Staying at the Disney World resort gives you an extra hours at the park every day.

So what does this mean to you and the family.

Well  it means that you have extra hours to spend in the theme park every day for an hour earlier in the mornings or you can spend up to an extra three hours after the parks are closed to the public. So you can see how great this is for  for guest staying in the Disney resort.

It means that you and the family  have time to explore the parks at a leisurely pace.

To get this advantage make sure you purchase the Park Hopper so that you can go from one park to the other on the same day. A basic ticket  only visit allows you to visit one theme park so  you can see the advantage of purchasing the Park Hopper.

Just remember that you need to have a Resort I.D to take advantage of Extra Magic Hours at the Water Parks.
To help you plan your trip to Disney World here are the early hours for November 2009.

Disney World Extra Magic Hours November 2009

Morning Extra Magic Hours

Magic Kingdom – 5, 12, 19, 26
Epcot – 3, 10, 17, 24
Disney’s Hollywood Studios – 7, 14, 21, 28
Animal Kingdom – 2, 9, 16, 23, 30

Evening Extra Magic Hours

Magic Kingdom – 2, 8, 16, 22, 30
Epcot – 4, 13, 20, 27
Disney’s Hollywood Studios – 1, 9, 15, 23, 29
Animal Kingdom – 6, 11, 18, 25

Disney World undertakes routine maintenance and upgrades to freshen up the park and rides. The off season is the time when a number of Walt Disney World attractions get a spruce up.

Only recently the big Mickey Mouse hat at Disney’s Hollywood Studios was given an extensive make over and the Hall of Presidents at Magic Kingdom is closed temporarily to allow for President Obama to be added.

And now one of my very favorite rides is to be shut down so that it can be refurbished. The ride opened on January 15th 1975 and now after 34 years the ride is to be made better than ever, if that is at all possible. The refurbishment will take a number of months so if you want to make it over to Disney World to experience or just take a final ride on Space Mountain, then do so by April 17th 2009 before the ride closes. It will be closed through summer and probably won’t reopen until very late in 2009, an exact reopening date has not been decided on yet.

As I have said in many posts, Space Mountain is one of my favorite rides with its series of sharp twists, turns and drops all undertaken in the dark. So although you know there will be a drop coming up, you can’t see it before hand and so the plunge is all the more exhilarating and you just never know what is coming up next.
There is going to be a new track installed, an new enclosure for the queuing area and a new interior ceiling. Thankfully the ride will retain the classic round shape.

There is a Space Mountain located in each of the five Disney parks around the world, and although the facade of the attraction maintains the famous white dome, each each ride is vastly different.

So do yourself a favor and hop on over to Disney World for one last fling on Space Mountain.

Unfortunately we were so busy enjoying ourselves we quite forgot to take a photo of Space Mountain. So the one shown is just a random photo taken at Disney World

On Wednesday 9th April, we arrived in Anaheim from Vancouver for the final leg of our holiday. We have been away from Australia since 20 February and have managed to fit in so many great sights and visits and now we are at Disneyland.  This is a smaller theme park than the Disney World theme park in Orlando and as we have 5 days here we intend to take advantage of the time to fit in as much as possible.

There is a special on Theme Park passes and we are able to purchase a 5 day pass for $174.00, which is usually the price of a 3 day pass.  We brought the passes at the Holiday Inn & Suites reception area which was really convenient.

There are two theme parks – Disneyland and California. We have decided to start at Disneyland, so after going through the bag check and picking up a map at the entrance gates we take a moment to plan what we are going to do.

Okay we’re off maneuvering skillfully through the crowd towards Space Mountain to pick up a Fastpass. After getting the ticket we realize that we have made a boo-boo. We can’t get on the ride until 3:10pm which effectively stops us from getting another fastpass until that time.

Oh well not to worry, it just means we will have to queue for the other rides. So we head to Frontierland and the first ride is the ‘Matterhorn Bobsleds’.  This ride is okay, lots of twists and turns but lacks any of the drops that would make it spectacular. More a ride for kids moving up in the scare scale before tackling the more advanced rides.

