Pongo's 15 Hour Disney Day Update: Let's Get It On!

[Pongo]

Yesterday I spent more hours at the Disney parks than I think I've ever done before: 15. Between the hours of 9:00AM and 12 midnight, my friend and I celebrated her birthday by going park hopping for the day. All four parks.

We first started with Animal Kingdom:
- I don't know if AK is ALWAYS crowded at opening, but it was packed when we walked in:

- All the animals were out and active. Probably because it was early and a ghost of rain was in the air.
- There were a few constuction walls up in Africa. I think they were all connected. In the queue for Kilimanjaro Safaris there was a lengthy wall up starting right after the bridge over the path the ride jeeps take extending quite a ways down. Other walls were up at the entrance to the Pangani Forest exploration trail, right before the Colobus monkeys.
- Over at the Conservation Station, surgery was being done on a snake.
- This is a picture of where the mermaid puppet show used to be, I think. I'm not sure, but they were construction walls nonetheless. This was by the area that shows videos of of conservation efforst in a secluded "room."

- I saw Everest for the first time up close and it is looking amazing. Here are the cliché Everest photos. (I had to stand on a rock for the second one.)

- I went into Dino-rama for the first time in my life. I didn't think it was so bad. It was a little busy and I didn't know where to look at times, but it wasn't bad.
- Dinosaur was running smoothly. Well, as smoothly as it is supposed to.

Then it was off to Magic Kingdom:
- We decided to take the Resort monorail and skip the crowd taking the Express. When we got to the station, the blue train was stopped, had all its doors open and about 5 or 6 Cast Members walking around it. On of them had some sort of panel opened on the opposite side of one of the cars. After a few minutes, all the doors closed and it set off for the Polynesian without any passengers.
- Crowds weren't any lighter at MK. We hardly rode any rides that we wanted to becasue we wanted to conserve time for other, more desirable rides at Epcot and MGM.
- I had a Dole Whip for the first time in my life. Despite my hate for pineapples, it was very good.
- Pirates had a very long line. I don't think I had ever seen it go out the main doors and into the little promenade area before. The wait time was about 20 minutes. I tried to confirm the Say-Hi-To-George-The-Ghost-After-The-Drop-And-Have-The-Ride-Stop-Before-The-Village rumor, but I wasn't successful.
- Lines to get food were snaking their way all over the place, making it hard to get through Frontierland.
- it's a small world had a crazy long line that stretched out almost to the old Skyway station and then curled around through the middle of the Fantasyland path. At some poits it wouldn't move, I think because people were admiring the new facade. A good thing or a bad thing?
- One little boy in line that was about 10 or 11 was being very annoying and yelling at his parents about how long the line was and how the mother said "it was supposed to not be busy today." everyone else in line just tried to ignore him, though it was hard.
- Don Quixote is still missing:

- And it was hard to get anywhere in Fantasyland:

- Push made an appearance outside of Mickey's Star Traders. It was weird becasue you could clearly see the Cast Member that was controlling him. I don't know if he did that on purpose, but it didn't look like he was trying to conceal the fast that he was talking into a microphone in his hand.

- As if Spaceship Earth wasn't enough, there is a screen on the TTA telling people to stay in their seats and showing footage of people somewhere on the ride. Unless it isn't new and I just haven't noticed it the past times I've been on it.
- We were all happy about SPINNING planets, but yesterday, only one was spinning. The blue and rainbow colored planets were motionless yesterday:

- The Carousel of Progress was running very well. The only glitch we had was after a baby started crying in the 40's and decided to take him/her outside. when the carousel was supposed to go to the next scene, it didn't. A CM cam over the sound system saying that there was a technical difficulty and we started to move just as "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" was ending. Coincidence? I'm not sure.

More to come. Epcot, MGM, the back to the Magic Kingdom!

 

[BRER STITCH]

Nice Pics!

Thanx for sharing!

Look at those crowds! I can't wait to mix in next week!!!

:sohappy: :sohappy: :sohappy:

 

[DONALDisMYhero]

Thanks for the pics ! It seems very crowded.


