Voicetek

I think the additions are a good choice, but probably won't affect me any. The two new additions to Planet Snoopy sound good, but I probably won't make use of them. I used to like Flying Eagle type rides back in the day, but now anything that spins round and round tends to make me sick. I like yogurt places, but probably will never eat frozen yogurt at the park since my wife and I are never really there long enough to make use of food options. We tend to eat before we get there and then grab a snack on the way home or at home. I like Starbucks when I have a gift card I need to use, but hardly ever spend $4-$5 on coffee just because. Also, I don't really like coffee when it's 95 degrees outside. If Winterfest was a thing, then I would definitely by a coffee. I can see where these changes and additions will benefit a lot of people and will be good for the park. Most the time I don't really care if I agree with them or not, as long as it keeps the park open. However, I'm hoping that before the next big coaster, we'll get something more along the lines of a new dark ride. Maybe next year, or the year after. I keep on hoping.

Yes, the Festival of Lights has gotten more popular/competitive over the years. You know what else it has gotten? Crowded. A lot more crowded. The past couple of years my wife and I have went, we've waited in a line of traffic just to get into the zoo. Last year it was so bad that the traffic jam started right off the highway exit. Now I know the crowds vary depending on night, time, and weather, but we never pick a certain night or time. We just go whenever we have a free evening and the past 2-3 years now we've ended up in ridiculous crowds. Are Christmas events getting more popular for this area? If so, by bringing Winterfest back, it might give families an alternative (maybe even a cheaper alternative) to the Festival of Lights. Heck, by having two events in the area, it might even help to spread the crowds out a bit. Maybe not everyone in the tri-state area will flock to the zoo on any given night. Maybe some people would do the zoo, some would do KI. Who really knows for sure. All I know is that Holiday/Christmas events seem to be popular in the area. Even the smaller, free events get slammed. Do any of you know about Niederman's Family Farm? Every year they do a Christmas walk on their property. They have lights, and displays and free hot chocolate and cookies at the end of the walk in a big, heated barn. It's small, but it's a free alternative for families. It's always crowded. People love it. If Winterfest did come back, I could see it as a smaller event. Give people the holiday festivities, but on a smaller scale and with an admission price a little cheaper than the Festival of Lights. I think this would make Winterfest more competitive and draw families who don't want to pay (or can't pay) the $20 to get into the zoo. However, KI could have some other options once inside the event to make money, or some upcharges for various activities. However, if you wanted to just come in and enjoy the atmosphere, you could do so for a minimal fee. I don't see that Winterfest is totally out of the question in the future. I believe that you could make it work if done right and I think the OP had some good ideas on how to do that. I think the key thing is to make it competitive and I think you can do that by scaling it down and making it more affordable than the zoo. It wouldn't be free, but it also wouldn't break the bank. Right now though, we can only dream. Perhaps one day I'll be able to take my kids to Winterfest and relive the memories I remember as a kid. How cool would that be?

Seems like we've covered this topic before. My vote? Other: Phantom Theater. Big surprise, right?

I wore my Diamondback t-shirt to Epcot one year Edit: I found proof! lol

What would make you think this place wasn't good for families? Just because they have farting dogs, vomiting rats, urinating bugs, and topless cows? What parent wouldn't want their kid's picture next to a topless cow? This park is just promoting some good, wholesome, family fun.

Just wanted to add something I noticed when I visited Magic Kingdom last week and rode the ride. On every boat, the back seat was blocked off. They were not allowing anyone to sit in the back row of the boats, not even adults. I was telling my wife about the boy falling out of the boat, and we were wondering if this might be the reason? It looked like the back row had a perfect place behind the back of the seat to sit a young child. I'm assuming Disney has blocked this row off on all of their "Pirates" rides in order to keep something like this from happening again. Why else would they block all the back rows? Thoughts anyone?

If we go back down there any time soon and do another theme park, more than likely we will give Islands of Adventure a shot. I don't think they'll ever be a time we'll go down to Florida without doing Magic Kingdom, but we will probably check out Universal too. However, I don't know when the next time we'll be down there will be. We probably won't do another theme park vacation next year since we've done them the past few years in a row. I promised my wife if we did a theme park vacation again this year, that we could try something new next year. So we will just have to see.

