The Keys to the Kingdom tour is a 4 and a half hour tour where you learn some of the secrets of Walt Disney World (primarily the Magic Kingdom) and get to see some backstage stuff at the park. The tour starts on Main Street and our guide, Johnnie, showed us some of the names in the windows and told us the origins of those names. We learned about the 4 "keys" - Safety, Show, Courtesy, and Efficiency. Here are some examples of these: Safety - when they do bag checks at the park entrance they are looking for glass (among other things) - glass cuts people when it breaks. Courtesy - You'll notice that cast members use a 2 fingered point, it's apparently friendlier then the one fingered point. Show - cast members use the Utiladoors to move from land to land at the Magic Kingdom, you'll never see a cast member from Fronteir Land in Tomorrow Land. Efficiency - you'll notice that menues have limited choices at the parks and resorts, it makes it easier and faster for you to choose your meal. We went backstage in the area between Adventure Land and Fronteir Land. This is the area where they keep and service parade floats - we got to see many of the parade floats being tested. We got to ride Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion, and had a nice lunch at Harbor House. At the end of the tour we finally got to see the Utilador, which was very exciting. There is a whole network of underground tunnels under the Magic Kingdom which allows cast members and stuff to move around the park without being seen. They're similar to something you would go through if you worked at a major sporting arena (that's the best example I have since I worked in one,) but with just a little bit of a Disney flare to it. An interesting fact for all you recyclers out there. Although Disney does not have recycling bins in the parks, they do sort all garbage by hand, so rest assured that your cans will be recycled.
It was a great tour, Terye and I really did enjoy it. It was a little over 4 and a half hours. It does involve a fair amount of walking, but we did have many breaks from the walking, sometimes with the chance to sit down. If anyone is interested in the tour though I suggest doing it after you have spent a day or two in the Magic Kingdom so that you can better enjoy the tour.
The followi
ng day we did the Around the World on a Segway tour at EPCOT'S World Showcase. This is a 2 hour tour. The first hour is spent learning to ride a Segway, which is a lot of fun. The next hour you get a guided tour of World Showcase with one break in the middle. We rode through most of the "countries" and got some tidbits of infomation about them. It was nice to get to see World Showcase without people in it, you could appreciate things a little more, too bad we weren't able to take pictures while riding the Segways. The Segways were sooooo much fun to ride. I wanted one after the tour, though I don't think one would be very useful in my regular life. I will warn that they really do kill the feet and legs. You can't really move your feet around when you're on the segway since you use your legs and feet to control it. Although I wanted to go longer on it, I don't think my feet could do much more. Next time I'll have to try the Segway tour at Fort Wilderness.
