We better get over to Magic Kingdom before they close half of it tomorrow. Well, not all of it, but Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and Dumbo are closing for lengthy refurbishments/movements. Fantasmic joins it with a refurbishment that will continue through February 12th. Tutto Italia over at Epcot closed today (the 8th) and Plaza Ice Cream Parlour at Magic Kingdom is also closed. Such is life. The good news(?) is that Captain EO is still there.
It’s still Christmas at Magic Kingdom. The Castle Dream Lights were on in the evening as well.
Christmas should end Monday.
This is the Chapeau store on Main Street. You’ll have to take my word for it. But I can prove it because that’s Tony’s Town Square Restaurant to the right and the FASTPASS machines for Mickey Mouse and the Pricesses inside Town Square Theater peeking out in the back.
A “better” look.
Main Street Bakery joins it.
Looking sharp. It has a kind-of-creepy walkway through it. Both establishments remain open during their tarpage.
It should have a proper scrim on it tomorrow (the 9th). This is the one on the Crystal Store. You sort of, almost can’t tell that it even has something covering it.
You may remember that the scrim timeline seems to follow a pattern. We first have a ridiculous tarp. In this case, it’s at Enchanted Grove. The building seems to be covered in trees.
Then a couple of days later, a better scrim appears. Note that we still have the trees on the sides.
And then the sides got added, with the scrim lining up perfectly with the tree.
And then Cheshire Cafe opens.
And here we are at the Hotel Frontenac in the Canada Pavilion. First, it was this.
Then this. There’s still a hole visible for the IllumiNations laser beam to shine through.
Then covered.
We saw the same pattern at Pecos Bill and others. Interestingly, I don’t think I’ve seen a scrim outside of Epcot and Magic Kingdom. I’ll have to ask my brain to think for a moment.
Considering the prominence of The Chepeau and Main Street Bakery, I would imagine Disney will do a great job with it. The Crystal Store, Main Street Confectionery, and others have been excellent. Prince Regal Carousel…not so much. But as we’ll see shortly, the Carousel is again scrim-less. I couldn’t tell you exactly why Disney doesn’t start with the proper cover. My guess is it has something to do with actually taking the measurements of the original brown scrims in order to create the better looking ones.
Main Street Philharmonic continues to play to large crowds. And its fair share of people walking right past. On their way to the Enchanted Tiki Room no doubt. Heard some really great things about that one….
Flowers are still looking pretty.
And a loooooong line for Ariel and Prince Eric. With Disney releasing The Little Mermaid in theaters in 3D this year, I don’t think their lines are going anywhere.
A longer-than-usual Dole Whip line. Since it’s Marathon Weekend, we have a lot of “big Disney fans” in town. They love their powdered-soft-serve-treats.
Agrabah Bazaar behind Aladdin’s Magical Carpets is your best chance to meet Jasmine and Aladdin with reasonable waits. No matter how long the line is here, it’s going to be way longer over in Morocco at Epcot unless you get reeeeeeeeeally lucky.
With interaction that is well above average. It doesn’t hurt that Jasmine is such a babe.
The Enchanted Tiki Room continues to play to capacity crowds since its reopening a couple of months ago. If its capacity was 12 people, I mean.
There was a horrific accident at Jungle Cruise today. I’ll spare you the details. Now you want to know, right? Fine. Click away if you so choose. The attraction closed down briefly.
Tiki Room could use some of those ghosts from Haunted Mansion to help fill seats, I think.
I had never seen this before. Granted I don’t get out much, but still. We have Pirate Goofy and several wenches (Disney’s words, not mine) along with some of the Pirates’ League graduates announcing the next Pirate’s Tutorial show. The stage is right across the way. It looked fun, even if you can’t really tell what’s going on from this lousy picture. If you’re looking for better pictures of something, I might suggest this tour of Cinderella’s Castle Suite over at DisneyTouristBlog.com. Just promise you’ll come back to me someday.
Sorry, bud. Despite your best efforts, you still appear to be in my picture!
I had mentioned recently that Pirate Goofy meets guests to the right of the entrance to Pirates of the Caribbean, but it’s worth mentioning again. His lines are usually short because he isn’t particularly obvious.
Golden Oak Outpost has its Flatbread Menu out, but remains closed. I find that it’s even easier to skip that way.
Busy over at Big Thunder Mountain, which will be down for several months beginning January 9th.
In capacity terms (and really, what other term is there?), Big Thunder is a beast, moving through 2,500 people an hour. Take it away, and we’ll have a couple thousand people in line at other attractions through May.
