Ah yes - for some Magic Kingdom is the literal definition of a theme park.
The castle, the familiar and iconic rides, Mickey Mouse.
It’s no wonder Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom is the world’s most visited theme
park.
Harry: Oh it’s the castle [Wooo from someone else].
Zoe what do you think of the big castle Zoe: It’s very big, no it’s good isn’t
it, it’s very good Harry: Time to join everyone else at the big
queue waiting for the park to open
So our day at Magic Kingdom began with admiring the castle and arriving prior to opening to
take part in the early entry given to hotel guests.
At this point, Zoe wanted to take the obligatory photo in front of the castle - so we thought
why not let the cast members do it for us with their proper cameras?
Harry: Look at those tragic photos, are you happy with that?
Zoe: No, the lighting, it looks like we made it up, look at that.
We are here, promise.
Isn’t that terrible?
Yep, it’s terrible, and we really did visit Disney World, despite the fake looking photos.
Magic Kingdom was our first stop on a tour of eight theme parks within Orlando.
I’m a big theme park nerd, having visited lots of theme parks across Europe.
Surprisingly, Disney World was one that still needed to be ticked off.
So, we got our obligatory incredibly awful official photo and continued with our day.
A-roll, in the space mountain crowd heading towards
Harry: I don’t know where we’re going, do you know where we’re going?
Zoe: Noooo
See normally I know what I’m doing when it comes to theme parks, but the long flight
the evening before, and the surprising amount of people in the park before it had even opened
threw me off.
I panicked with directions and so we ended up rope drop Space Mountain.
At least we rope-dropped something right?
A-roll, space mountain thoughts Harry: space mountain was fun wasn’t it
Zoe: it was really fun wasn’t it Harry: Everyone else on our train wasn’t
having as much fun as we were.
Yeah it’s weird isn’t it, i was surprised at how bright it was in there, you can see
most of the supports.
I was reluctant to put my hands up for that reason the entire way round.
It’s really fun, the light are cool.
One ride down good way to start the day Zoe: And we got the fasttrack one
Harry: Yeah we got Omega, and now we need to go on Alpha to get the other cred.
One of two down, good start
I can confirm we got to ride Alpha later - Omega is better though, for some reason?
Anyway, while in the general area, I thought we’d knock out some of the smaller dark
rides.
The little Mermaid and Winnie the Pooh were just around the corner, kinda.
The queues were still short, so we took advantage of doing the ‘less impressive’ things
quickly.
Harry: Do you want to stand in that big queue behind you
Zoe: No thank you very much Harry: Got to at some point
Zoe: I know, not yet
Most of the queues were short this early in the morning.
The Seven Dwarfs Mine Train queue is never short.
It was a lovely 90 minute wait at this point.
That would be a pain to experience later, at some point, when we could be bothered.
Harry: Done ariel Zoe: Winnie the pooh, Ariel is the best so
far, it was a really good ride.
Winnie the pooh standard, love the tigger bit, standard
Harry: Pooh ride system was really cool, the bouncing of the train was fun.
Ariel was good, nice relaxing little dark ride.
Now for it’s a small world
Harry: So, so far so good.
Zoe: We’re cracking on.
Harry: Been on space mountain, very good, ariel very good,
Zoe: winnie the pop meh, small world meh.
Done it now.
Zoe: Now we’re going the wonderful carousel of progress
Harry: and people mover, Zoe: it’s starting to get a bit more busy.
Harry: It’s not that bad.
We’ve got genie plus so all of the 60 minute queue stuff we’ll do on that.
So we’ve got Jungle Cruise at 1:30, and we’ll watch the parade at 12.
Vibing
I was told relentlessly how annoying, yet important, Genie plus might be to our trip.
That’s the new, paid-for, fast-track feature that lets you skip the lines to some of the
rides.
After countless hours of research I finally decided that Magic Kingdom, thanks to its
many many popular rides, would be a good place to test it out.
We spent $17 each in the hopes of skipping a few 60 minute queues, including Jungle Cruise.
The thing is, Genie plus is all about agility.
You can reserve a ‘skip the queue’ for your first ride at 7am, way before the park
opens.
What a lovely experience that is waking up early and stressing about skipping the queue
of an attraction you won’t be riding for many hours to come.
Anyway, speed is of the essence.
I let the side down and fumbled.
I finally made my first reservation at 7:03 and by this time the first slot for Jungle
Cruise was 1:30.
I didn’t make that mistake twice.
Harry: It’s not that bad.
We’re got genie plus so all of the 60 minute queue struff we’ll do on that.
So we've got Jungle Cruise at 1:30, and we’ll watch the parade at 12.
Vibing
I’m not a huge fan of Disney characters, but man, parades are just cool.
The detail of each float, and the quantity of them, is genuinely impressive.
I’d also waited years to see arguably the coolest Disney float ever, the fire-breathing
dragon.
Anyway, back to
the rides.
Before watching the parade we took a ride on the people mover - which was novel.
It’s a neat way to see the sights but it doesn’t really do much?
That’s probably the point of it.
It did allow me to get angry at the white blob over in the distance.
You know, the ride that was announced 7 years ago that still hasn’t opened - Tron!
Of course, we didn’t ride it - it was testing relentlessly, but we didn’t ride it.
Pretty tragic really, you’d have thought with the closure of Splash Mountain, now would
be the perfect time to open Tron.
Alas, what do I know?
Carousel of progress!
It’s a carousel which progresses through show scenes, like what I did there?
It seems to be an appreciated classic to most people - again, it was novel.
The concept and execution was cool, the music got repetitive, and the jumps between time
periods were sometimes a little weird.
