Married with Children - Our Disneymoon Aug 7th through Aug 17th, 2007

[dameodie]

Dining review is HERE

Before anyone asks for pics, I haven't uploaded any of our trip pictures yet. I'll probably add them to the thread once I do!

First of all - there are four of us. Myself (Odie) my now-husband (Red), and his two daughters R (8) and B (5). R just turned 8 last Monday, so she was technically 7 for the duration of the trip.

We got married on August 4th, and drove down to WDW leaving the evening of August 5th from south-central WI. It took us about 23 hours to get there... we devoured a TON of miles while the girls slept overnight, but through poor planning I didn't drive all that much overnight. I pretty much drove the rest of the way from sun-up to Kissimmee however, so it kinda worked out.

I'm going to do this by park, not days, just to keep it more simple.

Overall Observations
BESIDES "I wanna go back!!!"

• The crowds were large, but not terrible. The worst line we saw was a 110 minute stand-by line for Splash Mountian (!!!!!) but there were some 90 minute waits mixed in there as well. We certainly didn't feel packed in like sardines.
• If cast member morale and friendliness have been suffering, we certainly didn't see any of it. Everyone we had contact with was friendly.
• We didn't see the dream team once Fortunatly, neither of the girls asked once about staying in the castle, which was the first thing R asked about when we told her we were taking them to WDW.
• B was JUST about 44" before we left, so I was concerned that she may get turned away from "the Yeti ride" as she calls it and Space Mountian. Fortunatly she was just tall enough - short enough to still stand under the bar, but tall enough to definiatly touch it without question. No thick soled shoes needed, this was wearing her Crocs. She LOVED Space Mountian... sat in the front car and rode with her arms in the air, squeeling as only a 5 year old girl can (in a good way!) EE scared her, but the excitement of it overcame her fear. She claimed she didn't want to ride again, but we went on it at least two more times without complaint once we got in line. Also related to height issues, EE only measured her once, at the entrance to the standby and FastPass lines. She got a bright red YETI stamp when she did, and was not measured again. Wish they did something similar on all rides with height requriements!
• Unfortunatly, technology has really jumped ahead of a lot of the park. Whenever possible, the TV screens and films need to be updated to a hi-def format. What used to look fine or at least okay now looks old and dated.
• Have 3D films always been so out of focus? Or is it that I just haven't seen one that really makes use of 3D effects since I've been wearing glasses?

