Our vacation, Day five 1/4/09

We woke up early on this day because we were going to the Magic Kingdom for the first time. Also because we were changing hotels we had to check out of this one by 11am. The hotel took our luggage and transferred it to the new hotel for us. That was nice because check in at the new hotel was 4pm. We didn't have to worry about anything.

Each day one of the four parks has extra hours for Disney resort guests. Each day one park either opens an hour early OR stays open 3 hours later. This is nice because the crowd thins out. It makes it much easier to go on rides. The lines are not as long. They also have extra shows for the Disney guests during this time. You have to show your Disney resort room key to go on rides or to see shows. Everyone in your party gets a hotel key. This card (key) also had your Disney world passes on them.

On this day Magic Kingdom was going to be open 3 extra hours. We knew that by getting in the park early we would have a long day in the park so we could check things out. The park is set up pretty much the same. You enter on main street. Gift shops and food up and down main street with the castle at the end. The castle at Disney World ROCKS!! It is beautiful. The one in Disneyland is beautiful but the one in Magic Kingdom is so much bigger. I didn't get any pictures of it during the day but I did get some at night.

What did we think about the park? It was nice but we love DL (Disneyland) much better. Why you ask? Everyone talks about how the Magic Kingdom is so big and so much better. I am not sure why. Yes, the park is bigger but bigger isn't always better. We noticed that a lot of the rides in the MK (Magic Kingdom) were shorter and didn't have as much to see on the ride. Below is a list of the rides that we have rode in both parks. I have added what I think about the ride in each park.

Pirates Of the Caribbean: DL longer and more to see than MK

Tiki Room: The show is different at MK but still good. It is shorter in MK than DL

Jungle Cruise: A little different at MK than DL. Shorter in MK than DL

Rail road: Less stops in the MK than DL. Longer ride and more to see from the train in DL

Toon town: Sucked at MK. Sooo much smaller than Toon town at DL. Mickey house is much better at MK than DL

Space Mountain: Terrible at MK. Much faster in DL. The track and the car you ride in is much better at DL.

Speedway Indy Cars: The same at both parks

Buzz Lightyears Ranger spin: This is one of our favorites in DL. It sucked at MK. You cant pull the gun from the car to shoot. It is mounted to the top. This makes it harder to aim at the targets. Also at DL the targets light up when you hit them. This helps you know if you got it or not. They don't light up at MK. These things make a huge difference when you are playing the game. Astro Orbiter: Same at both parks

It's a small world: The rides appearance when you are in front of it is so much better at DL. At DL it looks huge in the front. At MK you could almost walk past it and not even realize it was there. The rides are pretty close. The one at the MK did seem a little shorter though.

The River Boat: Same at both parks.

The Haunted Mansion. A little different at MK. Both are still pretty good. The mansion at MK is awesome. It looks so much different than the one at DL. They are both great. Check out the photo below.

Big Thunder Mountain: The same at both parks

Tom Sawyer Island: At the Mk is is still the same as it has always been. At DL they have changed it over to Pirates Island after the popularity of the Pirates movies.

There were things at MK that were pretty cool that are not at DL. One of our favorites was the Monster's Inc Laugh Floor. Its a comedy club where the monsters interact with the humans. Another was Stitches Great Escape. It was also cute. We only needed to do this one one time though. It didn't have that I wanna do it again feeling. We liked the Carousel of Progress. I am sure most people hate it. It is a round building that you sit in. It rotates around through different eras. It shows you how far we have come over the last 100+ years. Its Corney but we liked it so much we did it 2 different times. Another cool thing was the Mickey's Philharmagic show. It was a 3d movie that was pretty great. They still have the Country Bear Jamboree at MK. It's pretty bad though. We did go see it but we laughed the whole time. I am not sure why it's still there. It's been 9 years since DL put their Jamboree to rest.

Splash Mountain was not working when we were there. It is down for the entire month of January. So is the hall of presidents. Not sure we missed much by not seeing this. The fireworks show at night is the same as the show at DL. Because of this we decided to use the time that other people were using waiting for and watching fireworks for more ride time.

As the park came to a close we headed back to our new hotel to get checked in and settled for the next 8 days. We were upgrading from a hotel to a resort so we were looking forward to all the extra amenities that this new place would have.....Like a fridge and microwave.