Somewhere in Kissimmee a dog howled....

27Th November 2007









We set the alarm for six. I'm awake at five thirty (Thanks jetlag) to find Lynn wide awake too. Knowing this will happen, we booked, as is our usual, a character breakfast at the Crystal Palace at the Magic Kingdom for five past eight. (Got to go to the Magic Kingdom on the first day, it's a Florida law apparently) This is without doubt the best buffet breakfast in Disney World. The benefits are twofold. one, best buffet breakfast, and two, when the park opens at nine, we're in front of the crowd.









I open the curtains to view the vista. Wow that's fog. Ah, not fog, condensation. Seems we have the aircon down a bit too far. Back in the UK I'm not a morning person. I'm definitely a night owl but this morning I'm firing on all cylinders. By 6.45 I'm in the sitting room watching Fox35 news on the TV. I love American news programmes, the world outside the US just doesn't exist, you can see why the make such piss poor foreign policy. I also love the traffic reports. Any two car tail shunt gets a helicopter overhead and details of the best routes around it. If you did that where I work, helicopters would swarm like locusts.









Andy and Em arrive dead on seven. They're never late, it's quite disconcerting. Suitably equipped with hats, suncream, sunglasses and cameras we make our way to the bus stop. Another great reason to stay 'on property', the Walt Disney World Transportation System. For those who don't know, if you stay at a Disney resort, there's a bus service (which frankly would make Ken Livingston cry), boats and even a monorail service which are all free to Disney guests. There are five stops at the Saratoga Springs, it really is that big. We're stop number four and it's about 100 yards from the block (yards - see I'm showing my age). As we approach the bus stop, a bus turns the corner for the Magic Kingdom. What a superb piece of timing. The bus is nearly empty this time of the morning and soon we're on our way. They changed the buses last year and frankly, it sucks. The drivers used to talk to you on the way, giving you opening hours and trivia and stuff, but now they've put an automated system, which I think is GPS controlled, which spiels pre-recorded announcements at certain places. All very accurate and generic. I miss the drivers spiel.









We arrive at the Magic Kingdom bus station at about 7.45 and follow the exodus to the gates. One of the most pathetic things in Orlando is that after 9/11, you have to have all your bags checked at the gates of the parks, Universal, Seaworld, everywhere. I don't mind that, but unless you have a big black orb with a fizzing wick hanging out of it, these goons wouldn't find it. I assume that this has more to do with public relations than actual detection and prevention.









After inspection (2 seconds), we are herded to a waiting area for the breakfasts. There are two in the Magic Kingdom, Crystal Palace and the Cinderella Princess breakfast at Cinderellas Royal Table in the castle. Frankly, you couldn't pay me to go there. There are loads of 6 year old girls dressed as Disney Princesses waiting in line to go there. Can you imagine the bedlam that's going to be in there. We far prefer the far more sedate Crystal Palace. While queueing we encounter another of the Disney World phenomena, the TFTW. This stands for Too Fat To Walk. Maybe it's the amount of all-you-can-eat buffets but Disney World attracts the grossly obese like a honey pot draws flies. A line has formed at the rental desk for ECV's. While waiting we observe the customers, of the ten or so witnessed by us, only one was actually disabled and one very elderly. The rest were TFW's. What grinds me is that there is nothing to stop these people walking, it's pure laziness. And later in the day, someone who really needs an ECV can't have one because they've all gone. Honestly, there are whole families doing it (Another group - TFF, or The Fat Family), you can tell they don't know how to drive one because they're running into walls, curbs and children. I'm no anorexic but Christ sake, put the forks down and get some exercise.





Anyway, back to the good stuff. No matter how many times I've been to the Magic Kingdom, there's nothing better than that first entry on the first day. Entering under the station into Town Square and looking down Main Street for that first view of the castle. It's always good to share this experience with friends, especially ones who have never seen it before. I look at Em and Andy's faces for expression and I'm not disappointed. We wander up a nearly deserted Main Street, taking in the music, the sights and the smells. Waiting at the hub end of Main Street are the Photopass photographers. This is a stroke of Disney genius. These photographers use digital cameras but link all your pictures to an online account. You get a card which they scan into the camera. The great thing is you can always get the whole party in the picture. It's free and you don't even have to buy any that are taken. We have several taken in front of the castle and the Partners statue.





Sidebar - The Partners statue stands in the hub and is of Walt standing with Mickey, holding his hand and pointing with his right hand. On the Keys to the Kingdom tour they tell you that Walt is pointing down Main Street to the statue of Roy Disney and Minnie in Town Square and Walt is telling Mickey to go to them as he's dying and they will look after him. Mairi was weeping at this in 2004. However, the Wonko view is that if you look from behind, Walt is actually pointing to the toilets beside the Crystal Palace and he's just giving directions.....





