[a throwback to a JZSquared trip in 2018!]
Chapter 25: Hello Random Fast Pass, how are you doing?
[sorry for the delay, it was a very long week in school, and by the time I got home every day, I was too exhausted to really do anything except watch Netflix and play Fire Emblem, since those two activities don’t require much brain power]
After we had our lunch, we were by Fantasyland. It was still rainy, gray, and cold, and our BOG lunch wasn’t nearly long enough to dry us off or warm us up, and we didn’t just want to stay there loitering because it was so crowded, and we wanted other people to have a chance to get tables since by the time we left, the line was out the door basically, and there were no free tables in any of the dining rooms.
Mickey’s Philharmagic was right nearby, and it was indoors, and had no wait whatsoever, so we decided to go check that out.
We both liked it and thought it was cute.
We had a FP for Peter Pan that was coming up in like twenty minutes, so we still had a bit more time to kill, so we decided to take another happy little cruise.
The wait was about maybe 30 minute, which wasn’t too bad, so we got on line, and we were moving merrily along the stand-by queue when we got the area, where they let the FP rides enter. There was literally nobody who had a FP, who was waiting for a ride, so the Cast Member just decided to randomly let Justin and I cut through the rest of the line. He lifted the rope that separated the two areas, and let us in, so we got a random fast pass basically for Small World since when that happened, we hadn’t even been waiting for that long, so that was pretty cool. It was a nice and tiny bit of Disney Magic.
We really didn’t experience a lot of Disney Magic on our trip, but that’s fine, I’m not bitter or anything, we’re just happy that the weather worked out in our favor, and we were really able to experience everything even with crazy holiday crowds.
[On a side note, I once read a book, I think it was the first book in Kingdom Keepers series actually, where all the dolls from It’s a Small World came to life and tried to kill the narrators. I was totally thinking of that scene as we rode on our cruise and how horrifying that would be if it actually happened]
[I managed to catch both of our names]
After It’s a Small World, it was time for Peter Pan
Since we used a FP, I didn’t get a chance to check out the queue or anything, but I also wouldn’t wait 80 minutes just to interact with a queue for a ride, and the wait never seems low enough to actually wait in line to check it out, maybe one day we will.
I don’t have much to say about Peter Pan except it’s so short! Like it’s crazy people wait 80 or more minutes just to ride a ride that lasts 2 minutes, if that. It’s definitely one of the classic rides, and one that I clearly do remember from being little and visiting MK with my grandparents, and I enjoyed the ride. I just find it shocking how crazy long the wait for Peter Pan is. It rivals the wait for Space Mountain, and IMO, I think SM is the better ride. I wish they could invent a way to make the line go faster for Peter Pan.
After Peter Pan, things started to change at the park.
Chapter 26: Whip it, Whip it good
After Peter Pan, the sun actually started to come out at MK. It didn’t exactly warm up, but it wasn’t raining, and the park was slowly drying up, we finally had a chance to dry. But of course, when the weather changed, so did the crowd at the park, and the park started to get really crowded.
Haunted Mansion didn’t have much of a wait, and we were right by it, so we decided to ride it again.
I really think HM has one of my favorite queue’s of all MK rides. It’s just so detailed.
I was sad though because the person who got on line before us had gotten the red card… so if I had just been one minute sooner, perhaps taken one less picture, I could’ve gotten the red card, and pretended I was special.
I think another thing that makes Haunted Mansion so awesome is that the cast members really get into it. They’re really into character. I bet it’s a fun attraction to work at.
After HM, we decided to check out another favorite from DL, The Tiki Room.
I didn’t get to see much of the little preshow they have before the actual show, it seemed as soon as it started, we were let into the show. But I thought it was a cute.
I enjoyed the Tiki Room, it was basically an exact clone of the one in DL.
After the Tiki Room, it was time for our dole whips.
I got the Dole Whip float because I have an unhealthy obsession with pineapple juice. Justin just got a vanilla soft serve because he doesn’t like pineapple, which I can’t understand.
I enjoyed my Dole Whip Float, but I struggled to finish it because I was freezing and it was so cold, and every single bite just made me colder and colder, so I’m sad to say I only ate about half of it.
After that it was time for our FP at Space Mountain.
Chapter 27: This Chapter Won’t Be Very Long
It was time for our fast pass at SM:
[and like the title says, this chapter will be VERY short because I have a trillion pictures of where we went to after this chapter and didn’t want to put them in separate posts]
Space Mountain is always a good ride. We went to the right track again. I think I like the right track better, I have no idea why since I’m pretty sure the sides are basically mirror images of each other.
