Trip Reports

Walt Disney World vacation, September 8 - 17

A friend and I, both 25 year old computer game programmers, flew to Walt Disney World from Seattle. We stayed at the All-Star Movies resort, in the Toy Story wing (we requested Fantasia but they were full). Our room smelled like carrots, a lot. Not a bad thing, really. Also, we were there for the first time WDW was ever closed, because of Hurricane Floyd. Can I plan them or what?

I don't have the patience to write a full trip report, but there are a few things I would have liked to know ahead of time, especially with all the new rides, many of which don't live up to the hype. I was disappointed with a lot of the new rides, like Test Track and Countdown to Extinction, but there were some great surprises too.

So what I have is a list of ride ratings from both Disney and Universal.

*** THEME PARK REVIEW/RATINGS

These ratings are based on an attraction/park's total entertainment value, including it's thrill factor, creativity, and theming. These are from a 25 year old perspective, and I'm only listing the attractions I've seen recently! The ratings reflect the current state of disrepair of some rides.

3/10 - Really lame, not worth seeing
4/10 - Worth seeing once, if you have time
6/10 - You "must see" this at least once!
8/10 - A favorite, see it many times!
**** THE MAGIC KINGDOM (8/10)

There are 6 different styles of architecture here in different lands, and it is done very well. This park is great, with a happy atmosphere and tons of rides. Most of the rides are short though. The only thing this park needs is more thrill rides!

18 attractions worth seeing.

Splash Mountain (8/10)

The best ride here, better than the one at Disneyland! Great music and fast lines. Less mildew on the handholds would have been nice though. Everybody loves this one, but unfortunately the height requirement restricts it from smaller children.

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad (7/10)

Fun. Rickety and loud. This line can go slowly. The back is a much better ride.

Space Mountain (7/10)

A good ride, but SO lame compared to the one at Disneyland. The left side seems a lot better than the right.

The Haunted Mansion (7/10)

Really, really cool, great effects! This is not a thrill ride, but the effects and theme are quite impressive.

Carousel of Progress (6/10)

A classic! Not thrilling by any means, but very cool, especially if you need to rest. It would be better with colder air conditioning.

Pirates of the Caribbean (6/10)

Only one drop instead of the two at Disneyland, but still a lot of fun. We really think the cannons should make a deep boom, instead of a fizz noise. It sounds like they're spraying hairspray every time they fire. I really don't understand why there's no boom.

Jungle Cruise (6/10)

Much longer and better than Disneyland. The guides can add a lot to this ride, by the quality of the comedy routines they do throughout the ride.

Peter Pan (6/10)

This looks like just a ride for kids, but it actually has really cool visuals, and the flying effect is neat. I always liked this one.

Skyway (5/10)

Nice view, but I wouldn't wait too long in line for it, the line moves slowly.

Mad Tea Party (5/10)

This is covered, unlike the one at Disneyland. If you try, you can really make yourself dizzy. This can be a good or bad thing, depending on your point of view.

Alien Encounter (5/10)

The hype made this out to be extremely scary and realistic. Well, it was kinda fun, but not at all as good as we expected.

Timekeeper (4/10)

Good circle vision movie, with some robots and plot added to make it more interesting.

Buzz Lightyear (4/10)

The visuals are really nice, with all the paint glowing in the blacklight, but the ride is lame. The guns hardly seem to work at all. They are trying to tie together video games and rides, but they need to take some advice from video game designers. There's needs to be feedback when you hit a target - there's no sound or anything!

People Mover/TTA (4/10)

A nice relaxing ride, but unfortunately they removed the narration, the one that went "we're just cruising along at 10 miles per hour.." Hearing about the technical aspects of the ride used to be the best part. But at least it's not Rocket Rods!

WDW Railroad (4/10)

Good for getting around, if your feet need a rest. There's also some neat stuff to see.

Snow White (4/10)

Whee. Kinda neat. Nice visuals.

Swiss Family Treehouse (4/10)

Cool gadgets. Little boys love this. At least, I did when I was a little boy.

Cinderella's Carousel (3/10)

This gets 3 because it's an antique. This is a 25 year old's perspective, remember?

Country Bear Jamboree (3/10)

Singing bears. Not bad if you need a rest.

Dumbo (2/10)

This used to be my favorite ride, when I was 3!

It's a Small World (1/10)

Ehh. Little kids LOVE this one. The one at Disneyland is much more impressive, especially at night.