We book in and are soon seated in the Crystal Palace. A light and airey eatery with the Winnie the Pooh characters going from table to table. Emma is unsure of how to react to character interaction, and knowing this I fail to warn her of the approach of Tigger. Tigger grabs Emma with a double armed hug and the look on her face in the photo is priceless. The service is always exemplary at the Crystal Palace and replete with breakfast lasagna we waddle out towards the hub just before ropedrop, the opening of the lands to customers.





What to do first? Definitely not a roller coaster lest those behind us get spattered with technicolour yodel. We settle on the Haunted Mansion which has not long reopened from a long rehab. The mansion has been cleaned and repainted and looks great. The queueing area has been updated with a long undercover section with fans. Inside the 'painting' over the fireplace has been updated to what looks like a video version of the old effect (a man gets old and turns to a skeleton before your eyes), the transitions are much smoother. The stretch room audio has been redone too. Before it was 6 or so speakers all in mono so the sound was omni directional and flat. Now it's all full surround sound and moves in a disembodied way around the room. We join the queue for the Doom Buggies (TM), basically a long loop of a conveyor belt that carries little cars big enough for two through the attraction, I think Disney call the system the Omnimover and it's used on other attractions in WDW. Biggest update is the new bride. The old ride had a Miss Haversham theme to it. You'd pass through an attic with a skeleton in a brides gown and sound effects of 'I do' floating about. Usual story, jilted at the altar, fled to the attic and died there. The new bride is darker. Passing through the attic, you now pass a series of portraits of the bride with different grooms, but the grooms heads keep fading away and reappearing. Rounding the turn is the bride, fully updated, and as you approach, an axe mysteriously appears in her hand. Very well done effects indeed!



We leave the Haunted Mansion very impressed. What to do now? We decide on a time management strategy. Working on the basis that Fantasyland gets full of young children early and stays that way all day (we've know people with young children go to Fantasyland and not come out again), we decide to cover all the Fantasyland rides first while it's quite empty.



We start with 'It's a Small World'. If you've never been on Small World, it's difficult to adequately describe it. Basically it's a slow moving boat ride through tableau's of animated dolls from different countries around the world. However, in reality, we think that it was designed not by Walt Disney Imagineering, but by the CIA as a means of psychological torture. Dolls! Hundreds and hundreds of dolls! The eyes! Everywhere the eyes! And the song, Over and over, "It's a small world after all......". Word to the wise, if you're on LSD (Do people still do LSD?), don't ride Small World......



We exit and take a moment to centre ourselves before crossing the path to Peter Pan. This ride is a notoriously slow loader and even at 9.30 we queue for ten minutes. All these rides are similar, but enjoyable in their own way, most are based on a Disney classic film and you follow the story from beginning to end during the ride. On Peter Pan you sit in a two seater 'ship', with sails, which is suspended from a rail monorail style and 'flies ' you over scenes from Peter Pan and ,Lynn's favourite because there's a model of her old office, old London Town at night, all made possible by the use of models, luminous paint, bicycle chains (yes bicycle chains) and ultraviolet light. I love the ultraviolets for spotting who's got the the white bra and T-shirt combo... (Giggity...!(Quagmire on Family Guy for those who don't know..))


Next we come to one of the true technological marvels of Disney World. Mickey's Philharmagic is the 4Th (I think) generation of 3D cinema developed by WDI. Storyline is basically you're in an opera house to see a concert with Mickey Mouse as the conductor complete with sorcerers hat. Donald Duck is left alone with the words 'And don't touch my hat...'. Of course, Duck wears hat, duck looses hat, duck interacts with characters (Lumiere, Aladdin, Ariel etc) in Disney classics retrieving hat). The experience is widely regarded as one of the best attractions in Orlando and includes smells blown at you to compliment the visuals (apple pie smell when Donald holds the pie out to the audience) and it's very well written. Just see it. You'll see what I mean...



There are other child orientated rides in Fantasyland, but being 40 we give them a miss. Been going to Disney for 10 years and we've never ridden Dumbo. Sacrilege some would say...



We head out of Fantasyland, past the Haunted Mansion, through Liberty Square into Frontierland. First stop, Big Thunder Mountain. Another of Lynn's favourites. A coaster based on the 'runaway mine train' theme (couple of years ago the ride in California broke and the real runaway mine train killed someone in the train behind). There is no queue, but the queueing line is still quarter of a mile long, and in 5 minutes we are ready to board. Before we start I have to say the Big Thunder isn't the most thrilling of thrill rides, some would say it's a bit of a fannies coaster. We sit in front of Emma and Andy. We gently pull away into the station, plunge briefly into darkness and up onto the first draglift. Slowly we chug towards the summit. We hang for a second at the top while the last car comes off the lift and then we're off. From behind us comes an awful screeching sound which passes quickly through 23000Hz (extent of human hearing) and into the 40000Hz range (upper range of dog hearing). I realise that it's coming from the seat behind.

Somewhere off in Kissimmee a dog howled....

The next statement from the back seat became one of the great quotes of the trip and the piss was duly taken for the next 14 days.

"Holy fucking shit, we're all going to die!!"

