February 29th
Happy Leap Day (one day late)! No, I’m posting this on March 1st for a reason. 😉
February 29th, better known as “Leap Day,” was celebrated like only Walt Disney World (“WDW”) can do: The Magic Kingdom park (as well as the Disneyland park in California) was open for an entire 24 hours!
Yay for Leap Day!
Yep! Disney proceeded to keep both parks, on each coast, open from 6am on February 29th to 6am on March 1st (i.e. this morning)! I soooo wished I could have been there, but since I couldn’t…
Were any of you there?
How long did you stay in the park?
And, more importantly, did you outlast the kids?
I was wondering how many of us Big Kids were out and about and hitting the rides in the wee hours of the morning — as a natural Night Owl, I know I would have been one of them!
So, congratulations if you were one of the lucky ones at:
WDW
or at:
Disneyland
And, because alcohol is not sold in the MK, I hope you at least had a Dole Whip Float “night cap” for the rest of “leaping” elsewhere last night. 😀 So for those of you that were there until closing, you can just let me know after you finally wake up! *chuckles*
Until next time…
I sooooo wanted to be there too! All’s I got to do yesterday was talk about Disney with my Kindergarten students…as we discussed Leap Day! We did get a snow early release, so I went home and dreamed I was there as I made dinner res. for my upcoming April trip to Disney. I would love to hear others comment on Leap Day at Disney! 🙂
Hi,
I was there with my boyfriend and we had an amazing time. We made it from lining up at 5am that morning (WDW) till 6 am the next morning with no naps but grateful for a few energy drinks at various points. It was mostly adults after 130a.m. and was a unique experience that I am glad we got to take advantage of. Seeing shows in the middle of the night and seeing the insides of Space mountain from the people mover after SM had closed for the night was amazing.
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I hope that Disney does this every leap year now as we would love to make this a tradition for us as a couple. It was hard to be up so early and for the evening was very crowded, but even though there were parts were you wondered why it was worth being there all night, by morning you felt like you had participated in something special, and we did. It will be fun to see how many years we can “hang” with the younger crowds all night.
I was there with my Daughter. What is unusual about that you say? Well lets just say, I am old enough to be retired and her kido’s stayed home with Dad so that the two of us could have this experience together. We splurged for a Theme Park View at the Contemporary, so nice and easy to go back and forth.
We were there at rope drop and I gave up at 1:00 AM, she was there until the Park closed. IT WAS AWESOME !!!!!!!!!
I was there, even if I don’t have the stamina of Jennele & her boyfriend above. In my defense, I am 62 & use a cane while walking. To be honest, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, or when to expect it – I figured the crowds would be one extreme or another since the announcement of the event provided fairly short notice. To be on the safe side, I arrived at the Magic Kingdom at 2130, but it was STILL a mob scene, & from the looks of things when I was entering the park, there were still more people arriving than departing. Once you managed to get to “the hub the crowd did thin a bit in the various “lands”. I did manage to purchase one of the “commemorative” T-shirts at the Main Street Emporium (I understood they eventually sold out, but to Disney’s credit, they had a major supply of cards with a special Disney Store web address so you could order a shirt if they had run out of any size, but you had to place your order no later than March 1). The crowd began to thin a bit after the special midnight “showing” of the Electrical Parade, &, as Jennelle said, by 0130 they had reached what is a comfortable level for me.
After the midnight Electrical Parade, they held a “dance ‘til you drop” type of thing in front of Cinderella’s Castle. I think it started somewhere around 0100 & had quite a large crowd in attendance. I stopped by periodically just to see how it was progressing & didn’t note any appreciable decline in audience participation! One of the interesting sights during that event were the stilt-walkers – there were about a half-dozen of them participating & encouraging the “dancers”.
I ended up leaving a bit after 0500. I was really curious as to how they went about clearing out the park so they could close at 0600, clean up, & re-open at 0900 – given the number of people still there when I left to return to Port Orleans-French Quarter, I didn’t see any way for that to happen.
The only real complaint I have is the lack of eating facilities that remained open during the event – while most of the snack bars were still open when I arrived at 2130, the vast majority of the full-service restaurants were closed (& the ones that were open quit honoring reservations made that night), & quite a few of the quick-serve restaurants were closed as well. By 0100, I couldn’t find a single full-service restaurant open. By 0300, several of the snack bars had closed, & the only quick-serve restaurant I could find open in any of the lands was the Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Café in Tomorrowland. I might be in the minority, but I tend to get hungry in the wee hours. LOL In the scheme of things, this is a minor complaint, but I think Disney missed out on a serious revenue stream here.
I would have to agree about the lack of places to eat being a bit strange. With so many people expected to be in the parks (or even if there were more than expected on the day of), you would think someone would have realized the need for at least one other counter-service to be open in one of the other “lands” for folks. Well, maybe they’ll realize this in the next 4 years and have more available next time (assuming they do this again, of course!)… 😀 Glad you had a great time — and thanks to everyone for their comments! So jealous of you all! 😉
I had two PassPorter friends down for the event, and it was fun catching up on their progress through Facebook. They were ROCKSTARS to do it, and I’m so *sniff* proud of them….
A blogger I love (Jen from CakeWrecks and Epbot.com) was there with her hubby, and they blogged about it afterwards. http://www.epbot.com/2012/03/night-in-magic-kingdom.html