(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.
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.