At this time I'd like to remind you all that this is indeed, a fannies coaster. Strange whimpering sounds came from behind until we at last returned to the station. We made our way outside, speaking in sign language due to our screech induced deafness.

Opposite stands Splash Mountain. A flume ride which as a finale drops you five floors at a 45 degree angle. However you have to go through 2800ft of the creepiest animatronics WDI has ever produced t0 reach that drop. Lynn hates this ride because of the ride audio's annoying song. The ride is based on the film 'Song of the South' but somehow doesn't mention slavery. The film was withdrawn by Disney due to the slavery themeing but they still made a ride out of it. Oi vey... In California on the Disneyland version there are unofficial nights, organised on the internet I think, when young ladies of dubious moral character flash the bare breasts to the souvenir photo camera on the long drop, and the hoards of pimply freds watching with their cameras. Believe it our not this is known as 'Flash Mountain'. But I digress, we make our way in our log, getting higher towards the top, with Em saying 'Is this the drop?' every three seconds. Ironically the only time she didn't ask, it actually was..

As our 8 seater plastic log sailed merrily down it's 52 1/2 foot plummet, somewhere in Kissimmee a dog howled...

We hit the water pit at the bottom sending a wave of water backwards over the log but miraculously missed us all.

"Bloody hell, that was lucky", said Lynn about a millisecond before two water jets triggered by the log behind soaked every one of us to the bone. There was swearing...

We walk from the exit and I realise water is issuing from the laceholes in my shoes with every step. 'Bastard', I thought. Me and Andy are wet from the waist up but the girls look like they've fallen arse first down the toilet. Oh how we laughed.. Em dives in the nearest toilet in what we later find out is a attempt to dry herself by sticking her arse under the hand drier. She failed..

What we need is something dry. Pirates of the Caribbean? Perfect. Only a ten minute queue. We get fastpasses for the Jungle Cruise and return to the Pirates line. Tactical error, Pirates is a large dark building with much running water and air conditioning. In short, it's cold as a witches tit and being wet as well, we are freezing our bristols / nads off. Thankfully its a short queue and we look forward to being back out in the Florida sun for a quiet steam. All progresses well until we are almost at the unloading dock. We are bumper to bumper in a line of boats waiting to unload. Suddenly everything stops and the maintenance lights all come on. We are marooned. And in sight of land too. The final part of the attraction has been rethemed to feature Jack Sparrow from the film. (The ride came first for those that don't know) the animatronic Jack is very good indeed, a far cry from the 1971 counterparts elsewhere in the attraction. The accompanying audio is a loop lasting about a minute as it's only meant to entertain you while you're unloading. After 20 minutes we are freezing cold, squashed (4 adults squeezed in one row), Andy's got cramp, pissed off and almost out of our minds with Jack bloody Sparrow. Nearly 25 minutes have elapsed when we are finally unloaded, feeling like Robinson Crusoe after his rescue from the island.

Fuck it. We're not doing anything more until we've dried out. The solution is very British. Tea. We stop at an eatery besides the Tiki Room and a foetus in an Adventureland uniform is behind the counter.

"Two teas and two coffees please."

The foetus makes for the cold drinks.

"Teas mate"

He looks at us like we've him for a kidney. "Yes, iced tea"

Oh why is nothing simple? An exchange reminiscent of Basil Fawlty to Manuel takes place with us getting the ache and the foetus getting more confused. Crux of the matter is that Americans drink tea (Hot tea as it's known) with lemon, not milk. The seemingly simple request of getting drinkable tea (NATO standard milk and two) ends up with me spending $3 on a bottle of milk, of which we need a gnats worth, to go with two plastic cups of lukewarm pisswater.

"You were a while", says Lynn.

"Next time you want tea, you can get it your fucking self!".

The next cup of tea I bought was back in Blighty.

I do 5 minutes of transcendental meditation and try to get over what a retard the foetus was. We ride the Jungle Cruise. A jolly 8 minute boat ride through a jungle infested with bad animatronics. People love the Jungle Cruise because of the boat skippers. They all have the most world weary and laconic delivery of their spiel interspersed with sarcastic ad libs and bad jokes. If you get a good skipper it makes an otherwise dull ride into a real treat.

Now we come to the best things in the Magic Kingdom, if not Florida and probably the world.

Dole whip float.

For those who have had one and are reading this, bet you're longing for one now.. For those who don't know it's pineapple flavoured soft ice cream floating in pineapple juice. Dole is the world biggest grower of pineapples, hence Dole Whip). It tastes amazing.

We cross the hub and head into Tomorrowland. I have to admit, this is my favourite land in the Magic Kingdom. There's some really good stuff here. And some terrible. We decide to get the terrible out of the way first. After getting a Fastpass for Buzz Lightyear we get in the queue for 'Stitch's Great Escape'. I actually find it painful to go into this attraction. SGE started life as ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter back in 1995. Riders started in a preshow featuring the most advanced animatronic at the time, S.I.R (Simulated Intelligence robotics), a robot working for the XS corporation, a leader in updating backward planets technologies. The great tagline - "profit is a by-product we've learned to live with". The demonstration is of teleporting a fluffy creature called Skipper from one container to another (think The Fly). The great Tim Curry did the voice of S.I.R. The creature starts on one side cute and fluffy, ending up on the other side somewhat singed. Tagline -"You're not burned, you've just got a healthy glow.."

