Florida 01/26 – Epcot + Magic Kingdom
After my minor rant about Florida Disney pricing last year, heavy research led to finding out that you aren’t as restricted to 7- or 14-day packages as I had previously believed.
You can get some pretty flexible deals here https://www.bestoforlando.com/disney-world-tickets/date-based-tickets/ that allowed us to tailor our visit to the exact number of days required, not having to worry too much about over or under-cooking it. We wanted to visit all of the parks again at least once, as three of them contained +1s and the other had the most well rounded lineup last time anyway so would be rude not to.
We kicked off this package at
Day 2 – Epcot
The most pleasant of the four to visit in my opinion. There’s an unrivalled vibe about the place and around 50% of the attractions that just can’t be matched elsewhere.
Not sure sequence is important here, so I’ll just talk about the attractions. This was the first true day of discovering Orlando was way busier than it should have been, with the major draws here all capping way over an hour even by early entry.
This meant that most of trip from this point onwards revolved around the constant internal battles and struggles of ‘I’ve ridden this before, I don’t want to queue worse for it’ and playing the generally fruitless game of trying to beat the system without paying.
One of the new things that took priority was the recently rethemed Test Track, now on it’s 3rd iteration. They’ve removed the quirky build your own car segment and the subsequent theme of the ride being tested around that car, in favour of returning more to honouring the original version. A simple sit down of talking about and enjoying some car stuff, with a bit of an attempt to sell one.
The queue is fine, if a little bland now without an interactive segment. One of the more pleasant ‘long’ waits we had at least.
Ride itself is great, a significant upgrade to my memory of it. Some of the visual effects in the early game are rather stunning, while the cheesy onboard audio describes ‘futuristic’ features. Then there’s literally just a pleasant sit-down section of driving through trees and mountains with the new and awesome soundtrack playing. Then you get the outdoor high speed bit, which is still rather surreal as a non-coaster experience.
Approved.
#1 Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind was suboptimal, they haven’t timed the audio visual loops of some segments to not repeat themselves multiple times as you slowly move past so one of the many Chris Pratt appearances throughout the city begins to grate quite quickly. Well maybe they did time it, but the now rampant fastrack abuse of Orlando quickly killed it.
The pre-shows stack weirdly with one just being an unpleasant room of constant ‘move forward and fill the space’ shouting, killing the mood somewhat.
Next one has a reasonably amusing introductory video.
Last one is supposed to have an impressive visual effect, but it was consistently broken.
Heading out of this one led to a hugely unpleasant bottleneck of bodies, one in which you could easily lose another 15 minutes to if you aren’t forceful enough or experienced about positioning. Though far less egregious than some of the examples at Epic had been, this created that similar disappointment of ‘pre-show made me excited for the ride, but now the mood is gone’. Especially as it literally ends with the line ‘quick, get them on the shuttles’. There’s just nothing quick about it, even for an 8-train Disney powerhouse.
Eventually our Vekoma train chugged in and set things in motion. I stayed pretty spoiler-free for this attraction even though it opened a fair few years ago now, not long after our original visit here. Not sure this particularly helped in the end, as the feeling of needing to stay spoiler-free implies a certain level of ‘something special happens’, and it really didn’t.
The initial visual sort of illusion with the big black room and screens on a corner as the cars spin backwards was a little disorienting in a ‘that’s kinda cool’ kinda way. Then it launches backwards, then it’s just a long and mildly interesting rollercoaster in a building.
For me it failed to capture any of the sense of fun that the Tower of Terror equivalent of the Guardians attraction delivers. Without a more consistent visual story aid, this one relies on character audio describing what’s happening, while also being drowned out by the loud accompanying music that is also a defining feature for the entirety of the journey.
I just failed to focus on any one thing in particular, from the coaster forces itself, to the random screen snippets, to hearing what the crew were saying, to not particularly enjoying the Blondie song. The result was a rather underwhelming experience to be honest, especially given the popularity.
It’s glossy smooth and the rotation is technically seamless, but that takes away from the thrill somewhat. Outside of a couple floaty pops of air here and there, the overall feeling is far less out of control than an old Space Mountain equivalent, and that simply doesn’t suit the premise, or my personal taste.
