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Queuing Under the Sea
The first dress rehearsals of the New Fantasyland addition to the Magic Kingdom is underway. For myself, I have been very excited to see how they would do the queue for The Little Mermaid attraction. I’ve been on the ride at Disney California Adventure, but the attraction here in Florida was to set the ride up in a whole new way. I’m excited to say that the queue delivers! And the result is that the ride feels much more of a total experience as a result. The best way I can compare the two is to say that DCA’s version to the MK’s version is like the old Fantasyland at Disneyland compared to the new Fantasyland of 1984.
There are lots of pictures. Let’s take a look. Please know that plenty of spoilers are ahead!
The first portion of the queue leads under the palace and along the exterior lagoon.You should know that at this point the queue is about 40 minutes and length. Something I haven’t seen at Disney California Adventure.
Forgive the murky water. Truth is, it will take a few weeks to get all of the construction dust out of the falls and rivers.The beach along the shore of the castle.Here we look back toward the palace.Water! At last in Fantasyland. It really creates a totally different feeling.
Plenty of detail in the rock work. The look of which contrasts greatly with the granite work found in the Beauty and the Beast section.Here’s the backside of water as we head into a cavern.Relics from ship wrecks are brushed up along the edges of the cavern.We find a couple of signs posted by Ariel asking us to be on the look out for blue crabs.We see a number of gadgets and among them we find an animated group of crabs moving things around.You can see one of the crabs checking things out. The only tough thing about checking out the crabs is that the queue, which is long, is still moving quickly, and it’s hard to study it all.The cavern opens up in sections where water and mist are flowing in.We find Scuttle in the cavern trying to figure out what’s going on with the crabs.Another crab moving a compass around.We are back-doored below the castle. Here we find murals on the wall depicting potential fates to sailors who sail the seas.More depictions and poems inscribed on the walls.We see what appears to be a stair leading to a maid’s entrance on one side of the cavern.Here we enter a final hall that overlooks the sea and our clam mobile vehicles.Here we see Ariel in the distance. While the DCA version is much more like a “dark ride” mural, this one is more a part of the palace and the caverns.This part of the boarding area depicts the ship.After disembarking we exit out of the caves and into Fantasyland.
What’s missing here of course is the ride portion. But it is completely similar to the revised version in DCA that I happened to see last week. You can search for that elsewhere. I will be curious as to whether the lines remain long for this attraction. It’s my belief that they will be, much more than DCA, partly because the MK has more guests, but also because there is a greater anticipation in attending this attraction.
What I simply wanted to focus in on is the amount of detail that has gone into place-making these attractions. It’s fantastic. And you really feel like you’ve entered a whole new part of the Magic Kingdom. In fact, the Magic Kingdom seems suddenly enormous. I’ll have more commentary later, but in the meantime, check out my Disney at Work Facebook Page where I’ll post more photos from the New Fantasyland. You can also check out my full review on this site of Storytime with Belle.