Riders then enter a circular chamber with a frosted glass tube at it's centre. Above each rider is a restraint that drops onto the riders shoulders. Plot is that XS CEO is going to teleport into the tube for a meet and greet. Of course it all goes wrong and an alien ,reminiscent of those from the Alien films, turns up. The following 5 minutes are mostly in the dark with the alien moving around (the restraints bounce on your shoulders to simulate the alien jumping on you), eating people and dripping slime before being returned to whence it came. Great fun. Unfortunately, it fell foul of one of the most potent forces in the world, crybabies. Whinging parents complained that their sensitive little angel was frightened and the Magic Kingdom was no place for such an attraction. So Alien Encounter closed in 2003.

What remains is likened to a mighty warrior, felled by disease. S.I.R has been turned into a fat policeman (voiced by Richard Kind) doing a dumbed down bit about a prisoner being teleported in. It's dire. The circular chamber is nearly the same with the addition of a couple of 'laser guns'. The main show is a fluffy version of AE. The Stitch character now bounces around in the dark breathing chilli dog smells and tickling people. Pathetic. I am lead weeping from the chamber. I am now depressed...

I need to lift my depression. Luckily nothing can lift my spirits like the TTA. That stands for Tomorrowland Transport Authority. This is a simple ride but one I find immensely enjoyable. It's basically a covered overhead scenic railway where the cars run on linear induction motors, that is a series of magnets two feet apart along the entire route which fire in sequence under and ahead of the car, pulling it along in silent comfort. This is great when it's hot or cold, or when you're just tired, for a bit of respite. It boards under the Astro Orbiter and goes first around Stitches Great Escape (weep), above the queuing area full of unfortunates about to enter, then around for a great view of the castle.

We then go inside the building and pass one of the original concept models for EPCOT, the Walt version, not the theme park. I wonder how many people go past and think "Nice model. Wonder what it's of..". It's history man!! Next some windows and a view down into Mickey's Star Traders, a retail outlet, then back outside, past the Indy Speedway (people queue for hours for their kids to ride this. Basically it's go karts on rails, like giant slot racers. So your 5 year old can drive one, big deal. Never seen the attraction myself).

We enter almost complete darkness and circumnavigate the Space Mountain building, lovely and cool. It the dim light we can just see streaks of reflective yellow as the ride cars fly around the coaster tracks at speed.

The exit back into the Florida sun has us all scrabbling for sunglasses and we're off to the Caroseul of Progress (More about that later), Once passed , we enter the Buzz Lightyear building. Along this part of the route is a strange thing, before or after the windows into the Buzz ride (I can't remember), there is a glass 'cubby' of sorts with a mock future hair salon in it. There's a manikin sitting in the chair, with it's head in a 'dryer' so it looks beheaded, wearing a short skirt with it's legs crossed. 'So what?', I hear you ask. Thing is, the manikin is wearing stockings and suspenders (garter belt for the colonials), I know, why were you looking? I just was. We noticed this years ago that one day you'll ride and the skirt's pulled up showing the undergarments and the next it's back to being prim and proper. And it's been that way for the last ten years that we've been going. Who's doing this? And why? Does Buzz Lightyear have a fetish? Strange.

Another brief run outside and its back to the loading dock. I am no longer depressed.

By now we are approaching the pain barrier and will need to eat. There are three more attractions to do so we decide to break through the pain before resting. Thank god for Fastpass. We grab passes for Space Mountain and head back to Buzz Lightyear. The entrances for Fastpass and Stand-by lines are side by side. We go through our side at the same time as a family go the other. We walk the deserted queue lines towards the load area. Thank god for fastpass. We arrive at the loading area and come face to face with the family. Bloody fastpass...

Buzz is a simple ride. Omnimover cars with infra red ray guns stuck to the front. It's just one long shooting gallery. Theming is great though and the ability to spin the car around on it's axis is a hoot. Your score is tallied on two displays in the car, one for each side. Lynn's not much cop at these things, in fact the poor thing has the marksmanship ability of a doorknob. According to the chart as you approach the unload, I am a Galactic Hero, Lynn is a NAAFI Shop Assistant. I don't like to gloat.....but I must.

It's now approaching 3pm, time for the afternoon parade. We make our way to Main St and find it quite busy. We walk down and find a clear spot of kerb and get settled in. There's about 15 minutes to showtime so we amuse ourselves people watching (and slagging them off, a British tradition..). There's a cast member with about a dozen kids in the middle of Main St playing, red light / green light and duck, duck, goose. We've seen him the last couple of years doing this and he really puts his heart and soul into it, so I tip my hat to him.