At least a long posted wait for Splash Mountain. It’s currently:
4:27pm. FASTPASSes are just 40 minutes out at least.
According to the Crowd Calendar today:
Magic Kingdom is tentatively recommended if you can arrive prior to Park opening. The evening Extra Magic Hours coupled with all the transportation woes will make this Park low on crowds until at least 11am, but things will pick up considerably going into the afternoon and they’ll stay heavy with the relatively early evening Extra Magic Hours. The lack of Main Street Electrical Parade is in our favor, but the operating hours aren’t any longer than tomorrow, which means we’ll have a decent number of Disney resort guests en route and a lot of people that ran the Half Marathon yesterday morning interested in visiting as well. I’m not too keen on the Magic Kingdom’s evening Extra Magic Hours when they begin at 8pm either because more families can stay for at least the first hour or two. We see crowds disperse more when Extra Magic Hours don’t start until 11pm or 12am because most families with young kids need to leave soon after Wishes and Main Street Electrical Parade earlier in the night. Overall, you can have a lot of success if you tour from 9am – 1pm, take a break, and return around 6pm, but the afternoon will be busy, though not as busy as tomorrow. This coming Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday would all be less crowded days to visit and more recommended overall. Today is better than yesterday or tomorrow though, which makes it tentatively recommended.
We are not exactly following it.
The Mme Leota cart has moved over here from its usual location near the external exit of Haunted Mansion. To the left is the entrance to Liberty Square Riverboat.
A couple new Haunted Mansion shirts have appeared, both celebrating its 40th anniversary. This one comes in itty bitty sizes it looks like.
And this one as well in larger sizes.
Speaking of things that I didn’t know existed (were we?) (are you annoyed by the incorrect usage of parentheses yet?), there is a Haunted Mansion version of The Game of Life. Who knew?
This is the reason the cart moved. It looks like Disney is finally ready to turn the old Skyway Station into bathrooms. Rejoice! Soon (or later), this should be a path up through Fantasyland.
Busy, but nowhere near as bad as it has been over the last few weeks. On Christmas Day, this line was all the way back and around the exit to Liberty Square Riverboat next door. That’s insane!
Speaking of the Skyway, this wall along the path up to Fantasyland is new too.
Don’t fret, you can still park your stroller here.
Look ma, no extended queue needed!
No matter how many times you click “optimize” on your touring plan, we can hope that it would never tell you to ride Peter Pan’s Flight in the standby line in the afternoon. Before 10am, with FASTPASS, or very late at night are your options. Or a 50 minute wait, I suppose.
Saying goodbye to Dumbo.
I doubt there will ever be a more successful attraction, in just about every respect, than Dumbo the Flying Elephant.
Winnie the Pooh continues to catch people off guard with its long wait times. The capacity just isn’t there.
Speaking of Pooh, I noticed on this week’s Times Guide that Winnie the Pooh and Friends will be meeting guests at the International Gateway beginning today (Monday). They had previously met inside the Toy Solider store in Epcot’s United Kingdom Pavilion. Because that location couldn’t be any less obvious, the line was always four or five deep, if that. We can expect some longer lines with the characters in a more obvious location, but Winnie the Pooh is so prevalent that waits should continue to be relatively short.
Part 2 is on its way, but I knew you wanted to read something on Monday morning while the boss is still hungover. Your boss, I mean.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
This installment was particularly entertaining…thanks. I’m thankful that the couple times we’ve been to WDW this year, there were no major closings. I’ll be interested in reading how Magic Kingdom is doing during the Big Thunder refurbishment as far as crowds.
Thanks for the Scrim Timeline
. I’m wondering how long it will take for Chapeau and Main Street Bakery to open up again. Main St. and Castle area are the heart of WDW and, although needed I’m sure, I hope it’s a short process. Kind of takes a bit of the magic away.
Oh, and my prayers also go out to those who strained their necks.
Thanks for the great update! I am always excited for a new one, but now that our trip is almost here, I’m even more excited!!!
The new Haunted Mansion products look great. DS 5 loves the Haunted Mansion and will be overjoyed if he can get a shirt his size! I actually made him one myself this year with the hitchhiking ghosts on it because I couldn’t find any small ones.
I too am hoping the scrims on Main St make a quick appearance. But, if they are still there in Feb, at least they will look “pretty”.
Little Mermaid is coming out in 3D this year, too? I know Beauty & the Beast comes out in 3D in theaters this Friday the 13th.
