Trip Report: The Magic Kingdom
Reedy Creek I.D., Florida - 11/15-16/2004

"Good heavens, someone has TP'ed the castle!"

Monday evening, I boarded the monorail and returned to the TTC, then boarded another monorail and went to the Magic Kingdom. When I arrived, a crew was planting a series of posts and clotheslines in the entrance plaza in preparation for the massive onslaught that would be hitting this plaza in a few hours. I entered the park and took a quick look around. A train was sitting in the railroad station, so I walked briskly up the steps, through the station, and hopped aboard the waiting train. Moments later we were steaming around the berm.

The train at the Magic Kingdom is a nice one, but its location appears to present something of a dilemma for the park's planners and engineers. See, the entire park is surrounded by a roughly fifteen-foot-tall mound of dirt, and the train runs on top of that mound. With very few exceptions, the mound (and the railroad track) define the external boundary of the Magic Kingdom...certainly they define the boundary of the parts of the Magic Kingdom you, as a customer, are expected to see. In fact, off-hand I can only think of two attractions (Space Mountain, and possibly Pirates of the Caribbean that are located outside. Of course, this presents an interesting problem, as the berm is intended to make the outside world invisible to people in the park. The fact that the train runs on top of the berm means that people riding the train (who are by definition inside the park) can see what is on the outboard side of the berm. Also, the train's elevated perspective on top of the berm would, in theory, extend the passengers' view into the park on the inboard side. The problem with that is that Disney's parks generally put the midways somewhat to the inside, with the actual attraction show space toward the berm. So the view adjacent to the railroad tracks would often be, as is so often the case around railroad tracks, a not-so-scenic view of the park. Of course, to a gearhead like me, that would be perfect, a look at the works that make the park function. But to Disney, that is simply unacceptable. Besides, the train would look out of place steaming through certain sections of the park. So they dealt with the problem through a variety of screening techniques. The result is a not-very-scenic trip around the perimeter of the park. To the left you can see...trees, and the occasional fabric mesh screen. To the right, you can see...more trees. That is, until the train pulls into the first station. Just ahead of the station the train pulls through a tunnel behind Splash Mountain, and on the right-hand side is a series of windows through which you can see Splash Mountain's final dark-ride scene.

My intention with this little trip was to get a look at Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and perhaps even get a ride, so I exited the train at the Adventureland/Frontierland station. I seem to recall that there is an interesting rail crossing just beyond the station where the Big Thunder maintenance track crosses the railroad track, but I didn't have a chance to see it this time. I stepped off the train and walked down to the midway, and turned left towards Big Thunder Mountain.

Big Thunder Mountain is looking good these days, certainly a lot better than it looked a year ago just because those big ugly construction walls are gone. I watched and saw one of the trains go by. The lead car, the one that looks like a loco(non)motive, looks a little strange with the floating axle removed. What does that make it...a 0-2-2? Sorry, I'm not a railroader, so I'm not entirely 'up' on the terminology. The truly bad news, though, came from a sign over the ride entrance: "Wait time [55] minutes." I did some quick figuring. That wouldn't leave me much time for anything else. I figured it might be an end-of-day trick to encourage people like me to not get in line. Well, I haven't ridden the ride in almost a decade, so I'm not real familiar with the traffic patterns, so this time their trick worked. Knowing I would be back tomorrow, I opted instead to hike across the park.

I hiked across the back of the park. As I passed the back of the castle, I noticed that park employees were shutting down the short-cut paths that lead to the hub in preparation for the closing fireworks show. I wandered briefly through Mickey's ToonTown, but skipped the Barnstormer when I saw the queue. Across the midway is a large building, and I looked inside. It turns out that it is an organized character meeting facility, with both the queue and the exit running through a gift shop. I wasn't there to meet characters. I was struck by the utilitarian structure, though. On the outside it looks a bit like a circus tent, and on the inside it looks like it might *be* a circus tent. Perhaps the actual attraction inside is more elaborate, but this part looked more like something I saw behind the slides on Midway America at Hersheypark. Somehow, I kind of expected more from this park. Ah, well, on to Tomorrowland.