Magic Kingdom

• The Laugh Floor is great! Sure, the jokes are dumb, but you expect those kinda rimshot jokes. R and B got on the jumbo-screen during the PaPP, which totally made their night. I was hoping that they would pick Red to be That Guy our second time through, to no avail. Drat!
• I know this is blasphemy for these boards, but Stitch's Escape didn't transform me into an unholy font of rage. It was a little confusing to follow what was going on, but the Stitch animatronic was really well done. And maybe my seat was out of chili dog spray, but I didn't notice the smell being all that bad. The biggest problem we had with it? If he was still an alien fugative at that point, he wouldn't be called Stitch!!! He'd be 626, or "that crazy trog" or something.... Now, granted, I saw the original Alien Enounter in its heyday, and Stitch simply can't hold a candle to that. But judging it on its own merits, I'd say it's fair to middling. Worth a stop if the line is short (and it always is) but not a must-do.
• As I've heard on here before, Disneyland's Buzz ride is much better. The WDW one just seems like an afterthought, or just thrown together, or something. It felt a lot shorter, and it's really damned hard to hit anything! Again, if the line is short, it's worth doing once. Twice if you're with the Chicken-Child and the Brave Little Sister and Daddy are riding Space Mountian. The line moves quickly!
• Space Mountian could certainly use some pepping-up, but it's certainly not a BAD ride. I did learn though that it's much more fun when you're tired... it was the last thing R and I did one night, and it felt a LOT more intense than it did when we went on it our next MK day fully rested. Though neither topped going on the one at DLR last summer morning after drunk (It was an adults-only trip! I'm surprised I got up that morning at all given how schnockered I was when I went to bed!!! ) The queue could definiatly do with some updating however. You could do soooo much cool spacy stuff with more current technology, and obviously there's huge room for improvement on the theming of the ride. Yes, you go into space, in a rocket-like car. But compare that to the themeing for rides like EE, Tower of Terror, RnRR... there's good groundwork here, it just needs to "blast off"!
• We didn't do Autopia, too long of a wait in the heat. If it had a Cars makeover however, we probably would have been tempted.
• The Fantasyland dark rides are... the Fantasyland dark rides. Saw the Mr. Toad picture on Winnie the Pooh. That was about the only amusing thing about the ride, though the girls liked it well enough. They liked Peter Pan, but only because it made their princess dresses glow under the blacklight. Plus we let them go in their own ship, and I think they liked that too.
• Ariel's Grotto will get your kids SOAKED. We have drowned-rat pictures of B meeting Ariel. They're still cute, but you can tell she's soaking wet. Bring a swimsuit or a change of clothes if it's not scathingly hot.
• Mickey's Philharmagic is really neat. I didn't even see the screen morphing until it was its full size! I was afraid the CGI characters would look really dumb but they actually pulled it off fairly nicely.
• With the Haunted Mansion being down, Liberty Square feels like a huge dead area (pun not intended). Just felt like a long hot walk for no real reason other than shops and a couple restaurants.
• We got SOAKED on Spalsh Mountian one time... but it wasn't the splash intended for our boat. We got a face-full of someone else's splash as they went down the big drop, and we happened to be in loop around the briar patch near the beginning of the ride. Made the big drop anti-climatic that's for sure!!
• The girls loved Big Thunder. We tried to make them ride together, since given the size descrepency this was a safer option, but it didn't always work. I don't think they're doing a major referb on it next month, just a maintenence one... which is too bad, because it really could benefit from a setup like EE with seperate lap bars. This one has huge potential for some themeing upgrades as well (so long as they arn't dumb enough to turn it into a Home on the Range ride!!!!) Either do more cute-little-town and geysers, or get rid of them. They just seem like afterthoughts rather than theming, since you blow right past them.
• Pirates... it's a classic, and the Jack Sparrow animatronics are top-notch. However, Jack causes suspension of belief problems with the other, less technologically advanced pirates. And I tell you what, I've tried giving my kitty rum before, and she wanted nothing to do with it!!! (Now now, PETA folks, I didn't force-feed hard alcohol to my cat. I just let her sniff the bottle to see what she would do. She made a face and RAN!)
• We only did the Jungle Cruise once... it's cute in its own way, but I do think it's time for an update. Keep the stupid puns and the fake animals, just revamp them and make them more realistic. Though they didn't do the headhunter joke, which made me sad (the one about him having a two-for-one sale).
• Overall, it honestly felt like the Magic Kindgom needs more... more something. More attractions. It felt like we kept circling the park, doing the same things we really liked over and over. Which was fine and all, but I would have liked more to do! Maybe some more shows that are fun to watch? We never made it to the Country Bears, which was a favorite of mine as a child, mostly beacuse I put it at a low priority based off of what I'd heard on here. I was afraid it hadn't aged well, and then frankly we forgot about it. We also never made it to the Hall of Naps, er, Presidents. Honestly I'm not that full of good ideas in this category, but I just know I left wanting more. The "more" that was offered beyond the E-ticket rides for the most part just seemed lacking.

EPCOT
(And yes, I will spell it that way, forever and ever.)

