Walt Disney World Part 2: The Magic Kingdom

I’ve been to Disneyland many times, but I don’t think I’ve been there right at opening. With Disney World, because it was our first time, I wanted to get there as early as practicable so we could get as much done as possible when the lines were short. And though it was tough to get up early, I was thrilled to be able to get on so many rides with no wait (I can’t speak for the thrill levels of the other members of my party, though).

The Magic Kingdom park is similar to Disneyland, so I figured we could spend the first half of the day there, then maybe tour the World Showcase portion of Epcot later (which happened—sort of. More on that later.) Add to that the unfortunate refurbishment of Splash Mountain, and there were really only two big-ticket rides to get on at the park: Space Mountain and Thunder Mountain (properly known as Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, or BMTRR to Disney buffs).

We got on a nearly empty bus for the 15-minute (or so) trip to the Magic Kingdom. Not only is the Magic Kingdom the furthest from most other Disney World locations, but there are some transportation-related quirks as well. Guests arriving by car pay their parking fee at toll booths, which are not right at the entrance to the parking lot, meaning you still have to drive a ways to the actual lot. After parking, they wait for a tram to take them not to the park entrance, but to the Transportation and Ticket Center (TTC). They can buy tickets there, and then take either a ferry or a monorail to the other side of a lake to the actual park entrance. Monorails from the TTC also serve three hotels (Grand Floridian, Contemporary, and Polynesian) and another long track goes all the way to Epcot. The bus from the hotel bypasses the TTC and goes right to the park entrance.

We arrived a little after 8, were let in at 8:30, and held at the tunnel that goes under the railroad station. Just before 9, the train pulled into the station with Disney characters aboard for the opening ceremony. Since we were right up at the rope, we couldn’t really see it, but I for one didn’t really care. At 9, we were let into Main Street.

The first thing one notices, of course, is Cinderella Castle. Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland really is a charming edifice with an unquestionably iconic silhouette, which masks how dinky it really is. Cinderella Castle is impressively large, with a busy, almost cluttered collection of turrets and spires. We would have time to admire it later, as we walked swiftly to Tomorrowland.

The Magic Kingdom has the same basic layout as Disneyland, minus New Orleans Square, Critter Country, and Mickey’s Toontown and plus Liberty Square. But with the exception of Main Street, each land looks different, sometimes drastically so. Everything was in the wrong place! Of course, a frequent Disney Worlder would think the same thing of Disneyland. Both would agree that the Magic Kingdom is much more spacious. The moat in front of the castle, for example, encircles the whole hub.

Our first stop was Space Mountain, which we literally walked on. In Disneyland, it’s on the right as you come in and you go up on a large, elevated balcony before entering the mountain. In the Magic Kingdom, it’s straight ahead at the very end. The mountain itself is actually on the other side of the railroad tracks, so as you enter the queue, you take a short flight of stairs down to a long tunnel. We rushed through it so I don’t remember much, but I do remember walking quite a ways to the boarding station, which is rather modest compared to the large, two-level Disneyland one. At Disneyland, after three switchbacks you emerge on the upper level of the boarding station, and the line slowly descends to ground level as it circles the station. There’s no change of levels at the Magic Kingdom, although there are two tracks.

Only the right side was open, so we walked (bypassing the queue area with the video games) onto the sleds. There are two cars per train, but only three single-file seats per car, like the Matterhorn. As it turns out, that’s not the only thing is has in common with the Matterhorn. After a light tunnel similar to the one between the first and second lifts on the Disneyland ride, the sleds climb the relatively well-lit sole lift hill, above which hangs a spaceship like the one hanging over Disneyland’s loading station. Partway up, another sled zooms by. Interestingly, this is not at the end of the ride, but near the middle.

