Magic Kingdom or Disneyland?

Saturday... Magic Kingdom! Probably the park we've been the least excited about, only because we've both been to Disneyland, and expectations were high. We took it a bit easy in the morning, being the first morning in our non-Disney resort, with separate bedrooms, full kitchen, and even two sinks in the bathroom! Luxury indeed.





Ok, back to the park. First, it's huge. Even the parking is so far away from the park entrance that we had to take the Monorail to get there. We headed straight for Tomorrowland, towards our favourite (we thought) ride, Space Mountain. With Fastpass in hand, we looked around for other stuff to do. So we tried a Stitch ride (missable), a train ride around Tomorrowland (cool), and the Buzz Lightyear ride. This was a fun, interactive, video-game type ride, much like the Toy Story ride at Hollywood (hmm, could they be related?). I was losing big time (I guess the gun wasn't working), but then I must have hit something big because I jumped ahead of Kendra's already impressive score! I love these rides!

And the rain arrived. Oh well, by now we were resigned. And when it rains, it pours. Within a couple of minutes there was a river where there had been a walkway. We stayed dry as best we could, but c'est la vie!

Across the park to Pirates of the Caribbean, and here's where the comparison with Disneyland really took off. We were a little disappointed. Sure, Jack Sparrow is believable and makes the ride, but mostly because the rest was a little... boring. Not at all as we remembered it from Disneyland.

Time to use our Fastpass for Space Mountain, so back we trekked. And... another disappointment! No music on the ride? No dizzying, rotating tunnel to launch us into space? At this point I'm willing to entertain discussion on the relative merits of the two parks, at least with regards to these two rides. Any opinions out there?

We decided to drown our disappointment (not too difficult in this rain) in Fantasyland. Peter Pan, Snow White, and It's a Small World soon restored our park-hopping enthusiasm. Then it was back to Main Street for some shopping, and a ferry ride back to the parking lot.

To be continued... on Kendra's blog.