Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 14 years and 5 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

We’re on our way to north Florida to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with family, but today we swung through Orlando to spend a quick day at Disney. We needed to renew our annual passes that we had purchased last November anyway in order to get the extra three months for free. Now we’re set through February 2011! 🙂 The weather today was perfect, but the park was a little more crowded than in the past when we’ve come around Thanksgiving time.

Since we were just coming for the day, we figured on just staying at the Magic Kingdom and not doing any park-hopping. Thus, we decided to try out a few of the attractions we either had never been on, or hadn’t been on in a long time. First things first, we got Fast Passes for Space Mountain. The ride had been closed for remodeling since April and is my daughter’s favorite roller coaster at Disney. It just re-opened this past weekend so we definitely wanted to get on it. No surprise, our Fast Passes obtained around 9:30am were for 5:30! That gave us the rest of the day to wander around. Thinking we could get a sneak peek of the Space Mountain changes, we hopped onto the Tomorrowland Transit Authority. To our surprise, the tunnel through Space Mountain is totally dark and you can’t see any of the ride anymore (we found out why later, once we got onto the coaster). Still in Tomorrowland, we rode the Astro Orbitor, another ride we hadn’t been on (in about 13 years). It was a first for my daughter though and she really loved it, considering it just goes up and down and around in circles just like the Magic Carpets or Flying Dumbos (just a bit faster).

After lunch we went to Fantasyland, rode the obligatory “It’s a Small World” and also went to see PhilharMagic (a personal favorite). In Liberty Square we went into the Hall of Presidents to see that show (I could have sworn I saw the Bill Clinton “robot” check his watch while Barack Obama was speaking! ;-)), which is now narrated by Morgan Freeman. In Frontierland, the river boat ride is now part of the promotion for Disney’s new upcoming animated feature, “The Princess and the Frog.”  The film doesn’t come out for another two weeks but there’s already a New Orleans-style parade featuring the princess (and prince) and some Mardi Gras-type characters and music. We rode the slow river boat around Tom Sawyer’s island (which we didn’t get to) with some great views of the back side of the Thunder Mountain Railroad coaster.

I couldn’t convince my daughter to go through the Haunted House, so we walked back to Tomorrowland intending to use our Fast Passes to Space Mountain and found it had been shut down! “Technical difficulties” the cast member outside the line said. He told me to check back later and any Fast Passes would still be valid. We snagged Fast Passes for Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin and then had dinner. After a race over on the Tomorrowland Grand Prix, we went to the Monster’s Inc. Laugh Floor where my daughter had a joke she had texted in read in the show!

By this time, Space Mountain was running again! We noticed a few changes while going through the line, primarily the addition of interactive video game screens on the standby side of the line and the “closed roof” of the waiting area. You can no longer see the coaster itself (what little you could see) while in the back-and-forth area of the line. This actually makes the ride itself darker because you can’t see the people in line. The “stars” seem to stand out more since there is less light on the ride. The coaster track itself hasn’t changed and it’s still my second-favorite Disney coaster (behind the Rockin’ Roller Coaster at Hollywood Studios and just ahead of Expedition Everest at Animal Kingdom).

After our speedy space ride, it was time for our Buzz Lightyear Fast Passes so we got in line to “shoot some aliens!” It was getting late, so we found some seats near the front of the park for the SpectroMagic parade, which my daughter, who actually awake this time, loved. Since no view of the evening fireworks could beat our last trip we left the park and drove to our hotel for the evening. Tomorrow morning we hit the road for the panhandle.