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Keys to the Kingdom
Thanks to the nice folks at Dreams and the DIS, Val & I won a Keys to the Kingdom tour from the Prize-ma-tron. We found out just before we came down for a quick weekend in September but figured that it would be too tight to book it then, especially with all the other things that were going on over the Labor Day weekend visit. Since we knew we would be back for F&W we decided we would book the tour then. A quick email to Julie was all it took to get us set up for the tour this morning. Thanks Julie!
They have 2-3 tours a day and we decided to go on the one at 8:30 am. This sounded great when we set it up, but not so great when the alarm went off this morning! Since we needed to be in the MK by 8:15 for this tour (I think they do this just to be sure everybody gets there on time) that meant getting up early for a shower and some breakfast at our OKW "home". We headed for the MK about 7:15 and that worked out perfectly.
Check-in for the tour is just next to City Hall where the package pickup is now (used to be Art of Disney/Disney Gallery a few years ago). Check-in was a breeze, just give them your name, grab a name tag and a audio device and you're all set. The did have coffee and some cold drinks for those who wanted them. We had some time to kill before the start of the tour so we went outside and took some pictures of Main Street without people. All the Halloween decorations are out and the MK looks festive.
Now before I go further, I'm going to purposely leave out stuff so that I don't spoil the magic for others. Especially the back-stage stuff. If you want more detailed info, you can PM me.
There were about 20 people in our group from all around the country and at least one family from the UK. We met Matthew, our Tour Guide, who gave us some background on what we were going to do and explained the ground rules about no pictures backstage and then we were off. The audio devices are a great thing since you can all easily hear the tour guide without him shouting or having to crowd together.
Matthew explained how they look at the park as a huge theater. The train station is the curtain to the theater - note that you can't see anything in the park when you first come through the turnstiles. As you walk through the tunnels you see signs advertising future attractions; what you'll see in the different lands inside.
Walking down Main Street we were able to stop and read some of the windows. Val & I spotted Lee Cockerells' about 1/3rd of the way down on the right. Matthew also told us the tale of how Disney acquired the land in the area through dummy companies, one of which was M. T. Lotts; (Say it fast). OK, so I love puns.
At this point we were about half way down Main Street and we walked down the small street on the right to a little area where Matthew talked about the four elements of the Disney experience, safety, courtesy, efficiency and show. Its truly amazing how detailed and well though out the everything is planned that you see in the parks.
From there, we walked the rest of the way down Main Street to the hub and the Partners Statue. Matthew told us a story about the statue, which was sculpted by Blain Gibson, and its counterpart of Roy and Minnie down the other end of Main Street. At that point it was coming up on park opening time so we stood there and watched the thundering herd coming down Main Street right at us. Actually, most of them were well behaved but were certainly in a hurry to get to that first attraction.
From there we proceeded into Adventureland where we sat in an out of the way spot while Matthew talked a bit about the early Disney days and how Walt and Roy worked together. Walt, of course, was the creative one. Roy was the one that had to come up with the money. Roy's favorite word was No. Walt hated to hear that word. A little friction between the brothers from time to time, but it was really a complementary relationship.
From there we went over to the Jungle Cruise, our first ride of the tour. We got our own boat and instead of having the skipper do the usual spiel, we went around with Matthew telling us a bit of how things are done and the ride mechanism. We got to go through the ancient temple with the boat's lights on so we could see the attention to detail that most guests don't normally get to appreciate.
We then headed toward Haunted Mansion where we learned some behind the scenes secrets and an explanation of how many of the effects are created. Then we were back-doored onto the attraction. At that point it was time for lunch, which is at Columbia Harbor House. They had taken our order when we checked in and it was all ready and waiting for us upstairs when we went in. We each had our own place setting with a name card, attached to which was our special Keys to the Kingdom pin. Val & I had the fried shrimp and we both thought it was very good. We were fortunate to sit at the same table with our guide and we spent some time discussing our lives and various things Disney.
From there we headed towards Splash Mountain and our first foray back stage. Its like stepping through the looking glass. A very abrupt transition from where the parades enter/exit. We saw where the parade floats are stored and repaired, the (utilitarian) backside of several of the attractions and how the on-stage landscape/backdrops often end just beyond the guests line of site. Its called saving money!
After this we went back through the looking glass and the magic returned. We walked through along Frontier Land and then took a right towards Liberty Square. All along Matthew was telling us little tidbits about the buildings we were passing. In Frontierland the buildings have numbers on them. But they aren't street numbers, they are the year that that style of architecture is representative of. In Liberty Square, he showed us little touches in many of the windows that most people never notice. Things like the musket in one window indicating that the resident was ready to fight for his country, or the doll in another window indicating that a young girl lived there.
From there we headed back towards Main Street and our second back-stage area. From inside one of the shops on Main Street we went through a set of double doors into another very small, utilitarian, room where we first closed the on-stage doors and then opened a second set of doors to go back-stage. Again, a very "through the looking glass" transition. At that point Matthew took us into the utilidoors. As I noted above, I won't say much about this area but a great deal of activity goes on down there to make the magic come alive on stage. We didn't see anything that would be classified top secret, sorry. We walked through only about 1/3rd of the area there ultimately coming up on the other side of Main Street. We saw Tinkerbelle's "landing area" and some other tidbits about Tink's special qualifications.
And with that we crossed back onstage near Tony's and our last stop at the statue of Roy and Minnie where Matthew completed the story about the partner's statue. This was the end of our tour, which lasted almost 5 hours.
A special thanks to the PodCast Crew for making this possible for Val & I.