The parade's starting.....oh wait....no it's not. It's the parade grand marshalls, a family picked at random earlier in the day, who ride down Main St in an old car with a marching band escort. I think you have to look a certain way to get picked. They all look like prime candidates to meet Ty Pennington. Another pause. I hear music, but farther away. The parade is a self contained theatrical production and it is performed in one section of the parade route in it's entirity before moving on to the next section. But this is done so seemlessly that the floats never actually stop moving. The parade music for the section in front starts as the first float approaches and finishes as the last float goes past but the performers are doing the same act many times over for half a mile. I don't envy them.

I love taking pictures and have photographed this parade many times, always looking for the better shot, the better focus or lighting. Our spot is not a good spot, If I turn left, the angle of the sun gives me lens flare and to the right a post. Not some of the best shots I've every taken but it proved what my new 18mm-55mm image stabilized lens, that if Lynn's reading this now knows about, is capable of.

The last float passes. Behind the float are four cast members carrying a rope between them like a crime scene 'do not cross' tape. Behind them are 200 slowly moving people. They're not trying to get to the front gates because you could just walk by and out. They're just following the last float. Why? If anyone knows please tell me....

The crowd disperses and we walk back to Space Mountain where our Fastpasses are still in time. Good time manage is an essential at WDW. You can see and do so much more if you're good at it... and don't take kids, they slow you down.

Food or coaster? Food or coaster? Would like food but should do coaster. Space Mountain has the most deceptively long queuing area at the Magic Kingdom. The fastpass line runs parallel to the stand-by line, no twists, no turns, just a long, dim tunnel. We pass the end of the stand-by line and keep going for another 100 yards. It amazes me that people queue these days. With fastpass on nearly every attraction, why anyone would stand in line for up to an hour really is beyond me. These are the people who queue for hours on every ride, see next to nothing and then moan and bitch endlessly when they get home about how little they saw and did and how they hated WDW.

At the head of the line the queue splits into two. Space Mountain is in fact two coasters that occupy the same pavillion. You can't see it because the coaster runs in almost total darkness. In reality it's not a very good coaster, more like the old fairground coasters. Very tight turns and sudden drops. One side is faster, one side has more drops. However, when picking my seat I am careful to note where the screamer in our party is sitting and sit at the opposite end of the car....

The dogs in Kissimmee were not disappointed.

Food! At last. The eatery in Tommorowland is called Cosmic Rays and it's normally bedlam. We are not disappointed. There are three serving stations, chicken, burgers and soup and salad and two huge counters of 'fixin's'. Coming from the UK we are amazed that you can take your humble burger, take it to the fixin's bar and make your meal three times its size. The sheer amount of condiments and toppings can boggle the mind of the average Brit. Pickles, sauces and vegetables, oh my.

The Ray of Cosmic Ray's is an animatronic alien character that sits at a keyboard in the main dining area doing a mock lounge singer act (which is terrible by the way) in a continuous loop of about an hour.

Sidebar - Most of the music loops last about an hour. I think that happened when CD's replaced the old tapes they used to use. The latest ones however are a lot longer, Expedition Everest's BGM (background music) is nearly a two hour loop so I assume that it's held digitally now. Progress....

For some reason Ray attracts small children like manure draws flies so we try to isolate ourselves from our surroundings and make out we can't see our hear the little bastards running riot. It's like the dinner scene from Carry On Up The Kyber. But it is food and therefore welcome.

Our last point of call in Tomorrowland is the Monsters Inc Laugh Floor. A new attraction that opened earlier this year in the building that used to be The Timekeeper. Unfortunately, yet again, the replacement cannot hold a light to the predecessor. And to be honest, the Florida version couldn't hold a light to the Paris version of it either. The Timekeeper was basically the 'Circlevision 360' set up (a camera setup that has 9 lenses giving a full 360 degree panorama of what's around the camera. It's used in several places at WDW). Premise was an Animatronic robot called the Timekeeper took you backwards and forwards in time to meet Jules Verne and show all the things he wrote about but never saw. The animatronic was excellent and the script was quaint. But WDI screwed the pooch when they let Robin Williams do the voice of the Timekeeper in Florida and let him change the script with his so-called 'ad libs'. I think that this is because there's a lot about European history and as previously discussed, nothing outside the US actually exists so the average American doesn't have a clue.

I digress. The Laugh Floor is set up as a comedy club in Monstropolis and the crowd are the audience. There are screens at the front and the characters interact with the audience. The place must be full of cameras as various people end up on screen. The animated 'Host' moves about the screen and asks people questions and reacts to those questions both facially and physically (while not leaving the screen obviously.... technology is good but hey..). It's a newer version of Turtle Talk from EPCOT but is nowhere near as good. The highlight for us was the guy who was unexpectedly picked on and put on the big screen. When asked his name, he replied in a thick false russian accent.

"Boris Yeltsin, I learn english from shortwave radio"

A stunned silence from the host. Done like a kipper. It was all downhill from there.