And then we get to the ride, which is basically Matterhorn in the dark. There’s music playing in the building, but it’s hard to hear and not synchronized to the cars. It’s very rough and bumpy. I will say that the turn directions are more even unlike at Disneyland, where you always seem to be going to the right (or clockwise). And there’s one turn where there’s a zippy, whizzing sound effect that whirls around you to give the illusion that you’re spinning. But all in all, it’s quite disappointing compared to the smooth, fast Disneyland version where you really whip around the turns with the added bonuses of improved effects, Michael Giacchino’s score synchronized to the ride, and a much lower chance of getting a headache. I don’t want to be too cynical, but if I want to approximate Disney World’s Space Mountain without flying across the country, I can just ride the Matterhorn with my eyes closed, and then rub my eyes to create phosphenes to simulate the star effects.

The exit is another long tunnel that passes by dioramas of fictional planets. I’ll write more on the rest of Tomorrowland later, but at this point, we crossed the park to Frontierland and BTMRR. Besides Main Street, Frontierland is the land most visually similar to its Disneyland counterpart, with the Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island. The exceptions are the placements of Splash Mountain and Thunder Mountain, the latter of which is on the far side of the former.

BTMRR is very similar to the Disneyland version, but a mirror image. “We’re going the wrong way!” I thought more than once. The scenery is also slightly different in places, with a flooded mining town partway through (right before the second or third lift) and a geyser/hot spring area at the end. The queue area is substantially different too, most of it covered. It also seems that you can’t see as much of the ride from the outside. The ride broke down right before we pulled into the station, which would presage things to come. 

We did get a nifty Attraction Re-Entry Pass, which we ended up not using since it was only good for the Magic Kingdom. If it had been good for the other parks, we probably would have used it.

Adventureland has less of a jungle feel than Disneyland’s. The part nearest to Main Street has more of an Arabian feel, while further in is more Spanish. We chose not to see the Tiki Room, Swiss Family Treehouse, and Jungle Cruise due to similar attractions at Disneyland (there’s also Aladdin’s Flying Carpets, a Dumbo clone), but we did go on Pirates of the Caribbean. The ride building is in a Spanish fort, and the indoor queue is interesting, with views of cannons, ammo, and a dungeon where two skeletons are at a stalemate in a chess game (a piece of business added to one of the early ride scenes in Disneyland). We walked through the queue and right up to the loading area just as the ride broke down, though luckily it got running again within ten minutes or so. As for the ride itself? We all agreed it was a joke compared to Disneyland’s version. You go right to the projected waterfall with Bill Nighy and Ian McShane, though you can see mermaid projections if you look at the water to the side. Then it’s Dead Man’s Cove and the hurricane scene and what we all agreed was the most laughable part of the ride—the “dip,” which makes the second dip on the Disneyland Pirates look like the final Splash Mountain drop. It seriously feels as tall as the dip on top of the lift at Disneyland’s Pirates, or that part on Splash Mountain right after the bees that I’m not sure is actually supposed to be a dip. Then you skip right to the ship attack scene. After that it’s mostly the same as Disneyland, though the scenes feel a little closer to the boats and thus smaller in scope. The exception is Jack Sparrow at the end, who for some reason is way off in the distance (there’s also no barrel-shooting scene or lift at the end). The animatronics also seemed jerkier than at Disneyland.

Much more impressive was Haunted Mansion. At the Magic Kingdom, it’s located in Liberty Square, an American colonial-themed land between Frontierland and Fantasyland. The Mansion itself is approximately where BTMRR would be in Disneyland, and the building itself looks much different. There’s a new interactive graveyard in the outside queue, where you can play with a pipe organ and fake bookshelves. The foyer features a portrait of a man who slowly decomposes. The stretch room is the same, except the ceiling moves up, while at Disneyland, you’re actually in an elevator going down. The stretch room exits right to the loading station. The Magic Kingdom ride has several scenes in the beginning not at the Disneyland version, though the additions are not on the scale of Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean. First the Doom Buggies actually move past the changing portrait corridor. The next room is a library, with flying books, moving ladders, and the familiar “watching” busts. Then there is a music room with a self-playing piano. Finally, there is a hallway with M.C. Escher-like stairs surrounding the buggies and going in all kinds of wonky directions. Footsteps can be seen appearing and disappearing on the steps. Following this, the ride is almost the same as in Disneyland, though the tombstone ghouls in the graveyard are a bit creepier looking. The hitchhiking ghosts in the mirrors also appear to interact with the guests—ours tried to take our heads off. Finally, a ride superior to the Disneyland version!

