How to Plan an International Trip: Travel Tales and Tips : Dream Vacay at Disney World, Orlando, Florida, USA: INTRO, MAGIC KINGDOM

WHY DISNEY?

After posting about the theme park Sea World at San Antonio, thought it may be good to follow up with our Disney park experience. So here goes...

There is a tendency for adults to look down on Disney theme parks and movies. The expression “disnefied” in snobbish circles refers to fake, over the top, commercial kitsch. Disney resorts are supposedly meant for only kids and adults who are not mature enough to handle the real world.

We have traveled the world and do possess the aesthetics, sophistication and refined taste [even if we say so ourselves! Ha, Ha!] to enjoy high brow art and culture all over.

We had also fell in line with the cynical view of Disney for quite a while. But doubts kept creeping in and we decided to give Disney a whirl!! WOW!! We did have a great time!!

Goofy and Donald Duck above...

The general ambience is LOVELY as you can see. The specifics are beyond AMAZING!

Look at the fountains below... not your run of the mill stuff. The jumping fountain looks like a water hose, the last fountain moves in reverse, from bottom to top, instead of the other way around!!

Even the gift shops were so inviting!! Again, these are not your typical kitsch, are they?? Not just the products but the whole decor!!

The whole park set up gets revised and redone periodically, so these posts are just a record of our experience at that point in time. May be the general guidelines we used can be put to use any time!

LOGISTICS:

Disney World, located in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, near Orlando, is the most popular theme park resort in the world.

We visited Walt Disney World's four theme parks: The Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom in 8 days. Entry ticket for 1 day is around 89$ [2011 prrices]... however, as we add more days, the price comes down, for 8 days we paid around $290 per ticket—that amounts to $35 per day—quite a nice discount. [2020: Disney World, a single-day ticket costs around $114-$199 for adults, however, this can vary slightly since Disney uses dynamic pricing. Single-day tickets to Disneyland Resort are now about $117 for adults, . For both parks, the per-day cost decreases as you add more days to a multi-day ticket]

Also each park needs 2 full days to cover all shows, rides, so our time was just right. We spent just 1 day at Hollywood studios though and spent the extra day at Magic Kingdom

Disney World over Disneyland:

Disney World covers 43 square miles of land. Disneyland is just 500 acres — 51 Disneylands can fit inside Disney World.

Inside those 500 acres, Disneyland hosts two distinct parks: Disney California Adventure Park and Disneyland Park. Disney World hosts four main parks: Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

With its larger size and 2 additional theme parks, Disney World has nearly 50 rides while Disneyland has about 25

Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty Castle is 77 feet tall, while Disney World’s Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom is more than double that height at 189 feet tall

Disneyland comes with just three hotels: the Disneyland Hotel, Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel and Spa, and Disney’s Paradise Pier Hotel.

Disney World has more than 25 different hotels stretched across its landscape. That includes everything from budget hotels like Disney’s Animation Resort to deluxe options like the Animal Kingdom Lodge, as well as deluxe villas like those at Disney's Polynesian Villas & Bungalows.

So our choice was clear!

WHEN TO GO? WHERE TO STAY?

ALL STAR MUSIC RESORT, DISNEY WORLD:

Since we stayed at a Disney resort on the property, we had the advantage of magic hours—extra hours in the morning or night ... more than other ticket holders coming from outside. So after fireworks, when other visitors left, we stayed on .. park was open till 1.30 in the night.

Disney buses arrive at regular intervals to the bus stops at the front of all resorts and take us directly to the theme parks... our grouch was that our room was almost half a mile from the entrance of our resort and the bus dropped us almost a km from the entrance of the parks... the more expensive resorts (starting $500/night, costliest villa is $2000/night!) have the nearest stops to the entrance....

Ours was a value room at $95/night which becomes $180, the next week... timing is important to avoid crowds as well as getting fleeced. The official website lists room rates by season. Our choice was the 2nd least crowded part of the year.

Early December is definitely the best time to visit these theme parks—lovely weather and comparatively less crowds. AVOID SCHOOL HOLIDAYS!!

Our research told us Disney World in Orlando , Florida is better than Disney Land California. So we opted for that... both are almost equidistant from Houston!!

Disney World here covers an area over 27,000 acres ...

It also has two of the world's three most popular water parks,

Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach,—we felt December was a little too cold to visit them.

Two shopping and entertainment districts, Downtown Disney and Disney's Boardwalk are also there—but we did not even have the time to go there and collect our free gift.

There was Excellent service by the resort.... they had sent tags for our checked in baggage, we put them on, so we did not wait to collect them at the Orlando airport but directly boarded the free shuttle (Disney's Magical Express) and reached our resort—ALL STAR MUSIC.

We left our hand baggage at the checkin desk and took the shuttle to Magic Kingdom...And yes, we did start our vacation on Monday... flights were remarkably cheaper than weekend prices!

DAY 1, Monday, DEC 5, 2011: Magic Kingdom:

This is the oldest and most popular park of the complex; in fact, with over 17 million visitors annually, it's the most-visited single theme park in the world.

Cinderella castle, the focal point of magic kingdom..

Cinderella Castle sits at the end of Main Street USA—-it is the 1st thing we see from the entrance.. it is the hub of commercial activity with little girls paying to be decked as Cinderellas... you need reservations for dinner at the restaurant at the top floor of the castle...here's a video...

1st impression was unfavorable though. Things appeared tacky and crowded...

thankfully, we started falling in love with the 'magic' soon. Above is Walt Disney surveying his kingdom.

There are music /dance performances in the dais at the front of the Cindrella castle every hour.

Of course the highlight is the ever changing lights of the castle when dusk settles in and the fireworks here. Before the fireworks they have a laser show with music projecting colorful images on the castle.. even our pics can be shown if we have asked the Disney photographers to take free pics of us.

The atmosphere starts building up with the characteristic gateway, each place has music suiting its theme as well. This area reminds us of Victorian-era tales of exotic adventure in far-off locales.

The environment evokes the jungles of deepest Africa, of the type explored by David Livingstone and H.M. Stanley in the late 19th century.

We started off with a tame ride—The Magic Carpets of Aladdin. We guided our carpet up and down with the lever as it was spinning round we did not notice the spitting camels...

IMAGINEERING is the term used for the innovative engineering involved in all the Disney rides and animatronic shows... very apt..

Cinderella castle is the landmark we can see from any part of magic kingdom...

all parks have a tall landmark with which we can orient ourselves—cindrella castle is that landmark for magic kingdom....

Swiss family Robinson tree house....the tree house is quite well built and true to description in the book.

All details from the book faithfully reproduced...
Here's the video:

Mad tea party.. The Mad Hatter and the March Hare invite us for a spin in a giant teacup.

we can spin our teacup around its center axis at whatever speed we like, but that's not the only thing that'll be moving; each group of five cups also spins around a common axis, and then the whole shebang rotates around a giant teapot. 1st time we just sat in the cup and enjoyed the ride... we noticed others rotating the central dial and we did that on our 2nd visit and made the cup spin more and had much better fun... one of the best rides...

Here are screen grabs from other rides.

After Galactic ride...