TR: WDW Magic Kingdom (5/7/2011)

It’s Mother’s Day Weekend. It’s Saturday. It’s the Magic Kingdom. Have we lost our minds? Why drag my mom through the misery of the Busiest, Happiest Place On Earth? Well, we had faith in the popularly published touring plans for the park and knew that Extra Magic Hours were happening elsewhere at Walt Disney World. Oh, and the opening time of 8AM, done to accommodate the last ever Grad Night might help too. With the alarm clock sounding early in the morning, we packed our things up and headed for the park. We stopped by the breakfast area of our hotel, grabbed a couple bagels, and we were gonna have to be good for awhile off that. Arriving at the TTC, we found the monorail was being reserved until 7:45AM for resort guests and that we’d have to wait until then to get on board. Even with that slight delay in getting to the park’s gate, we arrived just as the gates were opened and walked right in. We immediately turned right to Tomorrowland and were greeted with a closed Space Mountain (that spit out fastpasses) and a closed Buzz Lightyear – we got fastpasses and headed for Fantasyland.

At Fantasyland, it was a storm of dark rides; Pooh, Snow White, Small World, and Peter Pan fell fast. It was interesting to hear as the day went on from guests who were hearing that Snow White would soon be closing permanently – lots of sad sounding people bummed that it was being removed as part of expansion when on the surface it doesn’t even seem to need removal. I guess on the upside, I’m going to get a new credit, so why bitch too much? Its not as if there isn’t one in California and in Paris.

TR: Disney’s Animal Kingdom (5/6/2011)

Over the years, regulars to rec.roller-coaster know that my mom took me to a long laundry list of various places. Now that I’m an adult and doing well for myself, I figure that its time to start returning the favor. For my mom’s Mother’s Day gift, my wife and I flew her down to meet us for a long weekend at Walt Disney World; seemed like a better way to spend time than having her fly to East Lansing in the midst of finals week and the students leaving.

Navigating our way out of Orlando was no difficult task. Sure, you have the merge from hell with the rental cars coming out of the garage and no one having any idea what they are doing there, but once you get past that, its a faily smooth ride to Disney World. We arrived at Animal Kingdom couple hours after opening and found the park not too full, but certainly not dead either. A light rain seemed to be keeping Everest down (it may have been mechanical; not sure) and people away from rides, even those inside buildings like Dinosaur. That became our first stop; my mom seemed to enjoy it and my wife and I still can’t figure out how the layout is a copy of Indiana Jones. I do wish they’d get rid of that stupid looking pterodactyl that the vehicle dashes underneath. Just kills the whole illusion to have something that dumb looking.

TR: Paris – Disney Studios Paris (November 2009)

I lied. The next part ended up being longer, I think. Well, this will be short. It has to be. I’ve been to the Studios before, after all. It was, for some time, at the bottom of my list of parks in the world, alongside the unspeakably awful Six Flags Elitch Gardens. Things have changed though for the best. More rides have entered the picture, and more are on the way in the form of a new Toy Story miniland that was under construction while we were there.

Still opening the park is Studio 1, an immense structure housing lots of counter service food, tables to eat at, and some shopping. It was decorated for Christmas and looked good. It might be my favorite part of the original park, aside from original attraction Cinemagique.

TR: Disneyland Paris (November 2009)

For the next part of the TR, Disneyland Paris. Our goal for this trip with the Disney parks was to remember them. I mean, really remember them. Burn them into our minds so that we don’t forget and don’t ever have to do 4 days at them again. We both did day trips to them in our previous shots over: My wife went with her mother and late father in 2003 during the winter and never went to the Studios. I went in 2002 after the ECO trip with Derek Shaw and Marlon Scott, and while I did both parks, I only concentrated on the big dark rides and the coasters. I need not tell you then that we missed a lot.