I remember being really little and riding WITH my grandfather in Space Mountain. Like we would both be in the same seat, and I’d basically be sitting leaning against his legs, and he always promised to hold me tight because I used to be so scared of the ride. I think there used to be four to a car but in two seats back in the 1980s, but I could be wrong about that. After all I was only like 5 or 6 when I was finally tall enough to ride SM.
Then we decided to watch Carousel of Progress again.
I think even Justin had memorized the lyrics to “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” by then and we were just singing it along with the characters and we had a blast.
This amused me greatly. I like the female robot on the bathroom.
Speaking of the bathrooms, I was reading about Disney history somewhere recently, and the loading car for the sky ride that used to exist at Disney World was right above this bathroom, when they closed the sky ride, they just razed it, and left the bathroom. If I hadn’t read that, I don’t think I ever would’ve known that was where the sky ride used to let people on and drop them off. I think I actually remember riding the sky ride with my grandmother too.
After that we decided to go shopping for souvenirs.
Justin bought some sort of Finding Nemo [or Dory, I forget] bath towel set for his mom because she really loved those movies. He also bought a shot glass because he collects shot glasses from places we travel to [and I accidentally broke one from Butchart Gardens, a few weeks back, and still feel awful about it] .
I bought this:
[not my picture]
I am obsessed with Alice in Wonderland and I just needed this.
In case you’re curious, these are the flavors:
- Mad Tea Party Blend featuring Alice and The Mad Hatter
- Earl Grey featuring The Queen of Hearts
- Lemon Honey Chamomile featuring The Doormouse
- Chai featuring The Cheshire Cat
- Blueberry featuring The March Hare
- Papaya Passion Fruit featuring Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum
- Pomegranate featuring Card Soldiers
- French Vanilla featuring The King of Hearts Mango featuring The Caterpillar
- Jasmine featuring Iris Mint featuring The Walrus and The Carpenter
- English Breakfast featuring The White Rabbit
I have yet to open it. Part of me doesn’t want to because the set is just so pretty and such a collectible [for me at least], but the other part of me really wants to drink it because it’s tea and I love tea, and it’s Alice in Wonderland tea, and how freaking cool is that?
We’ll see if I’m still debating on it in a few weeks. [edit: as of October 28th, 2018, the tea is still in the container!]
Then we decided it was time to go take a voyage on the Jingle Cruise, which was a new ride for both Justin and me.
Chapter 28: A Jingle of a good time
First of all, I’ve never ridden Jungle Cruise, in any shape or form, so this ride was completely new to us. Even better was the fact that the ride was still Christmas themed, so it was Jingle Cruise 
I have to say, I really enjoyed all of the holiday refurbishments that overlaid this ride They really went all out and in an extremely cheesy way, which made it even better. I love corniness, I grew up in a family, where we would have punning competitions, and to this day, my father and I drive my mother insane sprouting the best er worst puns we can think of. So this is definitely a me ride.
I think the wait was stated to be something like 40 minutes, but we probably only waited about twenty minutes, if that.
I’ll just let the picture rides tell the rest of the story:
Our skipper was pretty funny, and she was really into it, which made it a lot more fun. I think she even made fun of me from being from New Jersey, by telling me she was sorry when she asked where I was from. [and how the heck was I in Disney just a month ago, it seems like we were just there, yet it’s been a month since our trip] Gee… I’ve never heard that one before
But we both enjoyed that ride a lot. We both loved how incredibly cheesy it is. The holiday overlay just made it better.
Coming up, Justin wanted to go on a magic carpet ride.
Chapter 29: The Laughing Place
After our Jingle Cruise, Justin really wanted to ride on Aladdin’s Magic Carpets. He just sort of has a thing for rides he can torture me on.
Exhibit One: The Teacups, spinning it so bad that the ride almost ended in divorce
Exhibit Two: The Magic Carpet ride, so he can try to make us go really high up and make me even more sick.
I’ll never ride Dumbo the Ride… When I was 6, I rode Dumbo with my grandpa, and the ride broke and we got stuck on it for probably maybe 5-10 minutes, but to my 6 year old mind, it seemed like hours. Aladdin reminds me a lot of Dumbo, however, Justin was a good sport in letting me plan a Disney trip, and surely my thirty-something [but a kid at heart self] could handle Aladdin.
The coolest thing was, I GOT A RED CARD FOR ALADDIN, I mean that surely made the ride worth it.
