Category: Magic Kingdom
365 Adventures in 2011: Day 211 – A chance meeting with Angelica
If you saw my post about visiting the new Tinker Bell’s Magical Nook meet-and-greet earlier today, you probably thought my photo of the day was going to be me with one of the Disney Fairies. But no – it’s me with a different female character at the Magic Kingdom. Believe it or not, despite the fact that she has been in the park since April, I had seen Angelica from “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” until today. The line to get a photo with her was only 2 people long, so I gladly jumped in for a picture.
We exchanged few words, as she seemed to have more important pirate-y things on her mind. And sure enough, a few minutes later, she led a gang of young pirates on a march through Adventureland. (I’ve included a couple shots of that as a bonus below.)
365 Adventures in 2011: Day 132 – Great Disney Scavenger Hunt, Day 1
I am exhausted. Today was day 1 of the Great Disney Scavenger Hunt, put on by the Disney D23 fan club. We started the Hunt in good spirits shortly after 10am at Epcot. We had 95 questions of varying degrees of difficulty to answer by speed walking through the entire park, riding a handful of rides. Four hours later, we turned in our completed question book and were completely wiped out… but feeling accomplished. Epcot is huge but we did well.
After a break, it was time for our second park of the day where we spent 3 more hours at the Magic Kingdom. After that, we were even more wiped out. We didn’t do quite as well at Magic Kingdom, but still NEARLY finished all the questions (and took educated guesses on the rest).
In the end, I think we got around 98% of all the questions right, which is pretty darn good. I hope we win the grand prize of a Disney Cruise, but I have a feeling a small handful of teams will do better than us and get ALL the questions right. We’ll find out tomorrow night after we continue the Hunt at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
Oh and our team is the Junior Woodchucks, named after the Boy Scouts-style group that Huey, Dewey, and Louie belong to (with honorary Junior Woodchuck Webbigail). Our team was myself (Huey), my wife Michelle (Webbigail), and our friends Kenny (Dewey) and Kurt (Louie). We dressed the part.
365 Adventures in 2011: Day 18 – Party at the Magic Kingdom
If you’ve been watching this blog between Jan. 18-23, 2011, you will have noticed a lapse in daily picture posts. That’s because I was thoroughly busy with Disney-related activities this week, some on land, many at sea. But along the way, I took PLENTY of pictures and certainly have good ones to share. So I’m backdating these posts to correspond to the proper dates, even though they were really posted on 1/23.
With that out of the way, my photo for today (1/18) is of the dessert party Disney set up in the Magic Kingdom for the launch of their “Let the Memories Begin” campaign. Illuminated tables were set up all around the Hub preparing for the new “Magic, Memories, and You!” castle projection show.
Unfortunately, due to a late start on the night, I barely had time to eat any dessert at the dessert party. But I did enjoy the show!
TweetSummer Nightastic at Walt Disney World to bring the Electrical Parade back to Main Street and more
I remember the last time I saw the Main Street Electrical Parade actually ON Main Street at the Magic Kingdom. It was announced that on April 1, 2001, the popular nighttime Disney parade would be finishing its run at Walt Disney World.
Now, at the time, I didn’t realize that Disney parades hopped coasts and came and went every few years. I wasn’t frequenting Disney fan web sites to find out all the latest news as I do today. And there were no podcasts to deliver the news either. So I was under the impression that when Disney was giving the Electrical Parade a farewell, they meant for good.
I made sure to not miss it, so I made one last trip to the Magic Kingdom to see it before it went away. This was before I moved to Orlando, so it was a great vacation and a chance to see my favorite parade one last time.
Of course, since then, I have seen the Electrical Parade at Disney’s California Adventure in Anaheim many times, but it’s just not the same as seeing it on Main Street. So I was thrilled to hear the announcement last night at the “What’s New, What’s Next” media presentation that the Main Street Electrical Parade would, indeed, be returning to Orlando and will be shown nightly on Main Street throughout the summer of 2010.
In addition, Disney announced that an all-new fireworks show would be performed each night throughout the summer, as part of their new Walt Disney World Summer Nightastic, a name borrowed from last summer’s event at Disneyland in California. Disney also hinted at new effects and enhancements being added to the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, one of my favorite rides.
Here’s a video of the announcement and an interview with Walt Disney World Marketing Director Carrie Matson:
While at the media presentation, I also had a chance to speak with Walt Disney Imagineer Diego Parras about the now-ongoing Fantasyland expansion at the Magic Kingdom:
There’s plenty of excitement to be found at the Magic Kingdom in the coming months/years and I can only imagine that this is all part of Disney’s plan to drive at least *some* attention away from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter opening in a couple of months at the Universal Orlando Resort. I doubt any Potter fans will pass up the Wizarding World to see the Electrical Parade and a new fireworks show, but they will almost certainly now add a visit to the Magic Kingdom into their vacation plans.
TweetMore Cinderella Castle Suite Details
I previously blogged about having a chance to wander the Cinderella Castle Suite in the Magic Kingdom for a short time and included a couple photos of sights I hadn’t seen before.
Now, the My Disney Mania blog has posted a fantastic set of pictures from within the suite, taken by a family who won a stay there for the night:
[…] a friend of a friend actually got lucky enough to be picked to win such a stay at Cindy’s Castle! So I finally got some in-depth account, rather than just superficial news reports, on what it was like, and how the inside of the suite really looked like, more than what news reports and press releases described. And the good thing was that these people were also Disney fans. So not only did they truly appreciate the enormity of what they had just won, they also were rabid enough to snap tons of photos (and grabbed everything that wasn’t nailed down, but that’s another story :)).
They have graciously shared the pictures they took with their friends, and I’m a beneficiary of some of those pictures. I’ve omitted pictures that identify them, and have scrambled pictures that they scanned that had their full names, mainly to protect their privacy as one can imagine, but other than those, these are some of the pictures they took. The detail of the Castle Suite is simply jaw-dropping.
The best part is that when the family got home, they scanned everything that they were able to take with them, including the stationary I spotted while inside the suite, their key cards, privacy sign, and more:
Be sure to check out the original full post on the My Disney Mania blog to see all of the great photos. (Thanks, Matt!)
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