Walt Disney World Archives - Your Mileage May Vary

Trip Report: 2019 Disney Vacation Club Exclusive Moonlight Magic Event at Epcot

Walt Disney World began their “Moonlight Magic” events in 2016 to celebrate Disney Vacation Club’s (DVC) 25th anniversary. DVC, as Disney’s version of a timeshare, can cost significantly less when you purchase points on the secondary market (as opposed to buying them directly from Disney). To make buying from Disney more valuable, they have continued the Moonlight Magic events from 2017 onward as a perk that’s reserved for those who’ve purchased points directly from them and not from the secondary market.

Joe and I have been attending Moonlight Magic events, on and off, ever since they began in 2016. As DVC members since 1991, and as Central FL locals, being able to go to a select park after hours, with minimal crowds, has been a nice perk that we look forward to here and there. As the events became more popular, it had become a little more difficult to sign up in 2018 if you weren’t staying at a WDW DVC property for the event (they get first dibs), but Disney has tweaked the system and we’ve found it easier to get in in 2019 than 2018.

We’d been to the Epcot event in 2017, and in 2019 had been to the event at Magic Kingdom, so we were interested to see how the event had changed, not only from park to park, but from year to year.

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The Daredevil Superfans Who Snuck Inside An EPCOT Attraction To Explore & Document It Before It Was Destroyed

With time comes change, and there’s no greater example of this than at Disney parks. In fact, Walt Disney himself was said to say, “Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.”

Growth can sometimes be a whole new park, or a new land within a park. But sometimes that change is in the form of tearing one attraction down to make room for another. At Walt Disney World, attractions such as The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh replaced Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Journey Into Your Imagination With Figment replaced Journey Into Your Imagination (which replaced the original Journey Into Imagination – we wrote about that whole hot mess in this post), and an entire nightclub complex, Pleasure Island, was “reimagined” into the current Disney Springs shopping district (granted, work on Disney Springs didn’t even start in earnest until about half a decade after they closed Pleasure Island but let’s save that for another blog post).

Horizons was a dark ride attraction at Epcot that opened in 1983, closed in 1994, reopened in 1995 while Test Track was being built and Universe of Energy was under renovation, and closed again, this time for good, in 1999. It was demolished in mid-2000 to make way for the current Mission: SPACE attraction. Horizons had something of a cult following and to this day, there’s lament of the loss of what some think is the best attraction ever seen in the history of Epcot.

When Disney attractions close, there’s historically no official documentation, at least not that fans ever get to see. Two young adults in Florida who loved Horizons decided to change that…

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Are Disney Parks Too Expensive?

As someone who has been going to Walt Disney World (WDW) since 1979 and to Disneyland (DL) since the early 1990s I’ve seen a lot happen with the U.S. Disney parks. And, not surprisingly, there have certainly a lot of price changes along the way. But have they just gotten too expensive? Here’s how I see it…

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Disney Rash: What It Is, How To Treat It & How To Prevent It In The First Place

You’re on a trip to Disney World sometime between May and September (a time of year fondly called the Heat & Humidity Festival by us locals), from your home where you don’t see the sun or warmth for half the year (or more). After a few days of walking around the theme parks, water parks or one of our fabulous beaches, you wake up one morning to find your legs are covered in a red splotchy rash.

What is it? Is it dangerous? What should you do for it?

Maybe you’ll search the internet to find out about it, and if so, Hello!!!! First of all, understand that you’re currently reading a travel blog. If you are having a medical emergency, seek attention immediately and stop Googling your symptoms.

Otherwise, you might head to the local pharmacy to find out what you can buy to treat it. That’s when you’ll find out that this is a pretty common problem for people visiting Orlando, or anywhere else that gets really hot.

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Why Aren’t There More Monorails At Walt Disney World?

Disneyland opened the first daily operating monorail in the Western Hemisphere in 1959 and when Walt Disney World (WDW) opened in 1971, it followed suit with its own monorail system.

The original WDW track was (well, still is) a loop that featured four stations: the Transportation and Ticket Center (TTC – it’s also the main parking lot for WDW guests), Disney’s Polynesian Resort, the Magic Kingdom and Disney’s Contemporary Resort – this loop was built as a dual beam so monorails could travel in either direction. In this case, the Resort Monorail, which stops at all 5 stops (the original 4, plus the Grand Floridian Resort & Spa when it opened in 1988), runs clockwise, and the Express Monorail, which only stops between the TTC and the Magic Kingdom.

When Epcot opened in 1982, another single-beam monorail route was built to shuttle people between the new park at the TTC. But those are the only two monorail tracks ever built at WDW.

Ever wonder why?

Of course, most people would say, “It’s too expensive!” In fact, that what I’ve always said, too. And to be honest, anyone who said that would be 100% correct. But it’s really more than just cost…

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