I was thinking of writing this review much earlier but somehow I totally forgot about it. I was doing what has become my favourite pastime these days which is reading reviews at MS ( I have so much catching up to do!) when I saw this review about Florida..and I thought what the hell..I should write a review about this fabulous place.
First some background details about how I landed up in Florida. It was the last week of Dec 2002 and of course no one even goes to office in the last week of Dec as everyone is using up all their allocated leaves. So we all planned a trip to Florida. Since we planned the trip so late, we didn’t get the flight tickets we wanted(read slightly cheap ones :D ) and besides it was holiday season which makes it highly unlikely to get tickets so late, so we went by car. So four of us went by car all the way from NJ to Florida. The trip according to Mapquest was supposed to last 17 hrs or so, but it took us more than 24 hrs to get to Orlando, Fl...aided in no small measure by the fact that it was snowing horrendously in NJ late in the evening on 25th when we left and most of the McDs, Dunkin Donuts’ etc seem to close early on that day. So we had to like take quite a few exits before we would actually find a shop that was open at night! Anyways we made it to Orlando late at night the next day, had an okay sleep and went to Magic Kingdom, Disneyworld.
Magic Kingdom is one of the kingdoms in DisneyWorld. I didnt see the the others...also we didn’t have the time for all that. Magic Kingdom consists of Fantasyland, Frontierland, Adventureland, Tommorrowland etc. You get to Magic Kingdom either by ferry or monorail, we went by ferry and came back by monorail..u can try the other way round and M2M with details of how it is different :)
You enter the world through Main St, USA which has all these shops selling souvenirs and has a town square and all that stuff. First thing we did on getting the map of Magic Kingdom was find out which were the best rides, we were looking for the ones which warned about physical damage, speed, caution etc :)..basically most of them are rollercoasters.We figured we should go for that first and then take all the ’’wussy’’ ones. Seems like everyone who comes there thinks the same way. There were huge queues for
all of those rides. Luckily there is this concept of Fast Pass where u can use ur entry ticket and get a pass which u can use in a particular time slot to enjoy those rides without standing in a queue. So we were able to use that. In case you are going to Magic Kingdom look for all the rides that have FP (Fast Pass). They are the best ones and most of them satisfy the ’’non-wussy’’ criteria I laid out some time ago :)
Let me see, go for Big Thunder Mountain Railraod which is in Frontierland I think, everything in Tomorrowland rocks particularly a high speed rollercoaster whose name I can’t remember( if some one knows tell me so that I can update this part). Also there is this excellent horror ride (again I forgot the name, damn) where u see all kinda spooky stuff. Positively amazing. Just remember what I said, look for the FP sign near the ride or show.
THose are not the only things to look for in Magic Kingdom. Since we went in the last week of Dec, there was this superb parade in the afternoon which had Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck.Goofy and the others in a parade along with Santa Claus. That was so beautiful. I felt like I was a kid all over again. And late at night before closing for the day there was another splendid parade this time to commemorate 100 or 150 yrs of Disney(forgot the number...guess I am getting older lol) I was informed that every day one disney character is the central character in the parade. The day I was there, the character turned out to be everyones favourite mermaid, Ariel. She turned up with all the others in the tale. Also there was this beautiful girl who played Cinderella (dreamy look in my eyes lol)
Just one thing about this place is if you are a vegetarian you don’t have much choice.Maybe I didnt look around too much but I decided I would eat the first veg thing I would find and ended up eating popcorn for lunch in the afternoon. Night was better and I was a bit more resolute so I looked at the map a bit closely and found a McD, I picked up some french fries from the McD. Another great thing, not to do with Disney but Florida in general was that I roamed around without wearing a jacket..I know folks back home may find this funny..but here in the US , the sun’s primary function is to provide light not warmth hehehe. So many times, the sun will be blazing away, but once u step out you can feel the cold in the air. Oops I digressed. Oh yeah and the lighting at night is fabulous, particularly the castle is amazing at night with its everchanging colours.
DisneyLand is a great place to go irrespective of age or gender. I enjoyed it as much as anybody else and I was 22 years old when I went there and I was the youngest. Now I am 23..this is 2003 you see, a minor technicality :) Also there are so many cute babies running around..that sight itself fills one with so much joy. My friend became a little bit too excited and focussed his camcorder on a beautiful little baby which was raising a ruckus in its pram. Soon enough the father started waving his finger at us...talk of paranoia...duh I again lost what I was saying. Oh yeah, DisneyWorld is a great place to go in Orlando. There is Universal Studios also, but I decided to write about Disney because kids are gonna have more fun here. I recommend Florida in general, Orlando in particular and DisneyWorld to everyone who read this review.
Please note that this review covers Disneyland only..there are other tourist attractions in Orlando such as SeaWorld, Universal Studios etc that I saw and enjoyed but can’t write about due to the word limit.
Just in case u r interested the return trip to NJ took even longer..that is because we missed the exit to Baltimore( we ended up taking A instead of B or the other way round or something like that) and ended up going all the way to Washington DC..talk of losing direction!..there was no exit at all after the exit we missed! After some roaming abt we found ourselves near some restricted area to boot! Luckily we were able to calm our collective nerves and reach home. Phew! Some trip that was!
Thanks for reading.