Wednesday, April 11, 2012

The happiest place on earth

If lining up for 40+ minutes for a ride that takes about a minute makes you happy than DisneyWorld is definitely the happiest place on earth. If you especially like lame rides that are only marginally more exciting than being in a coma than you better hurry up and book your tickets.

You may be getting the impression that I didn't love DW and you would be right. If you offered me a million dollars to go back today I would have to give it some deep consideration and then say "no [insert expletive here] way".

You can't fault their customer service (they probably employ half the residents of the state of Florida), you can't fault the organisation or cleanliness...but you can fault the enjoyability factor.

The fact we had been to Disneyland twice before (and DW is almost identical) didn't help. The fact that the kids were unreasonably grumpy to start with, reluctant to go on many rides claiming they were "scary" and Miss M kept on insisting we buy every damn princess related item we passed also didn't help. When the Princess Makeover Experience at the Cinderella castle proved to be booked out I couldn't have got any lower in her estimations. (Now I have to try and book her into a session at Downtown Disney because she won't let up about it.)

It's not like we didn't have ANY fun. The kids and Jay loved the car driving thingy in Tomorrowland. The kids and I enjoyed the Buzz Lightyear ride, even if the wait seemed twice as long as your average federal election campaign.

We enjoyed the cheesy song and dance show at the castle and the old "It's a small world" ride, which I was physically dreading, seems to have toned down the song which means we don't have it embedded in our brains like on previous visits (surely the old version was against the Geneva Convention).

The kids also had a ball dancing with Stitch at the DJ stage while we were waiting for Jay to finish with Magic Mountain.

We have now tried Waffle Sandwiches and while they didn't kill us we see no reason to eat such things ever again.

Marianna enjoyed a Minnie Mouse shaped Crispie Treat (like an LCM for those at home) the size of her head.

I think Will enjoyed the monorail ride to and from the transportation hub as much as the actual park. They both enjoyed the regular bus loading and unloading wheelchair bound passengers while we were waiting for our shuttle (look and learn Sydney Buses)

Overall it seemed like about one hour's worth of entertainment wrapped in a 10 hour day of hard, hot work.

We came back to the hotel and grabbed some rolls from the Muse cafe (which has nice, simple food but varied staff - yesterday: nice, today: prison day release program). Each night they play a movie by the pool and we ate our easy dinner on the lounge chairs while watching "Bolt". (Miss M was in the pool of course.)

I am writing this on Tuesday morning. Jay is off for his much awaited game of golf at the Waldorf Astoria resort next door. I am too scared to ask about the price but I'm sure he'll have an amazing time. The kids and I are enjoying a day of r & r by the pool. It's another gorgeous Orlando day.

We are half way through our trip and home seems a long way away. Love to everyone reading this - unless you are some creepy blog troll (shame on you).

PS. Only 72 hours until my gorgeous sister and equally gorgeous brother-in-law arrive to join us for five days. Yippee!

1 comment:

Sarah said...

I cannot think of anything worse than disneyland/world/any themepark type thing and should any child have the misfortune of having me as a parent they will have to rely on someone else for those childhood experiences (as they have no chance of my parents taking them either.)

I"ll drag them through Africa for the real Lion King experience before I ever set foot in Disney-anything.