Last Day in America : Magic Kingdom

Wednesday 14 July 1993. To recap: it's our last day before returning home from Orlando back to the UK and we have spent it in the Disney parks, specifically the Disney MGM Studios and then EPCOT. We got on the Monorail around five o'clock and transferred over to The Magic Kingdom. It was still pouring it down with rain.

We ate in a restaurant close to Liberty Square where (only with the greatest difficulty) we resisted the clam chowder and enjoyed a more familiar meal, watering the gravy with rainwater drips from the head...

Then it was a race to repeat as many of our favourite rides as we could before the fireworks display brought the night and holiday to an end.

We rode the cablecar to Tomorrowland and went on the Carousel of Progress where the audience seating rotated around tableaux of different periods with animated robots saying how wonderful the new technology of that age was - it mostly automated some chores so the wife could do others... Having running water let her do more sewing, having a sewing machine let her do more ironing etc. Quite right too... Agh! No! Stop that! Yeowch! Ok, ok, I was joking!!! Someone's child was screaming throughout most of it, there was applause when the ride staff eventually came out to suggest they should take it outside. I thought the ride was excellent, we hadn't realised how old it was and it was dismantled the following year and disappeared into the very history it had depicted.

Another ride shortly to disappear was the Wedway People Mover, a train without drivers, based on the magnetic field induction principle where the magnetic field creates electricity as the train passes over it which gives it enough boost to reach the next magnet in the track. [Edit: the ride had a reprieve, but underwent a name change and was still there when we visited again in 2016, some 23 years later.) As we travelled on this we saw the most glorious sunset over the park.

Then it was back to the castle for the firework display. Disney don't sell you short on this, there's a great display every night and afterwards the park closes and a huge mass of people leave all at once, laughing, singing, dancing and as entertaining as any of the park's formal parades. It had been a holiday like no other. We had never before been out of the UK and our holidays were normally spent mooching around the old or picturesque places in the south of England. It was an unforgettable two weeks that we have never yet repeated, but one that I still hope we will sooner or later. (See my spoiler above...)

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Final Hours at Walt Disney World

Sunday 1 June 2016. We've done it. We've reached the final article in this series which has lasted twice as long as the holiday itself! If you can remember from the previous article, we are having our final day in the Magic Kingdom.

Cinderella's Castle. Despite appearances it is not made of individual bricks, but is mostly reinforced concrete over a steel frame. Construction took 18 months and it employs forced perspective. The higher you look, the smaller the features such as doors to balconies and windows, which make it appear higher than it really is.

It is fairly tall anyway. Most sources quote 189 feet but that's measured from the foundations which are six feet beneath the moat. It's a bit of a mix of styles, looking like a medieval fortress castle, all sturdy windowless walls at the bottom, but Gothic Revival above.

Along one wall of the archway through the ground floor is a series of mosaics telling the story of Cinderella. Five panels set into Gothic arches were filled with over 300,000 pieces of hand-cut Italian glass and marble and rough glass traditionally used to make tesserae (mosaic pieces). Over 500 colours were used and some tiles are coated in silver or 14 carat gold.

The second and fifth panels have doors in them so the mosaic picture is concentrated to the space over the door with decoration to each side of the door. Here in the second panel, the Fairy Godmother does her stuff.

It went a bit busy for a while so I've had to include a couple of blurry people passing the mosaic on the third panel which shows our heroine fleeing the ball and losing her slipper on the steps as the clock chimes midnight.

Some license was used with the colours. You may have noticed that the Fairy Godmother was a touch purple of face. This helps explain her "other worldliness" as much as being due to her concentration levels. In the fourth scene of Cinderella trying on the glass slipper note the Ugly Sisters, one of whom is red with anger whilst the other is green with envy!

Oh... and I couldn't get a pic of the final panel which contains the door to the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique where you can pay around $230 including tax for the basic package to have your daughter pampered for somewhere between one to two hours as she is transformed into her favourite made-up and coiffured, be-gowned and sequinned princess. You can pay extras for things like shoes. If you have a little girl who can't sit still or who gets fed up quickly then I'd forget it and just cringe at the state of someone else's kid...

As we emerge from the castle archway we are in Fantasyland. It has a medieval European feeling and facing us is Prince Charming's Regal Carousel. With a bit of artistic license, the Sword in the Stone can be found standing in front of it.

Gable ends and turrets and half-timbered buildings abound. They house merchandise, food outlets and rides. Most of Fantasyland is off to the right, but to the left you will find (darn, there goes that song again!) It's A Small World, Peter Pan's Flight, and Mickey's PhilharMagic, which is a 3D film with some good special effects.

At the back of Prince Charming's Regal Carousel is one of many stroller parks to be found in the park. You can leave your pram (or stroller as the Americans call them) here whilst you go on a ride or for however long you want. As prams are collected, leaving others standing isolated, they are moved to the nearest remaining prams by attendant Cast Members, which must make it fun for anyone trying to find their pram and finding an empty space instead. By early afternoon these parking lots can be fairly large!

It says ice cream, but if you are looking for something else, it's always worth checking a menu board. All the outlets sell a range of drinks from water to fizzy drinks and tea/coffee.

We head out of the park and across the ferry to the landing at the Grand Floridian where we have a meal booked at Narcoossee's Restaurant. They served bread with the starter that was just ordinary bread, not the sickly sweet stuff we have been given to leave untouched for the whole fortnight. Oh Bliss! But then the butter pats came with sugar crystals sprinkled all over them... The meal though was lovely.

Afterwards Gill and Eddie decided to take Grace back for a rest. It would certainly be a long day tomorrow. We caught the ferry back to the Magic Kingdom and headed into Adventureland.

It was starting to go dark and all the lights were coming on. The park takes on a different aspect in the dark, though the sky is still only just starting to lose its brightness.

We cross into Frontierland. Put the people in western dress and it would look really authentic!

It may be approaching evening, but the temperature is still way up there. We pass the Shooting Gallery and cross back into Fantasyland in the top corner of the park. The queue for Peter Pan's Flight is only 35 minutes and we head in there.

Yeow... The temperature of so many people in the small corridors of the queue takes the temperature up to sky high proportions. Like the Winnie the Pooh ride, the queue is full of cool things. You wander through the Darling children's bedroom. On one wall you can see your shadows, but there are also the shadows of lots of butterflies jigging about. If you are quick you can make your shadow catch a butterfly and it will then sit on your hand for a while! Then the butterflies turn into bells and your shadow can hit them and you hear them ring!

This is a very long 35 minutes... The guy before us in the queue was totally ignoring his wife and small daughter and was watching a baseball game on his phone. Something must have happened, requiring the ride software to be reset perhaps. We were in the heat of the queue for an hour. Then the two-minute ride and we came out into a darkened park.

We reached Prince Charming's Regal Carousel again. The number of prams in the parking area had reduced to a small number.

For some reason the sky at twilight always looks bright on photographs, probably because it is bright compared to things around you. But the carousel looked really good all lit up and I took a photo which looked like broad daylight with a totally white sky... Luckily I managed to bring the light levels down to something more like what we were seeing when I got home to my computer and PhotoShop. I don't agree with purists who insist photos should be straight from the camera. Cameras lie.

We came back through Cinderella's Castle and I took this photo looking down towards and along Main Street U.S.A. Only a few minutes separate this photo from the one of the carousel, but we must be looking towards the darkening sky here.

We wandered around the park for a bit as I wanted a chance to photograph the castle in darkness. But - wimps that we are - we were really tired and the thought of waiting another hour for the fireworks and then facing the crush of people waiting for buses to the resort didn't really appeal.

We gave a mental and heartfelt salute to all those Disney Imagineers and Cast Members who had made the Florida experience such a memorable one and walked out of the park for the last time.

Monday 2 May 2016. The following morning we had to be out of our rooms by 8:00am. We had ordered a taxi to take our luggage to the resort's Customs House where the front desk was, but we had to chase the firm up before they arrived.

Then a final breakfast and whilst the ladies looked round the shop for the last time Eddie and I tried out the machines in the small arcade. I won at pinball - he won at basketball...

I found a few minutes to sketch another bit of Barefoot Bay round by the side of Centertown. A cheerleader came jogging round and said "That's really pretty!" as she passed.

Then a small Japanese woman came to talk. She was a Cast Member and was waiting for a party to arrive for their bus to the airport. Although the time had been specified in the brochure, she said the bus would have visited several other resorts first and might arrive anything up to 15 minutes early. They had refused point blank to arrive any earlier than the stated time however - to the point of getting angry at her and she was worried the bus might not wait.
"The brochure time is the time the bus is due to leave, not the time they should turn up!" she worried. I guess there are stupid people the world over... "What is it you're doing?" she asked and I showed her the almost finished sketch. "Oh..." she said, then, "Oh! Is that the water???" You win some, you lose some...

We all congregated ourselves in timely fashion and caught the resort bus for the Customs House where we were reunited with our luggage very efficiently. On time, our bus arrived and we set off for the airport.

Orlando International is - as could be imagined - a very busy airport. There were long queues and frequent hold-ups because there were far fewer security gates than the preliminary security desks feeding them. Other queues may well have gone quicker, but I've long since reconciled to the fact that getting frustrated at airports only winds up yourself and the people in your party. So when another stop came just as we reached the front of our queue, I just shrugged and began to chat with the chap on the desk, as did the man at the front of the other queue that he single-handedly had to cope with.
"It's tough knowing that everyone is staring at you, believing you are just not working fast enough," he said, "but luckily at the moment I've got two friendly faces in front of me!"

We got onto our plane with no problem and then came the long flight home. I hope you've enjoyed this trip as much as I've enjoyed reliving it whilst writing the blog. Fourteen days holiday became twenty five blog articles over the space of thirty one days.

Disney World Holiday Index

Last Day In Disney's Magic Kingdom

Sunday 1 May 2016. In the last article we took a walk through the huge shop along Main Street U.S.A. so I suppose this could almost be part two of this day in Florida's Magic Kingdom. There will be at least one more to fit in all the photos I took (never mind everybody else in the party!) so we still haven't finished with Disney just yet!

This would be our last visit to the Magic Kingdom so I did go a bit berserk with the camera trying to capture as many reminders as I could. Even so there's loads of stuff that over the weeks since we got back I've thought "I don't have a picture of ----!" This is the beautiful Crystal Palace.

The fountain helped cool you down just by the gentle sounds of the water splashing. Many guests dipped their hand in it whilst passing. The gardens are kept immaculate.

This is Princess Tiana from a fairly recent Disney cartoon, The Princess and The Frog. Perhaps a trifle older than the Tiana of the film, though we did notice that one or two princesses had grown up somewhat during the stay! She had no one waiting to meet her which we thought must be a bit off-putting for her so whilst at this point we didn't have the EGGs with us to use Grace as an excuse. we went up to give her a photo opportunity.

She held out her hand for a handshake but you can't just shake the hand of a princess, so I raised her gloved hand and lightly kissed it, which caused her to give a surprised (but it did sound quite pleased!) "Ohhh!"

She said, "Can I take your arm, Sir?" Well of course you can my dear, but please bring it back quickly as we fly home tomorrow...

Water plays a large part in the landscaping. Considering that everything you see here was a swamp before Disney arrived, it's hardly surprising that there should be some water I suppose, but it does make for some wonderful views.

The other thing that water does is require you to either cross it or circumvent it. You have the choice to do both mostly, but let's have a look at some of the bridges.

This one crosses from Adventureland to Liberty Square. It's on a direct line from the previous one that led from the Crystal Palace. Square lanterns light the board walk after dark.

Looking from the bridge we see another similar bridge which leads from the central hub of the park also to Liberty Square. This time the lanterns are slightly more modern in style and sit on extensions at the side of the bridge's piers.

Whilst looking at the above bridge I suddenly noticed that the tree on our right was loaded with long bean stalks or seed pods. So if you want to go looking for any Disney magic beans...

At the foot of the tree was this gorgeous bush. Please don't look for any plant identification from me. My knowledge only extends so far as to be able to say that this is a bush with flowers on...

And looking even further down... I sent Miss Franny running back to Princess Tiana to tell her we had found her frog...

Join us next time for a closer look at the sumptuous Cinderella's Castle amongst other things.

Disney World Holiday Index

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