Generally, it was unique.
I can see why it’s liked, but also why they don’t really exist elsewhere.
Oh and there’s Tomorrowland speedway, we didn’t do that because I didn’t want to
lose multiple years of my life to exhaust fumes.
Harry: How do you just feel that you’ve used the tangled toilets
Zoe: It’s a dream come true Harry: I had the problem of being so tall
I could look over the walls of the stall.
Tangled toilets are overrated.
The outside is lovely Zoe: Yeah the outside is
Harry: The inside looks like toilets
The tangled toilets are conveniently located next to Haunted Mansion, the park's spookiest
ride.
I’m a fan of classic ghost train-esque rides - and I’m a fan of Haunted Mansion.
The number of practical effects throughout the ride, from the little door knockers to
the huge scene at the end, it’s impressive.
Not at all scary, but impressive.
[alarm goes that] Look at that, it’s 1:30, time for Jungle Cruise!
I don’t like it.
It’s low-quality dad joke humour.
Maybe it’s because I’m British, or maybe I have a weird sense of humour.
We sat at the front right next to the host, which felt awkward.
Again, I’m British.
The whole ride seems to revolve around the interaction, the banter - there’s stuff
to see but it doesn’t really hold up by itself.
All in all, I’m really glad we didn’t wait 60 minutes for it.
Nearby is a theme park classic, Pirates of the Caribbean.
It’s one of those rides which I feel I’ve ridden 100s of times, even though I haven’t.
It’s impressive, the number of characters and animatronics is great but you can tell
it’s not the newest thing in the world.
It’s a middle-of-the-line Magic Kingdom ride.
The next reservation I scored on Genie plus was Peter Pan at around 5:30.
I’d also managed to get one for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, because why not, who doesn’t
love a mine train?
Me, I don’t like this mine train.
Okay, to be fair, the 85 minute queue was only 60 minutes.
I can deal with that.
60 minutes for a ride which provides nothing.
Did you know the trains swing by themselves?
Yeah you wouldn’t by watching it, they barely swing.
Zoe told me off for making them swing on the lift hill - the kid behind seemed to enjoy
it though!
Hey look at that, a genie plus reservation for Space Mountain!
After a break before Seven Dwarfs, and a break to eat a non-turkey tasting turkey leg after
Seven Dwarfs, I don’t recommend it, it was time for our trio of genie plus reservations.
Finally, a quality theme park attraction.
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is iconic - it’s the roller coaster of roller coasters.
Whipping around the landscape, diving through tunnels, seeing the other trains speed around
the entire time - quality.
It’s not the most intense ride but it doesn’t need to be.
There are moments of intensity and small pops of airtime, but it is a family coaster at
the end of the day, and a beautiful one at that.
On the complete other end of the scale, Peter Pan.
Oh Peter, why is your ride so terrible?
A 90-minute wait, thank god for genie plus in that context.
It’s tacky and weird and short and doesn’t make much sense and I don’t like it.
Fortunately, we had the final genie plus reservation to cleanse the palette.
Space Mountain is the best ride at Magic Kingdom.
Not because it’s a good roller coaster, not because there’s a lot going on inside
of the mountain itself.
Because it’s janky as hell.
The ride makes no sense, it throws you around, there’s sudden drops, sudden climbs, sudden
turns.
It’s simply the definition of fun.
Not bad for a ride which opened in 1975.
Okay, it’s now late in the day - we’ve done the rides, we’ve seen the parade, we’ve
walked past the long character meet queues.
There’s only one thing left, the show.
Magic Kingdom, and all Disney ‘castle’ theme parks are iconic for their firework
shows.
I’m talking about huge impressive displays with a heartstring-pulling soundtrack to match.
Well, the Magic Kingdom show is not that.
Disney Enchantment, as they call it, has cool fireworks, but it just doesn’t hit.
It feels like a poorly created showreel for Disney movies and characters.
Disney themselves know it’s bad because it’s predecessor returns on the 3rd April
2023.
So that’s a yikes.
Tinkerbell is pretty cool though, I’ll give them that.
Okay, let's round-up.
The good?
Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom has a lot of rides for all different ages.
The castle is pretty iconic, and the park is generally easy to navigate and understand.
It also has a great parade, who doesn’t love a fire-breathing dragon?
The bad?
Through no fault of its own, the Magic Kingdom feel is overdone.
It’s not unique, but samey, familiar in an ‘oh this is boring’ way.
Over the decade's theme parks around the world have copied Disney’s attractions.
Space Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Haunted Mansion
- these are now all classic theme park tropes.
I’ve ridden countless rip-offs of these rides across non-Disney theme parks.
The novelty just isn’t there anymore.
These, as well as the choice of design for many of the areas, make most of the place
feel fake and disingenuous.
Theme parks are meant to transport you out of the real world and into a new reality.
It just doesn’t really do that.
It’s obnoxious and unfriendly.
Ultimately I’m a theme park guy, not a Disney guy.
The average person might enjoy the characters, the castle and the tropes - I simply don’t.
I enjoy quality theme park experiences and Magic Kingdom, for the $169 price tag just
isn’t that.
This isn’t an amusement park filled with roller coasters, it’s Disney World.
A premium price tag warrants a premium feel.
The entire park feels like a rip-off of something else, even though it is the real deal.
There are hints of quality in there, moments where you can see the potential.
Perhaps that is just Magic Kingdom.
The park is familiar and unchanged so it can thrive off nostalgia and make adults reminisce
over their childhood memories.
Sadly, I don't really do nostalgia.
So, theme park one of eight ticked off.
It can only be up from here, right?