Can't wait to see the other ones !

 

[Pongo]

Epcot, MGM, And Back To MK!

Epcot:
- Epcot was just as crowded as the other parks, but most of the concentration of people was in The Land.
- There was a very small area with a construction wall around it outside of The Land. It looked like one of the raised areas with plants. I don't know what was going on, and I meant to take a picture, but after the events that occured inside The Land (to be mentioned in a minute), I totally forgot.
- Okay. The wait for Soarin' when we got in was posted as 80 minutes. There were no Fastpasses left. We decided to get on because we basically went on this whole parking hopping trip to ride Soarin'. What we didn't see was that the line for it went clear out into the eating areas. We were amazed. We joined the line and the wait went up to 90 minutes. It moved EXTREMELY slow. We had to start playing lame games such as I-Spy and 20 Questions to pass the time until we got to the information screens. I also tried to translate the German map I picked up at the front of the park. Anyway, by the time we got to the screens, we had been in the line for at least and hour and a half. When I left the line to go to the bathroom, I discovered that it was still to the queue entrance and the wait time now read 125 minutes. One thing I found weird was that people were leaving the line through the clearly marked emergency exit. one family of about 10 people went out into, by the looks of it, a parking lot behind the greenhouses. A funny thing, though: a lot of people that left would hand us their white time counter card lanyards. By the time we reached the end of the line, we had accumulated 3 of them. I don't know why the line took so long, but we got in it at 4:30, and walked out of The Land at 7:00.

- The fastpass line was often backed up all the way through the picture room into the winging hallway.
- It was my first time riding Soarin' and I think it was worth the 2 1/2 hour wait.
- We sat in the front row center. I think that really helped.
- I discovered that if you lean forward to see what's below you, you can't feel the air blowing on your face. I guess what I thought was a speaker before the ride turned out to be an air-blower and smellitizer.
- Speaking of smells, the orange scent was VERY faint. I could hardly smell it.
- After the ride, some lady in front of us that was on the same flight as us said something along the lines of, "Soarin'? It should have been called Borin'." I didn't agree. But whatever.
- Our sound system on Spaceship Earth was a little messed up. At some points it would skip or not play.
- It started to rain by the time we got off of Spaceship Earth, not hard, but people were still running through the park to the parking lot. To those who are coming to Florida in the next few days, it's supposed to be like this for a while. We stayed in the park.
- On the right side of Showcase Plaza (by Imagination), there was a construction wall up:

On to MGM:
- We took the Friendship VIII from the International Gateway to MGM. One of the drivers was really funny. His name was Mark or Mike, I didn't get a good look at his nametag, but everytime we would stop, he would call the ducks and they would actually go over to him! Then he would feed them bread scraps. It was really funny. Anyway.
- When we got to MGM it was pouring. We kind of gave up on the staying dry thing andgot soaked. Note: Tickets don't really work when they're wet. The ticket CM said that if they were soaked, the machine would eat them up.
- You can guess that MGM wasn't very crowded, and the general flow of people was out.
- Rock 'n' Roller Coaster still had a wait time of 40 minutes despite the weather. In reality it was only about 20.
- This was also my first time riding RnRC (the last time I was at MGM it was closed). It was a great ride with great themeing. I especially liked the doors that had music comeing from them when people were supposed to be "Recording" inside them.
- We went on Tower of Terror three times because there was no line at all. A word of caution: When it rains, the tiles outside of the Tower in the queue get VERY slippery and it is hard to walk. Make sure you hold on to something.
- We got to experience two of the four drop sequences. each of them are very unique.
- The rain had stopped after our first ride and Fantasmic still was a go. We saw a lot of people migrating from the amphitheater after our second ride on ToT.

After MGM closed, we took the bus to the TTC.
- The bus back to the TTC was absolutely packed.
- We missed Wishes, so we rode Space Mountain (again, another slippery queue when it's raining. I practically slid down the whole sloped part) and then wastched the end of SpctroMagic, which was, as always, great.
- On the way back to the TTC we took the resort monorail. We had the same one that we did earlier that day (red) and were surprised to find out that it wasn't playing all of the Spanish monologue, like it was earlier (it would stop after "Por favor").

