probably saw my daughter as she was lit up with her sneakers and ears and so many people were very happy to see it and talked with us. that was nice to have some great conversations with cast member and visitors.. many locals wanted to know where to find them.. They aren't the cheapest things but my daughter snagged them almost 70% off online earlier in the week.. It also helped me hone in on what will be my halloween costume this year.. I've been playing with clothing that lights up and think I have a way that will be disney friendly to be able to bring into the park and not have to carry around something heavy all day and night.. more on that when MNSSHP starts
I'm looking forward to the next mega crowded holiday... nights like this is why we moved here... the next special 2 day fireworks I do plan to check out from outside of the park as well as inside.. I loved being in the middle but some video of what it looked like outside the park and that is outstanding as well.
July 4th happens to have 2 days with MK fireworks so we decided that since there was new home town festivities we'd head in july 3rd to experience our first july 4th fireworks from MK.. We were tossed between skipping our own towns stuff (we can see it from our porch), heading to the larger Red Hot & Boom event that they try to out do all the theme parks and disney. We were able to score some good fastpasses a few days before the 3rd so that was our plan.... this was actually rough as I love fireworks. I also wanted to do HS the second night but when they announced it wasn't a special july 4th show like it did last year, I knew it was a skip disney on the 4th.
It's also my first time in MK since they changed where the smoking sections were. someone had rumored the new one outside the park wasn't actually opened and I almost completely missed it but I liked that one.. I usually run down main street heading to the adventureland spot and this got my mental need one after traveling out of the way and made main street very different...
It's actually the old ferry entrance path near the buses before they made the larger rope queue to hold everyone when the park closed. It has absolutely no shade though, in fact none of them have shade now and it's miserable.. It was nice to stop here then go in.. it changed my first couple hours at disney from what it used to be.
I was also hoping the muppets talking to you was opened, I thought independence weekend would be a great time to have that working... It wasn't but I think these are the windows it will be happening from..
I also got the see the blanket put over haunted mansion. I know it's only a few week facade work but I'm really wondering what prompted it.. was there any alligator heads or something on the mansion? I think they might just be cleaning and touching it up as that goes all the way to the ground with enough room to work on the entire outside. i'm crossing my fingers for some interactive gothic gargoyles or something.
Lunch
I actually decided to make a table service lunch for this trip.. I wanted to try the diamond horseshoe while it was doing the table service test (that was suppose to have ended on july 1 but still had seating). A thread I made here and I got a stay away warning but Pete and Oliver went there and posted something this week so I figured why not, they didn't hate it..
Overall it was nice, first it was the best air conditioned room disney had in was was miserably hot weather. It's a salad, collection of bbq type items and a browie for desert.. sounds like july 4th to me so it fit in well. I'm pretty sure they are using recipies from 50s prime time and whispering canyon for everything as it tasted very similar to both and reminded me of a mini-version of whispering canyon with their unlimited bbq.. I liked it a lot getting into the park just as it was time to eat not sure how I woul dhave enjoyed this if I was in the heat all morning.. overall, I would go back again and they were taking walk ins (in fact they seemed surprised I had an ADR) so if you need a cold room, unlimited food and like bbq, take it for a whirl.. They do accept tables in wonderland even though the TiW site does not list them.
PinQuest (just started)
From there we decided to do the new pinquest that disney is trying.. I remember doing something younger when pins were new to the parks and this was something I thought would work well on a crowded park day. It's basically buy a map, buy a clue, solve the clue and get a pin. repeat for 6 clues then buy the last pin when you complete the savanger hunt... Total investment is about $80 per person. Watch out some spots you need to go close so give yourself a few hours ending about dinner if you plan to try it. Also I recommend getting your map and first clue as you walk into MK. I forget the gift shop name but it's immediately to the right by tony's where they sell pins and magicbands. this will make ending it not be out of your way..