I was playing Fire Emblem Awakening on line, and a random kid looked over my shoulder and told me he played that game and he loved it and my team looked good. So that was a nice recognition for being a nerd.
Aladdin’s wasn’t too bad. Not sure if it was worth waiting 30+ minutes for, but it didn’t break down, and I didn’t get stranded in the air, so yay for that?
Next up was a hot date with Captain Jack Sparrow since we were right there and it didn’t really have much of a wait.
We enjoyed watching Jack “Make it Rain” as Justin would say.
Next was the hunger pangs, so we wound up at Pecos Bill.
Ugh Pecos Bill was probably the worst dining experience. It wasn’t really that the food was bad or anything [I mean Freebirds in Houston does Mexican way better], but just the people there. People were rude, shoving past people to claim seats, saving tables upon tables for friends and just being really obnoxious when you asked if this seat was taken. Eventually we found a tiny table in the corner that we could eat at, but it took a long time to find that table, and by the time we got a table, our food was pretty much cold.
I got chicken nachos, they were okay, nothing to write home about, but I’m also spoiled and live in Texas, where our TexMex and Mexican food is amazing. Justin basically ate the entire toppings bar and was more than happy to make a meal out of that.
After that it was dark enough to ride Thunder Mountain.
We had another negative experience on this ride. There was this family in front of us… a daughter, a son, and their father. And the girl couldn’t have been more than 10 or 11 and had a potty mouth that rivals mine and she was screaming, spitting, hitting her brother, punching her brother [even in the family jewels] and cursing, and the brother was antagonizing her and egging her on, and dad just stood there and did nothing. We had to wait behind this obnoxious family for forty something minutes and it was agonizing. We were so happy when the two tracks went their separate ways and we could separate from them.
The ride was still good [it’s better in the dark] and we still enjoyed it. But man was that family obnoxious. I would hope a kid of mine never acted that way, but if s/he did, I’d grab them and we’d leave the ride and even the park for that sort of behavior.
After Big Thunder was the first of like five rides on Splash Mountain.
Mind you, it was probably around 40, edging into 30 degrees by the time we started to ride Splash Mountain, so the ride was pretty much vacant. There was absolutely no wait, we walked on every time, and even got to ride twice in a row, once, and we started having fun with our ride pictures:
On our fifth ride, right at the “laughing place”, the ride just stopped working. The boat in front of us shot up the hill and we assume they made it down the mountain without a fatality since there were no ambulances or sirens or anything that we heard. However, our boat just stopped and the hill dried up, and all the lights came on:
The birds kept laughing at us:
They kept on making announcements about how the ride was having difficulties and they expected it to start shortly.
Spoiler alert: It didn’t.
After thirty minutes, cast members came in with crowbars and had to get us out of the ride vehicl
Boats were just stopped back to back.
This is the only “behind the scenes” photo of Splash Mountain I got before they asked us to put our cameras away, and then we got escorted through the backstage area.
The backstage area really wasn’t magic in the least. It was literally like being in the back of a warehouse or factory. There were a bunch of gray buildings.
They gave us a fast pass for our troubles:
And right as we got escorted out of the ride… The fireworks started:
Chapter 30: Lots and Lots of Fireworks
First off, here’s a pic I forgot I took, a selfie of J and me when we were stranded on Splash Mountain for thirty or so minutes:
You can see the line of boats that just wasn’t moving and all of the lights on in the ride.
Now here are tons of fireworks pictures. I’m not @fractal , so they’re not awesome by any means, though I did take his advice and use a trash can as a tripod and they came out decent. One day they’ll come out better. I need to learn more about exposure and ISO I’ll get there.
We stayed by Splash Mountain to watch the fireworks since the show had already started while we were stranded in Splash Mountain, and our view was decent from where we were.
Since we didn’t really see the show I don’t really have an opinion on the show, BUT FIREWORKS ARE PRETTY!!! I enjoyed hearing all the Disney tunes and was totally bursting out in song and singing alone and probably embarrassing Justin… But that’s what Disney is for anyways
It was our last day in a Disney park [the next day we were off to Universal], so we decided to use our fastpass to ride Space Mountain since that’s Justin’s favorite ride and it’d be nice to be able to skip the line.
We passed the castle on the way:
I’m just so happy when we went that all of the Christmas decorations were up. Christmas is my second favorite holiday [Halloween is the first] and I just loved seeing all the parks decorated for Christmas it totally made the trip more awesome.
Space Mountain was our last ride of Disney. After we rode, we caught the bus and went back to the hotel since we had to be up early for our VIP tour of Universal. I was sad to leave Disney.