With Tomorrowland complete we head for Main Street and the shops. I'm not one for looking at the jewelery and stuff so I'm soon separated from the rest of the party and hunting out the crap, but a gold plated replica of an opening day ticket catches my eye. We try to bring back something nice from our visits, normally artwork or a statue. I put it on my list of possibles.

It's now dark and Main Street sparkles with lights the way that only Disney World can. At five o'clock there's a castle lighting ceremony. This year WDW has copied Paris in the way it decorates it's castle. The castle has been covered in thousands of LED's that hang on nets over almost every surface. During the day they are hard to see unless you look very closely. But after dark they are illuminated in different layers, colours and intensities so the castle looks like it's covered in a film of ice. It's all done very theatrically and draws a huge crowd. We pick a good spot on the hub and wait. Andy and I make a brief foraging trip for Dole Whip only to find the shop closed.

At the appointed hour, there are several thousand people in the hub area, all looking expectantly at the dim castle. Then the show. Very well done. The usual 'big six' (Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, Pluto and Goofy for those that don't know...), Cinderella (It's her castle) and the Fairy Godmother (She makes the castle light up, it's a union thing..). I look at Lynn and she's crying, but this is nothing new. She's seen Illuminations 20 or so times and still crys every time.

We hear Em say under her breath, "I think I've found my new favourite thing".

Don't deny it! We heard you!!!!

There's a brief interlude and then the firework finale "Wishes". I sat here for a good while trying to write a good description..... but I can't. It's one of the best displays to be seen anywhere in the world. Period. Just see it. Pyrotechnics have advanced so much now that fireworks can now detonate in three dimensional shapes. Honestly, just see it.

With not a dry eye in the house, Disney World bids us a goodnight and it's time to leave. But they will keep the shops open for a further half hour "for our shopping convenience". Hhmmm. Cynical? Me? A human river is slowly making its way to the exit gates. I stop to take yet more pictures and promptly lose the rest of the party. Bollocks. Time to break out my secret weapon! From my camera bag I pull my rescue strobe light. ("what?", you ask. You heard me, rescue strobe) It's a aviators strobe that flashes every two seconds and can be seen at five miles. And it's waterproof too, buy one today.. I hold it above the crowd and wander about near City Hall. It takes my so-called rescuers a full five minutes to find me. I could have been dead. They're going to have to improve their response times.

With the Magic Kingdom closing early for the Christmas Party special event, we are at a bit of a loss for what to do now. Then I remember the Gingerbread house at the Grand Floridian.

We head under the monorail beams for the station. There are two monorail lines that run through the Magic Kingdom Station. One line goes through the atrium of the Contemporary Resort to TCC, the Ticket and Transport Centre. This is where the main parking lots for the Magic Kingdom are located. This is also one of the main transport hubs. You can get buses here to almost any location on WDW property, another monorail line to EPCOT and ferries to and from the Magic Kingdom entrance across Seven Seas Lagoon.

The other is the Resort Loop.which is a big circular monorail line that stops at all the resorts around the lagoon. It mainly brings resort guests to and from the Magic Kingdom, but also brings sightseers to see gingerbread houses. Luckily for me (I love the monorail), The Grand Floridian is the last stop before the monorail returns to the Magic Kingdom.

We miss the first train as it fills up before we get to the front. On the second attempt, the doors slide open and we file in. And for the first time this trip we hear one of the greatest phrases of Walt Disney World;

“Por favor, Mantenganse Alejado De Las Puertas”

Which is “please stand clear of the doors” in Spanish.

We pull out and head for the Contemporary. Passing the Magic Kingdom entrance I pause to think that it really is a work of art. The gardens, the WDW Railroad Station with its Stars and Stripes proudly flying above, on past the rear of Space Mountain, shining white like a beacon in the dark. We start rising up towards the Contemporary. Emma does not like heights and I don’t think she was ready for the beam to rise up to its high point of 50ft or so. I point out the new Vacation Club wing being built on the site of one of the old buildings and she makes “oh yes” type noises but the white knuckles gripping the hand rail tell a different story.


We pass straight through an opening in the north side of building. The Contemporary is a unique design. It’s a 15 story ‘A’ frame with the rooms on the outer walls with a huge open gallery Right on the top is one of the best restaurants in Orlando, The California Grill. More about which later on. The monorail line passes through hotel atrium above Chef Mickey’s and the shop. We stop at the hotel station as the TTC train flies through without stopping on the other line. A brief exchange of passengers and we’re off again.

We leave through the south wall and continue on towards TTC, To our left in the distance is the Wilderness Lodge. Another resort that looks like a huge (and I mean huge) log cabin in the forest.

Sidebar - Went there last year and had buffalo steak for dinner. Very good food but our server was anti-Brit so the service was shite for us, but good if you were American (must have been that holiday in Boston he took in 1776...).
The beam starts to descend to its normal level as we run parallel to the TTC direct line. We pull into TTC and no-one is waiting. Opposite the pilot (They call the drivers pilots, wow, spacey), there’s a countdown timer showing how long until the monorail can expect the signal to change and they can pull out. We sit there for the full two minutes and only a couple of people get on.

