Magic Kingdom- Sunday, August 24, 2014

We've had some high spots on every day during this trip, but it's probably safe to say that today was the best day of the vacation.  It was full of favorites, one after another.  It was a magical Disney day. 

It's late tonight though, and we're all exhausted.  We'll probably catch up with the details on the blog another time.

Until then, here's some pictures.

We've been using the new "Magic Bands" since our arrival at Disney.  We wear them on our wrists, and we each have a different color.  They are our room keys for the hotel, our admission tickets to the park, and our FastPasses to 3 attractions per day, to start with, and they keep track of our meal plans.   They can be used to charge things too, but we're avoiding doing that.  They arrrived in the mail about two weeks ago.   Julie had hers on when we arrived at the Animal Kingdom parking lot two days ago, and when they scanned it to see we were staying on property, we didn't have to pay for parking.  They work pretty well for us, but Scott keeps thinking he's wearing a watch and looking to see what time it is.

We took the ferry to the Magic Kingdom this morning, and started in Adventureland.  There seemed to be a lot of people at the park today, but so many of the attractions that we went on had little to no wait or very small audiences.  For example, we started this morning at the Jungle Cruise, and there was no wait at all.  We simply walked right up to the boat.  We've never seen that happen before.  After that, we went to the Enchanted Tiki Room and it was mostly empty (which meant fewer people were there to hear Julie singing the words and talking along with the birds).  Pirates of the Carribean was next, with virtually no wait at all.  It was getting close to 11:00 and we thought it was best to have an early lunch at the Pecos Bill Cafe.  Then we went to the Country Bear Jamboree where the hall was only about half full.   We had already seen quite a few of our favorite, and the day was just getting started.

When they have "updated" attractions at Epcot, they seem to water them down and take out the good parts (for example, adding the "Three Caballeros" to the Mexico ride, or taking Stan Rogers out of the Canada movie).  We've noticed several ways that the classic attractions have been changed at the Magic Kingdom, but in general, we like the improvements.   The Country Bear Jamboree seems to have been edited and shortened.   Julie and Scott noticed several places where a line or two had been edited out.  The song, "Devilish Mary" was gone.  Fortunately, though, its still basically the classic show, with the original voices and most of the original songs, because we've seen that go horribly wrong with their "holiday" version a few years ago.  A few of the bears had new skins, most noticably Gomer, the piano player, who is now a darker color and has a soul patch.

We then made our way to one of the big reasons that we came to Florida.  In addition to the new harry Potter section at Universal, Julie and the girls wanted to see New Fantasyland.  They were working on it when we were here before in 2011, and we had seen models of what was planned then, but they were excited to see what it had become.  One of the first changes that you see as you rcross through Liberty Square is the Rapunzel's tower from Tangled.  (Julie noted it was using what was left of the old Skyway ride.)  The Beast's Castle stands high on a hill, above the "Be Our Guest" restaurant with character dinning.   However, we had FastPasses for "Under the Sea: Journey of the Little Mermaid."   We loved it.  It was starting to seem like this kind of a ride wasn't being built anymore, replacing this family oriented story rides with headline catching thrill rides.  It was great to see  this one done in the style that Disney parks were always known for.  You ride a shell through several scenes from the movie, acted out by animatronic figures and filled with the music from the movie.  We hope they continue to make rides like this one.  As for the rest of New Fantasyland, we didn't see as much.  We didn't find time for the Seven Dwarfs' Mine Ride.  We noted that Dumbo and a few other rides have been pushed to a new section, but we chose to go to other parts of the park instead.  Before we left, Anna took time to Facetime Grandma Wright to show her what she could through the phone.

We went to It's a Small World, where they've added a clock to the entryway which mimics the one outside of the same attraction in Disneyland.  Then we took Emma on her first trip through the Haunted Mansion, which had many improvements too.  Most of the classic ride is still there, but there are several scees that have been improved.  Most noticably, the three hitchhiking ghosts are much more active and mischievous.    Instead of just riding quietly between you in the car, they ride on top or whereever they feel like.   They'll even pull the heads off of the people that give them a ride.   Anastasia and Emma both found their names on tombs as we exited.  (Emma's said "I. Emma Spook.")

We had FastPasses for the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.  You can now sign up online for three FastPasses like these before you even leave home.  Today, we had forgotten to bring the list of the times we had signed up for.  We were able to get the list and even move the times up to earlier spots with the help of Disney cast members.

We went for a leisurely ride around Tomorrowland on the Peoplemover and then had time for both the classic Carousel of Progress and the newer Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin.  The girls then went to Stitch's Great Escape, and Scott passed the time by riding the Peoplemover again.  We then watched Mike Wazoski ("with one 'I'") at the Monster's Inc. Laugh Floor.  That's a fun newer one too.

When we left Monster's Inc., one of the tremendous downpours of Florida's summers was hitting.  It had been sunny when we went in, and the storm would soon pass, but it was raining hard for a few minutes.  We thought we'd be clever by sneaking through the rain to get early dinner at the Tomorrowland Terrace around the corner.  There were lots of places to sit, but they aren't serving food there now.  We had to continue through the rain across Main Street to Casey's, got some hotdogs there, and brought them back to the Tomorrowland Terrace where we could sit and dry off.  The girls' cousin Grace had been trying to reach Anna, so they took time to Facetime with her for a moment.

After dinner, we went to the Hall of Presidents.  This one gets updated regularly, of course.  Since we were still wet from the rain, Scott agreed to go on Splash Moutain then with the rest of the family.  We had a FastPass for Peter Pan's Flight, and then saw Donald Duck in the 3D movie, PhilharMagic, which features a ot of classic Disney music.  The three girls rode Space Mountain then (and Scott rode the Peoplemover one more time while he waited).  They then had FastPasses for Thunder Mountain as well, so we went all the way across the park to that.   We looked at the Mine Ride in New Fantasyland as we passed it, but the wait was well over an hour, and the girls decided to use their Thunder Mountain FastPasses instead.

The Disney Electrical Parade was then just about ready to pass through Frontierland, and since that's one of the few parades that Julie likes we staked out a place to watch it.  After the parade, we followed the crowd to Main Street.  There's an innovative show that the project onto Cinderella's Castle itself, which shows scenes of many Disney characters and songs.  "Let It Go" from Frozen was one of the most prominently featured ones.  It was a very creative presentation, and even though we didn't see all of it, we really enjoyed what we saw.  They did it once before the fireworks (which we viewed from the circle in front of the castle) and once again shortly after them.  By then we were following the crowd through Main Street, to the ferry, and out to the parking tram.  We were dragging a little bit, sure, but we were thoroughly happy with what we'd seen today.  It was a great day at Diz and the favorite day of the trip for all of us.