That's about it. Overall, the main thing I noticed was that there was a lot of construction going on. Good thing? Probably.

 

[zdonahue]

Great update - Thanks for the pics.

Is it always this crowded in June? I know most of the schools are now out but those crowds seemed high.

 

[jcat2312]

Awesome pics! The crowds at MK looked nightmareish!

 

[Chape19714]

Great Update! Glad to hear you liked Soarin and Rock n Roller Coaster.

With Those Crowds, I would only be in the parks if I was working! I love the parks to death, but wow, that's a ton of people! Glad to hear you had a good time!

 

[Pongo]

With Those Crowds, I would only be in the parks if I was working! I love the parks to death, but wow, that's a ton of people!

It was a lot of people. I wouldn't normally go on such a crowded day, either. I didn't even expect it to be that crowded. But, it's summer.

 

[diddy_mouse]

wow...those crowds bring back memories of when i went in July during the Millennium Celebration :lookaroun

but, glad to know you had a good time...15 hours....i give you serious props!

 

[Mickeyman819]

wow the crowds are huge. I guess u can expect that though. the heat is killing here in jacksonville so its even worse down there
which ill be in about 3 days

 

[AimeeEvans]

Thank you so much for the great pictures and updates. I can not believe the crowds though!!! My family is going to be there June 30- July 9- I guess we're doomed??? Aimee

 

[joel_maxwell]

wow, a lot in 15 hours..... thanks for the update.

you would think that they would have a more concealing microphone.... like in size...... maybe even on the hooked to his lapel or in one of those new cell phone ear things so he would look like all those other DORKS that walk around with those things on their ears....... looking all star trek and stuff. :lol:

 

[askmike1]

Wow, those crowds looked huge for this early. This looks like July level crowds. I'm hoping it dies down a lot in the next two weeks (when I will be there). Also, the paint-work looks great on EE.

-Michael

 

[GoofBall06]

Nice update! Quite a lot of people though ......my goodness! :lol:

 

[LouDisney]

Thanks for the update and pics. I have been in June before and don't remember it being crowded like that. It was a busy day for sure.

 

[barnum42]

We first started with Animal Kingdom:
- I don't know if AK is ALWAYS crowded at opening, but it was packed when we walked in:

Looks like everywhere was packed. I've only seen such crowds in Animal Kingdom right after the Rope Drop when folk scurry off to the Safari.

 

[glennsonoda]

Looks like everywhere was packed. I've only seen such crowds in Animal Kingdom right after the Rope Drop when folk scurry off to the Safari.

Oh yea definitely...its been exactly one year since I been to WDW and those crowd sizes seem just as big as when I was there...while it's tought o navigate and it can be frustrating I always reminded myself "Hey, I'm in Walt Disney World!"

Man, I wanna go back alreadies!

 

[unkadug]

Great update and pics. Thanks Pongo...

But I've got a question. Maybe I'm just blind.

you would think that they would have a more concealing microphone.... like in size...... maybe even on the hooked to his lapel or in one of those new cell phone ear things so he would look like all those other DORKS that walk around with those things on their ears....... looking all star trek and stuff. :lol:

Where is the cast member with the mic? I don't see him !

Is it the man sitting on the bench sipping a drink? :veryconfu

 

[Pongo]

Where is the cast member with the mic? I don't see him !

Is it the man sitting on the bench sipping a drink? :veryconfu

He isn't in the picture. Sorry. Maybe I should have clarified that a bit better. The person who was operating Push was standing practically right behind the trash can, in the next to the doorway into Mickey's Star Traders. He was holding a microchone that looked about the size of an earpiece for an iPod or other mp3 player, maybe a bit larger. He would be just to the left of the picture.

 

[unkadug]

Thanks for clarifying that, I thought I'd gone blind! :lol: