Hello all, Druid here, husband of Sheena, father of TGM, friend of Mr. Squid, Laura74, Monkston, the whole Indianna crew and all around Disney lover.
Are there really thousands of you out there reading these posts?
I feel guilty for not sharing any of my favorite memories of this most recent trip, (especially since Laura74 has been gently nudging me to do so) so I thought that I might mention a couple of my highlights.
Let me start off with an apology to Laura74, I was told to not go out of order, but if you want me to post, this is what I wanted to write about so I hope that it doesn't wreck the feng shui of the TR.
One of my most memorable moments from this trip (I don't remember what day it was) was getting up at G_d-o'clock (anything earlier than 8:00 is rough after putting 10-12 miles in each day) to catch the bus, in the dark, to get to MK for the 24 hour day opening event. We, (the fun people, some of us slept in, and they know who they are, and thought that "we" were nuts) catch the bus at around 5:15 AM, and we make it to MK while it is still dark out. We were not alone in this as I'm sure that you might imagine, i'm not sure if every Disney yahoo in the world is there, but there are enough to feel that they are well represented.
If you can imagine, the area outside of the entrance, from the bus depot to the monorail station is elbow to elbow with people, many dressed in costumes, (more on that later) seemingly all are hooting and hollering in excited anticipation of the 6:00 AM opening to the MK 24 hour day. I can only imagine how the Disney employees felt about this idea, because the crowds were rabid for this opening. I'm not sure if this is the first time that Disney has done this, but it was my first time and it was very different from my usual Disney park experience, usually it has that magical other-worldly, once removed from reality (in a good way) feel. This had the feel of a pre-Grateful Dead show crowd, without all of the illegal stuff going on. I have video of this somewhere, I just have to dig it up and figure out how to post it up here, as I am just "earning my ears" don't cha know.
In any case, just as the sun was coming up, the train could be heard coming round the bend and on top of the train who do we see? Why Mickey, Minnie and many of their friends as they pull into Main Street Station. Some sort of officious statement is made, by someone somewhere, but all that I am aware of is the crowd pushing tighter together to get closer to the entrance. Now mind you I am not getting nervous as I am not a small person and neither is my son, TGM, and this is nothing like the crowds that I have experienced in NYC just after a Radio City Christmas Spectacular show, now that was scary!! This, however, was not what you would expect from a Disney crowd, but wait until you hear about later that night, but I digress.
Eventually the floodgates open and people began streaming into the park, we were probably within the first 500 or so to get in? I am sure that I will be corrected on that in subsequent posts from others in our party who were also brave enough to get up and get going, but anyway, once we were in, the question of where do we go first comes up. No one seems to have any idea, but we generally head in the direction of Liberty Square. I believe that the idea was to eat something, or get coffee. We ended up at Gaston's Tavern for cinnamon rolls and beverages. The cinnamon roll was huge! and it was still a bit dark and chilly out, but once we finished, we headed in the general direction of the tea cups until someone noticed that there was a line outside of the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and it was not really that long. Now mind you the mine train was not officially open at this point in time. The dates are hazy to me now, but I know that we were still several days from opening. We had noticed the day before that there was a "soft opening," but only Disney employees were allowed on. But here at 6:30 AM on the 24 hour day, it was open and we got in line. It is a very cool not very scary coaster, bound to become a classic. I had been watching this thing being built for the past three years, cursing the green wall and wondering what the new and delightful experiences the new Fantasyland was going to hold and when I saw it, I longed for Toon Town, but that is just me.
The rest of the morning is sort of a blur for me, I know that we made it on to quite a few major attractions, Big Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, Jungle Cruise I believe, and somewhere around noonish, we lose steam and decide to go back for some pool time.
Fast forward to evening and we find ourselves at Cat Cora's Kouzzina. Now I love Disney restaurants, and always find something great to eat, except for this particular time. I was sorely disappointed by this particular place, I had a bad meal (by Disney standards) and I couldn't wait to get out. TGM and I wanted to go back to MK to see what the night of the 24 hour day would look like so we beat a hasty retreat.
