Thursday December 1, 2005

What to Do?

After dinner I think much of the group was going to hang around the restaurant a bit longer and then head over to the rose garden a bit early for the big fireworks meet that seems to have become a Mousefest tradition. Since this was our only night in the Magic Kingdom I wanted to do a few other things, so I met up with Carlene and we headed off, since it was actually in between park closing and re-opening for the actual advertised party time they were letting the folks who had tickets to the party stay in the park, but we had to go to Liberty Square until they could clear some of the other areas since Carlene had spent much of the time I was at dinner hanging out in Liberty Square, and since she knew I liked to know about unusual details in the parks she took me to a place where you could see some pipes in through a second story window (I think this is near the Slpeepy Hollow snacks place.)

Above: This unused snack stand sits in what used to be the quiet area behind Liberty squares shops, it's less quiet now with the bridge that helps detour folks around the parade route cutting through here, but still not too crowded an area.

I knew that I wanted to see some of the special entertainment for Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party, I had really enjoyed the special entertainment we had caught on our last WDW in-park trip (our Honeymoon) when we attended the Halloween party. While we waited in the "quiet area" behind the Liberty Square shops I looked at the schedule for the party and saw that one of the earliest things listed was a performance in Tomorrowland by a group called the Lake Howell Holiday Brass, so once we got the "all clear" to leave Liberty Square (it was still a bit before 7 pm) we headed that way and along the way got some photos of the night lighting in Tomorrowland.

I'm not sure quite what I was expecting, but when I saw it looked like it might be a High School Band, I decioded I might rather do something else, I wish I had stuck around a little Christmas music by a marching band might have made a really nice recording, I'm almost sure that if I hadn't been so tired I'd have been more likely to stay. Still we had a couple of things in Fantasyland that were new for us so we headed that way.

We had to make a stop at the back of Fantasyland at the restrooms for a bit and while I waited for Carlene to come back out I took some nice photos of the castle, Carousel and a little party some of the Fantasyland characters were having with the kids (called the Fantasyland Holiday Hop on the MCMVP brochure). We took this opportunity to make our first viewing \ of Mickey's Philharmagic, I enjoyed it, but I'll have to do it a few more times before I really get an idea of how it ranks, it's fun, I just don't know if it will be one of my top 5 in the Magic Kingdom. After that we headed to see It's A Small World, it had went through a major refurbrishment since we last experienced it in 2002. I really like the way It's A Small World looks and couldn't help but try to take a few pictures here.

Above and Below: it was nice to see the Disneyland inspired facade here, though it had been even nicer seeing the original a few months earlier :-).