This update comes to you from the future. I’m talking about day 2 of our holiday at Disney, but we’re really on about day six.
This scene is titled “The Ham in action”.
I think the sign of a true holiday is when you forget what day of the week it is – that happened a while ago, but since being at Disney, despite everything we’ve managed to do, we have really had a great time and enjoyed watching Jackson having a great time (sure, sure – Kylie and I have enjoyed “Disney” too). I’ve never been a massive fan of theme parks, but Disney does holidays so well and I am sure Disney would say that they aren’t just theme parks, they’re experiences, or where dreams come true – or something like that. I don’t ever recall thinking badly of the service from any of their “cast members: (that’s what all staff are called here), the services which are offered are done so with convenience (through clever use of technology and processes) and everything is clean and tidy.
There are people who come here every year. I’m not sure that would be for me, but if I lived in the states, I could definitely see myself coming here every 3 or 4 years or so. There are shows and rides which Jackson simply could not sit through, but we’ve (Kylie and Chris) still only not done a couple of rides and we’ve been sure to do any rides we really wanted to do.
On with the show….
Friday 9th November
We had a wake up call ordered for 620am or so…. Micket Mouse was our wake up call (or at least a recording of Mickey Mouse). This made is a bit easier to get Jackson awake, as we put the call out through speaker & that woke him up quick smart.
We followed yesterday’s trip to the Magic Kingdom up with a visit to Disney’s MGM Studios. This park has a movie cinema theme to it and features many attractions we knew Jackson would love and quite a few of his favourite “cartoon” characters live here, it also had a few things I knew Kylie and I would enjoy.
The bus ride from our resort to the MGM was 20 minutes or so. Kylie’s mum takes Jackson on bus rides all the time, so he is well trained on buses and he enjoyed looking out the window at all the new sights.
Some of the highlights of MGM;
The Little Mermaid show is a 15 minute puppetry show which has some very cool special effects. Jackson did not want to do this – he told us in no uncertain terms that he did not want to do it – but afterwards he said he loved the show, even though there was a few scary bits. The show is live and the puppetry in the show is fantastic, with some of the puppets a couple of meters high! At one point in the show light sprays of water rained down on us – Jackson had a gobsmacked moment right here…
The Playhouse Disney show was right across the road from the Little Mermaid show. This was another live character show, with many of Jackson’s favourite TV stars on hand. For the parents (& grandparents forced to endure these shows) in our audience, we saw Bear & the Big Blue House and his friends, Stanley & his goldfish buddy, Jo Jo and Goliath and Winnie the Pooh and friends (and some other guy I’ve never seen before – thankfully, he was annoying!!). Jackson was up and dancing and clapping along and having a great time. (Meema, we video recorded the “goodbye song” for you).
Today was not the first time we have seen the ham in action, but it’s the most prolific appearance of the ham. A ham is apparently a US phrase for someone who knows how to strike a pose for a photo. We have a first class ham in our family, and it is no Kylie or Chris. The ham was out in force today, as Jackson struck a pose for photos with MANY of his favourite characters. I think this list is comprehensive – but I may have missed some & excuse the spelling if I havent got it right. Leo from Little Einstein’s, Jo Jo and Goliath from Jo Jo’s circus, Sully from Monsters Inc (this was for Kylie I am convinced), Buzz, Woody and Combat Carl from Toy Story & Lightning McQueen (!!! – more on that later). At one point I am sure I saw “Blue Steel” (the “Zoolander” fans will get it).
I (Chris) got to do a couple of rides today. Another great aspect to visiting a Disney park is called “Fast Pass”. “Fast Pass” allows you to go to a ride and run your park admission ticket through a special machine which then gives you a ticket to come back to that ride within an alloted time later in the day and jump the queue! It’s awesome, I have walked past hundreds of people waiting in line to ride some rides using a fast pass, which is available to anyone in the parks – I do not know why more people don’t use it.
The Rock n Rollercoaster has an Aerosmith (the band) theme to it. By having picked up a fastpass to this earlier in the day I was able to walk past a few hundred people right to near the front of the line! The rollercoaster is completely in doors and in mostly the dark, it is very smooth, with little to no jerkiness to the ride.
The other thrill ride I took today was the “Twighlight Zone’s Tower of Terror”. It is a little like th Dream World ride in that it features a drop from a great height. The theme of the ride is a twighlight zone story about a LA hotel frequented by Hollywood stars during the 1950′s, the hotel got struck by lightning and some people in one of the lifts at the time were killed and their ghosts were doomed to haunt the hotel for ever (i think that’s it anyway). Fastpass again – so as I walked past all the people in the other line, I felt a bit like Wayne or Garth from Wayne’s World when they had backstage ticket’s to the Alice Cooper concert and they were walking around flaunting their backstage tix in front of all and sundry! For the ride itself you board the lift which then goes on a little ride to the “drop zone”, you arrive at the “drop zone” which is is a completely darkened area – so you dont know you’re at the drop zone…. then you drop 13 floors like a “yo-yo” – up and down and up and down! the drop is apparently randomised so you never have the same drop twice. this is very cool ride!
Jackson, Kylie and I all did the Star Wars ride. This is a bit like the Batman ride at Movie World, you sit in a simulator and fly to the moon endor. Good fun and Jackson did well to not get too scared on this one considering all the jolting around, loud noise and that it was a bit frightening (for a 3 year old) in parts. After the ride I got myself a new stormtrooper t-shirt!
Jackson met Lightning McQueen, from the Cars movie, today. This character greeting is very popular, we were in line half an hour before the time Lightning was going to get there and even then we still were about the sixth group in line! We’ve got a couple of cracking photo’s of this and we all loved Jackson meeting Lightning.
They have a daily parade at 3pm which is of characters and their cars, which was ok. After this we went back to the hotel by bus and then onto a boat and over to the Magic Kingdom for some night-time fun.
Tonight we spent most of our time in “Tomorrowland”, which is future themed.
One of the first rides we did was the “Tomorrowland Transit Authority”, which is a little tram style ride which is elevated up at around second / third floor level and goes through some buildings and rides and gives you a decent perspective of what is in that section of the park. Tonight we got a perspective on some of the parts we probably shouldnt get too much of a perspective on, as the rie broke down while we were on it and in a tunnel. Jackson is still a bit iffy about the dark and tunnels, so this wasnt the best place for us to break down!! We were there for between 20 minutes and half an hour, with a near continuous message being played telling us the ride had stopped momentarily, to stay seated and not to leave our cars and that the ride might begin at any moment. Jackson handled the darkness well and eventually they walked us off the ride, for the inconvenience they gave us a few fast pass like tickets.
We had our first ride on the Buzz Lightyear ride….. the first of many goes on this ride. Jackson loves it – you sit in a carriage, with a ray gun and shoot buzz’s enemy zurg. We rode the mad hatters tea cup ride tonight.
We were back at the room at about 930 and asleep by about 931.