LisaG
12-05-2003, 01:18 PM
Cast:
Lisa (36) – air quality tech
DH, Darrell (38) – archaeologist
Day 7 11/6/03 MK Keys to the Kingdom tour, MGM, and EPCOT -
After a hearty breakfast of Mickey Krispy Treats we head for the Magic Kingdom. We are scheduled to take the 9:30 am Keys to the Kingdom Tour. We check-in at the tour desk upon arrival to the park. Since we are pretty early we figure there is time for a quick ride on Buzz. Darrell beats me again! Back to wait for our tour to begin. We picked up drinks on the way back not knowing they were going to hand out bottled water. Our guide was Kelly from NJ. When I booked the tour they told me 20 people maximum but there were 23 in our group. Most of them from NJ.
I’m not going to give away too many of the secrets they reveal but I’ll give you the basic layout of it. We toured down main st. then into adventureland. The first ride we were to go on was Pirates. We stood line for about 7-8 minutes then approached the boarding area. We all started to get a bad feeling when they squeezed all 23 adults (and we mostly towards the “fluffier” side of the scales. Our tour guide didn’t fit so she was to meet us back at the entrance. Off we go riding really low in the water. We hadn’t even cleared the loading area when we started rubbing on the side rails. They guy who loaded us came and looked and pronounced us ok to go on. For whatever reason they left the 2 boats behind us empty even though there were still people waiting in line. So we are grinding along when we get to the top of the drop and we grind to a halt! A female CM comes along and tried to have us rock and back and forth to loosen the boat – no luck. So she calls for a maintenance person. So he arrives and having proper training in this situation has all of us raise our arms in the air and on the count of 3 rock and back and forth. This works so down we go. Well we continue grinding along until we reach the town scene, now we come to a shuddering halt! Well after about 10 minutes the lights come on and the maintenance guy arrives again – this time armed with a long stick. After some pushing and prodding decides this won’t work and leaves only to return a few minutes later wearing boots up to his armpits! He is now joined by a manager and the cm who loaded us. The cm tells us he is sorry and we can all smack him upside the head when we get off. After the cm gets one leg wet trying to help he leaves and returns in the big boots too. Between him and the maintenance man pushing and pulling we are finally pushed free but the maintenance man declares we cannot continue this way. We thought they would offload half of us into one of the empty boats behind us but no we got to walk up through the town and out the back into the production area for the parades. This area is on the tour schedule but not til much later. So this has taken us close to an hour for our Pirates experience. When the manager reconnects us with our tour guide we head our to lunch at the Columbia Harbor House. (Neither of us really liked the lunch – won’t eat there on our own). After walking around Liberty Square we head for the Haunted Mansion and are assured no more than 2 people per Doom Buggy. When we came out of HM it was raining. We stopped so those of us who didn’t have them could purchase ponchos. At this point the tour guide questioned whether we still wanted to see the Production area and Utilidors or just one or the other. We all agreed everything and proceeded off in the rain. I enjoyed the tour and would do it again but I wasn’t really happy with how a few things were handled. After the Pirates fiasco I thought we should have gone another ride or redid POC since instead of the 3 – 4 rides the info says you may do we only did 1 ½. The manager for POC did give us all free magnets to try and make-up for it. But for the cost of the tour we thought another ride would have been better. Also after we lost all that time the tour still ended under 5 hours. And offering to cut off part of the tour after having missed out on other things really didn’t seem very customer service oriented. The group of people on the tour with us were great and really tried to make the best of all situations from being trapped on POC to touring in a downpour for the last 2 hours.
I do want to share one story regarding the partner’s statue. While there is no “official” story as to what Walt is pointing at our tour guide shared one rumor with us. Walt knew he wouldn’t be around forever so he is pointing to the statue of Roy and Minnie at the beginning of Main St and explaining the empty seat on that bench is for Mickey and that they would take care of him when he was gone.
After the tour was over we did some quick shopping and took the monorail over to MGM. We rode the Great Movie Ride – gangster side this time. Then headed to the 50’s Prime Time Café for 5pm dinner PS. Our server was cousin Manny. I had the pot roast and mashed potatoes, no veggies since I asked for no onions and they are in the veggie mix. Darrell had the meatloaf and mashed potatoes with green beans (which he tried to get me to eat so the server wouldn’t feed them to him, ended up hiding them under the napkin). The food was awesome! Manny even commented how I must not have liked the pot roast since I all but licked the plate! I love the desert menu in the viewmaster. Of course I went with the smore’s. Definitely too much for one person but I tried my hardest!!! Darrell helped but is a desert lightweight so he only ate 3 of the 16 marshmallows, I think I ate 9!
Our original plan was Fantasmic but decided to go do Sounds Dangerous then take the boats to EPCOT.
This was our big energy day! (Must have been the krispy treats for breakfast…) 3 parks in one day and we used the buses, the monorail and ferry systems to travel between.
At EPOCT we rode Mission Space, stand-by line, only waited 5 minutes. Then we rode Test Track, using the Single Rider option and walked right on.
Then we headed back to AKL while Illuminations was going to beat the crowds.
After doing most of our packing we went to bed.
