This is a guest post on what it was like at Walt Disney World for the “One More Disney Day.” Thank you Kelly Anderson for the post and sending you a HUGE apology for not posting it on Babes In Disneyland sooner!
My husband and I saw the first commercial advertizing “One More Disney Day” at the beginning of January while visiting family. I instantly decided we would go. What other chance would we have to spend 24 hours in a Disney park? Granted, I would have much preferred to stick it out in “the original,” but since we live in Key West and had limited funds after our Christmas trip, our trek would be to the Magic Kingdom by default. It was a bonus that my hubby would be celebrating his birthday on the 27th, so we had our plan. Fast forward almost 2 months, and we prepared for our 24 hour adventure.
I should preface this whole thing by saying I am the farthest thing from a morning person there is. If I am expected to be out of bed before 8am, there should better be a large coffee nearby. That being said, I was bright-eyed and bushy tailed by 5:15 (bottled Frappuccinos were stashed in the hotel), excitedly attempting to drag my other half out of bed with cries of, “Come onnnn, we’re gonna be late!” I was dead-set on making the opening ceremony (I’ve only seen it once or twice before due to the non-morning person thing).
We caught the parking lot tram at 5:50. I knew we weren’t going to make it. For those of you who haven’t been to the Magic Kingdom, the parking lot is over a mile away from the actual park. You have to catch a tram to the Transportation and Ticketing Center, and from there you take a monorail to the main gate. I was right. As the monorail pulled up, we could see the crowds surging through Main Street – we had missed it by mere minutes. However, there were still lights, cameras, and lots of action set up in front of the train station. We snapped the required pictures (one at a time) in front of the Mickey flowers and “One More Disney Day” banner, and headed straight for the Emporium to buy our uniforms of the day. We were disappointed to discover there were no Leap Day pins (!!), and we also missed the memo about the special ears for Annual Passholders, so our t-shirts and buttons were our only take-home prizes. On the bright side, the shirts glow in the dark!Armed with merchandise and fresh caffeine buzzes, we exited the Emporium to face a long line leading into the fire house. A few questions to the cast members nearby revealed that this was the line to begin the new Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom game. Score! (A brief side note: we normally don’t spend much time in the Magic Kingdom on WDW trips, mainly because we end up doing everything very quickly and then missing the Disneyland rides that are not there. Ergo, we had not heard about this new game until Leap Day.) Now we had something to keep us busy for the next 24 hours. We collected our maps, keys, and 5 spell cards for the day, and set off to play for the next several hours.
Here’s a basic run-down of the game. You are a sorcerer who must help save the Magic Kingdom from Hades, who has enlisted the help of 8 other villains to collect pieces of a magical crystal which will give him the power to take over. To do so, you must find magical portals throughout the park where Merlin and other Disney good guys help you fight one villain at a time. Portals are unlocked with your key card, which has an RFID chip to track your progress and save your game (yes, that means you can pick up where you left off on your next trip). You are given 5 spell cards each day you play in the park, and you can trade and collect those cards to help you in your quests. There are currently 70 cards, with rumors of up to 200 by summer. You can combine cards to make your spells more powerful. So, for example, you can combine Aurora and Prince Phillip (Prince/Princess), Simba and Pumbaa (same movie), or Cinderella and Snow White (both princesses). There are thousands of combinations, you can use more than 2 (or 3 or 4) cards, and you don’t even have to follow the “matching” rule. If you do, though, your spells are more powerful.
Once we started learning and trading, we had a blast hunting for portals and battling the villains. Most of our day looked like this (sorry for the dark picture, I didn’t think to take a picture of the actual lines until about 11pm):That’s right, there were lines all over the park which appeared to consist of a half dozen or more people eagerly staring at a wall. Curious onlookers asked, “What are you doing?” at least twice at each portal, and then stayed to watch once we explained the game. (We had our speech down pat by the 4th portal.)
We only stopped playing the game when we had to eat, change clothes, and attend the flag ceremony. Why the flag ceremony? Well, during our hunt for a Main Street portal, we stopped to chat with a Cast Member who informed us that he was in charge of picking the Veteran of the Day. My husband is in the Navy, so he was given the honor of participating in the flag ceremony. We decided to take our first break and head to the parking lot so he could change from his Leap Day shirt into his uniform. It was a good move, because we didn’t know at the time that he (and I) would be paraded up Main Street, holding the flag. Our day couldn’t have been more magical. After such a great honor, what were we supposed to do for the rest of the night? That’s right, play more Sorcerer! (We might have a problem here…) I managed to defeat Hades and level up to medium, which earned me 5 more cards (yay!) and a more difficult game to occupy my time. My hubby, who had just followed me for a few rounds without playing, continued his own game, and around 11 at night, we realized we should probably take another break before the 6am push.
After following the crowd’s influence and changing into our “official” shirts and sleep pants, we returned from the parking lot and hit the Main Street Bakery for a midnight snack and some much-needed caffeine. For the first time all day, the idea of standing in portal lines wasn’t all that appealing, so we made our way to Tomorrowland with the intent to ride Space Mountain and wake up a bit. That idea changed once we saw the Carousel of Progress and our feet reminded us that we had been standing up for the last 18 hours. A 20 minute Feeling somewhat refreshed, we caught our second wind and headed to Pioneer Square for some breakfast and prime viewing of the dance party going on in Main Street. After such an eventful day, we realized it was 5:30am. We began to hear families all around us cheering each other on – just 30 more minutes! The Main Street dance party came to an official close, and the fourth showing of “The Magic, the Memories, and You” projected on the castle.
At the 10-minute mark, we headed down Main Street and gathered around the flag pole, facing the castle. This was apparently everyone else’s idea, too. I started to think there might be a countdown to 6 o’clock, New Year’s Eve style, but there wasn’t. Still, 6am came, and amidst the twinkling lights of Main Street and the colored glow of the castle, cheers of “We did it!” could be heard. Suddenly there were dozens of cameras aimed at the clock over City Hall. I would have joined them, but by then, both of our phones were completely dead, and my good camera had been stashed in the car.
Our night/morning/day ended with a ferry ride back to the parking lot, watching the sunrise over the water. As exhausted as I was (and as much as my feet hurt), I was so happy to be seeing my second sunrise on Disney property. Its natural beauty was the perfect ending to our “one more” magical day.
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