This post was written by Greg, with photos and comments by Maria.
For our 8th day of vacation, we went back to the Magic Kingdom for the second time. The first trip we mainly only visited the left side of the park: Adventureland, Frontierland, and Liberty Square. We still needed to visit Tomorrowland, Toontown and Fantasyland.
We did our usual morning routine, caught the bus, and arrived at the Ticket gate. This time we took the monorail across the lake and arrived just as they opened the gates with a welcome song. We wore our BYU "Y" shirts again today and got many people asking us what the "Y" meant throughout the day.
Colin sneaking up on Spencer while waiting for the bus
We were all whispering messages to pass to each other during the bus ride
Spencer on the monorail to Magic Kingdom
Greg and Colin on the monorail - we had it all to ourselves!
It was fun being there first thing as all the employees line the streets and wave wearing oversized Mickey gloves. Maria and kids went crazy pin trading as fast as they could while employees were easily accessible as Dad waited impatiently to actually enter the park and ride something.
The crowd waiting to enter
Everything was dressed up for Halloween. It was fun seeing all the decorations!
We headed first thing into Tomorrowland. I noted as we entered the area the great futuristic synth-style music playing in the background. I made a mental note to come home and try to find that music later. We went first to Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, a newer attraction that I'd never been on. It was another shooting gallery ride where you shoot laser-tag style guns mounted on your cart while using a joystick to turn your vehicle. It was fun, but difficult to track where you were aiming at and whether or not you were actually hitting anything since most of the targets were not interactive. Maria's gun didn't seem to work very well and there was a huge difference in our scores: 3,000 vs. 300,000 points.
The boys with the talking Buzz Lightyear on the way in to the ride
Hooray! We defeated Zurg!
I thought this was a cute kiosk. I love the little green aliens!
Next we went to Stitch's Great Escape. This was a makeover to another attraction we visited last time called "ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter." The premise was we were being briefed to work at an intergalactic prison when a high-level prisoner comes in. It turned out to be Stitch (from "Lilo and Stitch") who escaped his cell and seemingly proceeded to run around the audience in the dark while we were all under harnesses that bounced up and down and sent out scents like when Stitch burped after eating a chili dog! It was a fun little show, and I was surprised when reading up on it how many people dismiss it as awful or at least skip-able. I think it was cute enough to recommend.
The boys cooling down in a mist area
Next we tried to go to "Monster's Inc. Laugh Floor", but it was still 35 minutes to the next show so instead we headed up to Tomorrowland Speedway. It's one of those car rides where the vehicle straddles a barrier so you can't leave the road. Spencer and I rode together while Maria and Colin drove their own cars. I had to push the pedal for Spencer because it was too difficult for him to reach. We swerved wildly the whole trip around the raceway which made me glad there are still many years left before we have to worry about him driving!
Spencer at the wheel
Hey, keep your eyes on the road, Colin!
We went back to Monster Inc. Laugh Floor and had a great time there. It's a half pre-recorded, half impromptu real-time animated interactive comedy show. Now that Monsters have learned that laughter is more powerful than screams, they need to make the audience laugh to collect and power their city. It was fun as different animated monsters came out and told jokes while interacting with various people from the audience. Like the Turtle Talk with Crush show, I'm still amazed at how a cartoon can interact in real-time like that.
We couldn't take pictures inside the show, so instead here are posters from it.
After that show we went on Tomorrowland Transit Authority. It's just a simple little traveling people-mover that takes you over the top of Tomorrowland on a brief tour. As part of the tour, we went through blacked out Space Mountain that's currently being refurbished, so sadly we never got to go on that favorite ride this trip.
Colin on the Transit Authority
A view of Tomorrowland from the Transit Authority. Pretty cool!
