Day 3: Disney’s Magic Kingdom

Did I mention I am exhausted?

Anyway, I’m a firm believer that every child in the world has been indoctrinated into the world of Disney by way of a trip to the Magic Kingdom. My first trip here I believe, was around age 7.

Little sister was still about the size of a sack of potatoes and had not yet reached the age where she broke Goofy’s nose during her first-ever theme park visit.

I also have this awe-inspired memory of the roof of the A-framed “Disney Contemporary Hotel” (by far their oldest btw) which seemed to be about a thousand feet tall to my 7 year old mind.

Fast forward 35 years and the roof has gotten a little lower. The doors a little tighter, and I’m still able to get away with buying and wearing totally stupid hats. In this case, a traditional cowboy hat intended to keep the sun off that I forgot to mention buying yesterday.

Keeping with the exhausted mantra, sorry for babbling, but stepping into the Magic Kingdom still invokes that feeling of giddy childishness in me. The desire to run from ride to ride, consuming copious amounts of soda, and just getting completely swept away in the moment.

Today, I had three hours to play by the time the bus got us there. Not a lot of time, but miraculously the rides were not crowded at all. In fact, the worst wait I saw was for the kid’s rides in Tomorrowland.

In fact, I pretty much bounced between Pirates of the Carribean, Space Mountain, and Haunted Mansion repeatedly without more than a 10 minute wait at any. Wait. Sorry, check that. It was a 25 minute wait for Space Mountain so only once this time.

As for the rest, the Hall of Presidents was closed to make way for our newest President, and — sadly I must report that — I’ve become a Pirates of the Caribbean purist.

I find that while I love some of the updates to the Haunted Mansion (to include tips of the hat to the horrible Eddie Murphy movie adaptation of the same name), I am upset that they’ve re-tooled Pirates of the Caribbean to be mostly about Captain Jack Sparrow and the Pirates trilogy.

It’s just not the same any more.. Whimper, whine, sob…

Now generations of children will be raised to think that the ride is JUST about the movie, meaning that as soon as people forget about the movie, the ride — which has stood for almost 3 decades — will become phased out and meaningless.

The price of progress I guess, but I’m glad to say I’m one of the people who fondly remembers the ride as it should have remained.

Tomorrow, I’ve still got one day left on my pass, and since the show is over, I’m debating whether to do the “Disney’s Hollywood” park, or just spend the night tooling around Disney Downtown (which is literally 3 minutes walk from the hotel I’m staying in) and catching the new Bond flick.

I hate to waste the Disney ticket (since I’m leaving EARLY Saturday AM for the DC show) but frankly I may simply be too tired to traverse another theme park. I’m SURE crawling the 2 square mile shopping mall will be MUCH easier… RIGHT….

Then again, going to see Bond here will fill my quota for the hobby of seeing a movie in every state I’ve ever visited.