Saturday, Aug. 14
Incredibly, Magic Kingdom opened again the next morning after Hurricane Charley. I don't know how The Mouse done it, but I would guess that they must have had crews start working on clearing trees and fixing stuff at within an hour or two of the center of the hurricane passing through at 9 pm on the 13th. Does anyone know about this? Does Disney have some kind of iron-clad contracts with its employees or with landscaping and utility companies that they will be onsite and in fixer-upper mode as soon as it is safely possible, come hell or high water? The local stations were announcing to Disney employees this morning that they should report to their regular shifts as scheduled, unless they had an emergency at home.
We got to the MK gates at about 9:30 am, after passing many, many downed trees and signs along Sand Lake Rd, I-4 and the WDW highways. But nothing was blocking the road, not even the oak tree that had blown down across Canada Ave. the day before.
The first thing we noticed was that FastPass wasn't working - all the machines had cloth covers over them. One cast member speculated that the computers had been zapped by the storm, but later in the day we overheard a guest waiting in line tell his friend that "they would need more employees to run FastPass", so perhaps a shortage of staff plus lighter-than usual crowds made them decide to give FP a break. As it turned out, we didn't need it. From about 10am to 11pm, we got to ride Space Mountain at least 6 times (average wait about 10 minutes), Splash Mountain 3 times (avg. 20 minutes) and BTMRR at least 4 times. Our longest wait was for Peter Pan, about 35 minutes. We got a good long rain in the afternoon which probably also helped keep the crowds away.
Whereas for our first family visit last year the kids were mostly pumped up about meeting characters (especially princesses), this year the fam-damily was really mostly interested in raw thrills, so we criss-crossed the park many times getting our fix. The kids were just fine scooting around the 9pm parade in order to get in a couple more rides on Space Mountain!
I didn't see storm damage anywhere in the park, except for a single tree near a little-used pathway to the northeast of Cinderella's castle, that was tilted over by about 30 degrees. Bravo you unsung Disney employees and/or contractors ... no one saw you busting your a$$*$ all night to get the park back in shape, but I really, really, really appreciate what you did!
A couple of mini-reviews:
Space Mountain is a great little coaster. To me, the left coaster seems smoother with a more exciting set of three dips near the end of the ride. I noticed that when you go in after dark, your eyes adapt to the gloom a lot better and you can see more of the superstructure, both from the interior queuing room and from the coaster itself. This was a subject of discussion on the boards a few weeks ago, and I would like to add my 2 cents: although your pupils instantly dilate when you enter a dark room, it actually takes several hours for your eyes to fully adapt to the dark and reach their maximum sensitivity. As I understand it, there is a chemical process that takes place in your retina and it is not just a matter of the iris muscles fully relaxing. But back to Space Mountain - the long, dark and up-and-down queue and the long moving sidewalk exit ramp strike me as being very quirky and charming compared to more modern rides. Those video pre-shows at Test Track, Rock'n'Roller etc. get very stale by the second time you see them, but I never get tired of seeing the alien dinosaur eggs, the goofy little space dog, and the funny way those digital "beams" (fishing line?) being sent back to Earth bounce up and down the way they are not supposed to. For astronomy geeks: am I mistaken or is the Omega Nebula mislabeled as the North American Nebula in one of the photos on your left as you queue for the ride?
Splash Mountain: It's great that such a little-known movie has spawned such a fantastic ride. I find the southern-style "forest" garden in the queuing area is extremely well done, even though most of the people in it look unhappy as they see how many times they will have to zig and zag before they finally get their turn in a log. The more I try to design and build gardens and raise houseplants at home, the more I appreciate what Disney gardeners and landscapers do.
Peter Pan: the 3D aspect of this ride, as you look all around at the little cars zipping around London (how do they do that?), fly past Big Ben and around the sails of Cap'n Hook's ship, seems to be the main reason why this ride is so charming and why its competitors (Pooh, Snow White, the late Mr Toad, and even Haunted Mansion) are - to me - so forgettable.
Astro Orbiter: thank you to whoever it was a few weeks ago who gave the opinion that "after dark" is the time to take this ride. I took the advice. Although there were no stars out, I thought it was very cool riding it late in the evening. We *just*missed* getting to ride it *during* the fireworks, which I think would have been positively orgasmic. The cast members on this ride were pretty relaxed and fairly unconcerned whether or not anyone figured out those goofy canvas "seatbelts" before the ride started. But what the hey, it was very late and my kids weren't going to climb out of a rocket ship that is 100 feet above the ground. One of the CMs did become a bit concerned when a lady, who was busy yacking it up on her cell phone, left one of her small kids alone in the queue while she took the other kid to the bathroom: "you sure your Mom's coming back soon?" This was after 10 at night.