Afterward, we went to the Astro Orbiter. This was a fairly simple hub-and-spoke-style ride like Aladdin's Carpets from earlier in the week. The only difference is this is set up high over the top of Tomorrowland which gives a great view. The problem is the only way to reach the ride was through a long line to an elevator that only a few people can ride up and down at a time. It was probably the longest line we had to wait for the entire trip. It was a cute little ride, but not worth repeating.
Greg and Spencer on Astro Orbiter.
Finally we hit the last attraction in Tomorrowland, the Carousel of Progress. It's still the same show that I remember from our honeymoon with the final scene in the carousel showing "today" with people wearing VR goggles and talking about car phones. It's all a bit silly, but still a cute show.
Another show we couldn't take pictures in, so here's the poster!
For a mere $350, we could have brought this balloon ball home with us!
With everything visited in Tomorrowland, we finally moved on and went up to visit Mickey's Toontown Fair. This section of the park has a few play areas and one ride, the "Barnstormer at Goofy's Wiseacre Farm." This is a small and very short roller coaster that is meant for smaller children. The kids thought it was fun, but they too were surprised at how quickly the ride finished.
The Toontown Fair entry sign, all decorated for Halloween
Part of the Barnstormer ride
Next door to the Barnstormer was Donald's Boat. This was a small play area with a bunch of water spouts and things to get kids wet and adults frustrated. We let the kids wander around with the promise that they wouldn't specifically try to get soaking wet.
The view of Donald's boat from the Barnstormer line
Colin and Spencer stepping on water spouts at Donald's boat
Next we went and toured Mickey & Minnie's country homes. These were two separate real live cartoon homes that you can walk through. They were both cute, but save for one or two interactive items, the homes were mainly just there to look at rather than play in. When we were done touring, we took shelter in an air conditioned shop for a bit to try and recuperate on this very hot day.
This whole house was adorable. Here the boys are looking at Mickey's bedroom.
A giant Mickey pumpkin!!
Checking out Minnie's fridge. Lots of cheese!
Colin showing off his souvenir squashed penny.
Next it was time to visit Fantasyland. Most of the rides in Fantasyland are located in the shadow of the giant castle at the center of the park.
A view of Cinderella's castle from the back of the park
While I picked up Fast Passes for the Winnie the Pooh ride, the kids played in Pooh's Playful Spot, a Pooh-themed play area. I was surprised to find when I got the Fast Passes, that we were given bonus Fast Passes at the same time for Mickey's Philharmagic. I'm not sure why, but we were happy since we'd intended on seeing that sometime that afternoon.
Pooh's tree - awwww. So cute!
Colin and Spencer discovered it was air conditioned inside the tree. Ahhh. I told them to pose like they were Pooh thinking of hunny.
By this time we were pretty hungry so we went to eat lunch at "Pinocchio's Village Haus." We all had a nice lunch and another chance to cool down again before going back out to stand in lines.
Some artwork from inside the restaurant.
When we were done with lunch, it was time to use our Fast Passes to see PhilharMagic. Interestingly enough, there didn't seem to be any line so going through the Fast Pass line met us up with the same people who entered in the regular line at the same time. Like Muppets 3D and Honey I Shrunk the Audience, this was another 3D semi-interactive film. It followed Donald, who has stolen Mickey's sorcerer hat as he chases it through many famous Disney cartoons like Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, Little Mermaid, and more. This was the first time I'd seen it and it instantly became one of my favorites of the trip. I believe everyone really enjoyed it. The 3D on this particular film actually seemed to work much better than in any of the other films we'd seen for some reason. After the show we exited into a really cool shop that actually had shirts our size and we purchased a few, while Spencer bought a Mickey Mouse baseball cap with ears.
I couldn't take a picture of the Philharmagic show, but this is a pretty good representation of it!
We still had a bit of time before the Fast Passes were ready for the Winnie the Pooh ride, so we toured the back part of the large Cinderella castle and looked at the mosaics on the walls and then visited some more shops.
