Mini-Meetup at Disney - Magic Kingdom and Epcot

Here are the pictures of the four of us that went to the Magic Kingdom and Epcot. DRD, FirelanderX, one of DRD's friends (he's not on the board, we'll call him 'T' since I don't know if he wants me to use his real name), and myself all spent Sunday 2/5/12 there.
Click the pictures for the imageshack page, I uploaded the fullsize ones there. They are a tad big for the forums.


DRD in the new Chevy Camaro SS at Test Track


DRD and T by the same car


Left to right: T, Me (Dragonbait), DRD, FirelanderX in front of the Spceship Earth Globe at Epcot


Left to right: T, Me (Dragonbait), DRD, FirelanderX in front of the Spceship Earth Globe at Epcot


FirelanderX, DRD, and T on the train at Magic Kingdom


Angled shot of Cinderella's Castle from the bridge going to Tomorrowland


Same thing, but I got in the shot too. Everyone was really nice and willing to help with picture taking. I returned the favor to quite a few people too.


T on the left and FirelanderX on the right on the Peoplemover in Tomorrowland at Magic Kindgom


DRD and T on the Peoplemover in Tomorrowland at Magic Kindgom


T with Space Mountain in the background, still on the Peoplemover

 

Us in front of Cinderella's Castle


Another in front of the Castle


This is in front of the Train Station right at the entrance to the Magic Kingdom


And the last one, same thing in front of the Train Station.

I'll be working on doing a write up for all the stuff we did. Hopefully won't take me too long. We did quite a lot, went through Epcot and the Magic Kingdom as you can see. It was a great time and an awesome way to celebrate a birthday with friends (even if it was a few days early)!

 

We started Sunday morning by meeting at the hotel before heading to Epcot – all except FirelanderX who met us at the park. The hotel had a continental breakfast so we made sure to get something to eat before heading off. DRD, T, and I left for Epcot a little after 9AM and sent a text to FirelanderX so we could meet him on the way in. Our timing upon getting to the park was perfect. Right after we started walking in the parking lot, FirelanderX called me and hung up right away. He was right behind us, we didn't have to look for him and our day was starting out as well as it could!

Making our way into Epcot, we decided to head for Soarin' over in The Land. It said there was a 20 minute wait, but I don't think it was even that long. I always have a good time on that ride and it was a great first ride of the day. From there we headed across the park and retrieved fast passes for Test Track. Next to that is Mission: Space. We chose to take the orange ride (more intense) and walked right in – no wait at all this time. T had never been on this before and he was a bit nervous, we all made it through without any unfortunate incidents and this ride is great. You can't lose though, despite my attempts to make us crash we landed safely.

By this time we were able to use our fast passes on Test Track and took that ride as we felt the need for speed! I then remembered that I did have my camera, so I took a few shots while DRD checked out the new Camaro SS. They used to have lots GM cars after the ride like GMC, Buick, and Cadillac, but everything there this time was Chevrolet. They don't let you in (or too close to) the Corvette.

Off to check on the dinner reservations to make sure there wouldn't be a problem with 4 of us coming to it. No problems! We would be dining later at the Coral Reef restaurant in the Living Seas. While there we went in to Finding Nemo (we found him) and looked through their massive aquarium. By this time we were all a tad thirsty.

FirelanderX introduced us to the secret place to go when thirsty, Club Cool. It's a Coca-Cola shop where they have sodas from different countries. They let you sample these for free, so you get to try new tastes while quenching your thirst! The one from Mexico was the best, Germany's was pretty good too. By the way, I may be getting some of this out of order, but I'm trying to make sure I get everything we did in here.

Next, we made sure all the tickets we had were “park hopper” tickets and after we got confirmation of that we hopped on the monorail over to the Magic Kingdom.

Our first stop there was The Haunted Mansion and went into the line through the new interactive graveyard. I thought the improvements they made to this were good, this ride did need some tweaking from the original. The heart of the ride stayed the same. From there we grabbed fast passes for Splash Mountain. Unfortunately, Big Thunder Mountain was undergoing renovations, so we had to skip it. We hopped on the train back to the entrance and got to Space Mountain for more fast passes.