I don't agree with your opinion of the stage shows. I think they are lacking. They need to re-book the Rock-afire Explosion. Don't know who they are? Look them up. You won't be disappointed!

Dang I wish I had checked out that site. We did Magic Kingdom on Monday and Hollywood Studios on Thursday. Sounds like we should have swapped the days. Oh well.

So my wife and I got back from our week-long Florida vacation yesterday. While we were down in Florida, we visited the Magic Kingdom and also Hollywood Studios. This trip report will just be for the Magic Kingdom. If I feel like it, I might add another one for Hollywood Studios...we will see. Ok, so we bought our tickets a few weeks ago so we could go ahead and link them with our MagicBands and schedule our FastPasses. We pretty much were able to get everything we wanted, which I figured would be the case for a Monday in October. On that day were were going, they were not doing Mickey's Halloween Party (Thank God), so the park was open from 9 til 11. Unfortunately, the night before we were supposed to go, I could not get to sleep. We had planned on getting up at 8 and getting to the park around 10 and enjoying a good, solid 13 hours in the park. Well...since I couldn't get to sleep, we decided to sleep in just a little bit more. We ended up getting to the park around noon (with me getting 3 hours of sleep, fun stuff!). So yeah, we get to the park around noon and while on our way to the park, I'm going on and on about how light the crowds should be and how we should be able to ride anything we want and heck, we may not even need to use our FastPasses. Why was I so confident? Well, a couple of reasons. First, I actually visited the park before in October with 2 of my friends. Guess what we did? We rode everything we wanted...multiple times. Second, I did my research. There were numerous articles written by park goers on which times of the year were the best times to go. Third, I downloaded the My Disney Experience app a couple of weeks before we left and monitored the wait times every day for the various theme parks. The average wait times - even on the weekends - were around 20-30 minutes. Not too bad really for Disney. So yeah, I was feeling pretty confident in my knowledge of crowds and wait times in October. Then we actually got the park. Just 3 words: Oh - my - gosh! I had never, ever, ever, ever seen the park so crowded in all of my visits. I have been there in March during spring break, and in the summer time in August and even those times were not as crowded as the day we arrived at the park. It was so packed you couldn't move. It looked as if every child in the United States was there on that day. I just kept repeating to myself, "It's a Monday...in October." It's like I couldn't comprehend the crowds. I immediately got on my Disney app and checked the times. The waits were averaging 50-70 minutes. I couldn't believe it! Thank God for FastPass was all I was thinking. Well, we just had to make the best of the day. I told my wife that we were probably going to have to choose the rides carefully, only waiting for the ones we really wanted to ride. Then if we had time, we'd ride the others. I'm not going to go into complete detail about every ride we rode or when we rode them, but I will give you a rundown of the rides we did ride. We had FastPassed Journey of the Little Mermaid dark ride, Splash Mountain, and Peter Pan's Flight and thank God for that too because those rides had ridiculous wait times that day. Other attractions we managed to get in were Pirates of the Carribean, Small World, Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, People Mover, Tiki Room, Mickey's Philharmagic, and yes, we even managed to squeeze a ride in on the new Seven Dwarf's Mine Train. We chose to pass up some of the other rides like Jungle Cruise, The Haunted Mansion, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and Space Mountain. We like those rides, but we like the other more and we had just ridden those last year. Now let me tell you a story about how we managed to squeeze in a ride on the new Mine Train ride. First, the ride has a lot of down time - for real! I know at least once or twice a day when I was checking my Disney app before our trip, the ride was listed as "Closed." So when we went to check it out, it was closed again. Really? No one knew when or if it would open, so most people had gotten out of line. They had the entrance blocked off and there were just a handful of people willing to spend their time at a $100 per day theme park waiting for this ride to open. I convinced my wife that this would be a good opportunity should they re-open the ride. Since the average wait time that day was around 70-80 minutes, if we could be so lucky to be there when they re-opened the ride, it would essentially be a walk on! So, I talked her into it with the promise that we'd only wait for 15 minutes and move on. Well wouldn't you know it. That was our lucky day! Right at the end of our 15 minutes, the ride started back up and they opened the entrance. We walked right on that ride! So my thoughts about the ride? It was nice, but way too short. There is no way I'd wait 2 hours for that ride. And I was a little disappointed that there was only one indoor scene with animatronics. I feel like there needed to be at least one more indoor section that your rolled through. All in all it was a fun ride, but too short and lacking the story that the old dark ride had. It's a nice addition, but there are other rides at the park that are better. We happened to get lucky one more time before the night was over. We had just ridden Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, and took a ride on the People Mover and were getting ready to experience the Stitch attraction when I decided to check the wait times on my app one last time. I noticed that Splash Mountain had only a 10 minute wait. How was this possible? Just then I heard a parade running. Oh yeah, everyone was watching the parade. My wife and I decided to bypass Stitch and make a mad dash around the park to get to Splash Mountain. Since Main Street was closed, we had to go around the entire park loop. Through Fantasy Land, over through Libery Square and up around by the Tom Sawyer's Island attraction. We ran, and ducked, and squeezed through crazy crowds and finally, at last, we arrived at Splash Mountain. A walk on! What a great ride to finish out the day. After that we headed towards the exit as people were literally funneled through a teeny, tiny path - the only path they had opened for people to exit. Everything else was roped off for the fireworks. Once we got through the bulk of the crowed we ducked into the shops and used those as a walkway to the exit. A quick glimpse at a few of the fireworks, and it was onto the monorail to start our journery to our car. All in all we spent around 11 hours in the park, and didn't manage to do everything. It was the most crowded I had ever seen it. I'm wondering if perhaps there was some kind of event going on that week? Heck, it wasn't even a Mickey's Halloween Party night. Maybe people are getting wise to the off season months and choosing to go then? Who knows. Next time though, I think I'll try December again. That, by far, has been the best time I've ever visited there. The first week of December - Nice weather, and short waits. Hopefully it's still like that! Our day in the park was hot, crowded, and crazy, but we still had a good time. We always have a good time at Disney!

