We all lounged around the house this morning, trying to find ways to occupy ourselves. The plan for today was to have a slow start and to visit Disney’s Magic Kingdom. Of all the theme parks, this one is the most debatable when it comes to which attractions we would all enjoy. My prediction was that this would turn out to be the least favourite theme park to visit. Much of it is directed at families with younger children. I didn’t want to write it off completely. I was keen to try out the new attractions, such as Tron Lightcycle Run and Tiana’s Bayou Adventure.
Sandy insisted we leave the house later rather than earlier. She felt the lines would be shorter later in the day. We were all loaded into the car and on our way by 11 am. We stopped at our favourite Waffle House to fill our tummies before driving the fifteen minutes over to the Magic Kingdom car park.
Disney’s Magic Kingdom is huge. It’s by far the largest of any Orlando theme park. Parking and park entrances are handled differently there. The car parks are vast and served by the same tram system in use at other Disney parks. However, the tram doesn’t take you to the park entrance. It takes you to the TTC (Transportation and Ticket Centre). The name is a bit of a misnomer. It used to be where tickets were sold, but now it’s nothing more than a transportation interchange. From the TTC, you can board a boat or the monorail to the actual park entrance. From parking the car to actually getting into the theme park, the whole process is lengthy and can be arduous—especially when the mercury is pushing 30°C, as it was today.
When we went through the security scanners, this time it was Jae who was red-lighted and directed to the more thorough screening. We’ve now all been subjected to the experience.
Once in the park, we navigated the front section until we found the wheelchair rental kiosk. Joey had stubbed his foot on the bed and was limping. Jae was struggling as well and wanted one so she could push, which would help alleviate her pain. We rented two wheelchairs. To predict the need for these in the coming week, we paid several days in advance to secure a discount.
I checked my Disney app to see the wait times. For the bigger rides, they were hovering at around the 80-minute mark, so I booked DAS return times for Tron Lightcycle Run. Tiana’s Bayou Adventure was showing as closed. In fact, I got a pop-up notification on the app at one point with an apology from the ride manager. The wording suggested the ride wouldn’t be opening anytime soon, so that was a write-off. Sandy noted the wait time for the Mickey meet-and-greet was just about half an hour, so we went in. She has been super keen to get character meet-and-greet photos with the whole family as much as possible. With Joey in particular, this is an uphill battle, as he hates being photographed. If he’s ever in a photo, he rarely puts on a smile. Sandy has been willing to combat this with bribery. She took a place in the queue, while the rest of us took advantage of the A/C and found a place to sit and chill.
While Sandy kept our family’s place in the queue, Joey and I wandered over to the buildings on either side of Main Street USA to window shop. Predictably, it wasn’t long before Joey was fixated on something. This time it was a Beymax soft toy. As I wandered through the shop, I grew increasingly irritated by the lack of price tags on many products. I ended up challenging one of the cast members about this. She said it was normal and that the idea was to scan the product’s barcode with the My Disney Experience app. Not only does that bring up the price, but it also includes a Buy Now button to pay for it. Each shop has a mobile order point near the exit. You show the cast member the QR code confirming your purchase, and you’re on your way. It’s convenient to be sure, but perhaps a little too convenient. It’s another way that Disney makes it easy and seamless to spend money.
The My Disney Experience app is well-designed and helps in many ways. For example, as we were boarding the tram at the car park, a pop-up prompted us to record the car’s location, even correctly citing the section we were located in. There’s a special section in the app dedicated to tracking this information. Many aspects of what you do at the parks are integrated into the app’s functionality, which is nice. It’s nice when it works. I’ve found the app to be glitchy. Sometimes, our DAS return times or other booked experiences don’t show, even though they are correctly registered. At other times, the app freezes, and I have to refresh it.
I got a ping from Sandy saying she was near the front of the Mickey meet-and-greet queue, so Joey and I walked back to join them. That was easier said than done, since preparations were in full swing for the upcoming parade. Cast members had been laying down masking tape to demarcate the crowd lines, and people were assembling in their masses. It was hard to find a path to push Joey in his wheelchair through the throngs.
