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Hello everyone,
In this fourth and final part of my trip report for our visit to Walt Disney World during Christmas 2016 I am going to share with you some more of our adventures at the Magic Kingdom.
Let's start on Main Street USA where we met Santa Claus before he set off on his magical deliveries on Christmas Eve.
We also saw the Trolley Show on Main Street, checked out the festive cheer inside the stores, and took some pretty night shots of the Christmas Tree, Main Street Station, snowfall and looking towards Cinderella Castle.
We were happy to pick up one of the cute Mickey Mouse Christmas popcorn buckets on Central Plaza. The moulded character buckets are something that the US parks have gotten much better at over the past couple of years, taking an obvious lead from the success of the character buckets at Tokyo Disney Resort.
In Fantasyland we took a tour through the Seven Dwarfs' Mine, and met Cinderella and Princess Elena at Princess Fairytale Hall.
At Cinderella Castle, during the day, we watched Mickey's Royal Friendship Faire, which had switched to its festive mode, and A Frozen Holiday Wish show, which sees Elsa adorn Cinderella Castle in beautiful ice lights. While the Frozen show is actually not bad, I do hope that we someday see a more classic show return, perhaps one that centers around Cinderella again (like the former Cinderella's Holiday Wish show).
Cinderella Castle is also the canvas for the Once Upon a Time projection show, and the centerpiece of the Holiday Wishes fireworks. While it has been running for many years now, I really do love Holiday Wishes.
While they don't look as they they directly tie in to the projection show at the castle, I did find some new mugs in a store on Main Street that use the Once Upon a Time name.
Over in Tomorrowland we watched A Totally Tomorrowland Christmas. Interestingly, they still use the Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party pre-show splash cards on the screen. It was just funny to see since we weren't at a party. I have never been a huge fan of this show, though after several years of seeing it, it has grown on me. I would not object to a new show now, though.
Tomorrowland is also home to the Magic Kingdom's Express Transportation service, which I talked about in previous parts of my trip report.
In Adventureland we took a trip on the Jingle Cruise. I like that they make the effort to make it different, but for what you get out of it, I don't think the Jingle Cruise is worth losing sleep over if you miss it/can't get a FastPass+ for it. I actually prefer Disneyland's Jingle Cruise more.
In the Epcot part of this report, I told you that we had seen the New Year's Eve fireworks, well, now I am going to tell you that we also saw the Magic Kingdom's New Year's Eve fireworks! One of the smartest things Disney has ever decided is that the New Year's fireworks should run two nights (30th and 31st) at both Magic Kingdom and Epcot, which means you get to see both! We saw the Magic Kingdom's on the 30th, if you were wondering, and yes, the show is exactly the same, even down to the countdown to the "New Year", the DJs and everything! I guess it also provides Disney with a dry run in case of any technical hiccups or bad weather the next night - pretty smart!
The display was impressive and the atmosphere in the park was great. Like at Epcot, they had opened up some backstage areas to alleviate some of the crowds. There was a pathway opened up behind Main Street USA and Tomorrowland, connecting the two, and along it were the floats from the daytime Move It Shake It show, which had New Year's graphics on them, and you were allowed to take photos of.
That's it for this report! In a few days I will try to get up my next report, which will be from our February weekend trip to Disneyland, so look out for that here on the blog!
Have a great day everyone,
Dan. |