I agree with the above two comments. Not sure we need a 5th park at all. I'd like to see them update/expand the current parks, well all except the Magic Kingdom really. They could definitely add some more attractions to Hollywood Studios and also Animal Kingdom. Oh wait, Animal Kingdom is getting Pandora. Oops, I forgot, or did I? Perhaps my brain was trying to suppress that from my memory. Oh well, either way, I think they could definitely expand on some of the stuff they have now. As much as I love Epcot, yes, it could use some updating. More family-friendly "budget" type resorts are also a good idea. I think these things make much more sense than adding a whole new 5th park. It is hard to do 4 parks as it is. I can't remember the last time I went down there and tried to do all 4 parks. I usually just go to the ones I want to go to, but not all 4. How long would it take you to see 5 parks? Longer than most families have for vacation probably.

I'm a little crazy I guess. I prefer the back seat on just about every coaster. If I can grab the back seat, I usually do. In the back seat, you get pulled over the hills so you get the most out of every drop. I know a lot of people prefer the front seats, but I feel like, in the front, by the time the train really picks up speed on that drop, the front seat car is half way down the hill already. The back, however, gets the entire drop at full speed. It really gives you that "tickle" in your stomach. That's why I ride coasters, so I try to get the most "tickle" I can get. Now occasionally I'll do a front seat just for the experience. Front seat rides offer the best views, in my opinion. The first time I rode Diamondback was in the front seat. That was a great experience. Now, though, I usually go towards the back since I've already experienced it in the front. I think the "best seat" is just whatever you feel it is. Some people have different preferences and would consider one seat better than another. It really just comes down to riding the coasters multiple times and get a feel for where you like to sit and what's the most fun for you. Someone's "best" seat might not be someone else's "best" seat.

I agree. I remember the first time I rode Boo Blasters and got to the part with the skeletons and I thought, "What in the world?" It was a total and complete tone shift from the rest of the ride. It's like we went from a fun, color kid/family ride to some scary/evil ride aimed at teens and adults. It makes absolutely no sense at all and I don't know if I had a young child, if I'd take them on or not. It's just so confusing as to who they were aiming that scene at. But what can you expect from a ride called Boo Blasters on Boo Hill?

^Maybe The Vortex is going to be a new Transformer in Transformers 5?