TGM and I start walking through Epcot, when we encounter an 80s dance party by Innoventions. There are hundreds of people between us and the monorail station all doing synchronized dance steps to a DJ spinning 80s hits with flashing lights and music blaring. We try to weave our way through the dancers whose arms and legs a flailing to some Flock of Seagulls song, and we are coming very close to getting smacked in the face repeatedly as we try to get through. It is very surreal scene, but there is no way through except through the dancers. We finally make it through get through the gates and up to the Monorail station where we see easily 1500 people waiting to get to the monorail. Disney, however, did anticipate these crowd and had monorails coming and going at an amazing pace. We waited as three or four monorails came through, packing each monorail full, taking off, only to be followed by another train minutes later. We finally got on to a fully packed monorail and were on our way to ticketing and transportation. I had never seen disney in such a state of frantic frenzied excitement. At this point it is 9:00 PM and the entire place had a very different vibe to it. There were teenagers and adults everywhere, not kids and many of the teenagers were dressed in their favorite character's costume. We came to find out that this night was a highly anticipated event for the Disney employees (those that did not have to work) and local Floridians who were Disney freaks.
As the Monorail approached Ticketing and Transportation, you could see MK all lit up and the parking areas as well as the Ticketing and Transportation areas, everything was packed with people, the lots were full, and there was an electricity in the air like I have never seen. We were able to navigate the transfer from the Epcot Monorail to the MK Monorail fairly easily, however, the crowds were unimaginable! This was not the stroller and kids by the hand sort of crowd, much more adult, teen, and rabid Disney fan sort of crowd. As we made our way into MK I had TGM by the hand and we were commando walking our way through the crowds, who mostly seemed as if they were content to just be there, with no particular destination in mind. This was fine with us as we wanted to go to The Enchanted Tiki Room and the Haunted Mansion, so we tried to navigate the seas of people in Tinkerbell and Mr. Invincible costumes and many other characters along with face paint and tee shirts with strange messages on them. Most people were, as I said, happy to just be there.
We crowd-surfed our way to the Tiki Room and were able to get in relatively easily, I was surprised, but again many people were just hanging around in costume and face paint and their "Rock Your Disney Side" tee shirts. We, of course, got caught in a parade on our way to HM, I just can't imagine who thought that a parade with crowds like that would be a good idea? On a good day I dislike the parades since you can't cross them (we tried once on our first trip and the Disney CIA jumped out of nowhere to chastise us) and you either wait it out or find an alternate route. This night we luckily noticed the parade coming and were able to navigate around it. As a side note, I did notice some people by the Liberty Belle who looked as if they had been there since opening and looked like refugees, their kids were sleeping on the walk way and the stroller kid was long out, they seemed a bit miserable, but also appeared as if they were in it for the long run.
We got to the HM que area and the line was out to the very end by the walkway to Fantasyland but it was moving. We waited for 15 minutes as the line kept moving briskly. The teenagers at the door were packing people into the HM like sardines, pumping them through non-stop with little of the usual Disney banter about moving to the dead center of the room and the like. This was survival mode for them, just keep moving them through, moving them through. When we got out, we made our way to Mickey's Philharmagic, which we could see people moving through, again at a brisk pace, so we joined in, and moved up to the entrance area just outside of the door. We met some twenty-somethings all dressed as Tinkerbell and Jack Skellington and the like who told us about all of the locals who have been waiting for this night for some time. They told us that the goal of most was to be in MK when the "get out of Magic Kingdom music" starts to play at 6:00 AM, which explains why so many people were just hanging around and not trying very hard to get into attractions.
At this point it is about midnight and TGM and I were trying to get from Tomorrowland to the castle area, and across the walkway was a chain of Disney employees forming a human chain separating the traffic so that if you were going in the direction of the castle, you had to stay on the right and the opposing traffic had to stay left. I can't describe the incredible number of people that were there. I have heard of MK closing when it reached capacity but I can't believe that it had not reached capacity that night because it was literally wall to wall people, it defies imagination. We tried to move around for awhile longer but it just felt futile after awhile, so we made our way to the bus depot since the monorail to Epcot was done. I think that we got back to Boardwalk somewhere around 1-1:30 or so, a bit beat up, but none the worse for wear and tear.
If you read all of this, thank you, I know that it was a lot, but I promised a post and here it is.
Odd choice, but as an IT guy and engineer, I was blown away that technology like that could be applied to a parking garage. Disney has raised the state of the art for getting people parked as quickly as possible and into the stores and spending.
Needless to say, we bought a lot less Disney stuff this year than we have in past years.