The quickest way to get there would have been to take the path along the railroad track. I noticed that the train station is located at the blind end of Mickey's ToonTown so that the section isn't a dead-end...but the disused path between the railroad station and Tomorrowland, a long, desolate, one might say even MarineLand-esque path squeezed in between the car ride and the railroad track kind of looks like an after-thought, and comes out next to Space Mountain. I opted instead to take the larger main route into the heart of Tomorrowland. I started by gliding up the moving rampway and into a vehicle of the Tomorrowland Transit Authority. From aboard that thing, I was able to get a pretty good view of the goings-on in Tomorrowland. I noticed a large number of people lined up for Alien EncounterStitch's Great Escape, which wasn't even supposed to be open yet. More important, since the Tomorr--...aw, to hell with it...the PeopleMover goes right through Space Moutain I was able to see that nobody was waiting to ride it. In response, when I got back down to the midway, that's where I went.

Apparently Bad Things™ happened sometime between when my TTA car went through the Space Mountain building and the time it took for me to walk back there. That's really a trivial distance, as the Space Mountain entrance is right across the midway from the PeopleMover ramps. When I got to the Space Mountain entrance, the ride was apparently down, as a chain was stretched across both of the entrances. That only lasted a few moments, though. When I walked up, the attendant was on the telephone. He hung up and dropped the chain, I walked through and found the queue backed up into the tunnel...a much longer line than I had seen before. It moved quickly, though, and in a few minutes I was instructed to take a seat in Seat #6 on the left-hand track.

As roller coasters go, Space Mountain is far from the biggest or the wildest. But it delivers a surprisingly rough ride in that back seat. I mean a rough ride not just in terms of the sudden, un-banked or under-banked 90- and 180-degree turns, but also in terms of simply rough running track, in the sense of a Zyklon that isn't quite level. I wonder if any of that is intentional, as in the dark it is hard to tell just how fast you are moving, or indeed if you are moving at all if the ride is too smooth. In any case, I was glad I had not opted to try out my camera's night shot features in here! [Footnote 1] I think it is a combination of the darkness, the somewhat violent ride, and the legs-stretched-out Jet Star-like riding position (minus anybody sitting in your lap) that just makes Space Mountain feel a little unstable. I do like the ride. It's a fun coaster, and I think it really is a much better ride than most coaster nuts would like to admit. "It's Disney, therefore it must be a dull ride," simply isn't the case here. I do wish that on not-so-busy days they would open a stairway between the unload and load platforms, though. I went back for another ride, but to do that means a long Speedramp ride back to the midway, a walk through the obligatory arcade and gift shop, then a long hike down the (now empty) corridor back to the ride. A lot of walking got me rides on both tracks.

As I exited from my first ride, I stopped in the arcade long enough to play a game of pinball [Footnote 2]. As I exited from my second ride, a video crew was working under the entrance sign. One person was running a camera, one person was gripping and two people were serving as talent, as a couple of other people looked on. I was standing right next to the camera guy, and within feet of the talent, but I couldn't tell what they were saying. It was a fairly complicated scene, not that they were doing anything complex, it's just that the grip and cameraman had their hands full, trying to handle the DV camera, the hand-held light, and a large white reflector. I watched as they completed the scene (only about ten seconds of action) and lamented the fact that we have trouble getting our students to put half as much effort into sequences that are ten times as important to their shows.

It was getting close to closing time, and I made my way back to the park's hub, then ultimately cut through the shops on the Adventureland side of Main Street. As night fell, I found a spot near the middle of Main Street, and found it to be a decent viewing spot for the closing-time fireworks show, "Wishes." I'd heard a lot of people talking up the fireworks used in this show, but quite frankly, for a person who sees an awful lot of spectacular aerial fireworks shows, it wasn't all that. It's very artfully done, with everything set off to really make the castle a good centerpiece to the show. But the show was as much about lights and sound as it was about fireworks...though I admit the one stunt where they fired off a dozen tracer shells in a large arc made for a pretty spectacular effect...and the way they went off, I wonder if they were all set off from a single rotating mortar. It was a good show, but it wasn't the fireworks that truly impressed me. No, it was the sound system. Extra-clean, adequately-loud, heck, I think it may have even been in stereo. Looking around Main Street, there are no speakers in sight anywhere, but a very close examination of the storefronts reveals that they are everywhere, mostly just below the second-floor window level, cleverly hidden behind various bits of acoustical cloth. It was the same thing I noticed the following night at Epcot. Disney does fantastic sound, even in what should be an extremely difficult venue. The trick is simple, though: they obviously have a team of sound engineers who (1) care about making the show sound great anywhere in the park, and (2) are not already deaf, so they understand what good sound sounds like. Once those two elements are in place, the rest is just good practice. It isn't all perfect; after the show I found a couple of spots up near the gate where there are nasty echo effects because you're just slightly too far from several speakers. But those spots were few and (necessarily) far between, and were not in places where you could actually see the show, were it going on.

