Thanks for the kind words everyone, and to my friend in Braintree, I was at the Emerald Hall on Friday night doing stand up... I'm a pretty big deal, I'm playing industrial parks now.
So we got a bit of a late start on Monday, not getting into the Magic Kingdom until 10:30. Touring plans had the Magic Kingdom as the best park for the day, and the crowd calendar was at a 6 (this would put peak wait times at 55-64 minutes. The park was open from 9AM – 10 PM, with Spectromagic at 8:15 and Wishes at 9:00. I listed all this out as things changed during the day. It should be noted that for the most part we waited 10-15 minutes less than the posted wait times for those attractions that we chose the standby line.
As we walked in, I stopped at City Hall to get Disney Dollars for my father, while Marie went to Space Mountain to get us fast passes, they were for 2:00, and she got them at 10:40.
The plan was to go on Buzz Lightyear after we met up, but the wait was listed at 60 minutes at 10:45 in the morning, so we went on the TTA, and saw some of the construction on Stitch’s Supersonic Celebration. The show looks like it’s not going to seat too many people, but we’ll see what becomes of it.
We then went on the Carousel of Progress and saw Monster’s Inc Laugh Floor. I’m famous in Monster World because of this little gem: “What’s black and white with a little bit of green? Two zebra’s fighting over a pickle.”
It was around 11:50 at this point, so we decided to ride Buzz. I rebounded from my horrible December showings, and wound up with 460,000 exactly. Marie was in the 140k range. After this we went over to Frontierland to get a fast pass for Splash Mountain. This was at 12:40, our fastpass return time was 4:15 – 5:15. The listed wait for Splash Mountain was 70 minutes and Thunder Mountain was 90 minutes.
From here, we rushed over to the monorail as we had 1:05 lunch reservations at the Kona Kafe in the Polynesian. We were a few minutes late, but were seated within 5 minutes of arriving. Marie had the chicken in peanut sauce, I had the fried steak in teriyaki sauce. Both were very good, and I used some of the leftover peanut sauce on my steak and rice. The chef also made us Tonga Toast even though it wasn’t breakfast. I’ve never had it before, it was great, I just don’t know if I could eat it for breakfast. Marie also ordered Crème Brulee and we were more than full. We headed back to the monorail to return to the park. We were the only people waiting, and initially we walked all the way down to the end of the gates. Then we realized that with the cast member at his station right in the middle that we should probably move. The cast member decided to play along with our little game, telling us to move to different gates 3 or 4 times. After he finally let us on the monorail, he jokingly told us that we had to get off and wait for the next one. I had also forgot to mention that on Saturday night at Epcot as we were walking out there was a custodial cast member watching everyone leave at the end of the night. He was quite loud, while holding his broom and pan, daring people to litter. “I’ll clean it up, you won’t sneak anything past me.” I threw a napkin in his direction and he cleaned it up very enthusiastically, and then shouted. “I’m getting college credit for this!” We were all amused.
I may be mixing up the order coming up, but I’ll try to cite wait times with approximate times of the day. When we returned to the park it was around 2:25, and we headed over to the Haunted Mansion, which was sporting a 40 minute wait. We actually were roped around down by the dock, and then sent back up stairs before going into the main queue. I don’t recall ever having done that.
I think after this is where the time frame gets a little fuzzy. I believe the next step was getting a Thunder Mountain fast pass, and then walking over to Pirates of the Caribbean. The wait for Pirates was listed at either 30 or 40 minutes, and we stood in the standby line for that.
We then went over to Jungle Cruise which had a 60 minute wait. 2 years ago we had a horrible Skipper, and I remember his face and his name. He was working the entrance as we lined up. The wait wound up being about 45 minutes. Our skipper was Pamela, she was from Brazil, and with English as a second language she did a decent job, but lately I have been expecting much more from the Jungle Cruise skippers. It seems like they have instituted a new thing where they have children drive the boat through the Temple.