• The standby queue games for Soarin' are a lot of fun... but don't do them more than once. No matter how much your kids beg. This ride seriously needs to reevaulate it's FastPass vrs standby policy. Just because you have a FastPass doesn't mean you have NO wait! You can wait a little bit, trust me. It won't kill you. Or make one side FastPass and one side standby, filling in standby people on the FastPass side when/if that side is short on people. We sat for a LONG time in the queue after the games, watching FastPass after FastPass person go through, while NO ONE from the standby side was admitted. I admit, FastPass users should get the advantage they got the FastPass for. But c'mon. Completely ignoring the standby line isn't the best policy either. Oh, the ride itself? It was pretty neat. The film needs a hi-def upgrade however, and a cleaning! The girls loved it (which is why we ended up in the standby line twice - we did the FastPass-for-later-then-standby thing, but we did it too late in the morning) It was SO NICE to not have to stow our Backpack O'Things under our feet.
• Turtle Talk is way cooler than I expected. I didn't quite realize how much he interacts with the audience (and by that, I mean the kids in front). Fortunatly, a Crush voice isn't that hard to emulate, so they can find people to speak for him easily. But it also makes it even more obvious why the "talking" characters on the Laugh Floor aren't from the movie. You get Billy Crystal to record his dialog, and then the stand-up monsters provide the live entertainment.
• The Nemo clamshell ride is worth doing once. If the line is short. Otherwise just go in the out door to get into Sea Base Alpha.
• We did Journey into Your Imagination simply so that I could have some context as to why it's so bad. Fortunatly I was prepared for The Stupid, and that's what we got. I could go on and on about what a p*ss-poor excuse of a ride this is, but I'll spare y'all that.
• We only did the green version of Mission Space. It was okay. The girls talked about "the Mars ride" for the rest of the day however. I'd be curious to do the orange side, but I think we wait on that until the girls are older. No problems with motion sickness (obviously) but they're serious about enclosed spaces!! I'm not claustrophobic and even I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when the top part came down...
• Test Track was okay. It was kind of a failure overall though, because they didn't play up what they were trying to teach you enough. It was 3/4 Fun, 1/4 Learning. For a ride like that to be effective it should be less whipping around and more facts. But then again, I'm a nerd so what do I know. Worth at least one ride however!
• I know I'm in the minority, but I loved Ellen's Energy Adventure. The humor's right on my level (which, I admit, isn't one that always appeals to the common man) and ANYTHING with Jeopardy in it is going to amuse me. Plus it's a 45 minute sit on a hot-hot day. Can't argue with that... Wish they'd updated the dinos when they refurbed it however. Though I admit, the concept of "going into Ellen's dream" kinda disturbed me a bit. There are things in Ellen's dreams that only concenting adults should be exposed to!!!
• Due to my husband getting a migraine our second EPCOT day, we really didn't get to spend the time in World Showcase that I would have liked to We kinda did the whirlwind tour of it, ducking in and out of the shops, finishing our evening with Illuminations. While I like the globe, I remember Illuminations being a lot cooler, with more fireworks. The movie-globe parts went on for way too long without some kind of break in the action. I'm also kinda glad we didn't try for an Illuminations cruise, it would have been even more of a letdown

The Studios

• I both enjoyed and was severly underwhelmed with Rock'n'Rollercoaster. It was nice to have something more akin to a "real" coaster experience, but the whole "dark with black lights" thing just seemed really lame. Plus I got to take R on an upside-down coaster, which she loved. I would have NEVER done that when I was her age! You go girl!
• The randomness of Tower of Terror really adds to the experience. The effects before the drops arn't as good as I remembered them being, but they're still decent. And I at least got in a "dead center of the room" joke here, since the Haunted Mansion is closed and thus denied me that particular pleasure.
• Fantasmic is really cool. We did make sure to get there an hour early, and we scored really great seats. Not ideal, but in one of the middle sections with a great view. My advice? Find seats, then send someone in your party to get some kind of a snack (or dinner, if you're okay with turkey legs for dinner!) It makes the wait more bearable. There were people waiting outside the theater at 7PM! That's just crazy. If you time it right you'll be fine without going to that kind of an extreme.
• The Great Movie Ride needs updating, but like Ellen, it's a nice long sit on a hot day. So long as the line is only in the trailer-movie room, the wait isn't THAT terrible. The girls love The Wizard of Oz, so we did this one twice (again, long air conditioned sit!). Is it just me, or did they turn down the creepiness of the Alien bit??
• The Muppet 3D show was great, as usual. The "a net full of jello" isn't that obvious, I couldn't find it for the life of me the first time around! I guess I was expecting something more like a trampolne kind of net, not a hanging net that looks more like a bag.... My husband bought an Electric Mayhem shirt, and we got a fuzzy pink Animal antenna topper for the van.
• Lights, Motor, Action is cool if you like stunts and cars. If you don't, it's a long sweltering sit with far too few fans. I was bored... but the "remote control" car bit was amusing.
• I really hope they have plans for the old Superstar Television building... it was sad just to see it sitting there not used. On a related note, I didn't even mention Sounds Dangerous to anyone, and no one asked to go there.
• Speaking of Not Going There, we didn't do the animation tour. To do it now would only make me cry And we didn't get over there early enough in the day to get any character pictures
• Unless you have little girls who worship Ariel, you can skip the Voyage of the Little Mermaid. I'd heard rumors of it being changed/phased out, which upset me before we left because my kid-brain remembered it being neat. But now that the girls saw it, and the next time we go they'll be older, I'm definiatly in the "needs work" camp.
• The backlot tour is a waste of time now. I know, I know, I'd heard this before we went, but I had to experience it for myself (a la Figment)
• Hopefully the "Hollywood" change will bring a lot of additions and changes! This was the only park we spent one day at, and we felt kinda like we'd run out of things to do by the end of the day.