When the show was over, the park was closed, and everybody...thousands of people who had spent the day in the park...all flooded out the gate. It really is a spectacle to see, closing time at the Magic Kingdom. Out front, though, those clotheslines that were being erected as I arrived were put to good use, and the monorails were almost but not quite stacked up at the station. The process of getting all those people moved from the park to the various out-of-park collection points (the hotels, the TTC, Epcot...) shows all the efficiency of a well-oiled machine. I watched the people filing out, then joined the crowd for the monorail ride back to my car.

Tuesday morning, as I approached the Magic Kingdom by monorail, I was happy I had visited the night before. Looking out the window, I could see that a shocking act of vandalism had taken place overnight, as someone...or something...had TP'ed the Cinderella Castle! In the plaza in front of the park, a giant inflatable "Stitch" character stood, "greeting" arriving customers. Inside the park, Main Street was placarded with Wanted posters depicting Experiment 626, with a photo that looked a lot like Stitch [Footnote 3]. I figured out pretty quickly that something special was going to happen, and it didn't take me long to figure out what that was. So I proceeded directly to the Castle. In the hub, a platform had been set up right behind the statue of Walt and Mickey. The platform was draped, and served as a workspace for a moderate number of television cameras. In addition, several totally unnecessary HMI floodlights sat on the platform, illuminating the castle stage, as if such illumination was actually necessary on such a beautiful day. I suppose the idea was that if there should happen to be a cloud in the sky, Disney would make up for it, indicating that it is always sunny in the Magic Kingdom, except when it isn't.

I only had to wait a few minutes. A gentleman in a dark suit (perhaps on loan from Universal Studios?) came out on the stage and briefed us, indicating that Experiment 626 had escaped, and that we should be on the look-out. Meanwhile, the castle show would proceed as scheduled. No sooner did he finish speaking than Stitch himself appeared on one of the castle turrets, flinging a roll of paper. I noticed that a poster was plastered on one of the turrets, indicating that "Stitch is King!" I didn't quite get what was going on, probably because I never saw the regular castle show, partly because I was decidedly off axis. There was something involving boxes, and Elvis, and Stitch finally appearing on the stage and getting apprehended, then several hundred kids all wearing Stitch hats came streaming out from the Tomorrowland side of the castle, running towards Tomorrowland. I couldn't make much sense of it, but the ultimate message was clear enough: Stitch's Great Escape was officially open in Tomorrowland.

As the party was concluding, I walked down the mostly-hidden path around the left-hand side of the castle, a sort of short-cut into Fantasyland. With very few people about, I quickly rode a couple of the dark rides, starting with the Winnie the Pooh ride that I missed last year because of the crowds. The ride vehicle is a little electric honey-pot which differs from the other dark ride vehicles in that in addition to lap bars, the thing is equipped with automatic sliding doors. Partway through the ride, when Tigger appears, it gets interesting when the back of the car starts bouncing not so gently up and down, in an action unique to this ride. I only rode once, but I found myself thinking I should have ridden this short ride a couple of times more...I was paying such close attention to the mechanicals I didn't get a good sense of the ride's story. Eh, that's a bad habit with me.

Next up was Snow White's Scary Adventures. Is it any wonder that when Disney put a frightening ride in Tomorrowland, the parents didn't believe it and they freaked out all the little kids? The scares in Snow White are mostly limited to the appearances by the Witch. It's scary for Fantasyland, perhaps, but not a frightening dark ride. I'd think a lot of kids would be more scared by the darkness in Peter Pan's Flight. This one uses little electric ore cars on an absolutely flat track with tight turns. This one is a classic old-time dark ride.

This was all a distraction for the moment. My next action was to walk past the big ugly wooden wall that fails to hide the facade of it's a small world. The temporary loss of it's a small world is one of those mixed sorts of things. It's a much maligned ride, mostly because of the music and because of the general pointlessness of it (it's the one dark ride in the park that doesn't have a story to tell...just a message to send). But it is a Disney staple, and it just doesn't seem right for it not to be there. Magic Kingdom without it's a small world is a little bit like Kings Island without the Flying Eagles [Footnote 4]. That said, when I rode that ride last year, it was obviously in pretty rough shape, and I don't think it had been down for a good going-through in years. The good news is, it's scheduled to re-open next spring (UNlike the aforementioned Flying Eagles) and I expect that with the ride down for a few months and the place drained out for a while, the work will be rather extensive.