Okay, next comes the ‘Big Thunder Railroad’. This is better, definitely has a scream factor. This is followed by ‘Splash Mountain’ which is a favorite and is situated in Critter Country. We went on the similar ride a number of times in Disneyworld last year and it is well worth the hour wait even though Paula complained continuously. This ride has a couple of teasers where you are pulled up a hill and expect a long drop only to continue gently down the waterway, there are a couple of turns and some splashing of water. Then you continue through a twisting waterway where animated characters sing and send you on your way to a 50 foot drop which is the really exciting part. Lots of laughter and screaming and we are at the bottom of the drop. An excellent ride.

Then it’s a cruise around the ‘Rivers of America’ on the Mark Twain Riverboat. The boat takes you around Tom Sawyer’s Island where there are all sorts of things to do including a pirate show. We spot Captain Jack  from’Pirates of the Caribbean’  not Johnny Depp unfortunately), swaggering around entertaining the crowd on the island.

We have lunch at the River Belle Terrace and order roast beef sandwiches which are enormous and so they should be for $12:95 each. I had ordered smaller portions at $:95 each but the serving staff didn’t feel that would be enough for us and gave us the larger serving.  The sandwich came with a side salad and was very tasty and filling.

Deciding not to take another turbulent ride after having just eaten we head to ‘Tomorrow Land’ to see the ‘Honey I shrunk the Kids’ 3D show followed by ‘Star Tours’ where you take an animated 3D ride with R2D2 into space and around the Death Star from Star Wars.

At last it is time to head off to ‘Space Mountain’ and as we have the fastpass we are able to walk past all the people waiting in the regular queue, to the head of the line.  This ride is amazing. You are on a very large roller coaster with lots of drops, twists and turns and the whole thing takes place in total darkness so you are unable to anticipate when the drops will come.  Awesome.

As we are here for 5 days we decide to take it easy and not try to do everything in day 1 as we usually do.

So we head off back to the hotel. Even though we have taken it relatively easy we have still managed to cover everything except Mickey’s Toontown.

But before we do leave we come into Main St where crowds have gathered to watch the ‘Walt disney’s Parade of Dreams’ which is led out by Tinkerbell.

This parade makes it’s way from “It’s a Small World’ to Main St every day at 3:30pm and  back from Main St to ‘It’s a Small World nightly at 6:30pm.

Be sure to keep hydrated by drinking plenty of water in the warm weather and wear comfortable shoes.

As this was our last day at Disney we wanted to make the most of it so after seeing everything we needed to see at Epcot we headed over to MGM Studios. We took the shuttle boat from Epcot and landed at MGM Studios about 20 minutes later.

Once at MGM we headed straight for the The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror as we never got around to this ride on our first visit a couple of days before. We used our Disney Vacations fastpass card and got onto the ride within minutes.

This would have to be one of the best rides in all of the Disney parks if you like that sort of thing….which we do. The ride starts in an elevator. You are actually seated inside the elevator and then taken up to various floors where the doors are opened and you see some spooky looking figures swarming around. The doors close and you keep going up further and then suddenly, without warning, you drop a few floors! You can’t help screaming when this happens. You go up again and then drop again. This happens 7 times and it is always random so when you take the ride a second time (which we did) then you experience a different sequence of drops.

As we had run out of time this was all we did at MGM on this night so we went out to the shuttle buses to make our way back to Epcot.

As it was almost 9pm, we headed off to try and get a good viewing area for the nightly fireworks. It was already packed with people and although we managed to get up close we were behind a dock so we didn’t really end up with a very good view at all. Even so, the fireworks were fantastic. I would think a better place to view them would be over at the World stage area rather than at the entrance side of the park. Someone else might have some better suggestions.

Once the fireworks were over we headed out with the thousands of others to our respective forms of transport. We had parked the car in the huge car park that morning and fortunately we remembered that we were parked under the monorail track so we didn’t have too much trouble finding it.

Wanda seemed to be getting used to driving on the other side of the ride by this time but that didn’t stop us from getting lost as we tried to make our way back to our hotel. Somehow we ended up at Animal Kingdom and then kept going round in circles but eventually we made it.

Once we got back to the hotel we packed our bags as we were leaving the next day to head back to New York. This was no mean feat as the bags we brought with us were essentially not much bigger than an overnight bag and we had bought lots of souvenirs and various other things during our stay.

Next stop – New York.