Monthly Archives: June 2014

Who Goes to Walt Disney World to Shop? I DO!

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Olaf PinWho else is excited about the new Disney Market Place Co-Op in Downtown Disney?  I cannot wait to shop there – I’ve been browsing some of their merchandise on their online store and whoa!  Great stuff – especially the home goods in Disney Centerpiece!  I just missed being able to shop in the Co-Op by a couple of days – it opened at the beginning of this month, just a few days after our WDW vacation ended.  Well, I’ll be back in October and I’ll save some pennies between now and then just for that particular store – because one of the things I like to do at Walt Disney World is shop.

There are many stores and shops at Disney World that I love.  Many I just browse, but seldom buy make a purchase in – I just think the stuff is great, with no real need to have any of it for my own.  This would include the giftshops at many of the ride’s exits – like Expedition Everest and Tower of Terror – those giftshops are really neat and offer cute and clever attraction-related merchandise.  The one on the way out of Pirates of the Caribbean is a particular favorite as well.  I also love to browse the shops in Disney’s Hollywood Studios – I just seldom find anything there IMG_6606I can’t live without.

Now, let’s talk about where my money goes.  There are four places I go to shop (as in like-an-Olympic-sport shopping) – The Fam is used to this and they know they can either help or get out of the way – I’m good with either of those opptions as long as I have some completely uninterrupted time to carefully select what will be going home with me.

Disney Shoe Ornament - MaleficentMouse Gear in Epcot

I love Mouse Gear because of its size, but also the way the store is merchandised.  The place is always bright, clean, well organized and neat as a pin.  Part of what’s so great about it is how open it is – one huge room all on display for my shopping pleasure.  Most recently, Megan and I added to our Shoe Ornament collection with the purchase of three new shoes from Mouse Gear.  If you saw my post on another Epcot store (Mitsukoshi in the Japan Pavilion), it deserves a shout-out here, but unlike Mouse Gear, I don’t always buy something from there.

Haunted Mansion Mickey OrnamentDisney’s Days of Christmas (Downtown Disney)

Disney Christmas ornaments are a must-buy souvenir for me.  The nice folks at Disney’s Days of Christmas will carefully pack my ornament purchases and ship them straight to my house where they will arrive safely unbroken.  Yes, I pay about $25 extra for that, but it’s totally worth it to me not to have to fret over what may happen if I tried to carry all the ornaments with me on the plane home.  As long as there’s room on my 9-foot Disney Christmas tree, I’ll be buying ornaments at this happy holiday shop.

World of Disney (Downtown Disney)

This store is, with regard to presentation, the exact opposite of Mouse Gear.  It’s a little darkerHaunted Mansion Singing Busts Ornaments and messier inside and divided into many rooms and sections – you could look around in World of Disney for a couple of days, I think, and still not see it all.  Clothing, watches, and souvenirs are the kinds of things I buy here.  It can be really crowded, though, so if you’re serious about shopping here, a little patience and crowd tollerance helps.  Most recently, I bought a tee shirt (for our dog, Junior) from the boys’ section, some Haunted Mansion ornaments (the singing busts) that were not at the Christmas Store, and some small souvenirs for friends back home.  I also bought my new, one-and-only, perfect-for-me Earhat!  (See me wearing it on our Facebook Page – oh, and if you press “Like” while your there, I’d be ever so appreciative since I’m only 20 shy of 1000!)

The Main Street Emporium (Magic Kingdom)

All the stores on Main Street’s left side are connected.  So, you can enter the Emporium and shop your way (in cool comfort) down to Casey’s Corner!  It’s the atmosphere of The Main Street Emporium that draws me in.  It’s got great Victorian details and I can find camera batteries, gift cards, and one of my favorite things to buy there, Disney Pins (for collecting and trading).  Yeah, I know they sell pins literally everywhere, but it has become tradition for me to at least attempt to find a pin or two from the Emporium to take with me.

Now it’s your turn – which of Walt Disney World’s stores are your favorite?  What are your favorite souvenirs to buy on every visit?