Why should someone be punished if they can't afford an admission ticket to Magic Kingdom? That's unfair - just because they don't have the money, why should they be unable to visit the park? That's a ridiculous statement that wouldn't apply to anything and that's not what I was talking about. Of course you need money to visit the Magic Kingdom and many people do. I'm talking about those people who are already shelling out hundreds of dollars in tickets for their family to visit the park and then being told that they can't schedule FastPass+ as early as these other people because even though they had lots of money, they didn't have enough money. I feel like if you're already paying money to get into the park, then everyone who has paid for admission should have access to the same features when it comes to riding the attractions in the park you just paid for. Now, buying something extra like dinner with the characters or the VIP Tour or something like that, yes, not everyone is going to be able to have the same experience due to the money issue. And I wouldn't argue that just because someone doesn't have the money to eat with the Princesses or to take a VIP Tour doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to. Of course they shouldn't, because these are additional "premium" experiences that require additional upcharges - such as Cedar Fair and their FassLane. Just because you bought an admission ticket to Kings Island does not mean you are entitled to a FastLane wristband. This is a premium, upcharge experience. My opinion is that if you've bought admission to the park, then scheduling an attraction should be available to you. You should not have to wait to schedule just because you're not staying on Disney property. A Disney hotel has nothing to do with a ride at the Magic Kingdom or Epcot or wherever else. If I paid my admission to that particular park, then I should be able to access the scheduling for that park's attractions along with everyone else at the same time regardless of where you're staying. It's pretty simple really. Everyone who buys a ticket has equal access to schedule a FastPass+ on a first come, first serve basis. It's so simple it's scary!

Part of the problem with this new system is that it is only catering to those people (mainly families) who schedule their Disney trips months and months in advance. Well you know, some people just can't do that, so unfortunately, they miss out. I've posted this on here before, but I'm going to use it again as an example. Last year my wife and I were staying in Hilton Head for our honeymoon. I'd booked a villa there for the whole week and had everything planned. When we arrived, I realized that we were only 4 hours away from Disney. Well, being the Disney nut that I am, I couldn't stand being so close and not visiting. So, my wife and I decided to be spontaneous and drive down to the Magic Kingdom for one day. Yep, just one day. Now if we would've tried to schedule any sort of FastPass+ at this time, we wouldn't have been able to because they would've been all filled. Thank God that the old "swipe your card and get a ticket" system was still in place. Even though the crowds were extremely light, we still took advantage of the old FastPass system on a couple of rides. Now, if Disney had switched all the attractions over to FastPass only, then we would've have gotten to ride anything and it would've been devastating. That's the problem I have with systems like this. And what's worse, people who stay on property get to schedule their FastPasses earlier than people who don't. I feel this is wrong. Why should you be punished if you can't afford to stay on Disney property? You shouldn't. It's almost like turning Disney into some sort of exclusive club for the rich or something like that. What would Walt have thought about that? The scheduling of FastPass+ should be available to everyone regardless of where you're staying, period. There shouldn't be any exclusive windows of opportunity, it should be equal in my opinion. Also, stand-by lines should ALWAYS remain an option regardless of how long they are. That might be the only way for some people to get to ride those rides. Think about this, what if Cedar Fair up and decided one day that you could ONLY ride their rides if you buy a FastLane wristband? It would suck, wouldn't it? Yep. So Disney needs to think about what their doing before they do it. I'm hoping that the test they ran on Toy Story Midway Mania last week was a huge fail and opened up their eyes to just how bad an idea that was. If their attractions ever go to a FastPass+ only system, I will no longer be visiting and neither will my future kids. And that will be money lost for them. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way too.

