An Irrelevant Visit to Adventureland at Magic Kingdom

In between posts with a lot of words, we return to an early morning visit to Magic Kingdom from earlier this summer. With so many changes coming up in the following four to six weeks, with Early Entry, Extended Hours, and Genie+/- all expected to launch by the first week in October, there isn’t much use in discussing touring strategy now, since there will be no way to replicate the current climate in just over a month’s time. That’s particularly true with current crowds at their lowest levels of the year. We’ll take a closer look when we get to Boo Bash versus Early Entry versus Extended Hours versus Disney Genie in what promises to be an obscenely lengthy discussion. Soon enough. Florida is diverting my oxygen too.

For a whole lot more on the wait time trends we’ve encountered at Magic Kingdom recently, see this post, with a lot of charts and graphs. For initial thoughts on how Disney Genie may transform your experience in the theme parks, see this post. And for the first Part of this series, which started even more irrelevantly in Frontierland with Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain, see this post.

Splash Mountain’s reimagining to The Princess and the Frog is yet to shut down the ride, despite Disney announcing the impending planned change, however vaguely, more than 14 months ago. As part of “Princess Week,” Disney offered additional details, more artwork, and interviews with key people attached to the project, here. Still, the only noticeable work at the attraction itself is the raising of scaffolding, which we see most years, as the company works to touch up paint on the mountain and ensure that the ride operates at least 40% of the time during the hottest months of the year. Given that it’s Princess Week, I feel like I should prepare my own fancy announcement. Maybe Thursday. And probably about something that’s at least 14 months away.

For now, we’ll continue on to Jungle Cruise for a look at the classic ride prior to its own “reimagining” along Problematic Scene Alley. I’ll include a video at the conclusion of the aging pictures with what you’d currently see. Or you can wait for the launch of Genie+++, probably arriving in fiscal year 2025, when you can either look at the entrance to the ride for $5, sit in a boat at the dock for $10, ride halfway down the river and then slosh through the rest of the track for $20, or experience the ride as Reimagined Walt intended for $50. We’ll long for the days when experiencing Rise of the Resistance only cost $110 per person. Remember, it only gets worse, so you better get in now:

Or a direct link to the video here.

Mother and I watched the Jungle Cruise movie a couple of days ago via Premier Access on Disney+ and enjoyed it well enough. But I’d probably wait until it comes to “free” Disney+ should you be a subscriber. I purchased “Premier Access” to Cruella shortly after it came out over Memorial Day Weekend at the end of May, and Disney will release it for everyone to watch on Disney+ come August 27th. That’s just three months later. If only I could wait, I’d be able to afford one fourth of a ride on Rise of the Resistance. I think we all know what the right play is there.

It will be interesting to see how the Genie prioritizes Jungle Cruise given the fact that its wait times have averaged around the sixth longest in the Park for years now.

It actually makes sense as a third morning priority given the fact that it’s going to post a standby wait of an hour or more most of the day given average crowds and modest Genie+ adoption rates.

Expect triple digit peak waits in October.

We’ll head over to Pirates of the Caribbean, another ride that has seen multiple scene changes over the years. Unless we see a seismic shift with Disney Genie +/-, you’ll virtually always wait less overall in the morning if you ride Jungle Cruise first and Pirates of the Caribbean second. I’ve made the mistake of backtracking from Frontierland and riding Pirates first as I initially passed by, thinking “How bad could Jungle Cruise possibly get in the next 12 minutes?” Turns out, pretty bad. We haven’t made that mistake since. A lot of people might come Genie time should they choose to follow the blue ghoul’s instructions. We’ll wait and see:

Even without words these posts are pretty long. We’ll pick things up in…Adventureland…next.