Disney Christmas Ornaments

Personalized Disney Ornament Dumbo Christmas Ornament Disney Shoe Ornament - Ariel Disney Shoe Ornament - Anna Classic Earhat Ornament

 

 

Disney’s Under the Sea – Voyage of the Little Mermaid

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In Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, Fantasyland has always been a favorite place for Fantasyland Photo Opparents and grandparents to take small children and enjoy some of Disney’s more whimsical, milder rides and attractions.  These are the ones made for every age – low or no height requirements, no rough twists and turns, no scary surprises – The kinds of rides Walt Disney himself had a hand in creating so children and adults could have fun together.

As part of the Magic Kingdom’s new Fantasyland expansion, the Little Mermaid ride (officially:  Under the Sea-Voyage of the Little Mermaid) is an adorable tribute to Ariel’s story – full of all our favorite characters and Queue for Voyage of the Little Mermaidscenes.  Tucked beneath Prince Eric’s castle, guests board clammobiles for a fun and fanciful journey through familiar scenes – brought to life, straight from the movie!  As you approach the attraction, there’s a great photo op and most likely a Disney photographer will be standing by to snap your picture in front of a ship with Ariel as the figurehead!

The queue is full of clever surprises – so much so that I was actually disappointed that the line moved quickly and I couldn’t look at the details as long as I would have liked.  The queue starts outside where you’ll feel just like you’re IMG_3003at the seaside walking in and out of caverns carved by the ocean’s waves.  Look down and you’ll see a variety of seashells under foot.  Look along the walls and find starfish and barnicles.  Once you go inside, there are interactive parts to this queue involving Ariel’s treasures and some cute and funny little blue crabs.

The indoor part of the queue is cool and dark – as is the ride itself.  Lighting effects make you feel like you are truly going under the sea in your clam shell.  Unlike Epcot’s The Ride Vehicle for Voyage of the Little MermaidSeas With Nemo & Friends which offers a new storyline continuing where Finding Nemo left off, Under the Sea – Voyage of the Little Mermaid (similar to Peter Pan’s Flight) offers only a selection of scenes straight from the movie. This is what divides visitors’ opinions about this attraction – Little kids (and Mermaid fans) love seeing the familiar scenes reproduced in great detail and larger than life.  Big kids and adults are often disappointed by the scenes’ simplicity and how the ride offers nothing new or different – basically just replicates parts of the movie exactly (with low-tech animatronics to boot).

Judge for yourself!  This attraction is worth at least one visit for the experience.  The highly detailed, interactive queue is very well done and the ride itself is a great place to sit down and cool off for a bit fromScuttle the Florida heat.  This is a continuously loading attraction, so you may want to save a FastPass for something else as the line moves pretty quickly.  Personally, I liked the ride okay, but I LOVED the queue!  I have to agree with the folks that would have liked a little something new or different in the Little Mermaids story – there seems to be wasted potential.

Have you ridden the new Little Mermaid ride?  What did you think about it?

 

WDW Ariel and Eric in Silhouette Ariel Getting Legs Ursula - Voyage of the Little Mermaid WDW Little Mermaid's King Triton

 

 

WDW Adventureland – Jungle Cruise: 5 Great Things

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WDW Jungle Cruise“Only a true connoisseur of puns can appreciate the perfect execution, the art, the comic genius of the Jungle Cruise skipper.” – Lisa Green (yep, me!)

Puns are the most revered form of humor in my family.  I’m not sure what that says about us, but it’s true nonetheless.  Joseph has inherited the pun-appreciating gene and he and my sister, Sandy, are the undisputed family champions.  This love for all things pun-ny has a lot to do with our love for The Jungle Cruise in Magic Kingdom’s Adventureland!  If you consider the Skipper on every boat a comedic artist – The Pun is their medium of choice.  And that is, after all, what makes The Jungle WDW Jungle Cruise DockCruise special and unique – the quality of the entire experience depends solely on the talent of the Skipper and their ability to deliver their pun-intensive dialogue with just the right timing!