Colin looking happy after some more pin trading
Spencer showing off his new Mickey hat
Spencer checking out one of the castle's mosaics
It was now time for the Winnie the Pooh ride. It was a cute tour through some of the Pooh stories. When we met Tigger, we went hopping with him as our carts hopped alongside him. It was a cute ride, but I guess the lines were long there since it was new. (It replaced Mr Toad's Wild Ride, I believe.)
After that we pretty much walked right in to the Snow White ride. It's a ride very similar to the Pooh ride where you simply tour through the story of Snow White. Again, it was a cute ride, but the line difference was very surprising.
Next we picked up fast passes to the Peter Pan ride and then crossed the street to the "Small World" building.
I love the entrance signs to these rides!!!
It's a Small World is yet another cute ride. Surprisingly the song doesn't get that annoying as you go through since it's not sung through the whole ride. A lot is instrumental. It was fun trying to figure out each country/culture being represented by the various children/animatronic dolls.
I liked this one with the funky hat. (:
We had some time before our fast passes were ready for Peter Pan, so we briefly exited Fantasyland to hit Haunted Mansion a second time. We walked right in and enjoyed my favorite ride once more. The ride shut down right as we were in the middle of the large elaborate dinner party scene with all the dancing ghosts and many, many other ghosts all over. It was actually really great to be able to sit and soak in all the things that are happening in this particular room. We sat there long enough that we even began to finally figure out how the ghost illusions were created. It doesn't spoil the magic, it just makes it more impressive how they pulled it off.
Oh no - what did they do now?
Next we went back into Fantasyland and found some ice cream to once again try to cool ourselves down from the heat.
Mmm, this ice cream sure looks good!
Finally we arrived back at Peter Pan. Fast Passes are given out with certain available times. If you arrive right when your time begins, as we did here, you end up having to get in line with all the other Fast Pass people which kind of defeats the purpose. So we ended up waiting in a large line for Fast Passes. The Peter Pan ride is another ride like the Pooh and Snow White rides; it's basically a ride through the Peter Pan movie. However, the main difference in this one is that your cart flies through the story so you get to fly over a miniature version of London as well as Neverland. That made it my favorite of those type of rides.
The entrance to the Peter Pan ride
From there we hiked back to Adventureland to visit the Enchanted Tiki Room which we missed the visit before. It wasn't an attraction anyone was particularly looking forward to; however ,I had bought a Disneyland/Disney World character figure pack which had a figure from the Tiki Room, so since we'd ridden all the other rides that had all the other characters at this point (Figment, Big Al, Hitchhiker Ghost, Pirate, etc), this was the last one to complete my collection. This also completed all the main attractions we intended to visit in the Magic Kingdom except for the train ride around the park.
The Enchanted Tiki room was a new show which featured Iago from Aladdin and Zazu from the Lion King who have taken over to try and modernize things. It wasn't particularly good, but I still really enjoyed how the whole room comes to life bit by bit through the performance with flowers, walls, statues, and birds all moving around and singing by the end. I think they should just convert the whole thing into a restaurant and make it a dinner show or something rather than a regular attraction.
The boys waiting for the Enchanted Tiki show. We were all hot and tired out by this point.
Greg chillin' on the ground. It was cooler in this area than out in the sun, but we were still anxious to get inside the air conditioned show!
When we were done at the Tiki Room, we started to exit the park. We took another snack break on Main Street on the way out and had another couple of chocolate croissants at a bakery midway down. We walked through another store and saw someone doing some glass-blowing.
Pretty nifty! Check out the glass Donald Ducks in the front of the picture.
We finally exited the park, rode the Monorail back, and then caught a bus back home. When we got home we discovered that the maid service had cleaned up our apartment. We had no idea they'd be coming in since this wasn't like a hotel where they come in every day, so we'd left things in quite a mess before we left.
After enjoying a few moments of a clean apartment, everyone changed to go out lazy rivering. After that we had a quiet PBJ dinner at home and then eventually went to bed.