POTC: There is so much to see in this ride, you simply have to ride it again and again to see and remember everything. Rather like Splash Mountain. The ride is so dark, but I can't help getting out my camera and as a geek photo challenge, try to take pictures of the inside *without* a flash. I have a digital camera with lots of manual controls on it, so I set it up with flash off, ISO setting cranked up to 400, and sit there in the boat trying to hold the camera steady enough to capture a few scenes using only the available light. The results are poor to so-so, but I have fun anyways.
Carousel of Progress: As charming as advertised, but the last scene falls flat. There were no yucks at all as Granny shoots down the aliens and Dad burns the turkey. Again - darn it Dad! I s'pose it'll be a long time before The Mouse is flush enough to spend some moolah tweaking up this relatively obscure attraction, but I think it could be vastly improved with maybe a hundred thou for an ABC sitcom writer to write a few pages, and a million or so for the Audioanimatronic imaginerds to goose up the scene, if not the whole show. What if a Walt droid became the main character - would that be too creepy for you all? I think it could be fun, and after all this was Walt's ride, right?
Park ambiance: the park lighting is remarkably low-key, some might say downright gloomy. Some night when you're queuing up on the side of BTMRR entering the mine building, turn around and look down at the crowds milling around in the darkness of Frontierland. To me, this is about as dark as towns looked back in my childhood in the 1960s, when streetlights were all old-fashioned incandescent lightbulbs - before the days of mercury-vapor and sodium fluorescent night-blasters. I don't mind it at all, in fact I really like the atmosphere, but tell me this, are other theme parks this dark? Too bad the sky wasn't clear enough, a starry sky over the MK must be awesome.
Columbia House: relatively empty at suppertime - what a great place to relax for an hour or so and rest our feet. I liked the scrimshaw in the back room where we ate. Could use a little bit more nautical decoration to complete the theme but perhaps a slightly stripped down and lean decor is a wee bit more practical in a restaurant intended to handle (I suppose) a couple thousand or more people per hour at peak times.
Thumbs down: Small World, Timekeeper and Tom Sawyer's island were all closed. In three trips to WDW over 10 years, I have never seen these three attractions. Boo!
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Incredibly, Magic Kingdom opened again the next morning after Hurricane Charley. I don't know how The Mouse done it, but I would guess that they must have had crews start working on clearing trees and fixing stuff at within an hour or two of the center of the hurricane passing through at 9 pm on the 13th. Does anyone know about this? Does Disney have some kind of iron-clad contracts with its employees or with landscaping and utility companies that they will be onsite and in fixer-upper mode as soon as it is safely possible, come hell or high water? The local stations were announcing to Disney employees this morning that they should report to their regular shifts as scheduled, unless they had an emergency at home.
We got to the MK gates at about 9:30 am, after passing many, many downed trees and signs along Sand Lake Rd, I-4 and the WDW highways. But nothing was blocking the road, not even the oak tree that had blown down across Canada Ave. the day before.
The first thing we noticed was that FastPass wasn't working - all the machines had cloth covers over them. One cast member speculated that the computers had been zapped by the storm, but later in the day we overheard a guest waiting in line tell his friend that "they would need more employees to run FastPass", so perhaps a shortage of staff plus lighter-than usual crowds made them decide to give FP a break. As it turned out, we didn't need it. From about 10am to 11pm, we got to ride Space Mountain at least 6 times (average wait about 10 minutes), Splash Mountain 3 times (avg. 20 minutes) and BTMRR at least 4 times. Our longest wait was for Peter Pan, about 35 minutes. We got a good long rain in the afternoon which probably also helped keep the crowds away.
Whereas for our first family visit last year the kids were mostly pumped up about meeting characters (especially princesses), this year the fam-damily was really mostly interested in raw thrills, so we criss-crossed the park many times getting our fix. The kids were just fine scooting around the 9pm parade in order to get in a couple more rides on Space Mountain!
I didn't see storm damage anywhere in the park, except for a single tree near a little-used pathway to the northeast of Cinderella's castle, that was tilted over by about 30 degrees. Bravo you unsung Disney employees and/or contractors ... no one saw you busting your a$$*$ all night to get the park back in shape, but I really, really, really appreciate what you did!