Just a couple of weeks ago, we rode the Jungle Cruise at Walt Disney World and Skipper Jeff (who was excellent) reminded us once again why this ride is charming, classic, and SO darned funny (well, to this family anyway).  I love every single thing about it!

Here are my favorite things about the Jungle Cruise, an Adventureland classic!

Spider WDW Jungle Cruise Dock1. While waiting in line, guests are treated to both sight gags (on the walls, overhead, on standing crates and cages) and sound gags.  As you get closer to the boarding area, you can watch the boats (they have cute names) come in and go out.

2. The design of the boats was based on the steamer in the movie African Queen (one of my all time favorites!).  While you wait, listen carefully to the announcements!  The dock manager’s notices over the P.A. set the tone for the rest of the experience.

“Any travelers who may need to exchange foreign currency during their voyage needn’t worry. There are banks all along our rivers.” – Jungle Cruise Dock Announcer

Sailing on WDW Jungle Cruise3. Once you board your boat, you’ll meet your skipper and set off on your journey around the world (along famous rivers).  Here’s where this attraction will capture your heart!  Yes, the jokes are cheesy!  Yes, the animals are fake!  Be ready to embrace the experience in the spirit it was intended – not to impress and delight, but to charm and entertain.  To truly appreciate all the Jungle Cruise has to offer, you must be willing to give both the skipper’s dialogue and your surroundings your complete and undivided attention!

4. The scenery is a masterpiece of real plants and totally fabricated situations.  In WDW Jungle Cruise Skipper Jeffcaves, floating along quiet pools, among ruins, viewing the backside of water!  The Disney details (like the puns) are plentiful!!!  Pay attention to the plane wreck – you’ll see only half the plane.  Why?  Because the other half (the front) is over in the Studios in the Great Movie Ride!  Do you know what scene it’s in?
“We’re in the Amazon in South America, where things grow larger than life, such as the butterflies on our left and on our right. Their wingspans grow from 12 inches to a whopping 1 foot!”  – Jungle Cruise Skipper

“See my jeep? I had a little trouble getting it started this morning, but I don’t know how they got it to turn over… oh well.”  – Jungle Cruise Skipper (The jeep has been turned upside down…get it?!?)

Butterfly on the Jungle Cruise5. The jokes just keep coming, the adorable animal animatronics surround you, the skipper guides the boat along the river until you’re back at the dock once more – Friends, this is Disney at its finest!  Some famous people got their start as Jungle Cruise skippers – Kevin Costner and John Lasseter among them. Yes!  Even Weird Al Yankovic sang a song about the Jungle Cruise called “Skipper Dan” – check it out on YouTube here.

We can’t be the only super-fans of the Jungle Cruise – shout out now and leave a comment if you love the Jungle Cruise like we do!WDW Jungle Cruise Jeep

 

 

WDW Jungle Cruise's Boulder Side

The Boulder Side of the Jungle Cruise

 

My Disney Experience – A Fair and Balanced Review

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WDW Bus Stop at Old Key WestUp until our recent visit to Walt Disney World, I could only speculate about how I would use all the new bells and whistles of the My Disney Experience, MyMagic+, FastPass+, and MagicBand.  I researched, I planned, I chose my ADRs (Advance Dining Reservations) 180 days in advance, I purchased MemoryMaker, I customized my Magic Band, I selected my FastPasses 60 days before I would need them.  I played by the rules, so to speak, and fulfilled what I considered all the new requirements for a visit to my favorite vacation destination.

The Good News:  For the most part, the WHOLE of our experience was a positive one.  I’m going to be completely honest in the rest of this article – not to whine, but to tell you how our experience really was – for us.  We always have been and still are HUGE Disney fans.  Please don’t misunderstand comments that seem to be complaints – to be fair and balanced, I need to point out areas that can be improved or that didn’t work well for our family.WDW Mickey Pretzel

We did not experience any glitches with linking our party in the My Disney Experience / MyMagic+ system, selecting FastPasses, etc.  The convenience of using a MagicBand for resort room access was awesome!  Our MagicBands were comfortable, lightweight, and non-irritating.  After selecting a PIN for use with our MagicBands for charging purchases, I’m certain we did spend quite a bit more money than intended – the process was so darned easy to use!  Touch the key pad, enter the 4-digit pin, enjoy your purchase.  Snacks, souvenirs, meals, drinks – the bill really racks up fast!