Thanks to the nice folks at Dreams and the DIS, Val & I won a Keys to the Kingdom tour from the Prize-ma-tron. We found out just before we came down for a quick weekend in September but figured that it would be too tight to book it then, especially with all the other things that were going on over the Labor Day weekend visit. Since we knew we would be back for F&W we decided we would book the tour then. A quick email to Julie was all it took to get us set up for the tour this morning. Thanks Julie!
They have 2-3 tours a day and we decided to go on the one at 8:30 am. This sounded great when we set it up, but not so great when the alarm went off this morning! Since we needed to be in the MK by 8:15 for this tour (I think they do this just to be sure everybody gets there on time) that meant getting up early for a shower and some breakfast at our OKW "home". We headed for the MK about 7:15 and that worked out perfectly.
Check-in for the tour is just next to City Hall where the package pickup is now (used to be Art of Disney/Disney Gallery a few years ago). Check-in was a breeze, just give them your name, grab a name tag and a audio device and you're all set. The did have coffee and some cold drinks for those who wanted them. We had some time to kill before the start of the tour so we went outside and took some pictures of Main Street without people. All the Halloween decorations are out and the MK looks festive.
Now before I go further, I'm going to purposely leave out stuff so that I don't spoil the magic for others. Especially the back-stage stuff. If you want more detailed info, you can PM me.
There were about 20 people in our group from all around the country and at least one family from the UK. We met Matthew, our Tour Guide, who gave us some background on what we were going to do and explained the ground rules about no pictures backstage and then we were off. The audio devices are a great thing since you can all easily hear the tour guide without him shouting or having to crowd together.
Matthew explained how they look at the park as a huge theater. The train station is the curtain to the theater - note that you can't see anything in the park when you first come through the turnstiles. As you walk through the tunnels you see signs advertising future attractions; what you'll see in the different lands inside.
Walking down Main Street we were able to stop and read some of the windows. Val & I spotted Lee Cockerells' about 1/3rd of the way down on the right. Matthew also told us the tale of how Disney acquired the land in the area through dummy companies, one of which was M. T. Lotts; (Say it fast). OK, so I love puns.
At this point we were about half way down Main Street and we walked down the small street on the right to a little area where Matthew talked about the four elements of the Disney experience, safety, courtesy, efficiency and show. Its truly amazing how detailed and well though out the everything is planned that you see in the parks.
From there, we walked the rest of the way down Main Street to the hub and the Partners Statue. Matthew told us a story about the statue, which was sculpted by Blain Gibson, and its counterpart of Roy and Minnie down the other end of Main Street. At that point it was coming up on park opening time so we stood there and watched the thundering herd coming down Main Street right at us. Actually, most of them were well behaved but were certainly in a hurry to get to that first attraction.
From there we proceeded into Adventureland where we sat in an out of the way spot while Matthew talked a bit about the early Disney days and how Walt and Roy worked together. Walt, of course, was the creative one. Roy was the one that had to come up with the money. Roy's favorite word was No. Walt hated to hear that word. A little friction between the brothers from time to time, but it was really a complementary relationship.
From there we went over to the Jungle Cruise, our first ride of the tour. We got our own boat and instead of having the skipper do the usual spiel, we went around with Matthew telling us a bit of how things are done and the ride mechanism. We got to go through the ancient temple with the boat's lights on so we could see the attention to detail that most guests don't normally get to appreciate.
We then headed toward Haunted Mansion where we learned some behind the scenes secrets and an explanation of how many of the effects are created. Then we were back-doored onto the attraction. At that point it was time for lunch, which is at Columbia Harbor House. They had taken our order when we checked in and it was all ready and waiting for us upstairs when we went in. We each had our own place setting with a name card, attached to which was our special Keys to the Kingdom pin. Val & I had the fried shrimp and we both thought it was very good. We were fortunate to sit at the same table with our guide and we spent some time discussing our lives and various things Disney.
From there we headed towards Splash Mountain and our first foray back stage. Its like stepping through the looking glass. A very abrupt transition from where the parades enter/exit. We saw where the parade floats are stored and repaired, the (utilitarian) backside of several of the attractions and how the on-stage landscape/backdrops often end just beyond the guests line of site. Its called saving money!
After this we went back through the looking glass and the magic returned. We walked through along Frontier Land and then took a right towards Liberty Square. All along Matthew was telling us little tidbits about the buildings we were passing. In Frontierland the buildings have numbers on them. But they aren't street numbers, they are the year that that style of architecture is representative of. In Liberty Square, he showed us little touches in many of the windows that most people never notice. Things like the musket in one window indicating that the resident was ready to fight for his country, or the doll in another window indicating that a young girl lived there.
From there we headed back towards Main Street and our second back-stage area. From inside one of the shops on Main Street we went through a set of double doors into another very small, utilitarian, room where we first closed the on-stage doors and then opened a second set of doors to go back-stage. Again, a very "through the looking glass" transition. At that point Matthew took us into the utilidoors. As I noted above, I won't say much about this area but a great deal of activity goes on down there to make the magic come alive on stage. We didn't see anything that would be classified top secret, sorry. We walked through only about 1/3rd of the area there ultimately coming up on the other side of Main Street. We saw Tinkerbelle's "landing area" and some other tidbits about Tink's special qualifications.
And with that we crossed back onstage near Tony's and our last stop at the statue of Roy and Minnie where Matthew completed the story about the partner's statue. This was the end of our tour, which lasted almost 5 hours.
A special thanks to the PodCast Crew for making this possible for Val & I.
My husband and I did this tour a couple of years ago and LOVED it!! In fact, it got us MORE addicted to Disney (if that is even possible! 
). I would highly recommend it for adults and teenagers...
If anyone is thinking about doing this tour (or any other tour for that matter)... be sure to see if they offer any discounts. Cha-ching! 
