I has been just about 15 years since my last visit to Disney World. As you probably can imagine, I don't remember much about that visit. I'm back here again with 18 other Ohio University students to study "storytelling in public attractions" (that was the name of our class). We studied contextual design, wayfinding, crowd management, imagineering, the layout of the Disney parks, and so much more over the last 15 weeks of class, and now, we get to apply what we've been learning over the past semester right here in Disney World. Bring on the food. Bring on the rides.
We all arrived sporadically yesterday at met up inside our hotel lobby at 5pm. The MCO airport makes it incredibly easy for you to find a shuttle to take you to your hotel within Disney. We're staying at the All Star Music Resort hotel (not to be confused with the All Star Sports or All Star Movie hotels). It has the main lobby building and then TEN other hotel buildings around it, all themed differently. After our initial group meeting where we sorted out logistics of money for the week, etc, we made our way back to the rooms to get ready for our private dinner in France, Epcot. It was seriously incredible. We had our own private patio area for just our group, a buffet style dinner with chicken, mashed potatoes, fruit salad, nom nom nom it was delicious. As dinner wound down, so did the daylight, and there we sat for an incredible fireworks display with all the other people who had made their way over to World Showcase that evening. It was amazing seeing all the other countries lit up. And best fireworks display I've ever seen, surely. From there we were escorted out of Epcot and back onto our bus to come back and crash at the hotel.
We had a pretty early morning this morning; our bus left at about 8:15 to take us over to Magic Kingdom where we spent the whole day. For our individual class projects, we were all required to pick an attraction to research. For the first half of the requirement we each gave a short presentation about our attractions during the semester in class. To complete the second part, we are required to basically give a mini tour to our class at the beginning of the ride each of us has selected. So basically we're required to ride rides for this class. Don't you love it? We rode seven required rides today for the seven students who had picked rides inside of Magic Kingdom, and then spent the day exploring and riding everything else.
I loved Space Mountain because it's super dark and you have no idea where your roller coaster is taking you. When I suggested we ride it again later in the day, my roommate, Becca, pulled the Disney app up on her phone to see that the ride was temporarily unavailable. We decided to ride the People Mover ride instead, which is just a slow moving rail that takes you up above Tomorrowland and winds you in, out, and through the rides. We got to this one section of the People Mover ride and noticed it seemed pretty empty and a little run down. We couldn't figure out what we were moving through since there seemed to be nothing to look at. It was then we realized we were inside Space Mountain, and since the ride was temporarily out of service, so was the People Mover part. We were supposed to be in pitch black darkness, seeing stars and galaxies, and instead we were riding around Space Mountain, finally coming up to some glass where we were able to look at every rail, contraption, and button to keep the ride working. It was definitely cool to be able to see but also a little disappointing that they mystery behind Space Mountain was gone. We already have a running joke between all of us that every time we see something "out of place," we say something along the lines of "Well that just RUINED my Disney experience." It's just because we spent so much time in this class going over how careful Disney is to make sure you feel fully immersed in the ride/theme/village/culture you're supposed to be experiencing. Anything less than that makes it seem like you're not getting the full experience. Thus, "the ruined Disney experience."
Speaking of which, here's a link to the blog that me, my classmates, and my professor are posting on every day, if you care to follow other peoples Disney adventures throughout this week too. Disney Tumblr Blog
