The “Disney MGM” park will be renamed to “Disney Hollywood Studios” park in December 2007. Anyway, here’s what I learnt:

• This park is definitely smaller than Magic Kingdom or Epcot. The map “looks” the same, but everything is much closer.
• A lot of the newer (movie) characters can be met here. The Incredibles & Ratatoulie are some examples.
• Younger kids will have a good time here, with Disney Playhouse shows and characters (e.g. Little Einsteins) here.
• Lines to meet the characters were less than 10 minutes.

Here’s what I learnt from our day at Epcot:

• Disney has rental strollers. The 2 seater is $18 (and we didn’t get it, but we think the single-seater is $12). The strollers are amazingly easy to maneuver and has a lot of carrying space. Worth the money!
• Epcot has lots of character spots to meet the characters. Near the big ball, there’s one character spot where we met 6 major characters (including Mickey & Mini) with a queue length of less than 45 minutes. That’s a breeze compared to the pain of meeting characters at Magic Kingdom.
• Although the food at Disney World has been generally unhealthy (hamburgers, fries, etc), you can get some decent foods at Epcot (e.g. the World Pavilions and The Land). Food is pretty expensive throughout the park.

Just got back from Day 1 at Magic Kingdom in Disney World Florida.

It was a crazy day, especially dragging around 3 young kids. Anyway, here are some note-worthy points that might help other young families cope:

• Find out (from locals) which days the park closes later (9pm vs the normal 7pm). Those will be the nights that have evening fireworks.
• Parking is $11 per day (not included in the price of the park ticket). The transportation system from the parking to the park is pretty good.
• You can get to Magic Kingdom via the monorail or the ferry. They’re both pretty fast. The wait for the ferry is marginally slower, but the view is very cool.
• There are really a lot of rides and stuff to see. Make sure you make use of the Fast Pass system: you get to come back (an hour or so) later, and jump into the express late. What’s not immediately obvious (which is why most people don’t do it I guess) is that you don’t have to come back at your alloted time. You can use Fast Pass at or after your alloted time.
• Don’t bother lining up to meet the characters at Magic Kingdom. The lines are huge and you only get to meet 1-2 characters at each spot (the shortest line was Winnie The Pooh & Tigger, which took us ~1 hour to get “autographs” and photos with them).
• Get a “Photo Pass”. It’s a card where you can give to their photographers for them to take pictures of you. You can look at (and buy) photos online. It’s pretty expensive per print, but it might be worth it to get all the photos on a CD/DVD. Will comment on that at the end of our trip…

Well, it’s that time of the year ago… Halloween!

My son has his mind set on being Superman this year. We were at The Galleria Mall in Henderson earlier in the week, and found a cool one for $45. People who know me, know that I’m always after the best deal (not necessarily the cheapest, but the best price for quality), so I resolved to find it cheaper on the Internet.

To cut to the chase, I discovered a Halloween costumes site that has it much cheaper ($24.95). There’s even a discount code for an additional 5% off!

Now, the next job is to find discount Halloween candy!

Well, later this evening, I’m hopping on a plane for Australia. It’s a long trip and getting a good seat is the secret to traveling well. And believe it or not, all seats are not equal… even in the same class (economy, business or first).

That’s why I use SeatGuru!. You plug in the airline you’re flying (e.g. United) and airplane model (e.g. 747-400) and you get a seat-map.

You’ll see that the map shows the lavatories, exit rows, etc. But I particularly like the details they give down to the seat level (when you move your mouse over any seat, that blue box pops up).

Very cool, and an indispensable tool for any traveler!