Spoiled by Disney and Early New Year's fireworks!

[AladdinsPrincess]

DH and I made a quick trip to Sea World yesterday. One last visit before our annual pass - that we’ve only used once (I just can not drive by Disney!) – expired today. It was chaos there and it was made a hundred times worse by their horrible employees! Even on the way in we were ordered to one entrance, and then another, and then back to the original one, and not in a nice way. No one was friendly at all. We’d try to chat with staff and they were not having any of it. DH and I could not wait to get out of there and over to Disney! And sure enough, the first Disney employee we encountered – the security guy at Epcot – was cheerful and chatty and immediately made us feel so much better! We are spoiled by Disney big time. Their cast members are THE BEST!

Some notes on our time at Disney:
We arrived at Epcot just before 9 PM and it was crowded. Not mobbed, but definitely crowded. We walked straight back to Italy and watched the fireworks there. The holiday Illuminations ending is just awesome. I can’t even put into words how beautiful and heartwarming it is. All the people around me were just in awe. I’m so glad we got to see it one last time.

From there we hopped to MK since it was open till 1 AM. We got there at quarter till 11 PM and it was still pretty crowded. 110 minute wait for Space Mountain! We did pretty much walk on Philharmagic and the Haunted Mansion though, and Buzz after the fireworks. I love the holiday decorations there. Amazing.

We watched Fantasy in the Sky at midnight, which was apparently a trial run for tonight (New Year’s Eve) because they did the countdown and yelled Happy New Year and it was pretty incredible! The fireworks were going off behind the castle and also at the other end of Main Street behind the train station. It was so AWESOME!! They were perfectly in sync too. At the finale, standing on Main Street, there were fireworks 360 degrees, all around us. How magical.

As we were leaving, I noticed cars parked on the grass, way, way down by the Petty Speedway. It must have been really crowded during the day!

Happy New Year everyone! Thanks for always letting me share my magical Disney experiences (sorry this post is so long!)

 

[jennymouse]

I wish they'd leave the special ending of Illuminations until the war is over.

 

[SyracuseWolvrine]

Fantasy in the Sky seemed like a great show ... I was standing at the base of Astro Orbiter during the show, and I was only able to see part of it, but there were a LOT of pyrotechnic effects. From a choreagraphy standpoint, Wishes is probably a better show, however, from a "look at all the pretty things in the sky" standpoint, FITS was excellent.

As to the crowd issues ... when you have that many people in one place, it can get a bit chaotic at times, and there can be times when it seems that people are running around with their heads cut off, but Disney seems to have a system that works pretty well, once people realize what they're trying to do.

 

[PatriciaH]

Wow! Those fireworks WERE amazing! We got to the MK around 6pm and I was happy it was not closed. We are hoping to have no problems tonight at Epcot and MGM but we will see! It was pretty packed at MK, but we did TTA twice, HM twice, Big Thunder and Dumbo all with no wait since everyone cleared out after the 12am Fantasy in The Sky. It was like a ghost town-more empty than an e-ticket night! We sat right on the curb for the 10:15pm Spectro-lots of great CM interaction. The LSU band before the 7pm Spectro was awesome too!

 

[lllovell]

The fireworks ar Disney are so wonderful. I cannot wait until our next trip to see them again. I hope atleast one time in my life to be there for a really special occasion to see more shows like the extra part of Illuminations that we saw this past trip. WOW!!!

Also, I am surprised that you had a bad time at Sea World. We always buy the fun pass and stop by Sea World when our trips are longer than 3 days. It is a wonderful environment, calm, relaxed, beautiful with super shows, beautiful landscaping, etc and my family really enjoys it. It is a great place to relax a bit after the hustle and bustle of MK for all of us. All of the staff we have run into there have been incredible! They are learning from Disney I am sure. I cannot wait until my son's are older and we can go and do the Discovery Cove experience.

Nuts...I want to go to Orlando RIGHT NOW lol

 

[spedtcr]

It's funny how those Disney fireworks spoil us! We were in Maui for 4th of July to see the "fabulous" fireworks spectacular, and my DH, DD, and I just looked at each other and smiled when we realized how awesome the yare at WDW, and amazed that it goes on every day! We will be at WDW on 4th of July, 2005... any suggestions as to which park to be at? We're leaning toward MK.