2015: Magic Kingdom

(Ed. note: There's a bunch of missing pictures here I'll try to fix later.)

The Magic Kingdom is the oldest park at WDW, featuring a charming mix of incredibly lame old crappy rides, princess towers to pee in, awesome new rides I didn't take any pictures of, and theater shows where you can sit down for a while and try to stop sweating. Most of it has been covered in previous years, so feel free to skim or just look at the pictures for the first half; the second half is about new places to eat that I took a billionty pictures of. 

Katie wore this hat to every single one.

Pirates of the Caribbean

Pirates of the Caribbean re-opened during our trip. There's not much new - I think the only change is a new boat at the beginning of the town scene and some more mist during the creepy opening scene. This is still one of my favorite rides, from the beginning with Davey Jones projected on a water screen to the end when you pass a amazingly life-like Captain Jack Sparrow in a treasure room overflowing with loot. Idiots still take flash pictures during the ride, but what can you do? (Leave a suggestion in the comments!)

Country Bear Jamboree

We actually went on this twice. This is a real experience and I'm not sure I can do it justice; if you're imagining a bunch of drunk hillbilly robot bears singing country music, you're right on the money. I just wish they'd upgrade the sound system; between the bears being soused and their accents it's sometimes hard to figure out what exactly they're singing. I made sure to shoot some video so everyone can share the magic!!!!!1

** update **
can't just drag the video into blogger :(

Hall of Presidents

Sadly, this is the last time we'll be able to see Obambi as the current President in the Hall of Presidents; I'm still pretty amazed at how good the animatronics are, although I'm sure that's helped by keeping the lights very low. Like other theater shows, this is a good way to get out of the heat for 20 minutes, and unlike The American Adventure at Epcot, it doesn't have a horribly catchy song at the end for you to go to your grave humming. I didn't get any pictures, possibly because of that Simpsons episode where they go to Itchy and Scratchy Land and Bart is like "Let's see if they wore underwear back then" and pulls down George Washington's pants and the robots try to kill the Simpsons. Remember that? Man, I'm old.

Here's Some Castle Pictures

Rapunzel's Tower

This isn't really a ride, it's a bathroom. Poor Rapunzel. To be fair, Disney is responsible for making this into a restroom, we weren't like "Hey princess, watch this!!" although that probably would have been kind of funny. Anyway, here's a picture Katie took, including some people looking uncomfortable at being photographed leaving the bathroom. We all know what you were doing in there. Disgusting.

It's A Small World

IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL,

IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL,
IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL,
IT'S A SMALL SMALL SMALL SMALL WORLDDDDDDDD
(two second pause)
IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL,
IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL
Seriously though, we saw something new on It's A Small World: There's a clock that opens on the hour and some little figures come out and dance. That's about it. Oh, look, though, we got some extremely creepy pictures!

Peter Pan's Flight

This is a very hard ride to get on where you fly over day-glo miniature London and then Neverland in the dark. It's pretty cool. That's what I did at Peter Pan's Flight. Any questions? Okay.

More Castle Pictures Required By Law

Ariel's Mermaid Ride Whose Full Name I'm So Tired of Typing

This is one of the new awesome rides, and I already used my joke about not getting into giant clams last trip report so I don't really have much to say here. Next time I'm gonna try to get a picture of Ursula during the scene where she's mugging her way through her song (and do I help them?/yes I doooooooooooooooooooooo). This ride is also right next to the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train rollercoaster. We did not go on the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train rollercoaster, but we did go on Ariel's ride where you ride a giant clam through singing fish and undersea invertebrates multiple times. No regrets!

Picture I Took in Tomorrowland of the Sun Beating Down on a Unattended Baby Who I'm Sure Was Fine Guys

And some miscellaneous hits:

Gaston's Tavern:

We stopped at Gaston's Tavern and got frozen apple juice, which is just as delicious as it sounds; nothing hits the spot like this when there's 100% humidity. (The mango foam on top was nothing to sneeze at either, although it was in a weird spot between liquid and solid that made it a little tricky to eat). I may also only be mentioning this so I can drop in a picture of the statue of Gaston out front.

Be Our Guest:

One of the new things at Magic Kingdom is the Be Our Guest restaurant (Be Our Guest-arant??), themed on the Beast's castle. For lunch it's a quick-service restaurant - you place your order on a touch screen, then find a table and a cast member somehow finds you (I asked ours how she did it and she said "magic". I knew it!!!) with your food. I got a turkey sandwhich and fries that made me reconsider my distaste for turkey; whatever they put on this was amazing, and the nice thick crusty bread didn't hurt either. Katie got a salad (with quinoa!!) that was pretty good I think.
For desert I got the chocolate cream puff, which is, um, a giant cream puff full of chocolate (and vanilla). Katie got a strawberry cupcake she ate with a fork that looked really tasty.

For dinner this transforms into full service sitdown restaurant, complete with the Beast himself walking through the dining room (he's a bit of a ham; the first two times he was very stoic, but the third time he stopped to wave and bow). You can meet the Beast himself in his study, the area where you order your food for lunch service, but I didn't want to risk getting mauled, so we just peeked in.
I was a little worried that this was going to be too fancy for us, but it turned out to be one of the best meals we had the whole time. Katie got ratatouie (with more quinoa!!!!) and I got pan-seared chicken. I'm used to chicken not having much of a taste, but this was great; I suspect it had something to do with the skin, which gave it a wonderful crunchy, savory garlic sensation. I even liked the spinach cream sauce on the side, which is like, uh, me liking something I normally don't like.
For desert, we had to go for the grey stuff (it's delicious! Don't believe me? Ask the dishes!). I don't know what exactly this was, but it was grey and tasted wonderful. It was served on top of a oreo cake and was very smooth and creamy. Our waiter drew a B on Katie's plate for Beauty, and a B on my plate for Beast, which I guess means I need to shave.

Inside Cinderella's Castle:

On one day, and to my everlasting amazement, we actually got into Cinderella's castle; as long as I've been going to Disney it's been closed from the front, but Katie showed me that you can actually go into the castle itself through the back door. There's a bunch of really nice mosaics telling the story of Cinderella in here, and it kind of seems like a waste that the area is only being used as stroller parking. They're doing some work on the castle ("PARDON OUR PIXIE DUST") and the concept drawing showed a castle you can walk through from the front, so maybe next trip.

Here's the mosaic pictures - please pardon any camera tilting, we had to avoid getting run over by strollers.

And that's it for the magic kingdom!

Goodbye, Magic Kindgom! Goodbye, person's face I'm too lazy to crop out!