Disney’s Magic Kingdom

Back in October I went to Florida for two weeks and when I was there I went to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party at Walt Disney World. The party is hosted at Magic Kingdom, and on that day I spent most of the day in that park, checking out all of the rides and the character meet and greets.

To ensure I did all of the rides before the party, I went in the park around lunchtime. Fastpass wasn’t available at the party so if you wanted to use the system, you had to make your Fastpass reservations in the daytime. Walt Disney World is the only Disney park in the world that uses the brand new Fastpass + system. I have a lot of issues with it which I won’t go into in this post, but I definitely will in another one.

As it was Halloween, Magic Kingdom was decorated for the occasion with a lot of pumpkins around the park.

Magic Kingdom is the first park that opened in Disney World and features many of the classic Disney rides such as The Haunted Mansion, Dumbo and Pirates Of The Caribbean. There are also a good number of meet and greets if you love meeting Disney characters. Magic Kingdom also features Mickey Mouse in Town Square Theater. He even talks to you too which is amazing. The technology is superb and when I first met talking Mickey a few years ago I couldn’t believe it.

Cinderella Castle

In Storybook Circus, I met Daisy, Minnie, Goofy and Donald in Pete’s Silly Sideshow. The wait times weren’t that long and they were definitely shorter than the advertised wait time. Daisy is my favorite Disney character and she doesn’t come out in many places, so it was great to see her here.

Other characters you can meet in the park include Buzz Lightyear, Alice In Wonderland, Ariel, Aladdin, Gaston, Pluto, Cinderella, Merida, Peter Pan, Rapunzel and Tiana, Winnie The Pooh characters, plus more.

Gaston’s statue of himself

If character dining is your thing you can meet Cinderella at her restaurant in the castle – Cinderella’s Royal Table. It’s open for breakfast, lunch and dinner and is a very popular restaurant so reservations are a must. It’s also one of the hardest restaurants in Disney to get a table at. If you do really want to meet Cinderella at a character meal, I recommend dinner at 1900 Park Fare in Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort. Not only is it a lot easier to get reservations for, it’s also a lot cheaper too. Cinderella’s Royal Table is a signature restaurant and will take 2 dining credits off your Disney Dining Plan. 1900 will only take one.

The Be Our Guest restaurant is also very popular and is themed on Beauty And The Beast. In the day it’s a quick service restaurant and at night it changes to a full service one.

The rides I went on were The Barnstormer, Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, The Haunted Mansion, Mickey’s Philharmagic and Dumbo. I really wanted to go on Space Mountain but there weren’t any fast passes available, and this wasn’t even late in the day that I tried getting one. In fact there wasn’t many fast passes left for many of the rides.

I also went to see the Country Bear Jamboree. It’s a show featuring singing bears. It’s really fun to watch and I thought the bit at the end where one bear sings over the other one hilarious. It’s actually one of the last attractions that Walt Disney personally helped to develop.

Magic Kingdom is open from 9am – 8pm. If you stay in a Disney Resort you can get extra magic hours which basically give you entry 1 hour earlier before the park opens to the public or an extra hour after closing.

You can check out Magic Kingdom at the Disney site for full details of attractions and opening times.