*** spoiler about pinquest **
your basically going from gift shop to gift shop but the gift shops (most of them) are ones you woulnd't even bother with. a lot were playing which made a crowd in the shop and nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd so many kept coming in to find out why the shop was so popular..
The pins are nice, you end up with 7 pins of steam punk theme (some look like something nearby where you got the clue) and then the mickey steampunk final pin.. it's actually cheaper than normal disney prices for 7 pins + lanyard and it gives you a little entertainment for a couple hours..
*** end of spoiler ***
It took us about 3 hours to complete but we were doing some rides while we were criss crossing the park for this. I did not post any pics as it would give away where things are but you can see the official disney blog for more info.
It's a party day, not everything was disney..
about 5pm suddenly the music changed.. it was only in Frontierland but it was loud and all of frontierland.. It also wasn't the normal disney being more danc eparty like selections, this was an actual dj allowed to dj.. it did hit on the disney tween favorites, but also went over to prince and for a while touched on EDM with calvin and hobes. it was all over the place but a very nice change to disney. It also made people watching a little more fun as they were getting into it and made it a nice little party in this corner. The hub also seemed to do their dance party a few extra times for the holiday.. everywhere else was disney..
The cast members also loved it.. they were dancing.. Woody and Jessie were right by the dj and they were dancing to the music (with correct moves) even more.. I'm sure the guests in line had some of the best photos and it was interesting seeing Jessie dance to beyonce and woody with his white guy dancing.. really added to the party feel as they were just side of the walkway doing this..
Crowded and crowd control.
Something new was how they were doing crowd control that i've never seen. every walkway was turned into stay right with a lot of cast members being in the middle to remind you that your not staying right... The hub was pretty much full by 5 or 6 as well so I wasn't even going to try to get through it.. in fact by about 7 or 8 you weren't allowed in the hub anymore and these exit signs started to appear everything with arrows on what direction to go..
You can't tell from this picture but they light up, change colors and really fit into the park well. The kicker here though is they wanted everyone to walk around the entire park and over to the backstage pass between the plaza to get to the main street exit.. even if you were standing next to the hub, you couldnt walk over the crystal palace and had to go around the long way.. this did lighten up as it got less people but for a good 5 hours or so, it was very strict where you can stand, how you should walk and exit the place..
We expected the crowds, had our couple fastpasses and did our pinquest so we had an amazing day even though it was crowded.. If you come prepared for mass line and people you can be prepared to do it..
ITS HOT.. REALLY HOT
It was hot hot hot hot hot out.. everyone was drenched in sweat, carrying around towels and water like it was going out of style.. ice cream, ices, anything they could find to cool off. Disney didn't have the a/c cranked and peoplpe had 5-10 bottles of water in their hand walking around trying to keep the family cool.. This really pisses me off to crank of the water price and then make everyone roast in the parks to save money on a/c.. or is this a disney way to get mega bucks from us bordering on the edge of medical unsafe heat and air conditioning...
It really hit me hard.. it took about an hour after we ate for it to really impact me but once it did, it was bad.. bottles of water and powerade weren't helping.. I eventually just needed to sit down in a quick service (I did pecos bill) and my daughter grabbed a ton of ice water.. after about 60 minutes cooling off, hydratying and being normal (keep in mind, I had 3 power ades before getting ot pecos bill minutes earlier) I finally felt semi-normal again.. about an hour later we had to repeat it but this time for my daughter.. the rest of the night we stayed on top of it but we lost 5-10 pounds in sweat.. everyone looked soaked.. this wasn't fun and shame on disney for having the air conditioning like this so nobody could stay cool and had to buy more things trying to cool off...
There as more adults in the water play area near bigtop then children at one points.. people just needed to cool off..
It was so hot I even went into small world when it was 10 minutes near the end of hte night just to get some air conditioning that worked..
It's amazing what this ride looks like when your dazed and confused with heat.. I enjoyed it a lot more than I remember it. We did get to see the storytellers ending which was broken the last time we went on so that was nice..
