[throwback to a January 2018 trip to Disney]
Chapter 22: And The Rain Comes Down
On Wednesday, our day at the Magic Kingdom, we had the worst weather of the trip. We woke up and it was pouring rain, and it wasn’t even a light drizzle, it was fast, and wet, and cold. The temperature was probably in the mid-thirties, and with the rain, it just felt so cold.
[this is my attempt to take a rain picture]
The bus to Magic Kingdom was practically empty when we got on it because nobody in their right mind [obviously, we were not normal people] would purposely choose to go out in that weather if they didn’t have to.
But I mean, there was a slight advantage to showing up at the Magic Kingdom [where Mine Train was already reported closed due to the heavy rain], it was pretty much empty, which we were hoping meant that we could get more done.
The first ride we rode was Buzz Lightyear because Justin was still determined to get his Galactic Hero status.
Did he succeed this time?
He didn’t even come close and he sulked about it for most of the rest of the day.
I didn’t fare much better, as my score was way lower than it had been a few nights prior:
After BL, we saw that Space Mountain had a really short wait, and when I say short, I mean like 45 minutes, I think that’s the lowest I’ve ever seen SM at in all the parks that I’ve been too, not that that I have too many to compare it to. Though we didn’t wait 45 minutes, I’d say maybe at the most, it was maybe 25-30 minutes.
I mean, seriously, who would’ve known a dark mouse-coaster, with glow-in-the-dark stars, and bad 80s techno music would’ve been practically the most popular ride at Disney World when it was first made.
We got to ride a different side than we had ridden the night before, I don’t know, which is which, so we went to the left this time instead of going to the right, and once again, being only a party of two people helped us cut a decent majority of the final section of the line.
The two sides seem mostly identical to me, but I enjoy the one on the right more for some reason, though I couldn’t actually tell you why I did.
I enjoy the queue at the end of the ride:
There are a lot of shout-outs to Horizons within that queue, which I vaguely remember from going to Epcot with my grandparents. My papa really loved that ride. I’m sure most of you know about all of them, so they’re not new to you, but for those who are curious, these are them:
- One of the bags in the baggage claim (located on visitors’ left at the start of the exit moving sidewalk) features the words “Mesa Verde” written on it.
- The undersea post-show scene after the desert scene is reminiscent of a scene in Horizons. This scene was the only new scene added to the post-show in the refurbishment – all of the other scenes were tweaked or redressed. The flat-screen display in the new scene describes the scene as “20,000 Light-Years under the Sea,” a pun on “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”, which is a reference to both the original 70s post-show scene depicting a futuristic family watching the Disney movie of the same name, as well as to the defunct Magic Kingdom attraction 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Submarine Voyage
- The robot valet and futuristic city skyline, which is the last post-show diorama, are similar to a scene in Horizons and to the lounge that Disney used to operate in LAX.
[I copied those from Wikipedia, I was too young to remember most of those things]
And if you want a trip down memory-lane, or are just curious, here’s a link to a video of that ride Horizons that I found on YouTube
Horizons: The Ride and here’s an interesting article that talks about two uberfans of the ride, who literally broke onto the ride Horizons documentation
I really love reading about older rides and I love looking up YouTube videos of them, technology is pretty awesome when it comes to things like that.
I really wish I could experience all the defunct attractions from when I was little now. I understand that there are newer rides and newer sorts of technologies, also the younger generation of today is so fast-passed and doesn’t have the patience for a fifteen minute ride like Horizons or a 20 minute ride like Ellen’s Energy Adventure was, and people have different expectations for what a ride should be, but there’s still something to be said about rides like Horizons, The World of Motion, and the Wonders of Life [which I probably remember most vividly out of all the attractions on this list]
I also really wish we had gotten a chance to see what was left of River Country, if anything was left, on this trip, by taking a boat from the Wilderness Lodge because I have an obsession with abandoned amusement parks, but we didn’t nearly have enough time to accomplish all this.
Anyhow, I digress…
After SM, Justin really wanted to ride the Tomorrowland Speedway, and I have no idea why. I think he just wanted a reason to make car sounds without people looking at him funny, and there only a ten minute wait for Tomorrowland Speedway, so I can’t really say no.
It was freezing and pouring and the cars were soaking wet. Justin enjoyed the ride [and was surprised by how long it was for a Disney ride] and making his car noises, but I was soaked and shivering.
We had a fast pass for Mine Train next, but since it was wet and pouring and cold, as you can guess Mine Train was closed, so it was finally time to ride Pooh
[and for some reason I took way too many pictures of Pooh, so I’ll write about that in another entry]
Chapter 23: I took how many pictures of Pooh?
So we finally found the Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, the ride I was oh so eager to ride two nights ago, that we never found.
I guess I like Winnie the Pooh so much because when I was little my dad used to read me the book “Winnie the Pooh” every night before I went to bed. I even still have the book. It’s old, the pages are yellowed, and the brown book binding is falling apart, but it’s the same book that my dad and I would read every night, and I’ll just always treasure those moments, and when I’m lucky enough to have a kid, I hope I can find a book [though knowing me it’ll probably be Harry Potter] that I can read to him or her every night before they go to bed.
Really this is just a lot of picture spam for the ride, and not much dialogue 
I thought the interactive playing area was really cute, I think they should include more things like that for rides in the future. Justin sure seemed to enjoy it.
