Vacation Wrap-Up

We got back from our trip to Orlando yesterday. From warm weather and theme parks to 28 degrees and bills. Whee.

We had two pre-trip problems. One was that I did not realize when I booked our vacation that "Pirates of the Caribbean", one of our favorite rides, would be closed during the whole month of March. We'll just have to make do with the soundtrack CD I got for Andrew last year for a while longer. The more worrying thing was when my debit card stopped working. I called up my bank and found that some weird charges to me card had been attempted (but didn't go through) and the bank had decided to cancel my debit card and send me a new one. Of course, I discovered this the day before we left. Thank goodness for our credit card.

Aside from these headaches, we did have a nice time in Disney World. Here's a park-by-park rundown:

Disney-MGM Studios - We checked out some old favorites like Star Tours, MuppetVision 3D, and the Great Movie Ride, but this is still probably the park with the least for us to do. We checked out Walt Disney: One Man's Dream, a museum exhibit type of show about the life of Walt Disney. We found it interesting, but it seemed strange that the creative minds at Disney Imagineering couldn't come up with anything more than a rather typical exhibit to explore the life of the Disney Company's founder and guiding force. We also checked out the "Chronicles of Narnia" exhibit, and I'm sorry to say I was hugely disappointed. You wait in a fairly lengthy line and go through an extensive pre-show to see....clips from the movie and about six props and maquettes. Perhaps this was more exciting before the movie came out, but as it was, it felt like a lot of buildup for very little payoff. We stuck around the park all day mostly because we had priority seating for Fantasmic!, the park's night show. I enjoyed seeing it again, but in hindsight, I think Andrew might have preferred the SpectroMagic parade at the Magic Kingdom, or skipping the nighttime shows altogether.

Epcot - We spent two partial days here, one largely dedicated to the World Showcase, the other for Future World. We skipped the few rides in World Showcase this time. We ate at the counter service restaurant in Japan, which was pretty good, and I managed not to make a total idiot of myself with the chopsticks. Conveniently, Japan was having an exhibit on tin toys, so we went and checked that out. Then we headed to Germany for drinks and France for pastries. We didn't hit Norway until our next visit, when we checked out the small exhibit on Vikings. The rest of our time was spent browsing the shops. Future World has been a bit of a letdown for us in recent years. The lack of recent updates to the park's rides and attractions means that today's Future World just isn't very futuristic. We did very much enjoy "Turtle Talk with Crush", part of the Living Seas recent "Finding Nemo" makeover. A CG Crush talks and interacts with the audience in real time, taking questions from the audience and asking them questions in return. It's one of Epcot's recent highlights and it's even been changed up since the first time I saw it. We rode on Spaceship Earth, a.k.a. the big golf ball at the entrance to Epcot, which we both agreed could use updating in both technology and content. For a show about communication, it feels just a bit behind the times (and a bit West-centric too). We picked up FastPasses (time stamped tickets that allow you to come back later and wait in a shorter line) for "Soarin'", Epcot's newest attraction which had a whopping 80 minute wait in the normal line. If you're familiar with the Massachusetts Museum of Science, Soarin' is much like the Omni theater with a seating rig that pulls you up into the air and tilts in various direction to suggest movement. As its name suggests, Soarin' is a very gentle ride, so unless you get motion sickness easily, you probably won't be losing your lunch. It was kind of fun, but we really though it could have been better. It's not very long and the film has abrupt cuts every few minutes that spoil the illusion of real flight. I'm glad we saw it, but I'm extremely glad we didn't wait around for over an hour to do so. We made an attempt to see Journey into Imagination, having heard that it had been revamped since a very disappointing redo we saw several years ago. Unfortunately, the ride was out of order when we went, so no visit with Figment this time.

Animal Kingdom - Andrew had never been to Animal Kingdom before, and I was eager to show him the rides I liked. We went on the day when the park opened an hour early and zipped over to Kilamanjaro Safari, which rewarded us with a brisk 10 minute wait time. Of all the parks, Animal Kingdom is the one where it's most critical to try and get there early, since the midday sun drives the animals into the shade. Again, our timing was good and we saw numerous animals at very close distances. After lots of photos, we caught the 3D movie It's Tough to be a Bug, which also greeted us with short lines. We had a good time and Andrew was impressed with the audio-animatronic Hopper. Our last big attraction stop was Dinosaur, which was probably the most extreme ride we went on during our visit. It's not a roller coaster, but it does take place in the dark and shake you around quite a bit as you ride by ocassionally loud dinosaurs. We both had fun, but wished there was just a little more to it. After that, we went at a more leisurely pace. Animal Kingdom features two animal viewing trails, one in Africa and one in Asia. We took both, and caught a show about birds before heading home for the day.

Magic Kingdom - Disney World's premiere park was our first and last stop. At Andrew's request, we rode the Haunted Mansion 4 times during our stay. The first was a little disappointing, as the ride was stopped for a while before we could get on and some of the effects weren't working right. But all was fixed for our subsequent rides. With a detailed dark ride like Haunted Mansion, you do notice more and more things as you ride it again and again, so neither of us got bored. We stopped by many other old favorites like Peter Pan's Flight, Snow White's Scary Adventures,and others. There were a few new rides since Andrew was last there, which we made a point of seeing. Stitch's Great Escape is cute in parts, but a little thin in content with too much reused from its former incarnation as Alien Encounter, which I preferred. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh was also a little light on story and complex animatronics, but it does use some very simple and effective visual tricks. We both really liked the 3D show Mickey's PhilharMagic, which has Donald running through various classic Disney musical numbers in pursuit of Mickey's sorcerer hat. I had though we were going to skip It's a Small World, but Andrew decided it would be a nice way to end our visit. We were both glad that we did. The refurbishment that closed it down on my last visit resulted in a new facade of geometric architecture and a working clock, reminiscentappearancede's appearence at Disneyland. Inside, the ride had been touched up, most notably with new lighting which did wonders for the look of the show.

Our flight back to Boston went smoothly. The bunnies got a good report card from their sitter and we are settling back into our normal routinessouvenirs our souveniers and photos should be arriving in the mail sometime soon. I'll post any good picture we may have.