January 27
Four Parks, One Day! (continued)
I decided to use my Fastpass on Big Thunder Mountain, and headed through Frontierland accordingly. Because my stomach is basically a bottomless pit, I snagged some delicious garbage food on the way.
It was too cold by that time of night for me to want to ride Splash Mountain, which was just as well since it was down for maintenance.
Funny story, it was down for maintenance in January 2010 when I'd done my other four-parks-one-day adventure.
Big Thunder was bustling, but I got in quick with that bonus fastpass.
It's always surprising to me just how much time it takes to go from place to place within the parks and to ride the attractions even when you don't have to wait stand-by. When I got off of Big Thunder it was already time to head back to Space Mountain. I showed up right at 11:00 for my 11:05 FP window; I usually follow the instructions but I knew they'd let me in five minutes ahead.
Hey random fellow rider, hope you enjoyed this photo.
I wasn't counting on doing much more after that, but figured I might as well make my way back to Adventureland and see what I could make of it since that was the one land I hadn't hit yet -- I did a lot of inefficient crisscrossing at MK, but oh well. By the time I reached Jungle River Cruise it was 11:30 and I figured any ride could be the last I made it onto.
In line I spotted a group of brand new College Program kids just starting the spring program, celebrating with a night at MK! Something one of them said caught my attention first, and then I saw that they were all wearing College Program t-shirts. They were all very engaged with each other and I didn't want to interrupt and interject myself when I was so tired and knew I'd probably be an incoherent conversationalist, but perhaps I should have said hello. I do usually like to strike up conversation when I notice a CM is wearing a name tag with a college instead of a hometown since I know what we have in common. Lucky kids. By now they'll have gone home, probably even the ones who extended through summer. I hope they all had great programs.
As always, the Jungle River Cruise was a good choice. I never get tired of it. The boat wasn't even crowded or anything; I think people had finally started to leave the park (at least, those who weren't waiting in hour-long lines for roller coasters...).
Pirates of the Caribbean had been closed for technical issues when I passed by it, but I went back up that way after JRC just in case and -- yes!
I got in line at 11:51, and this one really was the last ride of the night. I still love it even after riding the full length version at Disneyland; call me a blasphemous heathen but I don't think we're missing all that much by not having the long cave segment at the start. I know that's not all that's missing, but the fact that the Disneyland version is nearly double the length is not entirely down to it having a lot more actual story content.