After lunch at Columbia Harbor House (where we were given a free extra plate of fried shrimp—sadly, we were all to full to eat more than a little), it was off to the Hall of Presidents, a high-speed, turbulent roller coaster-type ride in the dark with sudden drops and stops. In reality, it’s an expanded version of Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln at Disneyland, with animatronics of all the presidents. The current president (Obama) gets to give a speech—as the attraction host said, Disney is a fan of both Bush and Obama, because they got second terms, and Disney has to change the show each time there’s a new president. Most of the twenty-minute show is a film projected on a curtain narrated by—who else?—Morgan Freeman. The curtains part a bit for Lincoln to talk, then close, then open their full length to reveal all the presidents, not all of who look like their real-life counterparts.

In Fantasyland, we avoided Peter Pan, Winnie the Pooh, and the Little Mermaid, all of which are in California and all of which had longer lines than in California as well (though I suppose Peter Pan in Disneyland still gets long lines. Definitely not the other two, though). We walked into Mickey’s Philharmagic, a delightful 3-D show that, despite its name, is more about Donald Duck getting owned by a bevy of Disney characters including Aladdin, Ariel, and Simba. I guess he is trying to retrieve Mickey’s sorcerer hat, so there is that connection. We didn’t tarry long in Fantasyland, but we did get a closer look at the backside of the castle, including a view through the stained glass windows to the restaurant within. I didn’t get to go on “it’s a small world,” though the one member of our party who did on a later day said that it was dismal and short compared to Disneyland’s. Say what you will about the ride, but the Disneyland ride’s façade is pretty spectacular, and Florida’s is pretty lame, like the entrance to any other dark ride. And there’s no Alice, Pinocchio, Mr. Toad (replaced by Pooh), Snow White (replaced by a character greeting area I’ll net), Casey Junior, Storybook Land Canal Boats, or Matterhorn. No wonder the few rides there had long lines.

The Country Bear Jamboree was one of the oddest theme park experiences I’ve had. Not because of the show itself, but because of the audience. I was familiar with the soundtrack of the show as heard on the Musical History of Disneyland collection, and I found the show odd, mildly pleasant, and not especially memorable. But as the show started, the weirdest thing happened. A good portion of the audience actually started clapping along. At that point, I fully expected a “Yeehaw!” to sound—and not from one of the bears. Then I remembered that we were in the South…kind of. This probably wouldn’t have happened in California, which is most likely why it’s not there anymore. It was very strange—I would understand if it had been a live show. In any case, it was like being at an older generation’s version of a rave (something else I’m not really into).

We went back to Tomorrowland, which has no Star Tours (which is in Hollywood Studios), no Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage, and a decidedly underwhelming-looking version of Autopia (and I’m not the biggest fan of the Disneyland version, either.) We elected not to go on Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin (where the guns are apparently attached to the cars, versus at Disneyland where you can take them out) and Stitch’s Great Escape, and no one else seemed interested in Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor (another time, maybe). But Rocket Jets is where it’s supposed to be, on top of a tower. And a big plus: Magic Kingdom still has the PeopleMover.

