Readers rides small world soft opening

Reader Bill send in this report (with pictures) from his trip along the newly refurbished ‘it’s a small world’ attraction at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom. He was able to ride it on the first day it opened to the public.

It’s a Small World opened up today @ 3:00pm.  We rode it around 10:30pm-ish.

The ride still stunk of fresh paint at the time.  The crew was very friendly and quickly realizing we were regulars, admitted the ride had been up and down all day with difficulties…not uncommon for a new ride of course.  The boats are new and are unlike the old ones as well as the Pirates boats.  They appear to be a type of plastic and also include roller wheels on the sides that play bumpers with guide rails. I don’t remember this being present on the old version.

The main loading area has busy decorations, just as you’d expect from the ride.  The only thing I really didn’t like was the textured finish on many of the surfaces.  It seemed reminiscent of a Home Depot do-it-yourself kit.  Outside of that, it was clever and attention grabbing enough to keep you occupied in the line, which was rather short this evening.

Inside the ride looked well refreshed.  Nothing you really wouldn’t expect.  There were a couple of anamatronic pieces that were either broken or seemingly out of sync.  Also, one thing my friend noticed
that I did not, in 1 part there is a boy surfing and appears to be wearing a Lance Armstrong "LiveStrong" bracelet.  Pretty cool in my opinion.

Thanks Bill!

As you can see from the photos the load/unload area has been redone to look more like the classic ‘Mary Blair’ verion at Disneyland. Even down the smiling clockface and the trumpteers on the quarter of the hour.

If anyone else rides it I’d love to hear your opinion in the comments.