When I was little, my dad I would go hiking a lot, in fact, I really miss hiking, it’s REALLY impossible to hike in Houston, for one thing, we don’t exactly have woods near us, and secondly, it’s freaking hot here, summers swelter in the 100s, and the humidity is suffocating, and even our winters aren’t all that cold [the exception being this year] with temperature averaging between the 50s and 80s.
And anyhow, my dad and I would always play Pooh-sticks, whenever we went hiking and we saw a bridge. A few years back, my dad and I went hiking in the snow, and we found a stream that wasn’t frozen over… and what did we do… we played pooh-sticks, yes a grown man, and his grown-up daughter played pooh-sticks and loved every second of it.
I think the whole queue is probably one of the best-themed ones out of all the rides. There’s just so much detail, and so much to see, and so much to do, I really enjoy the immersive experience of it.
Everytime I see this picture, I get the song in my head and start singing it..
“A heffalump or woozle is very confusel, the heffalump or woozle is very sly, sly, sly, sly”
and you know you want to sing along
[This and Dumbo’s Elephants on Parade are two of my favorite songs… not so sure what that says about me… but man would I love to know what the animators were thinking when they made those parts of the movies…]
And just because here’s elephants on parade
After the ride, I checked the lines app to see what ride we should ride next, and Mine Train had reopened, so it was time to cash that FP in.
Chapter 24: Try the gray stuff it’s delicious
As soon as we finished Pooh, Mine Train was open according to the Lines app, and it just so happened to be directly across from Pooh, so we cashed in our fast pass, and headed towards the ride.
Already when the ride had probably been open for less than twenty minutes, the standby wait was already at about an hour, even with our FP, we still had to wait about twenty minutes, but there was a really nice heated rock in the waiting queue, and I was freezing so I tried to warm myself up via the rock.
Justin and I somehow lucked out and were in the very back row for the ride.
I don’t really have anything bad to say about the ride. I read in a lot of places that it was short, granted it wasn’t the 15 minute long Horizons or the 20 minute Ellen’s Energy Ride, but I didn’t think it was that short.
Snow White’s Scary Adventures had always been one of my favorite rides to ride with my grandparents, so I sort of missed that a little, but it is in Disneyland along with Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride [which was one of Justin’s favorite rides], so it’s not like I can never ride it again [and I did in 2015 when we were in DL], so I’m okay with “New Fantasyland.” To be honest, I was so young last time I went to DW, I don’t really remember “old Fantasyland.”
Justin and I enjoyed Mine Train. It’s not a ride I’d probably wait very long for, but if the opportunity arose, I’d ride it, I’d love to ride it at night, roller coasters are more fun at night to me.
After Mine train, we didn’t have a lot of time before our ADR at Be Our Guest, but we had some time, however, it wasn’t really enough time to actually really ride anything we wanted to ride, so we decided it was time to warm up and wound up at:
It it hadn’t been so wet and cold, I might’ve actually tried LeFou’s brew though frozen apple juice with marshmallow- not sure what I would think of that- I like both of those items separately, but not sure how they’d blend together.
But we were freezing, so instead we each bought a coffee and split a cinnamon roll.
The coffee was coffee, but the cinnamon roll was delicious. And it was the perfect place to sit in for like twenty minutes, warm up, check our gameboy streetpass, and kill time before lunch.
Finally it was time for lunch at the hardest to get ADR ever, Be Our Guest:
I had preordered because on all the trip reports I read here, it was the suggested thing to do, and considering the long line of people, who need to order, it was definitely the right choice.
However, the one thing I didn’t like, and it was probably because it was literally the day of, or maybe it was because I was using the Disney app on my phone, I couldn’t adjust or tweak my order after I had made it because I was freezing cold and wet and really wanted to add French onion soup to my order, but couldn’t find an easy way to do it, so I just gave up. I guess next time, I’ll just over-order, in case it’s rainy and miserable again.
Anyhow I was happy that we had found seating in the West Wing, which is really the only dining room I wanted to eat in.
[I was very happy with how my pictures of the rose came out]
Not that that prevented me from exploring the other dining rooms:
Justin and I had almost the exact same thing:
We each had the french dip and french fries. The French dip was really good. Justin’s only complaint was that they didn’t give him enough dip, so he kept on staring at me as I ate, hoping I’d leave some of my dip for him to finish off his sandwich with [I did, he was happy]. My complaint was their french fries. Their french fries were awful, it tasted like I eating sticks of salt, and not enough ketchup in the world could save me from the awfulness of those fries.
For desert I had the Master’s cupcake because I really wanted to try “the gray stuff.” It was delicious. I thought it just really tasted like very whipped vanilla frosting to me. I know I’ve read it’s cookies & cream, but I tasted more vanilla than anything. And my cupcake was mostly frosting. It was hardly any cake, and like 80% frosting, but I’m not complaining, I LOVE FROSTING, when I was younger, I’d literally buy tubs of frosting and eat them by themselves. It was a good cupcake though.
Justin had the chocolate cupcake. He said it wasn’t anything amazing, but it was tasty.
We both liked Be Our Guest a lot, Justin said it was his 2nd favorite restaurant of the trip [his first was beaches & cream], and we probably will go back there again, when we go back to Disney [which realistically won’t be till 2021, after the new lands are open, as well as the Light Cycle Power Run], but Justin was thinking of switching it up and going there for dinner instead of lunch, but we have plenty of time to plan all that out
After lunch, it was time to hit up more rides.