A couple of mini-reviews:
Space Mountain is a great little coaster. To me, the left coaster seems smoother with a more exciting set of three dips near the end of the ride. I noticed that when you go in after dark, your eyes adapt to the gloom a lot better and you can see more of the superstructure, both from the interior queuing room and from the coaster itself. This was a subject of discussion on the boards a few weeks ago, and I would like to add my 2 cents: although your pupils instantly dilate when you enter a dark room, it actually takes several hours for your eyes to fully adapt to the dark and reach their maximum sensitivity. As I understand it, there is a chemical process that takes place in your retina and it is not just a matter of the iris muscles fully relaxing. But back to Space Mountain - the long, dark and up-and-down queue and the long moving sidewalk exit ramp strike me as being very quirky and charming compared to more modern rides. Those video pre-shows at Test Track, Rock'n'Roller etc. get very stale by the second time you see them, but I never get tired of seeing the alien dinosaur eggs, the goofy little space dog, and the funny way those digital "beams" (fishing line?) being sent back to Earth bounce up and down the way they are not supposed to. For astronomy geeks: am I mistaken or is the Omega Nebula mislabeled as the North American Nebula in one of the photos on your left as you queue for the ride?
Splash Mountain: It's great that such a little-known movie has spawned such a fantastic ride. I find the southern-style "forest" garden in the queuing area is extremely well done, even though most of the people in it look unhappy as they see how many times they will have to zig and zag before they finally get their turn in a log. The more I try to design and build gardens and raise houseplants at home, the more I appreciate what Disney gardeners and landscapers do.
Peter Pan: the 3D aspect of this ride, as you look all around at the little cars zipping around London (how do they do that?), fly past Big Ben and around the sails of Cap'n Hook's ship, seems to be the main reason why this ride is so charming and why its competitors (Pooh, Snow White, the late Mr Toad, and even Haunted Mansion) are - to me - so forgettable.
Astro Orbiter: thank you to whoever it was a few weeks ago who gave the opinion that "after dark" is the time to take this ride. I took the advice. Although there were no stars out, I thought it was very cool riding it late in the evening. We *just*missed* getting to ride it *during* the fireworks, which I think would have been positively orgasmic. The cast members on this ride were pretty relaxed and fairly unconcerned whether or not anyone figured out those goofy canvas "seatbelts" before the ride started. But what the hey, it was very late and my kids weren't going to climb out of a rocket ship that is 100 feet above the ground. One of the CMs did become a bit concerned when a lady, who was busy yacking it up on her cell phone, left one of her small kids alone in the queue while she took the other kid to the bathroom: "you sure your Mom's coming back soon?" This was after 10 at night.
POTC: There is so much to see in this ride, you simply have to ride it again and again to see and remember everything. Rather like Splash Mountain. The ride is so dark, but I can't help getting out my camera and as a geek photo challenge, try to take pictures of the inside *without* a flash. I have a digital camera with lots of manual controls on it, so I set it up with flash off, ISO setting cranked up to 400, and sit there in the boat trying to hold the camera steady enough to capture a few scenes using only the available light. The results are poor to so-so, but I have fun anyways.
Carousel of Progress: As charming as advertised, but the last scene falls flat. There were no yucks at all as Granny shoots down the aliens and Dad burns the turkey. Again - darn it Dad! I s'pose it'll be a long time before The Mouse is flush enough to spend some moolah tweaking up this relatively obscure attraction, but I think it could be vastly improved with maybe a hundred thou for an ABC sitcom writer to write a few pages, and a million or so for the Audioanimatronic imaginerds to goose up the scene, if not the whole show. What if a Walt droid became the main character - would that be too creepy for you all? I think it could be fun, and after all this was Walt's ride, right?
Park ambiance: the park lighting is remarkably low-key, some might say downright gloomy. Some night when you're queuing up on the side of BTMRR entering the mine building, turn around and look down at the crowds milling around in the darkness of Frontierland. To me, this is about as dark as towns looked back in my childhood in the 1960s, when streetlights were all old-fashioned incandescent lightbulbs - before the days of mercury-vapor and sodium fluorescent night-blasters. I don't mind it at all, in fact I really like the atmosphere, but tell me this, are other theme parks this dark? Too bad the sky wasn't clear enough, a starry sky over the MK must be awesome.
Columbia House: relatively empty at suppertime - what a great place to relax for an hour or so and rest our feet. I liked the scrimshaw in the back room where we ate. Could use a little bit more nautical decoration to complete the theme but perhaps a slightly stripped down and lean decor is a wee bit more practical in a restaurant intended to handle (I suppose) a couple thousand or more people per hour at peak times.
Thumbs down: Small World, Timekeeper and Tom Sawyer's island were all closed. In three trips to WDW over 10 years, I have never seen these three attractions. Boo!
TO BE CONTINUED ...
