Steam Train tour in Sept??

[luveeyore2]

We will be at Disney in September and would like to do the Steam Train Tour at MK. Can anyone give me some info on this? What are the chances its allready filled up? and how long does it last as we would like to make PS for breakfast at Crystal Palace afterwards. TIA!

 

[mousebrat]

Here's a link to a very informatice thread on the subject... http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=610695&highlight=+train++tour

 

[LibertyBelle]

Hello luveeyore2... I am one of the tour guides for the Magic Behind the Steam Trains Tour. The tour itself is a lot of fun...It begins at 7:30 (however they tell you to be there by 7:15 because the transportation can be tricky that early in the morning). The tour itself will have a little back history on Walt Disney and how he got interested in trains. We will tell you all about how the Company aquired the trains for our park (as well as the other Disney theme parks). They will take you to the roundhouse where you get to climb into the cab of one of the locomotives and see what it would be like to be the engineer/fireman. There you will also get to watch the morning crew prepare a train for service. The tour itself usually ends between 10-10:30 (depending on the guide, most of the time it ends around that time and then the guide will say that they will be around to answer questions or chat if anyone wants to). You shouldn't have a problem getting on the tour in September. It is slow season for the parks so the tours don't usually fill up. But they are offered Mon, Tues, Thurs and Saturday. The tuesday tour is usually the emptiest because we just added that day about a year ago and most web sites still don't list it...Thursday is the easiest day to get there because it is a magic morning for resort guests so transportation is already running (the other days you have to get there on your own as WDW transportation is not reliable that early in the morning).

I was going to post the same link as above There are some great reviews on there...

 

[mousebrat]

LibertyBelle,

My understanding is that the resort monorail starts running at 7:00. We will be staying at GF in late August and planned on taking the monorail to the tour. Do you think this will be a problem?

 

[luveeyore2]

Thanks for the info. We are staying at the WL and hopefully won't have any problems getting over to the MK that early if we get the reservation. (any insights on this??) I was hoping to hit Crystal Palace for breakfast afterwards but will do that a different day since breakfast will probably be over before the tour!

 

[mousebrat]

We actually have a PS for breakfast at Crystal Palace following the tour. The last PS offered is 10:30, which is what we have. LibertyBelle previously told us that if we just inform our tour guide about our PS it should not be a problem to make breakfast.

 

[LibertyBelle]

Ok here is the scoop on transportation...

If you are staying at a resort (Grand Floridian or Poly) you can ask the monorail CM's if the monorail will be stoping at MK (tell them you have a tour booked). It is usually not a problem if you are a "monorail" resort guest to get to MK for the tour via the monorail, it is however virtual an act of God to get there via the monorail if you are not staying at one of the monorail resorts.

If you are able to drive you can park at the Contemporary and walk over. Just tell the security guard you are taking the steam train tour and they will direct you to parking.

If you are taking a taxi...MAKE SURE you say you are going to the Contemporary... If you tell them you are going to MK they will leave you at the Transportation and Ticket Center and then you have the potential of being stranded. Remember CONTEMPORARY.

For the Wilderness Lodge I have 2 options that seem to work out good for most people. One would be taxi to Contemporary, it is not far so should be fairly cheap... OR another way that seems to work out well is to take the boat from WL to the Contemporary and then walk over from the Contemporary... But to do this and be on time you must catch the very first boat of the morning... which I believe will be at 7am (they start running it that early because of breakfast at Chef Mickey's)...