A picture of some of our souvenirs displayed in front of the TV
For our 8th day of vacation, we went back to the Magic Kingdom for the second time. The first trip we mainly only visited the left side of the park: Adventureland, Frontierland, and Liberty Square. We still needed to visit Tomorrowland, Toontown and Fantasyland.
We did our usual morning routine, caught the bus, and arrived at the Ticket gate. This time we took the monorail across the lake and arrived just as they opened the gates with a welcome song. We wore our BYU "Y" shirts again today and got many people asking us what the "Y" meant throughout the day.
Colin sneaking up on Spencer while waiting for the bus
We were all whispering messages to pass to each other during the bus ride
Spencer on the monorail to Magic Kingdom
Greg and Colin on the monorail - we had it all to ourselves!
It was fun being there first thing as all the employees line the streets and wave wearing oversized Mickey gloves. Maria and kids went crazy pin trading as fast as they could while employees were easily accessible as Dad waited impatiently to actually enter the park and ride something.
The crowd waiting to enter
Everything was dressed up for Halloween. It was fun seeing all the decorations!
We headed first thing into Tomorrowland. I noted as we entered the area the great futuristic synth-style music playing in the background. I made a mental note to come home and try to find that music later. We went first to Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, a newer attraction that I'd never been on. It was another shooting gallery ride where you shoot laser-tag style guns mounted on your cart while using a joystick to turn your vehicle. It was fun, but difficult to track where you were aiming at and whether or not you were actually hitting anything since most of the targets were not interactive. Maria's gun didn't seem to work very well and there was a huge difference in our scores: 3,000 vs. 300,000 points.
The boys with the talking Buzz Lightyear on the way in to the ride
Hooray! We defeated Zurg!
I thought this was a cute kiosk. I love the little green aliens!
Next we went to Stitch's Great Escape. This was a makeover to another attraction we visited last time called "ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter." The premise was we were being briefed to work at an intergalactic prison when a high-level prisoner comes in. It turned out to be Stitch (from "Lilo and Stitch") who escaped his cell and seemingly proceeded to run around the audience in the dark while we were all under harnesses that bounced up and down and sent out scents like when Stitch burped after eating a chili dog! It was a fun little show, and I was surprised when reading up on it how many people dismiss it as awful or at least skip-able. I think it was cute enough to recommend.
The boys cooling down in a mist area
Next we tried to go to "Monster's Inc. Laugh Floor", but it was still 35 minutes to the next show so instead we headed up to Tomorrowland Speedway. It's one of those car rides where the vehicle straddles a barrier so you can't leave the road. Spencer and I rode together while Maria and Colin drove their own cars. I had to push the pedal for Spencer because it was too difficult for him to reach. We swerved wildly the whole trip around the raceway which made me glad there are still many years left before we have to worry about him driving!
Spencer at the wheel
Hey, keep your eyes on the road, Colin!
We went back to Monster Inc. Laugh Floor and had a great time there. It's a half pre-recorded, half impromptu real-time animated interactive comedy show. Now that Monsters have learned that laughter is more powerful than screams, they need to make the audience laugh to collect and power their city. It was fun as different animated monsters came out and told jokes while interacting with various people from the audience. Like the Turtle Talk with Crush show, I'm still amazed at how a cartoon can interact in real-time like that.
We couldn't take pictures inside the show, so instead here are posters from it.
After that show we went on Tomorrowland Transit Authority. It's just a simple little traveling people-mover that takes you over the top of Tomorrowland on a brief tour. As part of the tour, we went through blacked out Space Mountain that's currently being refurbished, so sadly we never got to go on that favorite ride this trip.
Colin on the Transit Authority
A view of Tomorrowland from the Transit Authority. Pretty cool!
Afterward, we went to the Astro Orbiter. This was a fairly simple hub-and-spoke-style ride like Aladdin's Carpets from earlier in the week. The only difference is this is set up high over the top of Tomorrowland which gives a great view. The problem is the only way to reach the ride was through a long line to an elevator that only a few people can ride up and down at a time. It was probably the longest line we had to wait for the entire trip. It was a cute little ride, but not worth repeating.