There’s a mechanical noise and the doors close, one at a time for some reason, and we’re off again. Like the buses, the monorail has it’s recorded speils but this time with Spanish as well.

“Welcome aboard the Walt Disney World Monorail, our highway in the sky…”

It informs us that our next stop is the Polynesian Resort. The monorail lines diverge as we follow the lagoon edge towards a complex of genuine imitation Polynesian buildings and the other line veers left towards EPCOT. The station is in the Great Ceremonial House, the central HQ of the resort, housing the check-in, shop and two restaurants, Ohana and the Kona Café.

Sidebar - We ate at the Kona Café in September when we were last here. Both the restaurants are supposedly highly recommended. But we didn’t have a good time, Lynn’s order was wrong, both were not too warm and we were under the stopwatch.. We only went there because we couldn’t get into Ohana which has a huge firepit in the open kitchen and servers bring round meat on huge skewers, carving lumps off. We looked in and it’s got to be said it wouldn’t have been for us. It looked like a Polynesian ‘Cosmic Rays’. Bloody kids running riot. Also it looked a bit dated and in need of a make over.

We lose some more people here leaving only us and the truly minted as the next stop was the Grand Floridian. We pull out past the tikki torches and stuff. It all looks a bit Lilo and Stitch but it was here first as one of the original hotels that opened in October 1971 with the Magic Kingdom. The Grand Floridian was an afterthought built some years later, opening in June 1988

To our left side of our forward motion, (that’s how the spiel puts it, honestly who wrote that?) is Disney’s Palm Golf Course and Shades of Green. The Palm is a ducks nuts golf course which normally hosts the Funai Classic PGA Tour event in October. Always wanted to play one of the Disney courses but the nearest I’ve got so far is the Fantasia mini golf….

Try and find Shades of Green on the WDW maps. Go on, I’ll wait. See, it doesn’t exist. SoG is in fact run by Disney for the US military and only military personnel and their families can stay there. It’s a deluxe resort where you pay budget prices. It has its own buses with darkened windows. Bit X-Files heh?

To the right hand side (of our forward motion..), is the Wedding Pavilion. A wonderful place where couples can get married, remarried and make vow renewals overlooking Cinderella Castle and you can spend a little or hundreds and thousands of dollars. We spent a happy hour here a couple of years ago getting stuff as it’s our 15th Wedding anniversary this year and we wanted to have a vow renewal with our friends and family. We were going to pay for a good portion of the costs too. But every one of ‘em bar one (Thanks Caz and Ian!) blew us out. It was like we’d asked for a bloody kidney. We were quite upset at the time but we’re over it now. No, really, we are... We’re going on a southern states tour for three weeks instead on our own so fuck ‘em.

At last we arrive at the Grand Floridian. It looks like a turn of the century seaside resort. It’s the grandest of the Disney resorts with a price tag to match. In 2002, when I was pricing up our three week trip, when we stayed at our old resort of Port Orleans Riverside, I priced the Grand Floridian, just for shits and giggles, and it came to 15 grand! Compared to the Port Orleans price of only 4.

We cross the walkway into in hotel. It was like the scene in Titanic when Kate Winslet first boards the Titanic. ‘Fuck oh me’, I thought. There are huge chandeliers hanging from the ceiling of the five story lobby. We descend the sweeping staircase like a foursome of windswept and bollocksed Scarlett O’Hara’s to the ground floor. There’s a Christmas tree that almost reaches the ceiling, (again ‘Fuck oh me’) behind which stands the gingerbread house.

They start building this gingerbread house in August. It’s 25ft tall, 30ft along each side……and it’s completely made of real gingerbread. Totally edible!!

The gingerbread house is made of;

1,050 lbs of honey
140 pints of egg whites
600 lbs of powdered sugar
700lbs of chocolate
800lbs of flour
35lbs of spices
Tons of creativity, Disney Magic and Pixie Dust.

It’s an amazing thing to see. In fact, It’s so big that the interior houses a shop that sells miniature versions for $65 a piece. I look in my wallet at my financial holdings thinking I’d buy Lynn one. $21, some change, fluff and double nectar points voucher that expired 3 months ago. Bollocks. Chance to play the romantic hero denied.

Luckily, the roof of this house is made of hundreds of full size shingles. Each one is individually made of gingerbread and is chocolate coated on the back (so they can be stuck to the roof with icing, true) and the shop also sell shingles by the each. And I can afford two with my meagre funds. While the girls are looking around the house, I buy them one each. Not exactly the romantic hero, but at this point in the evening I’ll take what I can get.

The details on this house are amazing. There are figures and furniture, all constructed from chocolate and painted with edible paints and a special mouldable coloured chocolate. The detail on the chocolate Chaise longue is amazing. Right down to the pattern on the seats in edible gold leaf.

For those who are interested, the Food Channel made an hour long program about the resorts Christmas foods that shows how they built the house, and other stuff like the chocolate fairground at the Boardwalk Resort. You can download it by going to http://www.mousebits.com/ and use a bittorrent client to download it. It’s well worth it.

