Tom Sawyer Island

Tom Sawyer Island is a self explored area in the Magic Kingdom accessible only by pontoon boat in Frontierland.  There are caves to explore, a fort, a barrel bridge and other buildings to see.

This might be more appealing if I were much younger, but there’s really not that much fun here.  The boat loading and ride takes longer than many lines, you bang your head on rocks in the dangerously low lit caves, and there’s just not all that much to get excited about.  I wouldn’t even let kids explore on their own because there are dozens of ways to hurt yourself, even as a careful adult.

Apparently they used to hide paint brushes around the island before park opening which sounds like it would have been a blast, but we never got to experience that so…

Rating:  2/10 Dangerous and snail paced conga lines when someone ahead of you is slow in a cave

The Great Movie Ride

The Great Movie Ride is a dark ride through the history of movies at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.  You go through westerns, musicals,gangster movies and more with your tour guide.  The guides don’t change the experience much, though it was awesome to have the old lady gangster.

People complain the the movies are out of date but the ride is a classic which wonderfully encompasses the theme of the studios.  Plus, it’s air conditioned and you sit down for 20 minutes.  The pre show of old movie trailers is also fun and contains a lot of classics.  To be fair, Casablanca is my favorite movie, so this is right up my alley.

Rating:  9/10 Hip hip hoorays for Hollywood

San Angel Inn

The San Angel Inn inside the Mexico pavilion’s pyramid is an interesting dining experience.  It is made up to appear to be nighttime by a volcano in the middle of a Mexican bazaar.  The atmosphere is an interesting break from the Florida sun, but what you really care about is the food right?

If your idea of Mexican food always involves a tortilla of some sort,  then the San Angel Inn will either not be for you or will be a great new experience.  We regularly cook from Rick Bayless’ cookbooks and love his restaurants, which has opened our eyes to Mexican cuisine.  San Angel Inn is pretty good, and I prefer it to a lot of the World Showcase options, especially for lunch.

Rating: 8/10 tortilla-less Mexican dishes

Soarin’

Soarin’ is a virtual hang gliding trip where your seats are suspended and move with the video.  The movie of various parts of California is projected on a giant concave screen which you can barely see the edges of.

I have mixed feelings about Soarin’ because I am afraid of heights. It’s not the hang gliding video that’s the problem, it’s the fact that your seats are literally 3 stories off the ground. If you’re like me, don’t look down.  Other than that it’s a blast.  It doesn’t transport you with theme like other Disney attractions, but it’s still pretty cool.

Rating: 9/10 Mickey golf balls in your face

The Pseudo-science of Adam’s Mini Reviews

When I started to write the mini reviews, I realized that unless I planned things out, I might end up with a ton of 8s, 9s, and 10s and not a lot else, since there are so many things to love at Disney.  I realized that I needed to figure something out to adjust the scale.

So here’s what I did:

I got a list if every attraction at Disney World. 

I ranked each I had experienced on a completely subjective scale of 1-100.  50 was the barrier for whether I would ride voluntarily, a 49 or lower I would not experience without outside forces persuading me like doing an ultimate tour, someone asking me to go with them, or someone not believing how bad Country Bear Jamboree is.

For the attractions I had not done, I researched them and rated my anticipated enjoyment so that they would be less likely to skew future results when I do try them.

I put these all in a spreadsheet and calculated 10 percentiles from the ratings, and these are what you will see in the reviews.

A 10/10 means it is in Adam’s top 10% of attractions at Disney World.  Yes, this does mean that Captain EO is in my top 20%.

Just because an attraction is a 4/10, it doesn’t mean that I don’t like it, it’s just not in the top half.

Ultimate Tour – Magic Kingdom – 4/7/12 Recap Part 2

Thanks for joining us for Part 2 of our Ultimate Tour! Check here if you missed Part 1.

22. Pirates of the Caribbean

Although I wanted to save more popular non-Fastpass attractions for the end of the evening when wait times would be lower, we decided that since Pirates had broke down frequently earlier in the week, it was best to get it out of the way while we knew it was still working. We saw a lot of people heading in the left-hand entrance, so we tried our luck with the right-hand side, and ended up walking right on (those who entered on the left-hand side did not appear to be so lucky).

23. Tom Sawyer Island

We then crossed back to Frontierland to grab Fastpasses for Splash Mountain and hop on a raft to Tom Sawyer’s island. Because of the crowd levels, they had 3 rafts going at once, which meant we didn’t have to wait long before being able to board. We then jutted through a cave, across the barrel bridge, and up to Fort Langhorn. I will say, getting stuck behind slow people in the cave seems to be one of the most aggravating steps of the Ultimate Tour. In reality, you might be able to shave only a minute off your time if it were empty – but boy it feels long while you are doing it.

24. Celebrate a Dream Come True Parade

The 12:30pm parade had made it’s way to Frontierland by the time we got off the raft from Tom Sawyer’s Island. As allowed in the Ultimate Tour rules, we viewed the parade while walking against it along the side walkway in Frontierland, enabling us to view it in only a few minutes

24.5 Sorcerer’s Portal 3

We continued working on the portals as we let the parade traffic disperse.

25. Splash Mountain

Our Fastpass time was surprisingly up, so we headed to Splash Mountain. Again, this was one of the busiest days of the year (a crowd level 10 according to Touring Plans), but there were only a few times I really noticed it. This was one – normally, when I Fastpass Splash Mountain, I can walk right on. Instead, we had to wait 7 minutes (not a lot, but more than you want to when you are using Fastpass).

At that point, we were excited for another long stretch of time to sit down, so we headed to the Walt Disney World Railroad.

26. Walt Disney World Railroad – Fantasyland Station

Last time we did the Ultimate Tour, this station wasn’t open. It was nice to get another “attraction” in without having to actually do more.

