Disney Adventures Part 1

After years of visiting Florida and having its most famous tourist attraction elude me, I finally had the opportunity to head down to the Everglades State and partake in some Disney Magic. I actually had gone to the Magic Kingdom once when I was really little, and I don’t remember much from that trip, save for the Dumbo and Peter Pan rides, both of which I adored. I also remembered arriving at the gates of the Magic Kingdom by boat. I wondered if that were even true, though, as I thought it odd to not just walk to the gates from the parking lot…but I have to remember, this is Disney, and it isn’t like most other parks.

Other Florida trips saw us focusing heavily on things like Busch Gardens and Islands of Adventure, but Disney just never seemed to play into it. Things changed, however, when Nathan made plans to attend an engineering conference in town. We decided this would be an ideal time to check the parks off our list and see what all of the hullabaloo was about.

Nate arrived for his conference on Monday, and spent the next two days attending his conference and not really seeing much of the area. I arrived on Wednesday, and I settled into our hotel. He and his coworkers wound up staying at the Crowne Plaza Hotel right off of International Drive. As if that hotel weren’t nice enough, they were out of the regular rooms, and he wound up with a posh room on the executive floor. From 6 to 8, they have free beer and wine and fancy cheeses and shrimp to nosh on in their executive lounge, so as soon as we got there, we partook in those luxuries. We also had a stunning 14th story view (for a ride enthusiast) – we could see the bungee towers and even Universal’s Dueling Dragons roller coasters right down the street. It was splendid!

After indulging, we decided to see what International Drive had to offer. We walked down the touristy road, considering several restaurants before we wound up at Ming Court, an incredibly themed Chinese restaurant, where we shared some incredible sushi. Then we worked our way back, stopping at Bahama Breeze to sample their tiki drinks. It was ok for a chain restaurant, but no one can compare with Hala Kahiki. After that, we stopped in to Friendly’s for some ice cream. I had oddly been craving Friendly’s earlier that week, so we were pretty excited to see there was one in Orlando. Sadly, they didn’t have the turtle sundae I had last time, but our five scoop banana split was amazing! After all the scarfing, I was glad we walked – talk about needing to work off the calories!

On Thursday, Nate still had to attend more of his conference. We’d decided the day before to start with Disney this day, since he’d be done around noon, and I’m so glad we did because we wouldn’t have seen it all, otherwise. After taking it easy that morning, I eventually packed up and met Nate around 12:30. We drove off to the Comfort Inn, where we’d spend the rest of our stay, and checked in. We also inquired about Disney tickets, and it turned out that they had a deal going on – we actually saved $100 on our tickets in exchange for attending a timeshare pitch the next morning. Sounded like a good enough deal to us!

So after we got our tickets, we motored off to Disney’s MGM Studios, which is actually called Hollywood Studios as of this year, but it’ll be MGM in this story because it’s easier to type. It cost $12 to park, which is a bit hefty, but actually better than I expected. Once we arrived, we took the tram over to the entrance and got our tickets. We spent most of the day wandering around between FastPass acquisitions. (For those who don’t know, FastPass is a system in which you get a time to return to the line, bypassing waiting in the queue when you do, so you are free to do other things in the meantime.) I felt that MGM was rather incomplete in many ways, with a noticeable lacking of rides. We did do Tower of Terror, which we both enjoyed tremendously. It differs from the one in California in that there is a track that you ride along before arriving in the drop shaft. Each ride was different because it runs a number of programs, so you drop at different times from different heights. I am NOT a fan of drop rides, but I really enjoy Tower of Terror for some reason. It’s just so well themed and is one of the few rides that still makes me nervous.

The other major ride was an indoor coaster called Rock n’ Roller Coaster. It’s themed to Aerosmith, and the cars have little speakers behind your head so you listen to their music as you ride. It was an amusing little coaster, and though it had a loop, it was pretty tame. The scenery consisted of black lit road signs and such, but it wasn’t that spectacular. Still, it’s not every day you get to ride a roller coaster, hearing “Dude Looks Like a Lady” pounding in your ear!

Beyond that, there was an interactive shooting game themed around Toy Story that was actually pretty darned good – you ride around in little cars and stop in front of various screens where you pop bubbles and “throw” rings on the computerized characters. Plus, you didn’t use guns – instead, it was some sort of makeshift slingshot contraption, which was pretty unique. It was unusual to man at first, but really fun once you got the hang of it. It was a blast!

Beyond that, there were a lot of shows. We’re not big into shows, but we did see the Little Mermaid, which was “meh.” We also did the Great Movie Ride, which took you past scenes of old time movies. That was neat, and particularly funny when the guide got involved – it was just too hokey! Sadly, the back lot tour was closed, but we did have a fun time running around the “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” play area. I swear, sometimes those play areas are the best things in a park…luckily, you don’t need to have a kid with you to enjoy the ones at Disney. Haha! We also saw the Prince Caspian show, which was pretty lame, Star Tours, which I bet was good about 15 years ago, and then topped off the day with Fantasmic, the finale in which Mickey wards off his nightmares with a spectacular light show. It was pretty good, but I’m not sure that fighting the crowds was worth it.

So MGM wasn’t really that impressive to me, and I’m glad we did it on our shorter day. Had we not wanted to wait around for Fantasmic, we’d have probably left early and spent some time at a different park.

That night, we would seek out the Polynesian Resort because I’d heard a rumor that there was a tiki bar on the premises, and far be it for us to pass up a tiki bar. We eventually found the place, and after wandering around the grounds a while, we made it up to the bar. While the resort was extremely tiki-themed, sadly, the Tambu Lounge wasn’t THAT much so. Still, they had some good drinks on their menu, including the Lapu Lapu, which is served in an actual pineapple, and the Backscratcher, which comes with (get this!) a backscratcher! We had a fun time imitating Peter from “Family Guy” much of the night…”Backscratcher? Backscratcher!” Haha. After that, we stopped for dinner at McDonalds for some reason…I think it was all that was open. Sooo disappointing to not have green chile cheeseburgers on the menu, as it’s about the only thing from Mickey D’s that I’ll get, but at that point, a double cheeseburger really did hit the spot.