gavinshearer.com

« Off To Orlando | Main | Day Two: Blizzard Beach Birthday »

January 4, 2006

Day One: My Tomorrowland Can Beat Up Your Tomorrowland

Richard and I arrived in Orlando around 5, and, after much fooling around with shuttles, buses, and the lines, lines, lines to get checked in to the hotel, we dropped our crap on the floor of the room and hoofed it over to Magic Kingdom.

We got to the park 'round 8:30, with a parade going full-blast down Main Street. Fireworks were scheduled for 9; the park closed at 10. We looked at one another and said, "Tomorrowland."

And thus began the fun task of threading through throngs of slow-moving tourists, each of whom had a 50% chance of stopping, pointing, and going, "ooooh, look!" as some parade float went by. At which point they'd stop. Grr.

We made it through in one piece.

Tomorrowland was busy, but not packed; the parade n' fireworks were siphoning off large numbers of people. So we hit Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, Space Mountain, and the Tomorrowland Transit Authority. And then, with just minutes to spare before closing, we slid in under the wire at The Haunted Mansion.

With my recent Disneyland trips so fresh in memory, I was struck by a lot of the differences between the Magic Kingdom's Tomorrowland and the Real Thing back in Anaheim. Without being too blunt, lemme just say: Anaheim is better. Period, full stop, end of argument.

The California version of Buzz Lightyear, for example, is a markedly better ride. The ray guns you use are on flexible tubes, letting you point them every which way; in Orlando, they're firmly welded to the dashboard of your vehicle (making for a semi-frustrating experience). In Orlando, when you shoot a bad guy, the target doesn't light up to let you know you've scored. When you leave Orlando's version, you're not even given a freebie, e-mail-able photo of yourself and your friend, with your score embedded. Instead, you have to buy a score-free old-school picture. Bleh. (And the ride is dirtier, grungier - that sounds like a nit, but it's not.)

And then there's Space Mountain.

The Anaheim Space Mountain is a brand-spanking-new, modern coaster with kick-ass effects and music that's synchronized to the ride. The Orlando Space Mountain is a 35-year-old roller coaster in the dark. There's no comparison between the two. At all. Anaheim makes Orlando look old n' busted. Disney really ought to rebuild the Orlando version as soon as possible. We're talking potential brand damage, here, people.

One thing for Orlando, though, is the Tomorrowland Transit Authority. The Disneyland version, the PeopleMover, was discontinued back in the '90s and replaced, eventually, with the RocketRods, which broke down too often and were themselves shuttered. As a result, Orlando has a cool, five-minute arial tour of Tomorrowland (and you get to go through Space Mountain, which rocks); Anaheim has, uh, defunct track. Yeah. Point goes to Orlando.

So we're here, and we're in one piece, and we're having a ball.

But don't let anybody fool you: the Tomorrowland you want is the Tomorrowland in California. Seriously.

(Oh, and my Flickr photostream can be found here.)

Posted by Gavin Shearer at January 4, 2006 3:25 PM. Posted to Disney | Travel.

Comments

Posted by: Rod Shearer at January 4, 2006 4:29 PM

Posted by: marnie at January 4, 2006 8:03 PM

Post a comment

« Off To Orlando | Main | Day Two: Blizzard Beach Birthday »