After this we went back to Splash Mountain. Everything seemed to be working except the blue bird in the last scene wasn’t moving its mouth, or really anything at all. The frog’s mouth throughout the ride also seemed to be off a bit. The timing was perfect for us to use our Thunder Mountain fast pass, but something must have happened at Thunder because there was a backlog of fastpass people waiting outside the queue, and the line had extended all the way down to the fastpass entry area. We decided to come back to Thunder Mountain later… but we wound up with another fast pass for it from 8:15-9:15
We went to PhilHarmagic instead, wait time was listed at 20 minutes, we had to wait one show. We also noticed that Donald Duck required Pixie Dust in the Peter Pan scene. I always thought ducks could fly…
We finally got around to using our Space Mountain fast pass at around 6:40… the standby wait at that time was 100 minutes. I sat in the back, I’m curious as to when they added the speed bumps. Hey Phil Holmes… we’re gonna get that fixed, right?
After Space Mountain we went on Buzz Lightyear again. This time, Marie beat me. I think she scored in the 560K range, I got 361K.
We went back to Thunder Mountain after that and there was still a backlog of the fast pass. The wait time for the standby was listed at 60 minutes, and the standby was in the building while the fast pass was all the way down to the entrance. The fastpass also didn’t wind around the outside, it had several switchbacks in the building. We lucked out though as when we got in line, the essentially emptied the fast pass queue by putting through 100% fast pass people. We also noticed that the distribution time for new fastpasses was 9:15-10:15, so we asked the cast member at the entrance what time the park closed, and he told us 11.
After Thunder Mountain we had dinner at Pecos Bill. Marie got the food, and I went to the Jungle Cruise to get a fastpass for that. I met up with the horrible skipper from 2 years ago and asked him when they changed the park hours. He told me that they anticipated between 35k and 38k for attendance today and it was in the 52k-55k range, so the extended the park hours (We would find out later that they added a second showing of Spectromagic as well). I guess this happens 15-18 times a year, and the staff seemed to take it well. I didn’t hear anyone complaining about the extra hour, and it seemed that several managers were out working rides and such.
After dinner, we went back to Thunder Mountain for our second fast pass trip, this time the wait time was down to 30 minutes as it was in the 8:15-8:30 range. We got stuck in the parade traffic, and it took is 25 minutes to get to a ridiculously packed hub for the wishes fireworks. We made it over to Adventureland by 9:15-9:20, and finished the day off strong with another trip on the Jungle Cruise (slightly better skipper, probably going from a C to a B-/B), Relaxing Dole Whip, and a walk over to Mickey’s Toontown. We were gonna ride the train around the park, but it was closed. I walked through Donald’s Boat. I’ve never been in there, I’m guessing water squirts out and kid’s love it. It wasn’t squirting water at this point. We went on Goofy’s Barnstormer, but I couldn’t find the door in the queue that said, “Main Street Electrical…” After the Barnstormer we went to the Tomorrowland Speedway (again, doing things that we don’t typically do in our extra hour). We headed over to Fantasyland as we were hemming and hawing over whether or not to do anything over there. Pooh was less than a 5 minute wait (listed at 20), and Peter Pan was a 14 minute wait (listed at 30). The crowds disappeared after Wishes, and I’d say 60% of what was left was watching the second Spectromagic, and they left after that. It was about 10:45 after Pan, and we went over to the Haunted Mansion one last time. I waited in the stretching room to hear the extra whispers. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, and I think I may have been upsetting the Butler, but I’m sure she knew what I was doing. We shopped our way out as I bought birthday gifts for my nephew, and a couple bags of candy for my brother. I also filled a bag full of napkins for my father who has his own problems.
We’re off to Hollywood Studios tomorrow, hopefully for rope drop, but it’s 1:39 right now, so I’m not too optimistic about that. I still have to print our boarding passes, but I’m waiting for my laptop to install the printer.