Greg and Spencer on Astro Orbiter.
Finally we hit the last attraction in Tomorrowland, the Carousel of Progress. It's still the same show that I remember from our honeymoon with the final scene in the carousel showing "today" with people wearing VR goggles and talking about car phones. It's all a bit silly, but still a cute show.
Another show we couldn't take pictures in, so here's the poster!
For a mere $350, we could have brought this balloon ball home with us!
With everything visited in Tomorrowland, we finally moved on and went up to visit Mickey's Toontown Fair. This section of the park has a few play areas and one ride, the "Barnstormer at Goofy's Wiseacre Farm." This is a small and very short roller coaster that is meant for smaller children. The kids thought it was fun, but they too were surprised at how quickly the ride finished.
The Toontown Fair entry sign, all decorated for Halloween
Part of the Barnstormer ride
Next door to the Barnstormer was Donald's Boat. This was a small play area with a bunch of water spouts and things to get kids wet and adults frustrated. We let the kids wander around with the promise that they wouldn't specifically try to get soaking wet.
The view of Donald's boat from the Barnstormer line
Colin and Spencer stepping on water spouts at Donald's boat
Next we went and toured Mickey & Minnie's country homes. These were two separate real live cartoon homes that you can walk through. They were both cute, but save for one or two interactive items, the homes were mainly just there to look at rather than play in. When we were done touring, we took shelter in an air conditioned shop for a bit to try and recuperate on this very hot day.
This whole house was adorable. Here the boys are looking at Mickey's bedroom.
A giant Mickey pumpkin!!
Checking out Minnie's fridge. Lots of cheese!
Colin showing off his souvenir squashed penny.
Next it was time to visit Fantasyland. Most of the rides in Fantasyland are located in the shadow of the giant castle at the center of the park.
A view of Cinderella's castle from the back of the park
While I picked up Fast Passes for the Winnie the Pooh ride, the kids played in Pooh's Playful Spot, a Pooh-themed play area. I was surprised to find when I got the Fast Passes, that we were given bonus Fast Passes at the same time for Mickey's Philharmagic. I'm not sure why, but we were happy since we'd intended on seeing that sometime that afternoon.
Pooh's tree - awwww. So cute!
Colin and Spencer discovered it was air conditioned inside the tree. Ahhh. I told them to pose like they were Pooh thinking of hunny.
By this time we were pretty hungry so we went to eat lunch at "Pinocchio's Village Haus." We all had a nice lunch and another chance to cool down again before going back out to stand in lines.
Some artwork from inside the restaurant.
When we were done with lunch, it was time to use our Fast Passes to see PhilharMagic. Interestingly enough, there didn't seem to be any line so going through the Fast Pass line met us up with the same people who entered in the regular line at the same time. Like Muppets 3D and Honey I Shrunk the Audience, this was another 3D semi-interactive film. It followed Donald, who has stolen Mickey's sorcerer hat as he chases it through many famous Disney cartoons like Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, Little Mermaid, and more. This was the first time I'd seen it and it instantly became one of my favorites of the trip. I believe everyone really enjoyed it. The 3D on this particular film actually seemed to work much better than in any of the other films we'd seen for some reason. After the show we exited into a really cool shop that actually had shirts our size and we purchased a few, while Spencer bought a Mickey Mouse baseball cap with ears.
I couldn't take a picture of the Philharmagic show, but this is a pretty good representation of it!
We still had a bit of time before the Fast Passes were ready for the Winnie the Pooh ride, so we toured the back part of the large Cinderella castle and looked at the mosaics on the walls and then visited some more shops.