At this point, I started doing some careful examination of the property, only to determine that my initial observations had been totally wrong. Next to the it's a small world building there is a gate, and the midway angles downward to go through the (closed) gate. Next to that is a hill, with a disused Sky Ride station on top. Through the gate, I could barely see a beige warehouse, and if my theory was correct, that warehouse should extend under the Sky Ride building and tuck in beneath the hill. I walked around the hill, then back up on the other side, to wait in front of a door. As I waited, I peered across the little cemetery to see my theory blasted to bits. The warehouse was clearly visible, and clearly located some distance from where I expected to find it. The door opened, and I entered into the famous Haunted Mansion.

The Haunted Mansion is probably the single...er, no, make that the, um, quadruple [Footnote 5] most famous dark ride in the world, so completely documented that there are entire websites devoted to it. The ride exploits every imaginable optical effect. I did think it odd that we were told to stand away from the walls in the pre-show room; very odd, considering that there is nothing special about the walls in there where we were standing (the wall stretches upward, it doesn't move). On the ride, I saw a lot of neat tricks, and I finally spotted the 'secret' behind the 'hitchhiking ghosts' at the end. As nearly as I can tell, it's essentially a Pepper's Ghost effect, but it's done in reverse in that you are viewing the ghost directly and seeing your reflection as an aerial image.

Back out on the midway, a trip around the lagoon finally led back to the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. This time the sign indicated about a 20 minute wait. I proceeded up the ramp, and noticed that in addition to a very long, highly decorated outside queue (I like the boxes of explosives from Lytum & Hyde), there is a very Cedar Point-like queue block at the top of the hill, above the loading platforms. Note the plural. The ride uses an extensive network of track switches to accommodate parallel loading platforms so that two trains may be simultaneously flush-loaded. I noticed that the switches are clearly designed for high-speed operation. They are lateral track-replacement switches, but instead of the typical track replacement switches with side-by-side rail sections mounted on a sliding table, or a flip-over track replacement system often used for roller coaster switches, these have staggered rails, which significantly reduces the lock-to-lock distance the switch has to travel, and probably greatly reduces the lock-to-lock time for the switch.

The ride itself is more or less what we know as a Runaway Train. It has three lifts, all of them quite noisy, one of them featuring a tilting track reminiscent of the Mad Mouse at Idlewild. The track is bristling with so many block brakes and advancing devices that I lost track of the number of blocks. Most of the ride is inside and on the back side of the mountain, and as such is not visible from the park. It's a surprisingly wild ride, and it runs better than Space Mountain. No air time to speak of, but I enjoyed it anyway. Over the course of the day, I would be back several times.

I caught a raft across to Tom Sawyer's Island and spent a little time wandering the paths over there. From the shotgun nests in the fort at the tip of the island there are some good views of the 'public' side of the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

Right next to the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is Splash Mountain, Disney's overgrown flume combined with a dark ride. Is this a dark ride that thinks it's a flume, or a flume that thinks it is a darkride? The story is easy enough to follow in this one, as you see Brer Rabbit outfox his opponents with the plunge through the briar patch. The annoying bit was getting moistened by the water cannon accompanying someone else's boat down the drop while floating through the briar patch. Other than that thing, it isn't really a wet ride. Not at all like Central Florida's best flume ride, Dudley Do-Right's Ripsaw Falls over at Islands of Adventure. What is neat about Splash Mountain, though, is the little fake-out trick that they do so successfully. The ride has several lifts, each one followed by a short drop, as the flume winds its way through the mountain. Everybody knows that there is a very long drop on the ride, as that's the one part of the ride you can actually see from the midway. You know that 52-foot drop is coming, and they keep giving you all the cues that it is, in fact, right over this lift. Then when they finally hit you with it, you're very much not ready for it. It's a cheap trick, but it works. 8-)

I systematically worked my way around the left-hand side of the park, more or less the reverse of the way I approached the park last year. Pirates of the Caribbean was next up. Somehow I never noticed the parrot last year, standing over the queue entrance. The pavilion housing the queue and gift shop is really quite large. Like the Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean has a very large show building. In this case, though, the queue goes downhill to begin with, then the ride begins with a ride down a flume chute. Given the vertical distance, and knowing that the entire Magic Kingdom is allegedly constructed some 10'-15' above ground level, they could almost have just put the whole ride in the park basement and been done with it. Aerial photographs, though, such as those available on Microsoft's Terraserver suggest that in fact the show building is constructed outside the railroad track. Although, that inboard building is pretty darned big...

