Disney Dinosaurs and Disasters of The Ice Cream Kind...

Thursday 28 April 2016. This will be a dual-park day again for us, though with the bulk of photos coming from the Magic Kingdom. First we must go back in time...

We start the day at EPCOT in the science-oriented bits. The Universe of Energy has a show starring actress Ellen DeGeneres and Bill Nye, The Science Guy (?) looking at how fossilised fuels came about. This starts off as a film show, but then the rows of seats we are sitting in turn round like a train on a turntable and then move off into another huge hall with a literally breathtaking scene, glimpsed through the opening doors...

I didn't take any photos on the ride, but this is my sketch of the sight that awaited us with a whole herd of these gruntodons, one of which greeted us with a sneeze, spraying us with a mist of water! They were very lifelike with Audio-Animatronic movement. There were many more dinosaurs waiting to eat us or each other as our... er... cinema seats (!) moved through several scenes.

We decided to park hop on the Monorail from EPCOT to the Magic Kingdom. I still love the look of the Disney Monorail which goes all the way back to 1964. I remember how excited I was when I heard that Blackpool was to get a monorail in the Pleasure Beach in 1966 and then it looked as though they had made it out of origami folded cardboard... A bit like making a space ship that looked like a horse-drawn stagecoach...

By the time we got to the Magic Kingdom we were hot and thirsty and we decided on ice cream floats from a shop on Main Street U.S.A.

"You'll need to start drinking these straight away!" warned the man at the counter, handing over two large frothing drinks that threatened to explode lava-like over the edge. I took a big swig and Phew! mine was safe.

Miss Franny however was adamant she wanted to go outside before drinking and it erupted all over the cup, the ice cream carton that the man hastily thrust at her, her hand, several napkins that I grabbed, and half the floor before I could persuade her to take a gulp. We mopped up as best we could and left, safe in the knowledge that we couldn't be chased because everyone left in the shop was stuck to the floor...

I had been disappointed on our first visit here, this trip, to see that the Walt Disney World Railway was closed for refurbishment. But today - yahoo! - it was open. We got on at Town Square and did a full circuit of the park. There's not really a chance to take a good photo of the locomotive at the station as it pulls too far forward. It is, after all, the carriages which need to stop at the platform! I took this from behind the barrier as it steamed into the station.

The train stops in both Frontierland and Fantasyland. This is the view from the Frontierland station which overlooks the queueing area for Splash Mountain.

When we came back to Town Square and left the station, we found crowds had gathered for the daily Festival of Fantasy Parade. Oh what the heck! Let's watch again and just concentrate on faces.

We head into Tomorrowland for another trip on the People Mover. In the background you can see the stepless moving pavements that go up and down between ground and platform levels.

We met up with the family to eat at Casey's Corner. Well, the EGGs ate there. One look at the enormous hot dogs smothered in sauce was enough to convince us to look elsewhere but we all sat at the same table outside! By the time we made our way back down to the lagoon and the rows of bus stops, it was going dark and we could see but not hear flashes of lightning on the horizon.

This is one of the ferries that crosses between the Magic Kingdom and the nearest car parks. A fleet of land-trains (Disney call them "trams") run between the theme park and the car parks also. The car parks stretch for miles! Pay particular care as to which car park you leave your car in - it could take ages to find again if you forget!

Back at Caribbean Beach Resort. The sky is dark and cloudy and we can still see lightning. We don't hear any thunder or get any rain though.

Disney World Holiday Index

Disney's Festival Of Fantasy Parade

Last time I ended with us hearing the music heralding the 3:00pm Disney Parade: The Festival of Fantasy. Although we were well behind the crowds lining the parade route, most of the main characters are riding on tall float vehicles. We'll see some of the dancers and other floor-level characters in a later entry.

Mickey and Minnie actually bring up the rear of the parade, but I thought I'd add them first as the first pic is the one picked when I post links on FaceBook etc. Anyway, no one epitomises or represents Disney better than Mickey Mouse!

Giving some idea of our restricted view is this shot of the approach of the parade. The first float carries Belle and her Beast.

The The Festival of Fantasy has been running since March 2014. The parades are updated every so often but there is no hard and fast length of time that a certain parade will run and the interval can be as short as one year (where parades are themed around an anniversary event for instance) to five years.

The way that the soundtrack is handled is really rather clever. There is a general soundtrack which forms a basic rhythm and each float has it's own soundtrack that fits over the rhythm. Each float has loudspeakers and there are also speakers along the route on lamp posts etc. A special system picks up the approach of the parade and each individual float so that the music starts to build up as the parade approaches and then the appropriate music for each float "follows" it along the route. It works very seamlessly so that for instance a snippet of Be Our Guest, as Beauty and The Beast pass by, segues effortlessly into a quick blast of every young girl's favourite Let It Go! as Anna and Elsa from Frozen come by.

And so on. Ariel proves that whilst mermaids have tails instead of legs there is still some semblance of knees, and we get to sing a bit of Under The Sea!

Most of the floats have a troupe of dancers preceding them. The costumes for the dancers for The Little Mermaid float represented sea creatures and were fabulous. We'll get to see them on another day. On the ground before Peter Pan and Wendy are a few dastardly pirates with Mr Smee whilst below the ship on the float old Captain Hook himself is swinging on the anchor and keeping a wary eye on Tick-Tock Croc who is following behind the float.

Pinocchio (no thank you, AutoCorrect, I didn't mean "pincushion"...) rides atop Monstro the Whale. There is no room for the full set of Disney cartoon heroes but somehow Pinocchio has survived where Bambi, Mowgli, Duchess and her kittens and many more have fallen by the wayside.

The Sleeping Beauty element of the parade though, is devoted to Maleficent's dragon as a gloriously worked steampunk version. The driver is visible within the creature's neck and every now and then it raises its head to breath fire.

And it does breathe fire! Even several rows behind the crowd we could feel the heat from the jet of fire it breathed out. Ferocious looking attendants with masked faces and long, long legs (saying stilts would spoil it...) add to the fun. Donald and Daisy Duck followed with Mickey and Minnie bringing up the rear, draw the parade to a close. It takes about 12 minutes for the full length of it to pass you.

People start to gather by the edge of the route from about an hour beforehand and some spots, particularly the roundabout before Cinderella's Castle and from there, the full length of Main Street U.S.A. down to Times Square get particularly crowded.

We had been in the park since early morning and we decided to head back to the Caribbean Beach Resort for a cool down and a rest before it was time to eat again. The buses for resorts leave at least every 20 minutes and we found that we seldom had to wait so long. It does feel like it, in the heat, sometimes! Our bus stop (each resort has it's own buses and stopping place) was almost the furthest from the exit from the park, but it was a pleasant walk with a large pond to the side opposite the rows of bus stops.

Something large buzzed past my head and I ducked. "What was that?" Then looking up into the trees between us and the pond we saw what it was! Huge dragonflies clung to the top branches. These were four-inch (10cm) whoppers! Eew!

Disney World Holiday Index