The park is right in the middle of the Disney sizes compared to the US: Its bigger than Magic Kingdom or DCA, its smaller than Epcot. One thing that instantly distinguishes the entire Disney facility from the others world wide: the coasters here have inversions. Two of the three at Disneyland Paris do, as does a third at the Studios. Only one coaster at WDW inverts. That isn’t necessarily a good thing, however. Inversions mean big restraints. Big restraints sometimes mean discomfort.

TR: Paris – Intro + Basic Info (Pt. 1)

3 weeks after Cedar Point closing day came our actual close to the season. Planned back in March during a very dark period of the year around the death of Meredith’s father from cancer, the year’s finale was fervently prepared for with language CDs and video games and books right up to the point where we booked our trip to Scandinavia. At that point, we basically forgot about the France trip, did little planning, stopped doing our vocab, and focused on the immediate. That continued right up to the last week or so of the trip. Its tough to imagine that one could forget about a trip to France; we did.

TR: Honeymoon At Walt Disney World (4/26-5/3/2009)

Yes, really. Honeymoon. I’m married now. Go figure. We like our Disney and we wanted to take it in a relaxing fashion, so we picked a full week of the ‘ol Disney magic so that we could do everything we wanted to over and over and over if we wanted along with all the things we’ve skipped repeatedly over the last few years. And it was great! But we were left with a thought that I’ll bring up in the conclusion of the TR.

Because we’re talking about 4 amusement parks, 2 water parks, and that, uhh, arcade, its difficult for me to do this in the sort of linear fashion I am used to since I like to review *everything*. For that reason, I’m going to skip the usual reviews of all the stuff I’ve reviewed before and instead concentrate on things that were new/almost new for us, as well as things that we have significantly changes in our perception thereof park-by-park. But first: The resort and the honeymoon experience!

TR: Disney/KBF & Arce/Darchinyan (2/7-10/2009)

A couple weeks ago happened and wifey and I had decided to make a run to the West Coast to get away from lousy weather here in the midwest. Naturally, it followed us west while Michigan warmed up and melted down, but hey, you can’t win every battle, right? The boxing section gets the usual separation by “######” symbols too.

PARKS:

-DISNEYLAND-

Last time I was here, I think I forgot to write a TR. Which is fine, I suppose, because there’s not much I can add to what’s already been written about the park and its attractions. Here’s what I can add right now:

TR: Walt Disney World (2/24-2/27/07) Part 4 of 4

Day 4: MGM/Downtown Disney/Magic Kingdom/THE BIG MEAL

Ah, you’ve gotten this far, huh? Well, here it is. Last real day of the trip. Again, woke up, went to parks. The trick here was rotating back into my original pair of shoes. I had two pairs with me, and switched between them as necessary. I found that stopped a lot of the incredible discomfort my feet had. Today was a total mopup operation.

TR: Walt Disney World (2/24-2/27/07) Part 3 of 4

Day 3: EPCOT Center

Prior to this trip, EPCOT had always been my favorite of the WDW parks. It’s different now, with MK leading the pack. However, that’s not to say I had a miserable time here. Far from it. The biggest issue by far, though, was the fact that my girlfriend and I were absolutely exhausted from days one and two, and we were greeted, unfortunately, by the only real lines we would encounter on this trip. Arriving shortly after park opening, we found that Soarin’ had an epic 75 minute line, while everything else was virtually a walkon. No biggie, that’s why there’s Fastpass. Well, at least in theory there is. The machines were down all day, and that totally screwed us up. We’d visit 3 times that morning before giving up and waiting until Illuminations to get in our rides.

TR: Walt Disney World (2/24-2/27/07) (Part 2 of 4)

Day 2: Animal Kingdom/Magic Kingdom

The true mark of theme park mastery is to go when a park is crowded (like during the weekend), packed with humanity, and wildly popular, and then knock out everything you want to do in short order. And then repeat the process at another park. Oh, and make the parks among the 10 most visited in the world annually. That’s what happened here. Just to note: Our breakfast consisted of beginets from the food court, and they were delicious. Excellent use of a snack credit, even more so than the box of Entemanns donuts.