What I really noticed for starters was how big the sets are in Pirates of the Caribbean. That's why it has that flume drop at the beginning of the ride: that's how you fit a 40-foot ceiling into a 12-foot-tall building. The ride uses a series of outdoor scenes, which is a really neat trick inside a building. Perhaps the most impressive is not the elaborate, highly animated, finely detailed town scene, but rather the sea battle. That's impressive because while the back wall is physically located right behind the ship, you can see all the way to the horizon, miles and miles and miles off in the distance. It's a simple trick, but very well done, as is the entire ride. When I got off, I hiked through the massive gift shop, then happened upon a barely noticed elevator and outside stairway that mark the location of the ride's unloading platform, much closer to the midway than I had expected. I suppose the long Speedramp exaggerates the distance, and hides the elevation change. Looking down that shaft gives a good idea of just how deep that building goes!

Next up on my trip around the park was the Jungle Cruise. As has been advertised regarding the park in California, the ride has changed slightly since last year. Our Captain had a sidearm in a holster on the panel above the boat's wheel, and as we approached the hippopotami he cautiously drew his revolver. The creatures were apparently napping [Footnote 6], though, as they never emerged from the water, and thus the Captain never had an opportunity to open fire. I did think it odd, though, when, not two minutes later, we steamed into slightly more troubled waters and he asked, "Does anybody have any...weapons?" Had I not been sitting at the back of the boat I might have uttered a smart remark. No, that's not quite right. I was sitting at the back of the boat, and I DID utter a smart remark, had I not been sitting in the back, the Captain might have actually heard me. But then again, I really wouldn't want him to get off-track...

Last year, somehow, I missed the Enchanted Tiki Room (under new management). You know that expression about how, "if these walls could talk...?" Well, these do. It's a rather neat show, and I still wonder...are there separate sound tracks and speakers for each bird, or did they just do an amazing job with stereo placement? It's probably a combination of lots of speakers, good tracking, and convincing use of robotics. If I ever saw the old show, it was so many decades ago that I have forgotten every element of it, and I couldn't tell you how different the new show is. But the new show is pretty darned good.

Having exhausted all of the possibilities that Adventureland had to offer, I cut back across the hub and paid a visit to Tomorrowland. Another ride or three on Space Mountain would be nice just to get back to coasters again, so I...umm...Except, you know, I don't feel so good. Some food would be nice, just a quick sandwich or something for the moment. I looked around, and popped into a very large restaurant to see what was on the menu. It turned out to be a very large restaurant surrounding a sort of a food court, where each service line offered a different menu. I was just thinking that it wasn't quite what I had in mind, then I spotted the topping bar. Lettuce, tomato, two kinds of relish, the usual sauces, and...what's this? Sauteed onion and mushrooms on a topping bar? Most places you can't even order those items! Suddenly a cheeseburger looked really attractive. A cheeseburger and fries, but I'm not paying nearly $3 for a Coke. The $7 for the rest of my lunch, though, was almost reasonable. I didn't much care for the fries, though the cheese sauce helped a lot. But the burger was decent.

I wandered through Tomorrowland, stopping briefly to get a photo of an alien tourist, taking rides on both tracks of Space Mountain. I took another tour with the Tomorrowland Transit Authority, this time being sure to sit in the front of a train. That made it possible for me to get a good look at the motor packs positioned on the track. It's kind of odd, one of the ways that linear motors work is that the reaction plate speed is governed in part by the coil spacing, so in the areas of the TTA where the trains move faster, the motor packs are actually positioned further apart on the track.

I took in a show at the Carousel of Progress and what I noticed, to my dismay, is that progress isn't always all it's cracked up to be. It's a neat little show, and the concept behind it is somewhat brilliant, but obviously a show designed to be presented in 1964 has to be updated a little to appeal to a 21st-century audience. So the final scene was re-done to reflect a more modern sensibility. The bad thing is that the animatronics in the final scene are most disappointing compared to those in the first four scenes. Ah, well, I guess that's progress...