I liked the PeopleMover at Disneyland because you got a glimpse into various attractions, and I thought the effects in the TRON tunnel were cool. There’s no TRON tunnel in Florida, and there aren’t elevation changes like there were in California, but the Magic Kingdom’s PeopleMover still had plenty to offer, and I found it to be one of the hidden gems of Disney World.  First, the track goes through the Stitch show building, though you can’t see into it. What you can see is a model of EPCOT—not the park, but the Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow that Walt Disney originally wanted to build in Disney World, a futuristic, mostly enclosed city. There are additional dioramas in the vein of the ones in Space Mountain’s exit. Then, you go on a bit of exterior track before entering Space Mountain. You get to see a lot more of it than you did at Disneyland. The neatest part in my opinion is when the PeopleMover actually goes right between the two lift hills. Then you circle the inner circumference of the mountain and are given a good, long look at the whole ride, though it is very dark and hard to make out much. Ironically, I heard the music better here than on the Space Mountain ride itself, though maybe that’s because they have speakers on the PeopleMover track. Then it’s back outside and around the outer edge of the Carousel of Progress (you don’t go inside like you did at Disneyland—that’s where the TRON tunnel was). The final show building has Monsters, Inc. and Buzz Lightyear; you can’t see any of Monsters, Inc., but you do see the Planet Z segment of Buzz.  All told, a very relaxing and pleasing ride, with a few nifty moments, especially in Space Mountain. And after BTMRR and Pirates, it happened again. The ride stopped twice while we were on it: once before we entered Space Mountain and again just before we exited. It wouldn’t be the last breakdown we would experience.

Our penultimate attraction was the Carousel of Progress. The theater rotates to show four animatronic scenes featuring the wonders of electricity through the decades. It’s a fairly long attraction, about five minutes per scene. There are no thrills here; in fact, a majority of guests would probably find it soporific. It was nice to see as a slice of Disney theme park history I suppose, but certainly not a highlight. The narrator is different from the original heard on the Musical History of Disneyland CD set, and the fourth scene is completely different.

We ended our Magic Kingdom experience with a round trip on the train. There is no Grand Canyon diorama or Primeval World segment, so it’s not as interesting as the Disneyland version. There are some scenes of an Indian village by the Rivers of America. The Magic Kingdom version does not stop at Tomorrowland, but as in the Disneyland version, the Main Street station (where we boarded) was much less crowded than the Frontierland and Fantasyland stations.

It was around 2 or 3 by the time we were finished, so we took a monorail to the TTC, and from there we transferred to another monorail on the much longer route to Epcot. The whole thing around half an hour—notably, once the monorail gets to Epcot, it enters the park and does a loop around the Future World area before exiting again and arriving at the station. Then you have to take a long set of ramps down to the ground level. I’ll detail my thoughts on Epcot in the appropriate post, but we managed to ride Test Track twice, Mission: Space on both the green and orange versions, Gran Fiesta Tour featuring the Three Caballeros, Maelstrom, and Journey Into Imagination with Figment. We also had a very late dinner at Biergarten. So we didn’t get to see much of World Showcase that day, but we did manage to get on a bunch of rides. Again, details will be provided in the Epcot post.

I was sorry that we couldn’t go on Splash Mountain (because of the refurbishment), especially since it’s different from Disneyland’s, but other than that, I got most of what I wanted to do at Magic Kingdom. Maybe we should have gone on Jungle Cruise instead of Pirates since the former apparently has stuff the Disneyland version doesn’t. But I didn’t expect that Magic Kingdom’s Pirates would be that pathetic compared to Disneyland’s. And maybe next visit we’ll have time to see Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor, check out Buzz, and see Stitch just to see what all the fuss is about (after all, I have been on Heimlich’s Chew Chew Train and the Golden Zephyr).

Magic Kingdom was a bit of a letdown compared to Disneyland, but I had been expecting that from the research I’d done. It was probably good that we went there first. Because we got there early and got the headliners out of the way, we walked onto most of the attractions. The longest we had to wait for any ride was around ten minutes for Pirates, and that was because it broke down. It’s undoubtedly a good park when taken on its own terms, and it does its job as the heart of Disney World to the majority of visitors there who have never been to and will never go to the California parks. I did like its Haunted Mansion better than Disneyland’s (though I think Disneyland’s outer building looks better) and I enjoyed the PeopleMover and the Philharmagic show. But from the start, I was looking forward more to the other three parks, and I would not be disappointed.

Next: Animal Kingdom