We are really starting to flag now so we set off for home. We either get the monorail back to the Magic Kingdom and get a bus, if they’re still running, back to Saratoga Springs or get the bus from here to Downtown Disney and walk. Bus stop it is. We set off for the stop like the four noddys from the Wizard of Oz. Thankfully we only wait a few minutes for a bus and we collapse into the seats. It’s about 15 minutes to Downtown Disney and we see, for the first and only time of the whole trip, rain.

Luckily the rain has stopped when we reach Downtown Disney. We drag ourselves off the bus. Why is it that it’s only when you stop that your feet start hurting? We are not looking forward to walking the quarter of a mile back to the block. I remember that there’s a boat service from Marketplace to Saratoga Springs. Can’t do any harm to see if there’s a boat at the dock. I desperately want to walk through the Christmas shop on way but am overridden. We get to the dock to find a long line of people. Looks like the long walk then. As we turn to leave I notice that the gate we thought was the exit for the incoming boats was actually another line for the Saratoga boat. The long queue was waiting to go back to Port Orleans. Joyfully we enter and hobble to the end of the queue. A virtually empty boat sits chugging away at the dock. We hoop on and flop down into seats. Five minutes later we are on our way across the lake. The views from the boat of Saratoga and Downtown are excellent and somewhat peaceful. Like we're in the eye of a tornado, oblivious to all the hustle and bustle surrounding us. Made even more peaceful by the fact that this is the only form of WDW transportation without an onboard recorded spiel.

Saratoga Springs is so large that it takes a full seven minutes at full power (admittedly putt, putt power) to approach the dock at Saratoga. We were now to witness one of the greatest feats of boatmanship ever seen by man. The dock is approached from the main channel into a cul-de-sac with not alot of room. The dock is 90 degrees to the angle of approach. This boat is over 30 feet long and our pilot manage to pull a handbrake turn, like a stuntman putting a car between two parked cars, to within inches of the dock then casually hops ashore. I am so impressed, I nearly gave him a $10 tip. But I am skint, so sorry Bob. Not tonight.

The boat dock is next to the Carriage House, which has check-in, the shops and the restaurants. Restaurants... I'm hungry. Is anybody else hungry? Apparently so. The food counter seems the best option. We look at the menu, chicken strips and the flatbreads seem to be the order of the day. Behind the counter is a Brit! We don't have to cross the language barrier! We order and pay, then we're issued a pager. At a counter service? Indeed. Apparently everything is cooked to order. We find seats and get silverware (well, plasticware actually) and condiments. The millisecond my arse touches the seat, the pager goes off. We collect our three meals from the counter. Three meals? We're one light. The bloody Brit has put the order through wrong.

Moral - Just because a Brit works at Disney World, doesn't mean he's not a fecking idiot.

Andy takes our semi complete order back and I wait for my chicken strips.

Having eaten, we are faced with the walk back to the block. In the Unoffical Guide, one of the major gripes with our block is it's 15 minute walk from the carriage house. I take it the griper was a TFTW as we were sitting on our balcony in 5 minutes with a beer.

As we sit chatting about the day a bright flash illuminates the sky about a mile away. Then another flash, then another. Looking about we fiqure where this might be from, combined with the time we fiqure out its Illuminations at EPCOT. It's funny, but we've seen it so many times and heard the music so many times that even with our partial view (we can only properly see the higher bursting shells), Lynn and I know exactly where in the display we are and what music is playing. The display ends with it's customary barrage and a few seconds later the rapport of the final explosions drift across the lake. We return to our chatting. A few minutes pass, another flash. Another one? green? More flashes. Red? Of course!! It's christmas! Holiday Illuminations!! An extra ten minutes tacked on the end of the display of christmas colours. I've never seen it but I've heard it's great. we watch and I've never seen so many flashes in such a short time. I'm impressed and am now really looking forward to seeing it all properly tomorrow.

Another beer? Thank you. Sam Adams please. Sam Adams, best beer the world, and now available at Sainsbury's too.

We return to the sitting room to watch a bit of TV before bed. I take my shoes off and my feet throb like a Warner Brothers cartoon character's head that's been hit with an anvil. Oh crap! it's Dancing with the Stars. The US equivilant of Strictly Come Dancing. Me and Andy hate this programme, but EM and Lynn love it. We are stuck. Andy can immerse himself in a book and completely block out the outside world, I however, cannot. I aimlessly flick through my magazines but luckily I am not subjected to more than half an hour of audio visual torture.

That done we retire to our rooms, looking forward to our beds. I go through my bed routine (turn on television, find Seinfeld, undress and leave clothes on floor, get into bed) and Lynn does hers (God only knows what she does but shes backwards and forwards to the bathroom, kitchen and closet for a full half hour and I'm halfway into Sex in the City before she finally gets in bed).

I try to get to the end of Sex in the City but even the sight of Kristin Davis can't keep me awake, so I turn off and fall into a heavy sleep.