Colin looking happy after some more pin trading
Spencer showing off his new Mickey hat
Spencer checking out one of the castle's mosaics
It was now time for the Winnie the Pooh ride. It was a cute tour through some of the Pooh stories. When we met Tigger, we went hopping with him as our carts hopped alongside him. It was a cute ride, but I guess the lines were long there since it was new. (It replaced Mr Toad's Wild Ride, I believe.)
After that we pretty much walked right in to the Snow White ride. It's a ride very similar to the Pooh ride where you simply tour through the story of Snow White. Again, it was a cute ride, but the line difference was very surprising.
Next we picked up fast passes to the Peter Pan ride and then crossed the street to the "Small World" building.
I love the entrance signs to these rides!!!
It's a Small World is yet another cute ride. Surprisingly the song doesn't get that annoying as you go through since it's not sung through the whole ride. A lot is instrumental. It was fun trying to figure out each country/culture being represented by the various children/animatronic dolls.
I liked this one with the funky hat. (:
We had some time before our fast passes were ready for Peter Pan, so we briefly exited Fantasyland to hit Haunted Mansion a second time. We walked right in and enjoyed my favorite ride once more. The ride shut down right as we were in the middle of the large elaborate dinner party scene with all the dancing ghosts and many, many other ghosts all over. It was actually really great to be able to sit and soak in all the things that are happening in this particular room. We sat there long enough that we even began to finally figure out how the ghost illusions were created. It doesn't spoil the magic, it just makes it more impressive how they pulled it off.
Oh no - what did they do now?
Next we went back into Fantasyland and found some ice cream to once again try to cool ourselves down from the heat.
Mmm, this ice cream sure looks good!
Finally we arrived back at Peter Pan. Fast Passes are given out with certain available times. If you arrive right when your time begins, as we did here, you end up having to get in line with all the other Fast Pass people which kind of defeats the purpose. So we ended up waiting in a large line for Fast Passes. The Peter Pan ride is another ride like the Pooh and Snow White rides; it's basically a ride through the Peter Pan movie. However, the main difference in this one is that your cart flies through the story so you get to fly over a miniature version of London as well as Neverland. That made it my favorite of those type of rides.
The entrance to the Peter Pan ride
From there we hiked back to Adventureland to visit the Enchanted Tiki Room which we missed the visit before. It wasn't an attraction anyone was particularly looking forward to; however ,I had bought a Disneyland/Disney World character figure pack which had a figure from the Tiki Room, so since we'd ridden all the other rides that had all the other characters at this point (Figment, Big Al, Hitchhiker Ghost, Pirate, etc), this was the last one to complete my collection. This also completed all the main attractions we intended to visit in the Magic Kingdom except for the train ride around the park.
The Enchanted Tiki room was a new show which featured Iago from Aladdin and Zazu from the Lion King who have taken over to try and modernize things. It wasn't particularly good, but I still really enjoyed how the whole room comes to life bit by bit through the performance with flowers, walls, statues, and birds all moving around and singing by the end. I think they should just convert the whole thing into a restaurant and make it a dinner show or something rather than a regular attraction.
The boys waiting for the Enchanted Tiki show. We were all hot and tired out by this point.
Greg chillin' on the ground. It was cooler in this area than out in the sun, but we were still anxious to get inside the air conditioned show!
When we were done at the Tiki Room, we started to exit the park. We took another snack break on Main Street on the way out and had another couple of chocolate croissants at a bakery midway down. We walked through another store and saw someone doing some glass-blowing.
Pretty nifty! Check out the glass Donald Ducks in the front of the picture.
We finally exited the park, rode the Monorail back, and then caught a bus back home. When we got home we discovered that the maid service had cleaned up our apartment. We had no idea they'd be coming in since this wasn't like a hotel where they come in every day, so we'd left things in quite a mess before we left.
After enjoying a few moments of a clean apartment, everyone changed to go out lazy rivering. After that we had a quiet PBJ dinner at home and then eventually went to bed.
A picture of some of our souvenirs displayed in front of the TV
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