We went back to Splash Mountain as enough time had passed for us to use our passes. This was different than I remember it as well. Less seats per row, and it seemed longer than it used to be. Oh, and on the bright side, you definitely do not get as wet as you used to on this ride.

With the fast passes for Space Mountain we walked right on in again on this ride. This was renovated a couple years ago and the improvements are great. It's probably a good 25-30 seconds longer than it used to be and not being able to see where you are going make it really fun.

Next we stopped for some lunch in Tomorrow land and we got our first recognition of our Pony shirts. Or at least I did. I went to 'Bay 1' for food and the other guys wanted stuff from 'Bay 2'. The guy at the register saw my shirt after taking my order and thought it was awesome. I thanked him and asked which pony was his favorite and he's a total Rainbow Dash fan. He also comped my soda. We met back up and finished lunch.

Then we let lunch settle which riding on the Peoplemover all around Tomorrowland. Somewhere in there we got fast passes for the Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger ride. The photos I took while on the Peoplemover turned out better than I thought they would.

Onto the Buzz ride, I had no idea when they took the photo of you and you could have totally captioned my picture with a “Buzz Lightyear is serious business.” tag. I also destroyed the other 3 in score during the ride. Over 100,000 more points than DRD who was the closest to my score.

Following that we headed to the Monster's Inc. Laugh Floor. I had never been at that attraction before, so I wasn't exactly sure what to expect. It turns out that it's an interactive show with the crowd and animations controlled by live performers watching via camera. Our next Pony recognition came here when I was selected to be Mike Wazowski (with one “i”), the little green one from the movie played by Billy Crystal. The participation consists of them putting you up on the screen from their cameras. So I play along of course and close an eye, you know, so I only have one “i” for my part in the show. During the part where they are thanking us for helping they give me a, “Nice My Little Pony Shirt and Happy Birthday!” which totally made that my favorite part of the day.

The last stop for us in the Magic Kingdom was The Pirates of the Caribbean ride. I kinda miss the old one where the pirates are chasing the wenches instead of the new vice-versa ones they have. They have added in some new little things with Blackbeard and Barbossa though and Captain Jack Sparrow still makes his appearances throughout the ride.

We then left and took the monorail back to Epcot to make sure we had plenty of time before our dinner reservations. We hit Spaceship Earth on the way in and FirelanderX and I made perfectly epic faces for the little video they give you at the end of the ride. I wish I would have kept it and emailed it to myself. Oh well, we will just have to go back on another meetup and make another one!

Turns out at Coral Reef they run a tight reservation schedule, so we had about an hour to kill. I was the only one of the four of us to have seen Captain EO. We went over there and saw Michael Jackson in his prime with what is a pretty good 3D movie. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were involved with it, so the production values are great.

We still had some time so we learned to talk like a turtle with Crush at Crush's Turtle Talk (who would've thunk it?). It's another interactive show but much more little kid involvement which was cool. You have lots more fun when playing along, so we said a whole lot of “duuuuuuuuuuude”.

Lastly, we headed to dinner for some very tasty food at the Coral Reef Restaurant. I made sure to get a dessert after dinner so they could do the whole singing Happy Birthday thing and bring out the cake with a candle in it. I enjoyed myself quite a lot! We also got really lucky with the weather too, the rain held off up until this point. When we left the restaurant there was a light but steady drizzle coming down, so our day at Disney came to an end. FirelanderX had to catch his ride so we bid him adieu and headed back to the hotel.

We tried to watch the latest My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic episode, Read it and Weep, on my laptop but the wifi in the hotel wasn't very good. It was free though, so I got what I paid for...

DRD and T soon headed off and thus ended our mini-meetup at Disney. It was one of the best times I've ever had there and I'd like to thank DRD, FirelanderX, and T again for coming along and making it such a great day!