Tomorrow: EPCOT, Downtown Disney, and Cape Canaveral
Lisa (36) – air quality tech
DH, Darrell (38) – archaeologist
Day 7 11/6/03 MK Keys to the Kingdom tour, MGM, and EPCOT -
After a hearty breakfast of Mickey Krispy Treats we head for the Magic Kingdom. We are scheduled to take the 9:30 am Keys to the Kingdom Tour. We check-in at the tour desk upon arrival to the park. Since we are pretty early we figure there is time for a quick ride on Buzz. Darrell beats me again! Back to wait for our tour to begin. We picked up drinks on the way back not knowing they were going to hand out bottled water. Our guide was Kelly from NJ. When I booked the tour they told me 20 people maximum but there were 23 in our group. Most of them from NJ.
I’m not going to give away too many of the secrets they reveal but I’ll give you the basic layout of it. We toured down main st. then into adventureland. The first ride we were to go on was Pirates. We stood line for about 7-8 minutes then approached the boarding area. We all started to get a bad feeling when they squeezed all 23 adults (and we mostly towards the “fluffier” side of the scales. Our tour guide didn’t fit so she was to meet us back at the entrance. Off we go riding really low in the water. We hadn’t even cleared the loading area when we started rubbing on the side rails. They guy who loaded us came and looked and pronounced us ok to go on. For whatever reason they left the 2 boats behind us empty even though there were still people waiting in line. So we are grinding along when we get to the top of the drop and we grind to a halt! A female CM comes along and tried to have us rock and back and forth to loosen the boat – no luck. So she calls for a maintenance person. So he arrives and having proper training in this situation has all of us raise our arms in the air and on the count of 3 rock and back and forth. This works so down we go. Well we continue grinding along until we reach the town scene, now we come to a shuddering halt! Well after about 10 minutes the lights come on and the maintenance guy arrives again – this time armed with a long stick. After some pushing and prodding decides this won’t work and leaves only to return a few minutes later wearing boots up to his armpits! He is now joined by a manager and the cm who loaded us. The cm tells us he is sorry and we can all smack him upside the head when we get off. After the cm gets one leg wet trying to help he leaves and returns in the big boots too. Between him and the maintenance man pushing and pulling we are finally pushed free but the maintenance man declares we cannot continue this way. We thought they would offload half of us into one of the empty boats behind us but no we got to walk up through the town and out the back into the production area for the parades. This area is on the tour schedule but not til much later. So this has taken us close to an hour for our Pirates experience. When the manager reconnects us with our tour guide we head our to lunch at the Columbia Harbor House. (Neither of us really liked the lunch – won’t eat there on our own). After walking around Liberty Square we head for the Haunted Mansion and are assured no more than 2 people per Doom Buggy. When we came out of HM it was raining. We stopped so those of us who didn’t have them could purchase ponchos. At this point the tour guide questioned whether we still wanted to see the Production area and Utilidors or just one or the other. We all agreed everything and proceeded off in the rain. I enjoyed the tour and would do it again but I wasn’t really happy with how a few things were handled. After the Pirates fiasco I thought we should have gone another ride or redid POC since instead of the 3 – 4 rides the info says you may do we only did 1 ½. The manager for POC did give us all free magnets to try and make-up for it. But for the cost of the tour we thought another ride would have been better. Also after we lost all that time the tour still ended under 5 hours. And offering to cut off part of the tour after having missed out on other things really didn’t seem very customer service oriented. The group of people on the tour with us were great and really tried to make the best of all situations from being trapped on POC to touring in a downpour for the last 2 hours.
I do want to share one story regarding the partner’s statue. While there is no “official” story as to what Walt is pointing at our tour guide shared one rumor with us. Walt knew he wouldn’t be around forever so he is pointing to the statue of Roy and Minnie at the beginning of Main St and explaining the empty seat on that bench is for Mickey and that they would take care of him when he was gone.
After the tour was over we did some quick shopping and took the monorail over to MGM. We rode the Great Movie Ride – gangster side this time. Then headed to the 50’s Prime Time Café for 5pm dinner PS. Our server was cousin Manny. I had the pot roast and mashed potatoes, no veggies since I asked for no onions and they are in the veggie mix. Darrell had the meatloaf and mashed potatoes with green beans (which he tried to get me to eat so the server wouldn’t feed them to him, ended up hiding them under the napkin). The food was awesome! Manny even commented how I must not have liked the pot roast since I all but licked the plate! I love the desert menu in the viewmaster. Of course I went with the smore’s. Definitely too much for one person but I tried my hardest!!! Darrell helped but is a desert lightweight so he only ate 3 of the 16 marshmallows, I think I ate 9!
Our original plan was Fantasmic but decided to go do Sounds Dangerous then take the boats to EPCOT.
This was our big energy day! (Must have been the krispy treats for breakfast…) 3 parks in one day and we used the buses, the monorail and ferry systems to travel between.
At EPOCT we rode Mission Space, stand-by line, only waited 5 minutes. Then we rode Test Track, using the Single Rider option and walked right on.
Then we headed back to AKL while Illuminations was going to beat the crowds.
After doing most of our packing we went to bed.
Tomorrow: EPCOT, Downtown Disney, and Cape Canaveral