The Tron Lightcycle Run is a new attraction for us. It sits nestled just beyond Space Mountain. We quickly went through the Lightning lane queue. Before reaching the loading point, we had to stash our belongings in one of a battery of complimentary lockers, which were opened with the physical cards we were issued upon entering Hollywood Studios for the first time. The rollercoaster cars are designed to be ridden like motorcycles, so you’re leaning forward in a motorcycle pose. Several restraints lock in around you. One presses on your back while others lock in behind your knees. They are all physically linked, so everything closes in at the same time. It’s an awkward position. Sandy was really struggling and eventually had to give up on it altogether. She and Joey exited, while Jae and I remained. I had no idea what happened to them after our car (cycle) was dispatched into the depths of the dark ride. I wondered whether they went to the child swap, so that Jae or I could redo the ride with Joey while Sandy sat it out. I did ask Jae whether she might consider doing the ride again so Joey could ride. However, she was becoming progressively overstimulated by the heat and sensory onslaught and was really struggling to hold it together.
The ride itself was excellent, albeit very brief. I gather that’s a common observation about this ride. When we exited, I looked for a child swap sign but couldn’t find one. I flagged a cast member and explained what had happened. He was confident that Sandy and Joey would have been taken aside until a special car (cycle) with wheelchair access arrived at the loading point. It has special seating for people who are unable to contort their bodies into the cycle position. Sure enough, that’s precisely what had happened, and they both emerged into the exit tunnels after several minutes of waiting.
Jae was by now really starting to buckle under the weight of the heat and sensory overload. She was adamant that she needed to leave and return to home base. She set off towards the front of the park to book an Uber.
In the meantime, we booked a DAS return time to Space Mountain, since we were still in Tomorrowland. This gave us an hour to chill out. Sandy suggested the Laugh Floor might be a good place to do so. It would be a fun diversion, but crucially, it was also indoors with A/C, which would be a blessed relief from the midday heat. The next batch of around 400 people was about to be let into the show building, so we wheeled Joey in and took our place in the front row.
The Laugh Floor show was quite funny. It’s a stand-up comedy club, with various animated Monsters, Inc. characters performing comedy sets on the screen to live audio. The animated characters speak, act, and move around in real time just as you imagine a real person would have if they were standing there in person. It’s really quite clever. It put a lot of smiles on Joey’s face in particular, which was a nice bonus for us.
Once our 400-strong crowd was ejected back into the blistering heat of Tomorrowland, we made our way over to Space Mountain. With temperatures like today, you end up shuffling from one air-conditioned environment or shade to the next, avoiding direct sunlight as much as possible. This is very typical of life in Florida.
We went through the Lightning Lake queue for Space Mountain after scanning our cards on the Mickey ears scan poles. It always takes a couple of seconds while the system is thinking, but as soon as the light goes from rotating white to solid green, along with a satisfying audio ding, that’s our cue to pass. Sometimes, the cast member standing there with a tablet can override the system and force the light to green for us. This happens if we’re slightly early, but they’re happy to let us through all the same.
The walkways leading to the roller coaster loading point are long and go up and down hills. If you have dodgy knees and are already exhausted from just moving through the thick, humid Florida sun, it’s not ideal. All of us have been struggling today—Jae so much so that she has already left to go back home.
The Space Mountain ride was considerably more bumpy than I remember. I felt every jolt and direction change in my back, and found myself using my feet to push myself into a more rigid position to help cushion the movements. When we exited, Sandy commented that she had left her glasses behind in the ride-car’s pouch. This marked the start of a sorry series of events.
I mentioned to a nearby cast member that we had some lost property in the ride. She pointed to another cast member standing about 10 meters away at the entrance to the Lightning Lane. I had to let him know, and he would be able to help. All I needed to do was to pass perpendicular through the queue of people waiting to get into the ride, and the cast member was a few steps further. I started to do so, but she stopped me. “You have to walk around that way, sir.” I mentally followed the path she suggested, but it was a lengthy detour through unshaded parts of the park. “But he’s right there, what’s the harm in me passing through right here?” She wasn’t having any of it. She kept insisting, “It was just around that way.” I pleaded with her. Just walking in this heat and humidity is already arduous. There was clearly no need for me to have to walk a hundred meters when I could practically speak to the other cast member as he was so physically close. Nobody was going to be harmed by me crossing through the line. People were spread out so much that I wouldn’t even need to ask anyone to step aside. Nope, she just dug her heels in. I could have forced the issue by just ignoring her. Had I been on my own, that’s exactly what I would have done, but the potential for a resulting scene might not have gone down well with Sandy. Now carrying a boatload of frustration, I reluctantly walked the long way around, but I was absolutely fuming. I made a mental note to come back to this once I had retrieved Sandy’s glasses. This jobsworth cast member hadn’t seen or heard the last of me.
