At WDW? Short on Time? Ride This OR That!

Posted on November 13, 2015 by greenlisa9989@yahoo.com

Unless you’re staying for an extended period of time, it’s nearly impossible to do it ALL at Walt Disney World in a single visit. That’s part of what keeps our family coming back for more, again and again. The choices among rides and attractions can be pretty overwhelming! It’s easy to find the thrill rides, if that’s your thing, and knock those off the to-do list. But what about the less thrilling rides? The movies and live shows? If you can’t do it all, which should you choose and which should you leave off for a later visit? For today’s Friday Five, I’d like to offer a few suggestions…

At WDW? Short on Time? Ride This OR That!

Spinners- In Magic Kingdom, ride Dumbo or Magic Carpets of Aladdin or Astro Orbiter. Love Dinosaurs? Skip those two and ride Triceratops Spin in Animal Kingdom’s Dinoland U.S.A. My Opinion: Dumbo’s a classic but the wait can be long (and loud!). Magic Carpets of Aladdin is cute and our kids have always loved it.
Under Sea Adventure- Both of these attractions have Clamobiles as ride vehicles, both take you back through popular Disney movies – Ride Under The Sea-Journey of the Little Mermaid in Magic Kingdom (Fantasyland) OR The Seas With Nemo and Friends in Epcot (Future World). My favorite is the Nemo and Friends version, but my friend Heather and her family love the Little Mermaid best. Both are cute!
3D Movies- You have three choices: Mickey’s PhilharMagic (Magic Kingdom), It’s Tough to Be a Bug (Disney’s Animal Kingdom) or MuppetVision 3D (Disney’s Hollywood Studios). My opinion: I don’t dislike any of them, but Mickey’s PhilharMagic is my favorite. Keep in mind: It’s Tough to Be a Bug can be very scary for little ones and people of all ages who are afraid of bugs.
Kiddie Coaster- Barnstormer and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, both in Magic Kingdom, have low height requirements at 35″ and 38″ respectively. Barnstormer is great for very young, apprehensive riders (entire ride lasts about a minute). For brave first-timers (or Barnstormer graduates), Seven Dwarfs Mine Train lasts twice as long and has more to see.
Live Stage Shows- Great choices abound: Festival of the Lion King (Animal Kingdom), Finding Nemo-The Musical (Disney’s Animal Kingdom), Beauty and The Beast Live on Stage (Disney’s Hollywood Studios), Disney Junior Live on Stage (Studios), and Voyage of the Little Mermaid (Studios). You’ll know best which of these will appeal most to your own Disney fans, but if you can’t decide, Festival of the Lion King is a crowd pleaser across all ages.

Which rides or attractions would you pick from the list?

At WDW? No FastPass? Please Stand By!

Posted on August 21, 2014 by greenlisa9989@yahoo.com

Even if you’ve mastered all the tricks of the new FastPass+ system, I’ll bet there will come a day when you will want to experience a ride or attraction and will need to use the standby line. I know! That’s the way it used to be all the time! I think some of us have been so spoiled by the entire FastPass convenience, we’ve come to believe that a 20 minute wait is practically torture – a vacation-ruining waste of time! I, for one, don’t fall into that category. I’m so much more patient and tolerant of waiting when I’m in the Disney Bubble – sometimes, I’m willing to step into line for one of my favorite attractions even if the posted wait is 45 minutes!

Luckily for all of us, those geniuses of Disney Imagineering have come a long way with the entertainment value of the standby line. Once just a holding pen with little to see or do as you and your party snaked around and around chain barriers and handrails like cattle, the introduction of a well designed standby line has changed overall ride experiences exponentially.

Today I want to highlight three examples of what I consider excellence in queue creativity. I chose these three attractions based on their ability to provide samples of the following categories –

Existing ride successfully refurbished to provide a vastly better standby experience
Brand new ride with a wildly entertaining standby line
Not-so-new ride with an original, well-themed queue

Existing Ride:

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad – Refurbished in 2012 to add a new interactive queue: I just got to experience this highly touted standby experience myself in May and I thought it was absolutely wonderful! So wonderful, in fact, the line moved too fast for me to fully enjoy all the cool features and activities. I’ll share a few pictures, but you’ve just got to experience it for yourself. Seriously – if the wait is 30 minutes, you’ll have a ball!

Brand New Ride:

Under the Sea- Journey of the Little Mermaid – New Fantasyland attraction, Opened December, 2012. From the craggy rocks along the “shore” to the seashells, starfish, and many other tiny details on the outside of the Little Mermaid queue to the really awesome treasures and cute blue crabs that move in and out of different scenes. Again, this ride moved too fast for me to catch all the interesting things to see and do! Since the Clammobiles are continuously loading, this line moves fast. Do not waste a FastPass on this one!

Not-so-New with Originally GREAT queue:

You know what I’m going to pick, don’t you? Expedition Everest! We were lucky enough to be at Animal Kingdom during this ride’s soft-opening back in the Spring of 2006. So, EE’s 8 years old now and still boasts one of the (if not THE) most amazing, clever, spectacularly detailed queues in the World!!! We fell in love at first wait and still try to use the standby line at the Forbidden Mountain whenever time allows. To me, Expedition Everest set the bar for every new attraction that followed. This is Disney Imagineering at its finest.

Okay, it’s your turn – which ride would you nominate in each category?

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

Posted on June 17, 2014 by greenlisa9989@yahoo.com

In Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, Fantasyland has always been a favorite place for parents 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 scenes. 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 at 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 Seas 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 from 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.