I’ve read that they are making Beauty and the Beast, Monsters inc, Finding Nemo and The Little Mermaid all in 3D.
Hi, do you have any idea when the tarps will be down on Main Street? Thanks.
Enjoy your comments and pictures very much.
Thanks for the scrims photos, I work for a small downtown and have a building where they are considering that during construction. I told them – they use that at Disneyworld, but was then expected to get photos, I had been searching your site, but hadn’t run into them, so this was perfect.
I’m not sure when those particular scrims will be gone. It is a lengthy process – it should be a few months unless the work is very minor. Assuming they’re doing similar work to Pecos Bill, Main Street Confectionery, etc. it will probably be April or May until we see the actual buildings again.
You mentioned the capacity for Big Thunder and how those people will all be in other lines now. Just curious…what is the capacity for Dumbo? It will also be closed during our trip.
I think on our last trip the only thing closed was Splash Mountain, which I imagine doesn’t have a large capacity.
I hope this doesn’t effect wait times on my favorite rides too much.
looks like the scrims “enhancements” are starting to go up. The pictures i have seen now have some of the “photo” of the building showing up over the brown scrim. At least it will fit in a bit better once they finish making it prettier.
Josh, with regard to the lines for Jasmine and Aladdin….is the longer line at Epcot just specific to the high crowd season right now or has something else changed to make MK an easier M&G with them than at Epcot? We enjoyed short lines and easy access to the princesses including Jasmine at Epcot during our last trip (Mar 2011). We are headed back again in early March 2012!
I can’t wait to read part 2. Especially your review of Boma.
I clicked the link, but I put it in another tab and read your post first.
You got closer to Goofy than you did to Jasmine, your readers like babes too, you know.
On our last trip we had a great meet and greet with Jasmine and Aladdin in that spot . We were the last family before they closed the line and they spent a lot of quality time with us, they were really funny joking about Abu
Jill – The capacity at Dumbo is just a few hundred per hour, whereas Splash Mountain’s is around 1,500 if everything is running properly. Actual capacity is probably a bit lower most of the time. Big Thunder will probably have the biggest effect on Splash Mountain, which is right next door. People will arrive, find out it’s closed, turn around, and notice Splash Mountain is right there.
Mark – Yes, it looks like it will be a couple more days, but everything should be up soon.
Becca – It depends on the time of day. If you arrive about 10 minutes before they’re scheduled to arrive, you’ll just be waiting those 10 minutes. If you get in the back of the line in the afternoon, you’re looking at 30+. This was the line tonight around 5pm – http://i.imgur.com/fk50dl.jpg Just Jasmine was meeting at this particular moment.
Darcie – Neither can I.
Aaron – Next time I’ll get really, really close.
Dave – Poor Abu!
On the last day of F&W at Epcot, we were lucky enough to catch Aladdin and Jasmine coming off of break. My 3 boys (ages 12 and under) thought Aladdin and his stories were hysterical (something about magic beans and the power of Boston baked beans). And my 8 yr-old daughter was fascinated by Jasmine’s costume. Or lack of it.
We also walked right into the toy store and spent quite a few minutes alone with Pooh and Tigger. It was terrific…especially after a day of crowds outside.
One tip for Dole Whip lovers, the line on the left of the building (shown in the picture) always seems to be much longer than the one on the right. We decided to keep walking when we saw a long line and found just 2 people waiting on the right hand side. We’re now Dole Whip fans.
Great info. Thanks Josh! I’m wondering about the Ariel M&G. We must meet her or my 2 yo might explode. How far in advance of a scheduled M&G should we get in line to avoid the crazy line formation? We’ll be there on a 3 crowd level day, but it isn’t a reco’d day. We’re not there for rides, just a few characters and the only way to see MSEP our week. Thanks!
@natalie- we saw Ariel and Eric with only a 10minute wait when we lined up 10 minutes before their first meet of the day. I think that’s the best way to do it. By the way, I think the day we were there was a 9 crowd day.
Josh -
Your morning advice for MK that day seemed to be spot on. My wife and I arrived a little before 10am that day to enjoy thunder mountain before it closed (would have been earlier, but buses were very slow due to the marathon). The park was shockingly empty, even though we were late. We walked on BTMRR twice, rode splash mountain a few times, and then used a fast pass for BTMRR at 11:15 before leaving. Even at that time, the standby line looked like 10min (though stated to be 20min as I recall). Your afternoon pictures of the ride look scary compared to the emptyness we saw.