27. Walt Disney World Railroad – Main Street Station

28. Walt Disney World Railroad – Frontierland Station

After the Railroad, we grabbed Fastpasses for Jungle Cruise then continued upon our tour doing attractions that never get busy – even the day before Easter, evidently. After the Railroad, we attempted to see the last PUSH show in Tomorrowland. We’ve seen him a couple of times, both outside of Mickey’s Star Traders and Buzz, so we weren’t sure where to look. Unfortunately, this resulted in us looking all over for him and couldn’t find him, so we had to retreat back to Adventureland dejected.

29. Captain Jack Sparrow’s Pirate Tutorial
30. Enchanted Tiki Room
31. Jungle Cruise

The queue for the Jungle Cruise stretched past the entrance; thank goodness for Fastpass.

32. Liberty Square Riverboat
33. Sorcerer’s Portal 4

Unfortunately we saw the ending three times before we completed it. We waited an average of three minutes per portal window, which I hear is pretty good.

34. Shrunken Ned’s Junior Jungle Boats

At least half of the boats were broken. I wonder why Disney even bothers keeping these attractions open when they are in such a sorry state? I can’t complain too much though because it did count as another attraction for us.

35. Casey’s Corner Pianist

We grabbed hot dogs from Casey’s while we listened to the pianist and waited for the Castle Forecourt Show. This was my first time experiencing the pianist, and it was an enjoyable diversion.

36. Castle Forecourt Show
37. Flag Retreat
38. Town Square Theater – Princesses

As we waited for the Flag Retreat, a cast member pointed out that there was only a five minute wait for the Princess meet-and-greet and was trying to drive some more people to it. We decided to try it out in the 15 minutes between the end of the Flag Retreat and the Street Party – and that cast member was totally correct. Thanks random Main Street cast member!

39. Street Party

This was the first time watching the Street Party from inside the hub (we wanted to sit on the benches). I totally recommend it – there was no one there and the view from inside the party was pretty great.

After the Street Party, we headed to Frontierland, attempting to catch the last Hoedown that was listed on http://www.wdwent.com. Unfortunately, it didn’t occur – if I had known we would have the time to do all these bonus attractions, I would have double checked the times of these types of shows with the Cast Members and their schedules at the start of the day.

40. Hall of Presidents
41. Mickey’s PhilharMagic
42. Prince Charming’s Regal Carrousel
43. Crystal Glass Blower

This was another diversion that I experienced for the first time that I really enjoyed.

44. Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor
45. Sonny Eclipse

Sonny offers the side benefit of grabbing something to eat at Cosmic Rays.

46. Club 626 Dance Party

This was the first time I have seen this attraction open. It was…interesting. I’ll leave it at that.

47. Carousel of Progress
48. Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover
49. Stitch’s Great Escape
50. Mad Tea Party

We completed our goal of finishing Tomorrowland (minus Astro Orbiter) before the Magic, Memories, and You, so we decided to fit in the Mad Tea Party.

51. Magic, Memories, and You Castle Projection Show
52. Wishes

This might have been may favorite viewing of the Magic, Memories, and You and Wishes because, for some inexplicable reason, every in the hub decided they wanted to watch the show sitting down. I kid you not. I am in full support of this movement.

53. Winnie the Pooh

At this point, it was time to hit up the remaining attractions that build up longer waits in the middle of the day. We dashed to Pooh figuring that it would take the crowds some time to trickle in after Wishes; based on our five-minute wait, I think we were right.

54. Haunted Mansion
55. it’s a small world
56. Main Street Electrical Parade

We were able to walk through the castle right up to the side of the street and, in a tradition continuing from earlier, able to sit down. We hung out for a few minutes waiting for the Kiss Goodnight, as was forecasted on the WDW Entertainment site (we had never seen it) but it didn’t happen so we continued.

57. Snow White’s Scary Adventures
58. Barnstormer
59. Dumbo The Flying Elephant

60. Astro Orbiter

We became spoiled being able to walk on the six previous attractions. Even after midnight, we had a twenty minute wait for Astro Orbitor. Perhaps the largest change I would have made that day was I would have done Astro Orbitor right at park opening, rather than Adventureland. It would have been worth the extra couple of minutes in Adventureland to not have to deal with a long wait at Astro Orbitor after such a long day.

60.5 Hub – Finish time

After starting at 6:52AM (well, really 5:15AM when we woke up), we finished at 12:25AM the following evening. Declaring success, we stopped to grab some snacks from the snack cart on the Hub. Good thing we did because then we saw…

61. Kiss Goodnight

…which brought us to our goal of 61 attractions (50 core attractions, 11 bonus attractions). We “missed” 4 attractions (Pinocchio, Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom in Main Street, and PUSH and the Hoedown if they had occurred, and probably others I simply didn’t pay attention to), but in all, it was a good effort.

Sorry for the long entry and thanks for sticking with us!

Captain EO

I may have only been 2 when Captain EO came out the first time, but it’s a nostalgic blast even today.

Captain EO is a 3D movie starring Michael Jackson, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and produced and co-written by George Lucas.  Yeah, those are some big names.

Now picture in your mind, a short film written by George Lucas starring Michael Jackson.  That’s exactly what Captain EO is!  Before you think that you don’t need to see it, because you just did in your mind’s eye, note it’s much better in the real world.

It’s 80′s-tastic, it’s got MJ dancing, it’s got Angelica Huston as a Borg-esque queen, it’s got crazy sci-fi stuff.  Why are you still reading this?  Shouldn’t you be booking your trip?  If you’re not into the nostalgia, you might not find it as entertaining, but I love it.

Rating:  9/10 Spinning crotch grabs