Winnie the Pooh (?/10)

We didn't get to go on this new ride, because the line was huge and I'm not waiting that long for Pooh. From what I've heard, I'm sure it's worth seeing. Mr. Toad was a good ride, but as long as they keep the one at Disneyland, I'll be happy.

**** EPCOT (5/10)

Epcot has the most wonderful futuristic architecture I've ever seen. This park used to be my favorite, but it has really gone downhill. Sadly, they closed or changed many of the cool rides (Horizons, Imagination, World of Motion). It seems like this park is mostly just a huge shopping mall now.

8 attractions worth seeing. (There may be more now that were closed before)

Illuminations (8/10)

Very impressive laser and fireworks show. It's best if you have a view of Spaceship Earth, but that means you're at the end of a long line of people trying to leave when it's over.

Spaceship Earth (6/10)

A good slow ride, this ride is really showing its age, creaking constantly, and Jeremy Irons' narration is dull - Walter Cronkite was much better. This used to be one of my favorites, they need to fix it up!

Test Track (6/10)

This is a good ride, but certainly not worth all the hype surrounding its opening. It is mostly slow, but has a couple brief fast parts. The problem with this ride is it involves going fast in a car, which is not exactly a novelty.. most people had to do to get to Epcot in the first place. World of Motion, which this replaced, would have gotten a higher rating.

Honey I Shrunk the Audience (5/10)

Good 3D movie with surprise effects.

Living with the Land (5/10)

This is an interesting boat ride that shows some interesting and innovative growing techniques. More fun than it sounds! They show plants growing with no soil, it's cool if you're into technology type stuff.

Norway - Maelstrom (5/10)

A decent boat ride with nice theming, but they make you wait in a line to leave, AFTER you get off the ride! And that's not very nice.

The Living Seas (4/10)

They have the world's biggest salt water aquarium, but other than looking at fish, there's not much to do here. There's a brief ride, but it's kind of pointless.

Body Wars (4/10)

A flat-screen motion simulator ride (the panoramic motion simulators are much better) with an interesting theme of being in a microscopic ship inside someone's body.

Ellen's Energy Adventure (3/10)

It starts out funny, but goes on forever and gets pretty dull. Energy never was the most exciting ride, with or without Ellen.

**** DISNEY/MGM STUDIOS (7/10)

This park has a 50's movie theme. A good theme, but not the greatest. Some of the rides and shows here are the best anywhere.

10 attractions worth seeing.

Tower of Terror (9/10)

My favorite ride at WDW! I just wish there was more ride to it before they drop you, and they could make better use of suspense. But great theming! The hallway is one of the coolest effects I've ever seen.

Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular (9/10)

Awesome live show. Fire, explosions, people falling, Harrison Ford lookalikes, big rocks, what else do you want? Airplanes and guns? Sure!

Fantasmic (9/10)

Well, this is just really, really umm, fantastic. The water screens are incredible.

Rock n' Rollercoaster starring Aerosmith (8/10)

A very good ride, the acceleration at the beginning rocks! (pun intended) But every time I got off, I had a headache! I feel fine on other mega coasters... Indoor coasters are cool because they can run when it's raining, but why does Disney always make them dark? Darkness is fun, but so is variety. I'd like to see what cool indoor effects they could come up with instead of just blackness. Countdown to Extinction really suffers from this.

50's Prime Time Cafe (7/10)

Yes, this is a restaurant, but it's really fun! It's themed to a family reunion, Mom makes the food, and they treat everyone like cousins. The people at the next table are "your cousins from New York.."

Muppetvision 3D (6/10)

Very funny 3D movie with surprise effects. The best of the 3D movies in my opinion.

The Great Movie Ride (5/10)

An interesting mix of cool and dull scenes. There's some live actors and fire, otherwise it wouldn't be that great.

Backlot Tour (5/10)

Catastrophe Canyon is always cool, but the quality of this ride depends on whether you get a good guide. This last time, our guide sounded like she was in a big hurry, or practicing to be an auctioneer - "ontherightyouseethecostumecenterwherewemakemagice veryday".

Star Tours (4/10)

A flat-screen motion simulator ride (the panoramic motion simulators are much better) with a star wars theme. A lot of people like this one, but the flat screen just doesn't do it for me.

Sounds Dangerous starring Drew Carey (4/10)

Very little video, mostly audio in pitch black darkness. Funny story, great sound effects. Those are some nice headphones. Mine were sticky

**** ANIMAL KINGDOM (5/10)

This park has pretty nice jungle themeing, but I was pretty disappointed with this new park.. there's just not much here. There are only 3 rides, and none of them are fantastic. But on the other hand, it's the most entertaining zoo I've seen.