When I finally reached the other cast member, I explained the situation. He wanted more information that I had to give, like the type of glasses, what colour they were, what the make was, etc. I didn’t know any of this. To make matters worse, I couldn’t reach Sandy to ask. I was at least able to confirm which seat Sandy had been sitting on. He said there are twelve ‘rockets’, so it would just be a matter of checking the relevant seat on each to locate the missing glasses. After a couple of phone calls and a tense five-minute wait for a response, the call came through that the lost glasses had been found. “Just walk through here until you see the next cast member, and they will return your wife’s glasses for you.” I went through as directed, but there was no cast member anywhere to be found. I eventually reached the tail end of the queue of people waiting to ride the attraction. I surmised it would take me more than half an hour to reach the loading point at this rate. Sandy would be stressed about why I hadn’t yet returned. The only thing I could do was to ask everyone to let me squeeze past so I could make it to the front of the queue to locate a cast member. Oh, the embarrassment as I tried to convince numerous people, with indignant looks on their faces, that I wasn’t jumping the queue but was instead retrieving lost property.
I eventually shuffled to the front of the line and connected with a cast member. He immediately got it and led me through a door to where our lost property was waiting. Now all I had to do was walk the several thousand steps up and down ramps to the exit again. I was so aggravated at this point that I could have exploded. All that pent-up frustration needed an outlet, and I decided to go back to the original jobsworth cast member who put me in this foul mood in the first place. I told her I wanted to submit a complaint against her. She tried to pull the same ‘these are the rules for everyone’ line, but I cut through that and asked that she summon her supervisor. This she did, and I had a crack at releasing my frustration at this next guy. He eventually summoned another, even more senior supervisor, this time wearing a different uniform, with whom I also then had a lengthy exchange. We discussed at length just how ridiculous it was to ‘uphold this rule’ when reasonable discretion was warranted. The senior supervisor did her best to calm me down and to placate me. She did indeed note the complaint in the system on her tablet, and I had calmed down after several minutes of going around the same verbal roundabout with her. If nothing else, it was the outlet I needed to vent my frustration. We finished the discussion on good terms and in a courteous manner. Yes, I know I can be annoying at times. I can let things go most of the time, but sometimes I need to stand my ground.
And here’s the final kicker to this entire sorry tale. Sandy later revealed that these were $2 over-the-counter reading glasses, and she has three more spare pairs at home. Had I known this, I wouldn’t have bothered to go back for the glasses in the first place. We would have written them off and gone on with our day.
Although I was done with the altercation with the cast members, we were clearly all being affected by the oppressive heat, sensory overload, crowds, etc. We decided to pop into a nearby shop to cool off for a while. We picked up some new Tron toys for Joey, but collectively decided it might be best to give up on the Magic Kingdom for today. We wondered whether popping over to EPCOT would be the better option. Having made that decision, we pushed our way through the crowds towards the front of the park. We had the option of leaving the car here but taking the monorail to EPCOT and back. One of the cast members suggested that would be the way to go if we planned on coming back for the fireworks, but taking the car otherwise would be recommended. We decided to head back to the car.
Just as getting from the car to the park was an ordeal, the reverse journey was equally arduous. The sun was higher in the sky now, and we were all losing it in the heat. Everyone was struggling. On the way to the car, we decided we’d first pop along to a nearby McDonald’s and possibly give up on the idea of going to another park altogether. We have that flexibility anyway, so we decided to take advantage of it.
Everyone perked up once we were fed and watered at Maccas. It was clear that giving up on EPCOT for today was the right call, also. It was around 7 pm by now, and spending any appreciative time in EPCOT would have resulted in a very late return home, which none of us would have enjoyed. When I first planned this trip, I considered the possibility that we might struggle with full days at the theme parks and end up doing things in moderation, like spending only half days at the parks. This is turning out to be the case.
On the way back to the house, I stopped at Publix to replenish our bacon and eggs, which the kids like so much. Joey and I sat in the car while Sandy went inside. That was a rookie error. I would have been in and out in under five minutes. After fifteen minutes, Joey asked whether Mum had gotten lost or forgotten that we were still here. After what seemed like an eternity, Sandy emerged toting several bags of shopping and a Publix staff member helping carry two large inflatable tubes. Sandy had picked them up to use in our swimming pool. They also had Gatorade on sale, so she was carrying four packs. Honestly, that woman is lethal when within thirty meters of a checkout till and armed with a credit card.
Back home, and now with the car emptied again, we were finally able to relax. Tomorrow is definitely going to be a ‘do nothing’ day…unless they all get bloody bored again!