Keys to the Kingdom

My Official Key to the Kingdom!

Yeah, that's right, I actually got this to keep! 

I went on the Keys to the Kingdom tour today with Lindsey!

Such a blast! We learned so many awesome secrets and little tricks of the Magic Kingdom!

We started off walking down Main Street USA and watched the Trolley Parade. Something cool we learned was when Walt was buying land for the Florida project, he knew companies wouldn't sell him land for a fair price because, well, he's Walt Disney, so he made up a ton of different company names (that you can see on the windows along Main Street). Also, if you were to look into these companies, you'd see that the vice presidents of these made up companies were Steamboat Willie, and Donald Duck. We made our way down to the Hub and learned a little about the design of the Statue 'Partners.' Walt is 6 feet tall cause that is the height he thought was perfect for a man (even though in real life, he was only 5'9) and Mickey is about waist height because that's how tall he is in Fantasia when he is side by side with Yensid (the wizard).

We went into Adventureland where we all rode our own private Jungle Cruise (Lindsey was super excited about this as it is her favourite ride). We discovered that the Jungle Cruise has the world famous 'Bottom-less Hippos' and also that one of the Tribal men screams out "I LOVE DISCO!' when he attacks the boat!

We got to go backstage and see where all the floats for the parades sleep at night. We saw all the floats for the 'Celebrate a Dream Come True' parade and the 'Main Street Electrical' parade. We even saw the shed where they keep floats for special parades like the Christmas Day parade and the Halloween party parade. We also learned that on the parade floats, there aren't hidden Mickey's, but instead, Hidden Walts! So cool! Our awesome tour guide pointed them out to us! Anyone want to see the parade with me? I'll point them out for you too! I will also point out the doors! Yes, it's true, the floats are driven! But the drivers are just as Magical as the parade itself! 

Little fun fact, I got to touch the float from the 'Celebrate a Dream Come True Parade' that Mickey dances on!! 

After our lunch at the Columbia Harbour house, we all rode The Haunted Mansion. But that's old news, Lindsey and I are already very well informed about that ride, but it was still cool, and you can never ride The Haunted Mansion too many times in my opinion!

We learned why they got rid of the 'Mr. Toad's Wold Ride.' Turns out, parents prefer to take their kids on a ride where you bounce along with Tigger and Pooh, then on a ride where you are basically a drunk driving toad who gets arrested, breaks out of jail, then dies and goes to hell. Huh? Beats me?

We talked a little about Cinderella's castle, why it's exactly 189ft tall. We got to see pictures of the inside of the Cinderella Princess Suite. I want to win a night there! It's beautiful! There is no dollar value on this room, it is there for Make A Wish children, and during the Year of a Million Dreams celebration, every night, one family would be chosen to stay there. 

We went down into the Utlli-door, which is the secret underground of the Magic Kingdom! It was pretty cool. It wasn't my first time being down there though so it wasn't totally amazing, but we learned a lot about Roy Disney and how hard he worked to make Walt's dream of Walt Disney World become a reality. We learned about Walt's vision for all his movies and how he wanted the world to not only see the movie, but to smell what was going on in the movie, to feel the wind in their hair when they were flying or to feel the rain on them when it was raining in the movies. 

It was an amazing experience! I am so thrilled I got to experience it! I would do it again in a heart beat, or any other Magic Kingdom Tour! Absolutely incredible !!!!

I would like to thank our awesome tour guide, Katie! She was great! We even played a little prank on another tour guide which was fun! She was in the middle of telling her group a little bit about backstage stuff, and our group walked up and we all screamed, congratulations on your engagement!