^I remember their dark ride and their caves. I rode their dark ride only once, I think, with my mom and sister. I don't remember too much about it other than the fact that I was pretty scared. I did, however, used to like the caves they had. I seems to me that they had a couple different ones. I remember going through them with my cousins. Fantasy Farm was definitely a unique park. Looking back on it, they had some things that other parks, at least not around here, had. I was still pretty young the last time I was there, so all the memories I have of that place are a little foggy. I wish I would've been a little older when I visited that place so that my memories would be a little clearer than they are. Now Americana on the other hand, that's a different story. I spent many, many days of my summers at that place and remember it quite well. Gosh, we used to spend all day at that park, not sure how we did that as there wasn't too much to do. We used to just go back and ride things over and over again. During the week in the summer time, there wasn't too many people there so you could just ride whatever you wanted. One of my favorite things at Americana was the "Country Bears" show they used to have. It was an animatronic show (like the one at Disney) with a family of bears and they would sing and talk and whatever. Unfortunately, the last remaining years at the park, the attraction was always closed. Every time I asked about it, they would tell me it was being repaired. It never was repaired though and the show never re-opened. That's a shame. I also remember the pool they had there and swimming in it on occasion with my family. I also always liked the Sky Ride, the Ferry Boat, and the Train that took you over to the other side of the park. Also, does anyone else remember the gigantic goldfish they used to have in their lake? Crazy! Parks like these were a breeding ground for making memories with your family. There is something about these small parks that hold a great deal of nostalgia that just can't be replicated. It's really a shame that most of them get shut down and their rides and attractions get scrapped. There is nothing to revisit the history of these parks really except for some old pics and video footage online, and of course your own memories. That, to me, is just sad. Edit: I found an interesting article (with pictures) about Tom Sawyer's Caverns at Fantasy Farm here.

My wife and I are going down to Disney World next weekend. Last night we went ahead and linked our Magic Kingdom tickets to our MagicBands and selected our FastPasses. We even downloaded the mobile app so that we can manage our accounts from our phones. Within the mobile app there is an "Attractions" tab that lets you know the wait times of all the attractions in the park. If those wait times are correct, then I don't think we'll even need FastPasses since most of the waits were only 10-20 minutes. The longest wait in the park was the new Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train which was 50 minutes. Since the park is open from 9am to 11pm, there should be plenty of time to do everything even without FastPass. That being said, I think it's a horrible idea to make some rides FastPass only rides. I think it's still good to have a normal "Stand By" line for guests who weren't able to FastPass the ride. If someone wants to wait 2 hours or more to ride something, then that's their business. It might be the only time they're going to be able to come to Disney, so to them it's worth it. You don't know the circumstances and it's not right to tell people they can't ride if they didn't book it 6 months in advance. That's crap.

My family and I frequented this place when I was younger. At one time we even had season passes! We'd drive up here Sunday afternoons after church and pack a picnic lunch and eat under the shelter then my sister and cousins would go off to ride rides. I have great memories of this place. I spent lots of time here when I was a young child with my mom, sister, cousins, aunts, and grandparents. I drive by it quite often and I always look over to see the area where it used to be. It's kind of sad to see there's nothing left.

You start a Kick Starter campaign and I'll donate.

I think it's a good thing that they removed these displays. Just one less act of violence to have to look at. If you've read my posts on here, there really is no question of how I feel about most Halloween displays. Most make my stomach turn. I don't mind some - cats, bats, owls, spiders, spider-webs, skeletons, pumpkins, scarecrows, (some) monsters, etc. I think that's plenty enough to have great Halloween theming AND and it can be acceptable/appropriate for anyone. What I don't understand is this morbid fascination with blood, guts, severed limbs, decapitation, mutilations, torture, excessive violence, human sacrifice, and just about every other inhumane act you can think of being put on display for anyone and everyone to see. What I don't like is even when I go to KI during the day and see some of these displays up during the "family" event going on in the park. I'm sorry, but I've never been entertained by such displays in all my life. If I want to see inhumane, violent acts, I'll just turn on the news. It's not funny, it's not fun, and it's no where near entertaining. I don't care if it's fake or not. This type of stuff is real. This type of stuff goes on all over the world. We don't like to see it in the news, so why do we want to see it at an amusement park? It's not really amusing. And that, folks, is why I don't step foot in "Haunt" and yes, that is my decision and my decision alone. If you enjoy this type of thing, then good for. I'm not condemning anyone, I'm just trying to understand why this type of stuff excites and amuses you. For me, well, just give me a good ol' Fall festival any day of the week and I'll be happy. A nice hayride, corn maze, pumpkin patch, apple cider, hot coffee, scarecrows and the like are just the types of things I need in order to have a great Fall season. Add to that some crisp, cool air and it's even better!

I can't imagine painting an entire roller coaster with a hand roller. Yikes!

^I would respond to how much I agree with this statement, but I have done so in just about every other thread and I'm afraid that it's starting to get redunde... ...oh heck, I 100% agree with this statement!

^So if that ride changes every 10 years, then just how much longer do we have to put up with Boo Blasters?

Just my opinion on Disney saturating everything in Frozen...