Animal Kingdom

• I'd never been to Animal Kindgom before this trip... we all really liked it a lot. There's definiatly room for some additions (and some subtractions!) here, but we really liked the mix of attractions and animals.
• EE is awesome! The backwards in the dark part really makes you feel like you're going upside-down (or at least that's what it did to me!) The theming is great, doesn't feel tacked on for effect at all.
• This was probably a case of too much build-up, but I wasn't impressed with the safari. Seeing all the animals together was neat, but the poachers thing was stupid, as were the ostrich eggs. Espically when other animals were hanging around near them, and other passangers questioned it... "Arn't they worried that those Big Things could step on the ostrich eggs??" I forget the animals that were hanging around them, but they were large and definiatly would have been a threat to real eggs.
• Kali River Rapids is a huge waste of time. Lamest raft ride EVER. The queue is themed nicely, but we didn't even bother to use our FastPasses for it on a really hot day. There's only ONE big dip... the chair or two who hit the bottom of that dip get drenched, but those on the other side don't get anything. The rest is just kinda bobbing down a river with little to no interest, and little to no splashing!! FastPass it if you must, or have kids who insist on riding.
• If you like chai tea, the Royal Andanapeur (sp) Tea Company sells a chai freeze that's yummy! We got them twice
• The walking trail which ends with the gorillas is really neat, or maybe we got lucky I wasn't as impressed with the tiger one, though we got there late in the day and it was lazy time for the tigers (understandably so!)
• If you have little ones who are scared of spiders, think twice about It's Tough to be a Bug.
• Oh, and I can't let this pass by without a wistful hope that someday Beastly Kingdomme will be brought to fruition (yeah, yeah, I'll put that on the list right next to Horizions and restoring Figment to his former glory)

Pooh-Sized Observations

• I didn't ride the teacups, but my husband did with the girls. He complained that it was "too hard" to turn the wheel in the center. Fortunatly the girls loved it anyway.
• By some miracle, I kept the girls off of Dumbo and the other Dumbo-clone rides. I simply told them the truth - "It's a very simple ride, and it has a huge line. Wouldn't you rather go do something more exciting?" They grumbled a bit, but quickly forgot when we went to the next thing.
• The carousel horses seem to stop in about the same place each time around, or close enough that it doesn't really matter. If you put your kid(s) on a horse near the exit, you can wait outside the exit for them and they should come around to about the same place. I had to let myself in the exit to help the younger one off her horse, but no one yelled at me for this. I probably COULD have rode, but I would have been too uncomfortable to do so.
• The seatbelt trick works well for Dinosaur and Test Track. Pull out the seatbelt BEFORE you sit down, lock the belt in place with your finger, sit, and then buckle. They're not the most comfortable rides, but they're certainly not off-limits either. Dinosaur espically was very uncomfortable, given all the jerking around it does. I actually found that by planting my feet firmly on the floor and pushing myself into more of a standing than a sitting position, it made it more comfortable (but certainly not easier!) to ride. I woudln't recommend this for safety reasons however, just giving my personal observations. If you do this and get hurt, remember "No dancing! Only sitting!"
• If you're carrying around a large bag of some kind (we had a backpack with such essencials as spare shorts and underwear and water bottles in it) you're going to run into trouble on Space Mountian. If at all possible, if you have a smaller person with you, make them take the bag in their seat. It can be done, but it's uncomfortable and difficult.

I'm already unofficially planning our next trip... which won't be for several years, sadly. At least not if we do it how I want to, which is to fly down, rent a car, spend a few days at Universal, and stay at the Wilderness Lodge for our Disney stay and be on the dining plan. We're probably talking in the $7-8K price range for that trip including things like spending money and adjusting for price increases. But I opened an ING Direct savings account over the weekend to start saving now!