7 attractions worth seeing.

Kilimanjaro Safaris (7/10)

The closeness to the animals is neat, but the imaginary "poaching" script is lame. I don't object to throwing some fantasy into the ride, but it could be more interesting. Also, and this is true about a lot of the rides, if you had a good guide and want to let him know you liked him, it's not easy to do. Rides are more fun when the people can interact more with the guide, like on Jungle Cruise.

Countdown to Extinction (6/10)

After seeing Indiana Jones at Disneyland, I was looking forward to this one, but it was a real disappointment. For a hybrid motion simulator to work (fool the senses) you have to be able to see! It doesn't work very well in complete darkness!

Kali River Rapids (5/10)

A good ride, but WAY too short, a longer journey would make this a good ride. It's not worth being completely soaked for the rest of the day for a 2 minute ride!

It's Tough to Be a Bug (5/10)

Cool 3D movie under the Tree of Life (unless you are afraid of bugs), with surprise effects.

The Tree of Life (4/10)

More like a huge sculpture than anything else, it's cool to walk around this in the maze of its roots and see animal exhibits.

Pangani Forest (4/10)

African animals, including gorillas and underwater hippos.

Maharajah Jungle Trek (4/10)

Asian animals, including bats, komodo dragons, and sleeping tigers.

**** UNIVERSAL STUDIOS FLORIDA (3/10)

The theme, if there is one, is a city. Not very exciting. The rides were mostly dull, and had inaccurate wait times posted, like the sign says 10 minutes but it's actually 40. You have to walk forever to get into the park, and the people here aren't as friendly as the Disney parks.

5 attractions worth seeing.

Terminator 2 - 3D(?/10)

I really wanted to see this, but the lines were huge and we missed it. This is supposed to be really good, so I'm sure it's definitely worth seeing.

Back to the Future (7/10)

The BEST motion simulator I've ever been on! The movie could use work though, and I don't appreciate being called butthead at the end, but other than that, it's great!

Twister (5/10)

The narrator (star of the movie Twister) is monotone, and sounds really incredibly bored, but the actual show is good. The tornado isn't very big, but the effects make you think you're going to die, which is nice. The preshow shows a little girl watching her father get killed by a tornado. This definitely isn't Disney.

Earthquake (4/10)

This is interesting from a technological/engineering aspect, but when you can see all the cables and machinery working, it's hard to get pulled in to the scene. Still, pretty neat to see.

ET Adventure (4/10)

A 5 minute wait was posted, but what they don't tell you is after the preshow movie, there's a 30 minute line inside. The queue is a really beautiful looking forest, but unfortunately the ride turned out to be cheesy.

Kongfrontation (3/10)

This depends a lot on your guide, and the guide we had was the absolute WORST I have ever seen. He wasn't overacting or underacting, but he certainly wasn't acting like a human being. It comes from doing it 50 times a day I'm sure. Not good at all. This would probably be worth it with a good guide. I'm assuming so, because with our guide I would give this a 1/10.

**** UNIVERSAL ISLANDS OF ADVENTURE (7/10)

There are 6 different styles of architecture here in different "islands", and it is done very well, just like the Magic Kingdom. Coincidence? There are a lot of fast, fun rides here, but you have to walk forever to get into the park, and the people here aren't as friendly as the Disney parks.

At least 8 attractions worth seeing.

Incredible Hulk (9/10)

Very cool mega coaster with a great queue. Rockin' bass music. I hope you like going down very fast.

Dueling Dragons (9/10)

Really cool double inverted coasters, with excellent medieval queue. The line was really short compared to the rest of the park, at 10 minutes. To get in the front row was an extra 30 minute wait! We didn't do that.

Jurassic Park River Adventure (6/10)

This ride looks really impressive from the spot where the huge splash is, but it's not quite as fun as it looks.

Spiderman (?/10)

I really wanted to see this, but the lines were huge and we missed it. I hear it's awesome.

Dr. Doom's Fearfall (?/10)

Didn't ride.

Dudley Do-Right's Ripsaw Falls (?/10)

This looks REALLY fun, but we didn't get to ride it. Lines were huge.

Popeye & Bluto's Bilge-Rat Barges (?/10)

Didn't ride.

The Cat in the Hat (?/10)

This sounds cool too, but didn't have time to ride it.. next time!

Adam Pedersen

adam@adeptsoftware.com

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