There’s no better time to explore the Magic Kingdom than a chilly Thursday morning. Let’s see what’s new!
First off, the WDW Railroad has been closed since Monday, with December 2nd being its last day of operation for the foreseeable future. If you still want to get an up-close look at the trains, though, you can! There will be a stationary train to take pictures with at the Main Street station every day until the tracks re-open.
All the train stations have been fixed up with new signage to keep people from wandering onto the platform expecting to take a ride around the park.
Speaking of the railroad, I found these great balsa wood model kits in the Emporium. They come in a couple of different vehicle types and all having moving parts.
You know it’s a cold morning in Florida when every shop wheels out the sweatshirt rack.
There were some limited release holiday Pandora charms available at Uptown Jewelers.
They also had this cute Mickey ornament holiday purse, to match the holiday dress. It should also be available at The Dress Shop in Disney Springs.
Running out of gift ideas this season? Get this glass boot for the Cletus in your life.
New Mary Poppins merchandise has been popping up over the last few weeks in anticipation of “Mary Poppins Returns” this month. The Main Street Cinema had these cute Mary Poppins Precious Moments figures.
Pick your poison: a Mickey gift card covered in so many crystals it weighs down your wallet, or a commemorative 2008 Disney Dollar that’s been collecting dust for 10 years.
Over at the Frontierland Trading Post, we saw some new pins released today. There are four pins you can buy individually, or if you want all five from the set, they have a boxed edition.
This month’s Latte pin features Oswald! This is one of the better ones, in my opinion.
I also noticed that here, as well as almost every shop in the park, they were selling Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party merchandise first thing in the morning. They don’t seem to wait until the party starts to put it all on the shelves anymore. I didn’t ask, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d have let me buy some of it.
Small Tron construction update: in Fantasyland, they don’t let you any further than this part of the path anymore. On Monday when they closed it off to begin with, you could go to the other side of The Barnstormer.
They have also blocked the view of the soon-to-be construction area from the Speedway via this green scrim.
Stitch was looking very festive in The Merchant of Venus today. Most of the shop is Stitch merch these days.
Not sure if I’d say they have enough variety to support that theme.
They’ve even started pulling cruise line merchandise to fill the shelves.
Down the path, I noticed the Cosmic Ray’s sign was looking really rough. It’s a shame they didn’t replace this sign when they did all that work on the outdoor seating.
But in more pleasing news, the “secret menu” fries aren’t a secret anymore.
Over in Fantasyland, I found this new line of Princess baby dolls.
Look who’s back! The Liberty Belle returned to her dock about a week ago. She’s in testing mode at the moment, taking laps around the river. You can hear her new whistle from most places in the park. She should be open to guests soon.
The Cosmic Ray’s sign isn’t the only thing run down. I was there a week ago and maintenance and show as a whole seems to be of little concern.
– Multiple PeopleMover/TTA vehicles out of service with a giant orange cone sitting in the seat to indicate to the loading cast (attractive!),
– The Progress City model looks worse every year, and I doubt any of the tunnels on the PeopleMover have been cleaned in 10 years,
– Audio completely out of sync in one of the Carousel of Progress theaters,
– Fluorescent work lights left on behind the thin curtains of the final CoP theater,
– Multiple speakers out of service in the right stretching room of the Haunted Mansion leading to missed portions of the audio as the ghost host voice “moves” around,
– The “Donald crashed through the rear wall of the theater” animatronic at the end of Mickey’s Philharmagic totally missing (the curtain hiding it didn’t even open),
– I’d estimate 25% of the exterior bulbs on Narcoosee’s are burnt out which really stands out as there isn’t much else illuminated around there,
– Numerous Spaceship Earth vehicles out of service, but at least they have a custom red cover to put over the seat backs to indicate those instead of the big orange cone,
– For at least 5 days the down escalator off the monorail platform at the Contemporary was out of service and guests were directed down a cramped emergency stairwell complete with a sealed off half-sized door with a broken handle and make-shift padding on a low ceiling at one point to avoid head injuries.
I guess the thought process is “we’re building a bunch of new stuff so that will distract everyone from the rest of the place that is broken and rundown.”
Was there for the party on the 6th and was pretty happy to see Liberty Belle taking laps! Too bad we couldn’t have rode it. The park has changed so much since 2010