Popped into the Magic Kingdom for a late afternoon stroll and was surprised to see how much work has progressed in the last two weeks. Not only has the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train coaster gone vertical, but lots of little details have been added to the already detail rich Storybook Circus area. Let’s go see, shall we:
Here’s some of the vertical infrastructure going up for the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. Note how tall it is and there isn’t even a show building yet.
Here’s another show showing how tall the show building will be. Much of the view of New Fantasyland we’re used to will be blocked by the mine train ride.
Colorful entrance has a ticket book, since this is supposed to be part of a circus midway. Beautiful detail work and I love the hidden history carrying over the socks and pants from the old attraction.
Yes, That’s the full attraction name – The Barnstormer Featuring Goofy as The Great Goofini. Can someone check and see if that is the longest attraction name and can someone tell me what was wrong with Goofy’s Barnstormer. Which conveyed basically the same thing, and actually had a barn.
I’m actually quite happy with the upgrade, quibbles about the circus theme aside. However, I realized I posted an update to Storybook Circus about new posters in the land, but I had neglected to link to the original posters, which can be found in and around the Barnstormer queue. So let’s fix that right now.
I love these posters located around in in the queue. The Monkey is on all the posters. Apparently he does not have a name, so let’s have it fan community. What do we call the monkey?
It’s another great themepark day in Orlando. Today we’re starting at the Magic Kingdom then heading over to EPCOT for some Flower Power. First stop was Storybook Circus, of course. They’ve added more posters to red walls. All the ones on Goofini plus these. And… Read More »New Posters at Storybook Circus
Jeff and Denise from MouseSteps, two of the nicest people you’ll meet at Walt Disney World, take you on a narrated trip through the newly opened Storybook Circus. Along the way they point out a lot of the details and take you on board both… Read More »Video Tour of New Storybook Circus
With Storybook Circus soft opening this week, it was a great time to get some unique shots of the New Fantasyland expansion construction. I didn’t get everything this trip, but there’s still a lot to see, so let’s get started:
A great view from the top of the new Dumbo spinner. Obviously, there’s a lot of work to do on the other side.
Zooming in a little bit, you see some of the support walls for the mountain that will presumably house the Seven Dwarves Mine Train roller coaster.
A little night work going on atop the high wall on the right of the picture above.
A little tilt-shift fun. It’s really beautiful at night.
I’ve already posted my general overview of the soft-opened Storybook Circus area of New Fantasyland, but Disney is in the details and Storybook Circus has a lot of them. To capture more of that magic, I want to loop back and go into more depth with each attraction starting with Dumbo The Flying Elephant. So here’s another photo update of the newly re-imagineered classic.
The area isn’t even finished, but it already looks beautiful at night.
A new poster lays out current and future attractions, stores, and dining coming to Storybook Circus. I love that Humphrey the Bear is there. I wonder if he’s replaced The Three Little Pigs who were featured on previous posters.
Took a few days of vacation last week, but returned just in time for the Magic Kingdom to do a soft opening of the first small portion of the New Fantasyland expansion on Tuesday. Storybook Circus opened half of the relocated Dumbo – The Flying Elephant. The Barnstormer returned with its new Great Goofini theme, and the Fantasyland Train Station returned with new restrooms and a tribute to Walt’s past.
This portion of Storybook Circus was not supposed to open until March 24th or so. But hotel occupancy forecasts that revised the Spring Break crowd expectations upwards forced Disney to race ahead and open the attractions 12 days early. I must say that every cast member was up to the task and very helpful. Details are obviously still being worked out in a few places, but signs of fore-thought were abundant too. All in all a great effort and result from Walt Disney World and the Magic Kingdom.
There are so many great details, I took a ton of photos and still didn’t capture but a fraction. You may have already seen a few in my post made live from the park yesterday. I’m not sure how many parts this post will have, but I know it will be more than one. So let’s get to it.
Here is a sort of overview of what I saw today, we’ll come back in and fill in the gaps in future posts.
The first sign guests got that today would be different, was a new guidemap with an old image of Dumbo on the cover.
Inside, the map reflects the soft opened area of the New Fantasyland expansion. They even show only one side of Dumbo being open. However, #35 has a caveat.
With spring break crowds already in town, the Magic Kingdom put the rush on to open at least part of Storybook Circus to help alleviate the crush. Here are some of the first photos to hit the net. More later!