Fireworks
The fireworks themselves started promptly at 9pm and lasted about 14 minutes.. I didn't take any photos and just enjoyed.. I was behind the carousel near my normal spot but they had viewing areas taped out.. It was a great spot and there was heavy over our head, bigger than ever behind the park (including using the 2 side road launch sites to make it fill the sky 3 times wider).. They also had a barge in the seven seas lagoon so there was fireworks coming from the front of the park in the lake.... Very well done, loads of excitement.. finale used all the launch sites making it a 30-50 second everywhere they can fire lots of fireworks from at the same time they did ending... Very happy to have seen this in person and very happy where I stood to get that 360 view including overhead. It's the only place in the world I know you can be a visitor and see fireworks this way. we picked the right place to see july 3rd fireworks from..
This was the crowd behind the castle about 10 minutes before they started..
More New things..
I never really got close enough to red what this carriage was but it was near pinochos (and the back bathrooms there).
you could take your pic in front of it but not in it.. I looked around for a new popcorn bucket as I know disneyland had one that was this color but alas, there was none at the closest popcorn vendor.. (and she didn't run out, they didn't have them).
Disney was also testing out a new technology for picture taking. It wasn't very fancy but you stand still and they move a bar past you.. Being july 4th this is what the end result of the photo looks like.. you can also see how miserable from heat I was.. I'm not a huge fan but the technology can do other things so I'm curious what might be coming.. this was literally the first night they even tried to see if it would work for photopass so I don't think we'll see it out this summer except for special events and it didn't have a name (I asked).
I started a thread on just this if you want to read and see more pics of it in action..
Parades and things..
they had a whole lot of stuff to see.. there was a couple electrical parades and a couple celebrate the magics after the fireworks. basically every hour something happened... the crowds did thin a little back to normal really crowded but we got out of there a little early before everyone from other parks and resorts decided to do emh that ended at 3am...
something I did end up skipping because I didn't notice it was an option was riding the train around disneyworld. It was still going at 12:30 when we walked out and I've never seen the trains out when it was dark so we've never done it.. I wish I noticed I would have went for a whirl but by the time I wwas outside the gates, I didnt' care enough to come back in..
Things I couldn't find.
I was also on the lookout for the new cameras for photopass that you control on your own. I assume it was just too crowded to have it out.. also if it takes a cast member to tell you how to work it, how is that better than having a photopass photographer just take it?
I did find the aligator signs in MK but they aren't in your face and makes me wonder why have them in the first place. they were in spots that made sense like the dock for the boat to tom sawyer island and one in the smoking area next to it. other than that, I didn't see much and the rest of disney had existing barriers from the waters so probably wasn't really needed. I didn't find them out of place either and they were different enough to not look like a disney touch and a real warning.
Conclusion....
Overall we liked it.. the heat and nowhere to really cool off did take it's toll on us.. we're just miserable the next day and we live here, it's not like we haven't been in this weather before.. We're very happy we did this and had a wonderful time, especially doing the pinquest and having somethign different that was crowd friendly.. We love the pins, I love steam punk..
If you were there you probably saw my daughter as she was lit up with her sneakers and ears and so many people were very happy to see it and talked with us. that was nice to have some great conversations with cast member and visitors.. many locals wanted to know where to find them.. They aren't the cheapest things but my daughter snagged them almost 70% off online earlier in the week.. It also helped me hone in on what will be my halloween costume this year.. I've been playing with clothing that lights up and think I have a way that will be disney friendly to be able to bring into the park and not have to carry around something heavy all day and night.. more on that when MNSSHP starts
I'm looking forward to the next mega crowded holiday...
nights like this is why we moved here... the next special 2 day fireworks I do plan to check out from outside of the park as well as inside.. I loved being in the middle but some video of what it looked like outside the park and that is outstanding as well.
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