Undiscovered Future World -or- Keys To The Kingdom

when did they make the utilidors off limits? We went through them on our Keys to the Kingdom tour in October.

The KtoK tour was really interesting. Got a lot of the history of the park and disney parks and rides in general... like the history of audioanimatronics.

Never been on the Future World tour, maybe for my next trip

Originally posted by Moustronaut
when did they make the utilidors off limits? We went through them on our Keys to the Kingdom tour in October.

Click to expand...

My dad was going to book the tour in February, and the guy on the phone told him that since 9/11, you only got to like, look into the utilidor, not really walk through it or anything. But if you went in them in October, that can't be right. Maybe the guy on the phone had the wrong information, who knows.

yea not to be a spoiler or anything... but we went in them on one side of mainstreet USA... went under the street, then came out the other side in a cast parking lot. spent a while in them talking about the flow of people and material and then some of the park rumors. and this was October of 2002.

one thing I will say about any of the tours... from our experience it looks like the tours vary widely from guide to guide, even group to group. So you don't always get the same stories or take even quite the same path from tour to tour.

Keys or Undiscovered

I've done both and I think that the Keys to the Kingdom is the better of the two tours...even without the utilidors. It was really fun to do the utilidors but honestly it wasn't that big a part of the tour. It lasted 4 hours or so and I only remember spending about 20 minutes in the utilidors. There is so much more to learn about the Magic Kingdom and it's all research and details that Walt Disney actually did himself. The Epcot tour was a lot of corporate lounges which I couldn't care less about and kind of obvious information given. The best parts of that tour were walking through the dinosaurs at the Universe of Energy and the backstage part.

I will echo both Elaine and Mousetranaut. I took the Key to the Kingdom tour on April 19 (roughly two weeks ago). My dad came with me and said that it was very different from the tour he took last year (with my brother-in-law). So I believe that the tours vary a great deal, depending on your guide. For example, we heard almost nothing about the history of the animatronics. Also, on my dad's last tour, they rode PotC, while this time we rode on the Jungle Cruise.

Also, we did see the utilidors, but spent only about 20 minutes or so in them. We did see a paramedic team "racing" through the utilidor on their golf cart, so there was some excitement.

There were lots of great things on the tour. I enjoyed learning the significance of the upstairs windows on Main Street, USA. I also heard Mickey taking his piano lessons, which I'd never noticed before. That was cool.

Chuck

I've posted previously on the Keys to the Kingdom and I definitely do not recommend it. The utilidors section of the tour were in fact scaled back following 9/11 per our tour guide. We spent maybe 30 mins. down there mainly standing in a hallway. Our tour guide pointed out the trash chutes, the payroll office and the cast member lounge. Whopee doo. Was such a disappointment. Instead of visiting the areas that were formerly part of the tour, we were taken to a room, actually a hallway, above one of the main street shops, where we were shown a display discussing makeup, costumes, etc. It was incredibly dull and took over 1/2 hour. The first part of the tour was somewhat interesting i have to admit, but I knew all the information previously. We were taken down Mainstreet, we rode Jungle Cruise and Pirates, and were then taken backstage to see the parade floats. This all happenned duirng the first two hours or so and were the highlights of the entire tour. Oh I forgot, she also explained a bit about the haunted mansion but we were unable to ride it as it was down that day. Unfortunately so much of the tour has nothing to do with the rides and stuff, but with disney castmember philosophy. At one point we were explained how disney sets up displays in their stores, it was such a waste of time. Frankly I don't see how a disney fan would find it interesting as they know most of this stuff and a regular visitor would be bored by the detail. There are some prior posts you should check out on this subject as opinions vary widely.