Disapproved.
Spaceship Earth remains a classic of course, a long and comfortable uphill sit-down with soothing narration and pleasant scenery. This is capped off by a drastically out of date but quirky on-board interactive screen which puts your on-ride photo face into a goofy future.
Did Soarin’ because why not, never actually done it before. Unironically it has one of the most enjoyable queues on park by means of a simple quiz on screens that you can also interact with using your phone. No decoration whatsoever, just a simple brain exercise competition was enough to keep us entertained.
The ride is nothing to write home about, I’m way beyond caring about flying theatres now, though there is a certain charm in coming back to one of the originals that started the craze in the first place.
Speaking of charm, Living with the Land oozes it. Where else in the world can you get a dark ride through an unenchanted greenhouse, with real vegetables. Better than Guardians.
One final shout out to Club Cool. We had heard about but managed to not find this sodas of the world thing last time. To our elation, stumbled upon it still existing and then visited on multiple occasions. A great source of free hydration in a theme park, not to be underestimated.
There’s no coasters to rank here, so let’s rank sugary drinks:
8. China – tastes like medicine, not particularly pleasant.
7. Russia – Cucumber flavouring is too bland to carry it.
6. Italy – Not awful, but tastes like a mixer rather than a standalone drink.
5. Philippines – Is what it looks like, watermelon Fanta. Had better versions of the same thing elsewhere in Asia though.
4. Dominican Republic – Decent flavour, but the kind of very sweet you wouldn’t want to drink too much of.
3. Moldova – Decent flavour, a little in the opposite direction, bit too subtle to satisfy.
2. Madagascar – Addictive taste.
1. Korea – As good on flavour, I just prefer non-sparkling drinks where possible.
Yay for Epcot.
Headed out to Disney Springs for a meal, before hopping over to
Magic Kingdom
This place is the most faffy of the resort to get to, because of the mandatory monorail. For a first time visit, the wonder of that likely adds to the charm, or at least it probably did when monorails were more special. On a return visit it just eats up a portion of your expensive day out.
It was actually already dark when we arrived, don’t let that photo fool you, and for now we had one new coaster on our mind, #2 Tron Lightcycle Run, for the sake of completion.
See?
This sucked, so bad. Let’s get the clone moan out of the way. I’ve done it before, under much better circumstances. Remember the good old days, when Disney used to give free fastpass from machines and they didn’t ruin anything for everyone else? Well even without that I queued about 20 mins a go for the Shanghai version of Tron. Didn’t like it much, because I don’t like motocoasters and the layout is bland as anything.
Well here we are 9 years later, the Americans were patient enough for Disney to just bring it to them. It wasn’t worth it.
The queue time was understated at around 80 minutes, which was awful to begin with. But it’s just lazy, no effort overflow switchbacks under boring and sparse umbrellas. On a hot day, this would have been hell on earth, but we had a different kind of issue. No sunburn for the first time in forever, but Florida was instead on the cusp on a freak cold snap. It dropped from 29 °C to -4 in under 48 hours and we felt the effects of this to our very bones, barely moving, even though trains were being launched every 25 seconds.
After over an hour you might reach the actual queue entrance, which says the name of the sponsor rather than the ride. Then maybe 20 minutes is actually themed, poorly, indoors, with another annoying audio loop about a mini-game in a film no one is supposed to acknowledge that they have seen.
Ride was exactly as I remember – uncomfortable, underwhelming visually and as a coaster. It immediately superseded Guardians as the new ‘this ride is better than <insert premium attraction here>’ of the trip.
Case in point, wanted to go ride Space Mountain, because it’s better than Tron (and Guardians), but it had broken for the day.
So we walked straight onto the Peoplemover, which is better than Tron. Got some sneak peeks at the inside of Space Mountain with the house lights on, an engineer standing at a block section and scratching his head.
Then no sneak peeks at whatever they’re doing to Buzz Lightyear, because they’ve put curtains up.
Castle show wasn’t far off starting at this point, but the crowds, weather and general mood deemed it was better to skip it in favour of getting out at a reasonable time in a reasonable condition. Had our eye on some different shows for the week anyway.