The whole FastPass+ thing was fine, but not as great as I’d imagined.  I was, perhaps, a bit overly optimistic.  We left a lot of FastPass selections unused!  Crowd levels were such that, for the most part, we didn’t need FastPasses for any other than e-ticket (headliner) rides and attractions.  Being forced to select 3 then only needing one or two Waiting for Toy Story Midway Maniameant that if we never used all 3 on a particular day, we totally ruined our chances to select more.  Yes, we could have changed our selections to something else in the same park, but then we’d have been more or less “forced” to ride out those passes to be eligible to get more – and we wanted more, especially for a different park.  Plus, the addition of the tiered FP systems in Epcot and the Studios really proved to be challenging and not as good as the old FP system for our family (your experience may be completely different!).

Getting into the parks seemed to be a LOT slower than in the past.  Especially for us since Raymond’s MagicBand almost never worked properly.  Remember Key to The World cards?  How you fed them into the card reader then the fingerprint reader’s light would come on?  Well now you touch the Mickey on your MagicBand to a reader and wait for a light to swirl around and around (on the reader, while you’re touching Mickey to it) before the swirling light becomes a bright, solid light – THEN the light comes on for the fingerprint DSCN3367reader.  Then you wait for the whole shebang to turn green- it’s much slower than the card reader!  Especially when one member of your party has trouble almost every time.  In Raymond’s case, the Cast Member by the MagicBand reader would have him try multiple times before calling over a Senior Cast Member with a hand held reader – who would read Raymond’s MagicBand, call him by name, and give him the go-ahead to enter.  This would have been okay if it only happened once, but we visited two parks a day and the process got tedious in a hurry.  It also felt like we were…how do I put this…appearing suspect.  I wasn’t embarrassed, really, but – we just felt singled out, stared at, scrutinized, again and again.  When you’re trying to use Morning Extra Magic Hours and you get held up every time…I’ll stop complaining now, you get the idea.

Splash Mountain Ride PhotoSo – to wrap it all up for you…

MagicBands – very convenient when they work properly.  Highly wearable – no complaints about comfort (I kept looking at mine as if it would tell time).  If Disney really wants this to be convenient, they’ll find a way to attach your discounts (Tables in Wonderland, DVC, Annual Pass) so you don’t have to carry all the cards!

MemoryMaker / PhotoPass – easier to use than the old system – just hold your arm out post-picture-taking for a quick scan of a MagicBand and you’re on your way.  Ride photos, character dining pics, park photos all together for one price with MemoryMaker.  If you’re Family Pic at Disney's Boardwalkthinking about it, pre-purchase for the $50 discount.  You can read my justification for forking over the $149 here.

FastPass+ – There’s a definite learning curve here.  I think I can do better on our next visit.  I strongly dislike the must-choose-and-use-three at the same park before getting the option to hop and pick again.  I also wasn’t a huge fan of having to use a kiosk to pick the fourth, fifth, etc. (versus being able to use the app, which you can’t).

MyMagic+ – There’s still some work to be done.  I believe the app is not as user-friendly as it could (and should) be.  It’s so slow!  Even when we were in a park – SLOW!!!Meg and Joe at Disney's Hollywood Studios

We had a GREAT vacation!  None of the problems we experienced were more than momentary annoyances.  No matter what kind of change you’re faced with, there’s always a period of adjustment.  I feel certain that Disney will address the existing system glitches.  I believe they will listen to guest feedback and make some additional tweaks here and there.  I am very much looking forward to our next visit to Walt Disney World in October to celebrate our 25th Anniversary – our first trip without children since my first visit in 1990!

Tim over at Dad for Disney has a great article on new versus old FastPass systems.  Check it out here.

If you’ve been to Walt Disney World recently, how was your experience with the new system?