I dream of Disney
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| Ironically, it actually was freezing that evening. Stupid unseasonal weather. |
There are many ways to do Disney. Back in 2007 I had a fantastic holiday in the Orlando area with (or should I say in spite of) an ex and her friends, but we stayed in a villa a few miles away in Kissimmee and failed to execute any kind of forward planning. This time, my beautiful new wife and I splashed out to stay in the Beach Club, one of Disney's own huge array of resorts (it being our honeymoon and all) and we... okay, she planned everything down to the last detail. If 'Strictly Regimented Fun' isn't Disney's motto then it should be.
The exhaustive and exhausting Unofficial Disney Guide book contains hundreds of pages of info on every possible aspect of your trip to the Greater Orlando area. This book. Dining plans. Fastpass plus. Touring plans. Early entry. Extra magic hours. All these are your weapons in the war against Disney queues and fully booked attractions.
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| Beach Club resort - the back door |
If you stay in a Disney resort, you can literally let the corporation control your whole holiday, starting and ending with the Disney's Magical Express coach service to and from the airport. Then upon check-in you're given your Magic Bands, smart wristbands which act as your room keys and also contain all your Park tickets and ride and meal reservations (and probably your phone and email correspondence histories, voting record, known associates, etc).
You can also request badges, as we did, if it's your birthday/anniversary/honeymoon/first visit. You'd think you'd get tired of cast members (ie Disney employees) relentlessly congratulating when you walk by, and after about the hundredth time you'd be absolutely right. Enough with the congratulations already, just give us some free stuff. Mind you, we refused to buy the his'n'hers matching newlywed Mickey and Minnie ears, so maybe we just didn't love each other enough.
Anyway we stayed at the vast Beach Club, modelled on Eastern Seaboard beach hotels of times gone by. This was a great place to stay, as it was within easy walking distance of both Epcot and the Hollywood Studios, and just across the lake from the Boardwalk resort with its row of restaurants and bars (think Boardwalk Empire without the extortion and prostitution). Staying at Disney means you can take advantage of its vast transportation network of buses and boats which take you to all the parks, other resorts plus Downtown Disney. Logistically, it must be a hell of an operation to organise, but it sure makes life easy for guests and I couldn't imagine ever bothering with a car here after this.
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| The Castle of Dreams, or whatever it's called |
The Magic Kingdom remains the quintessential Disney experience. None of the rides themselves are particularly thrilling in terms of speed or extremity, and they can be a tad samey - eg the new Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, which is just a retread of Big Thunder Mountain at heart. However it's the atmosphere of the place and the incredible attention to detail lavished on the park's every aspect that make it worth the visit. Get there early and you're treated to a jazz hands-tastic Welcome Show. Then of course there are the numerous parades, character meet and greets and other shows throughout the day.
In the evening, you can get into prime position on Main Street to watch an animated show projected onto the famous castle, followed by the Wishes fireworks extravaganza, at which you can only stand in awe at the amounts of cash they must spend on pyrotechnics every single day. MK is, as they say, for kids of all ages. Cynics must really loathe it, which is absolutely their loss.
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| Hollywood Studios streetscape |
Disney's Hollywood Studios (formerly MGM) is more of a mixed bag. On the plus side, the Tower of Terror is a simple yet very effective vertical drop ride that's different each time, the new Toy Story Midway Mania is an inventive and fun series of interactive target shooting games, the Muppets and Star Wars rides are always amusing, and there is a wide array of shows each day, climaxing with the spectacular Fantasmic! which projects animated scenes onto huge water fountains.
Conversely though, attractions like the Great Movie Ride and the Indiana Jones stunt show feel somewhat old hat, and if you can't plan your day to fit in all the shows the number of attractions feels kinda small, even more so now that a couple of the older ones are now closed. You can be sure that they are working on ways to jazz DHS up though, as Disney does not like to rest on its laurels. The Downtown Disney area, for example, currently resembles a giant building site, which I'm sure will look great in future, although less so if you want to walk around there now (especially if like us you pick the night of Orlando's record lowest November temperature. Forced to wear coats and hats in Florida - didn't they know we were on our honeymoon?).
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| The Epcot Golf Ball |
EPCOT, as any fool knows, stands for Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow - and this naff name encapsulates the rather square and nerdy feel of its Future World half. It also brings to mind the old maxim that nothing dates quite so quickly as the future. I'm not sure how much kids enjoy the educational elements of these rides (they've come to Disney to get a break from school, surely), and if I were a parent I wouldn't be particularly happy about every ride being sponsored by a major corporation. At the end of Test Track you even have to walk through a giant Chevy showroom, for Pete's sake. (For the record though, the ride elements of Test Track, Soarin' and Mission:Space are all very good.)
Ultimately, it's telling that although the Innoventions buildings contain multiple sciencey, pseudo-educational exhibits, the only one with consistently big queues is The Sum of All Thrills, in which you can design and ride your own rollercoaster.
Better is the World Showcase, aka the bit with all the stuff representing different countries around the giant lagoon. With atypical good timing, our visit coincided with Epcot's International Food and Wine Festival, which meant stands packed with enticing little portions of foodstuffs and booze from around the world. Not all of it was great, but again with Disney the overall experience was top-notch (as was the end-of-night Illuminations fireworks show).
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| Hogwarts~! |
Naturally we also spent a day at Universal Studios Florida, now home of not one but two Harry Potter-themed worlds. With every element needing approval by JK Rowling herself, these were always going to be worth a visit. Even so, nothing can quite prepare you for the sumptuous recreations of King's Cross, Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade village, carefully crafted to the minutest detail. The two major HP rides, Forbidden Journey and Escape from Gringotts, both break new ground in terms of overall ride experience - their use of cutting-edge 3D technology is matched by the sheer scale of the entrance halls and innovative pre-shows.
This does raise the wider questions of how far ride technology can possibly go, and whether modern rides can truly replicate the thrill of older ones. All of the new Universal attractions follow Spider Man's pioneering template - the cars use a combination of limited motion and 3D mini-movies to create an approximation of a true coaster-like experience. This means their appeal is more closely tied in to the visual theme than on old-school rides - eg Simpsons and Despicable Me, funny and clever; Transformers, bone-headed and dull (although at least on the ride the spectacle of identical grey robots hitting each other is interactive and quick, as opposed to being passive and three hours long).
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| Diagon Alley, with Gringotts in background. The dragon breathes out actual fire. |
The plots all boil down to the same template too - you're on some kind of tour or benign mission, something goes wrong, then all hell breaks loose. And although the HP rides raise the bar in terms of greater movement to go with the visuals, Forbidden Journey in particular swings you around in all conceivable directions, leading to even someone like me who has ridden some pretty wild coasters feeling decidedly disturbed of stomach at the end.
My personal view is that Spider Man still provides the best experience of these new-school rides, even if it's not as advanced as what's come after it. Ultimately, something like the Tower of Terror at DHS (my wife's favourite ride, and now one of mine too) works because it does one thing very well. Greater complexity does not necessarily lead to higher levels of awesomeness.
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| Becky samples some Patagonian fare at the Food Festival. Hang on, that's not a country... |
Universal brings together a disparate array of characters and movies owned by different corporations and studios, and whilst some of the individual attractions and themed lands are stunningly realised (the Potter worlds being the pinnacle), the overall effect is something of a mish-mash. For pure thrill rides though, it's still the place to go.
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