With ridiculously long lines for both Stitch's Great Escape and for Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin (or whatever it is called; I rode it last year...), and with the Timekeeper out of commission for the day, I took the back path back to Fantasyland. I've been avoiding mention of it so far, but one of the most obvious "attractions" in Fantasyland right now is this gigantic blue wall along one side of the path, across from The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and Philharmagic. The Fantasyland Wall has severely curtailed access to The Mad Hatter's Tea Party but the added complications to ride access doesn't seem to have hurt the ride's popularity any.

Last year I missed Philharmagic, which is a special-venue movie that gives the classic and not-so-classic Disney animated characters a chance to get on the screen and perform a bit. As I entered the theater I inspected the seats as I always do, and noted that the hardware is in place for the now tiresome practice of squirting water on theatergoers. I don't know about you, but I think these attraction designers need to come up with a new gimmick. It turns out that this attraction has a new gimmick. On entering, it appears to be a large movie theater, but at some point during the show, almost unnoticed, the walls of the theater disappear, and the projection screen becomes really, really, really, really wide. It's a neat tactic, and I'd like to see how they make the projected walls look so good during theater loading and unloading. I know it is a trick I wasn't expecting, and after I saw it...well, now I want to know how they did it!

The tricks in Peter Pan's Flight are far more obvious, as a combination of distance and forced perspective, with scenes constructed in various scales beneath the ride vehicle give the sense of flying over London and far, far away. It's yet another very nicely done dark ride, and another way to pass the time in Fantasyland while it's a small world sits behind its construction barrier.

As I walked through Liberty Square, my timing was correct for a change. I made it into the building just in time to catch a showing in the Hall of Presidents. The film shown in there is clearly a technological precursor to Philharmagic as it uses the same projection techniques to present a historical show in multiple aspect ratios, ultimately taking up half the perimeter of the room. The film is followed by a display of figures of all of the United States Presidents, both famous and forgotten, and addresses given by the animatronic versions of Presidents Lincoln and Bush (II). It's not exactly a thrill ride, but for someone who had never seen it before, it was an impressive show.

That detour lasted through the parade that made the usual mess of the midway traffic flow, and the delay made it easy for me to get back to the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad for a couple more laps. The line had actually become shorter, leading me to believe that my theory was correct about the night before: that at the end of the day they were overstating the wait time in hopes of getting the ride closed down on time. I took my rides, I wandered the park some more for pictures, and just as the day was ending, I left the park, boarding the monorail just as the first fireworks for the "Wishes" show were lighting up the vandalized castle. I was on my way to Epcot to see the closing show over there, but I've already written about that trip...

This has been a long and detailed report. But even though it is a tiny little park (Jeff Siebert at Paramount's Kings Island pointed out recently that the entire Magic Kingdom would fit into a corner of Kings Island's parking lot), it's a tiny little park that is crammed full of interesting stuff. The Walt Disney Company has practically re-invented the amusement park business in the past 50 years, and anybody who is at all interested in the business can learn a lot from them. Their approach is different from that of a Cedar Fair or a Six Flags, but it's the same business, and in many ways, Disney is the grand master. I've only been to the Magic Kingdom three times in the past 20 years, two of those visits in the past year. So it is not a usual experience for me. Many people have warned me away from the Magic Kingdom over the years, cautioning that it has only three roller coasters and none of those is particularly wild. Well, that's true. But in spite of that, the Magic Kingdom is not a kiddie park, either. It's a well-rounded amusement park, and even I managed to have fun there.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Footnote 1: While on-ride photography is explicitly prohibited on many of the attractions at Disney/MGM Studios and on both Test Track and Mission:Space at Epcot, such photography is permitted on the rides at the Magic Kingdom. Yes, I asked. [Return to text]

Footnote 2: Star Wars Episode 1, if you must know. [Return to text]

Footnote 3: I have only a passing familiarity with the back-story, as I have never seen Lilo & Stitch. [Return to text]

Footnote 4: No, I'm not upset about that one at all... [Return to text]

Footnote 5: ...since this is one of three copies of the original Disneyland attraction... [Return to text]

Footnote 6: That's Disney-speak for "malfunctioning". [Return to text]

--DCAjr

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