The Disney Machine

Ah, Disney - the happiest place on earth. I don't know about you guys, but I used to watch The Wonderful World of Disney faithfully every Sunday at 5pm (actual time and screening may have partial inaccuracies due to being a little kid at the time). I never thought I'd get there. I thought you'd have to either live in America or have the richest dad on the planet to take you there, so I was almost beside myself with excitement at the thought of going. That is until I woke up that morning in the Snottiest place on earth. Luckily America has the most relaxed policies on the strength of non-prescription drugs I've ever seen, so there was no way in heck that I was letting a short supply of tissues get in my way of living my childhood fantasy.

Day 1: Arrived about 3pm Wednesday and checked in, we were staying at Disney's All Star Movies resort, our room allocated in the 101 Dalmatians area of the complex, in between The Mighty Ducks and Fantasia areas. First stop - the gift shop. A quick, pleasantly healthy late lunch option and then onto the bus to Downtown Disney.

Disney Florida is a small land unto its own. We entered via gates similar to those of Jurassic Park, and still continued diving for 20 minutes or so to our resort. When you stay at any of the resorts you can use any of the free shuttles between every single Disney attraction. There's very little traffic other than these buses, which is good for the responsible (I was surprised to find beer in the restaurant fridges, and bars by the pools; not sure why I was so surprised, just went into kid mode I guess...) and/or distracted-by-over-stimulated-kid parents. The drivers of the buses, on the other hand must be incredibly talented at zoning out all this over-hyper activation because every time we rode anywhere there were unhappy, over-tired kids giving their parents every reason to cut the vacation short.

So Downtown was like a Disney-themed strip mall that curved its way pleasantly around a big lake shooting out water, fireworks and a Lego Loch Ness monster. There are a few restaurants (which you needed to have booked several months ago) and a pub, so we had fish 'n' chips and a beer (well, not for the snotsville resident), perusing the shops for prospective souvenirs that were just too darn cute to leave on the shelf and headed home ready for a big day.

Balloon Ma'am? MGM Studios.

Day 2: MGM Studios had a few cool rides, but overall I was not all that impressed. I think the best bit was walking into the Star Wars ride and seeing Darth Vader fight small children who had clearly mastered the force, and were kicking his butt. Oh, but then there was the Muppets 3D movie which was kinda cool when Fozzie squirted his flower on the audience and you got wet (he hee). Ooh ooh, and then there was Aerosmith's roller coaster which was a wild rock 'n' roller coaster which was completely in the dark to heighten your senses to the speed, music and neon. The Tower of Terror had me dropping several storeys, lifting me out of my seat, my stomach into my throat, and giggling like a schoolgirl!

OK, so maybe I was one of those over-stimulated kids on the bus on the way home, but I kept it well hidden behind a veil of sinusitis. After all that I was ready for bed!

Day 3: Magic Kingdom was super cool. I just didn't know what to do first. Tomorrowland, Fantasyland, Frontierland! First stop - fast pass* to save us queueing for Space Mountain, then off to Splash Mountain to reacquaint ourselves with an old, and in my humble opinion, under-rated character in Brair Rabbit. Splash mountain was really cool - the whole story of one rabbits struggle against adversity, and eventual triumf over the man that just couldn't keep him down (wipe away tear). But please, don't have your camera out on this one...

(*Fast pass allows you to swipe your park pass and get an allocated ride time so you don't have to waste time standing in queue's all day)

It's a Small World, Snow White's adventure, dropping in on Mickey to help with the kitchen reno's, the wild and crazy tea cups at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, watching out for Captain Jack Sparrow's whacky hijinx. The list goes on. Space Mountain was so much fun that it warranted three rides, again with tears of joy being sucked out of my face by the g-forces...and the giggling of course.

While on a fun-break we ran into Pooh and Tigger. It was starting to rain, so they were heading in to protect their silky coats. I snapped this pic as they hurried off, and I kinda like the crazy similarity with all the celeb pics in the trashy mags...

Tigger is well known for his dislike of the Paparazzi, but Pooh, always keen to keep the cameras on side, is happy to throw us a wave. Magic Kingdom.

We were at Magic Kingdom from 9.30am til about Midnight. We caught the fireworks over Cinderella's Castle and rode the Merri-go-round and generally had the best day ever.

Who Doesn't love Dumbo - I mean look at that face!?!?! Magic Kingdom - there were almost tears when some kids tried to cut in front f me for this one...luckily a vigilant parent noticed my bottom lip quivering and rectified the situation.

Day 4: We had not planned to go to Animal Kingdom, to be honest. We were supposed to go to Epcot, but after comparing the in house brochures, we decided that Epcot looked almost educational, as opposed to Animal Kingdom who had just opened an awesome new roller coaster based loosely on the Yeti myth. Subsequently our first stop was again getting our fast pass for the Everest Experience, then on to the tigers! We got pretty wet on the ride of Kali where we took on rapids, waterfalls, and sluggish elephants spurting water out of their trunks - come to think of it pretty wet is quite an understatement...lucky it was warm.

Next was the Dinoland roller coasters (more giggling ensued) and then a photo session with Pooh, Tigger and Piglet, and some gift shopping. Oh, now I've not mentioned that the exit for all rides - sorry ALL RIDES, is through a gift store, so you see it really wasn't all our fault - I only have so much will power!

Dinoland also has a pretty great ride where you go 'back in time' to help out in getting a dino sample, until things go pear shaped and you're almost torn apart by some large flesh eating dinosaur. The best part about this is the photo taken right at the 'scariest' or for the sake of saving face - the most 'unexpected surprise' of the ride and then seeing it afterwards and realising who the obvious chicken of the group is. After that ride, this happened:

Is that Chip or Dale eating my head, or just a trippy hallucination brought on by aforementioned near overdose of non-prescription drugs? Animal Kingdom.

Time for our Everest Expedition - its all going swimmingly well, until out little Nepalese train comes to a complete stop where the infamous Yeti has ripped up the tracks. Most of the ride following that is backwards through mountain tunnels with the Yeti hot on our tail. Classic, simple FUN! Oh, how I love a good roller coaster where you can scream for pure enjoyment. Animal Kingdom rocked my world quite a lot, sooo much better than Epcot if any one ever has to make the choice, and I know because we we went to Epcot when AK closed. Epcot is like a giant World Trade Fair. To be honest it did have two stand-up rides: Mission Space which is all about the serious G-force (no joke, sick bags provided if you decide to dismiss all seven announcements that people who suffer from motion sickness may exit at this point) and Fast Track which is a simulated car test track where you hit some serious speed. The experience is heightened as they make you wait while the car flies around the track above your head, screams floating down to you every single time.

Now I know that Disney is the most well oiled corporation around, who over-stimulate children to parental breaking point around the clock, will take you by the ankles and shake roughly until all cash has left your person, and will do it all with a gigantic cartoon grin, but damn if I didn't have some Fun! I'd definitely go again!