What you don’t know about Disney World

IT HAS 19 million visitors a year and is meant to be the happiest place on Earth, but here are some things you probably don’t know about the famous theme park.

Welcome to Disney World, land of intrigue.

EVERYONE knows that Disney World is one of the happiest places on Earth. There are rides, your favourite Disney characters, and enough fireworks every night to make Sydney’s New Year’s Eve display look like amateur hour.

But, if you’ve never been, there are a whole bunch of things you don’t know about the biggest Disney Park in the world ...

1. You can sleep in what is effectively a zoo

Animal lovers who are after something a little bit different can stay at the Animal Kingdom Lodge, where most rooms look out over a large grassy area featuring zebras, giraffes and antelope. They’re all quiet animals, so you don’t have to worry about an elephant keeping you awake, and they’re free to roam around, so you don’t have to feel too bad about majestic animals being kept in tiny cages.

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If you don’t feel like going to one of the parks until a little later in the day, you can hang around to watch feeding time. All guests are given a wildlife checklist at check-in so the younger (or young at heart) members of your group can spot the more than 30 different kinds of animals featured at the hotel.

As a bonus, the hotel also features Jiko, which is easily one of the best restaurants in all of Disney World. Sure, you feel a little guilty eating wild boar while looking at Timone and Pumba’s friends, but it’s the circle of life, right?

Fancy a snooze here? No problem.

2. A lot of the videos before or during rides feature celebrities — often filmed before they were famous

If you like CSI and its various spin-offs, then you’re going to be in heaven. Gary Sinise, star of CSI New York, sends you off on Mission: SPACE at Epcot, Hodges (Wallace Langham) from CSI sends you on a poorly-planned time travel mission on Dinosaur at the Animal Kingdom Park, along with several other recognisable cameos.

Judi Dench takes you through history on Spaceship Earth at Epcot, Allison Janney is a flight attendant droid in the Star Tours — The Adventure Continues queue at Hollywood Studios, and sitcom-era Ellen DeGeneres takes you through her dream about energy and dinosaurs.

3. The lines are also fun

No one actually likes lining up for things, but since the Magic Kingdom (one of the four major parks at Disney World) alone gets around 19 million visitors a year, waiting for some attractions is fairly inevitable. That’s why there are puzzles, games and extra story throughout the lines themselves.

What a magical sight.

Although The Haunted Mansion ride doesn’t actually give you many details about the story of the ride, other than that there are 999 happy ghosts that just want to party (and possibly keep you there/follow you home), there story is in the line, if you want to look and use your imagination. There are also many in-references to Disney animators and imagineers on the grave stones and books.

If you touch the instruments on the wall, they play their parts of the Haunted Mansion song, touch them all at once (if you’re like, an octopus or something), and they’ll play the song proper. You can also try to push the books in, but they’ll always come out. There are things to read, too.

Space Mountain has video games for park guests to play against each other. Peter Pan’s Flight tells you the story of Peter Pan and takes you through the Darlings’ nursery, with Tinker Bell flying around.

Yes, the lines can be enjoyable. Really.

The Seven Dwarfs Mine Train was the newest ride when I went there, and thus had the longest line, with the wait times for Peter Pan’s Flight and meeting Anna and Elsa from Frozen being only marginally shorter. 210 minutes during the quiet season is a long time to wait for a ride that lasts less than five minutes.

If possible, you need to FastPass (a line skipping pass bookable by anyone) those three rides. But, if you can’t, the line features a gem-sorting game, barrels full of gems that create reflective animations on the ceiling and “musical spigots”.

4. There are some surprisingly epic musical productions playing every hour

Every theme park worth its salt has some kind of performance featuring their licensed characters, and usually it sucks. The Finding Nemo musical at Animal Kingdom Park is amazing and a must-see.

It has production values and talent on par with any high-scale musical production, except it’s included in the ticket price and runs every hour. It’ll take you on an exciting adventure from Nemo’s mum getting killed, right through to the touching father-son reunion. The Frozen Sing-A-Long is also surprisingly worthwhile, as is The Lion King show. You can give The Little Mermaid’s show a miss, however.

There’s Nemo!

5. There is a restaurant where the servers force people to eat their veggies, and it’s hilarious

The 50s Prime Time Café is located in the Hollywood Studios Park and harks back to the day when shows like Father Knows Best were all the rage. It’s kitted out like a true 50s kitchen with the old-timey furniture and ancient-looking TVs, but, most importantly, the waiters act like your parents and make people eat their veggies.

At the table next to us, neither the father nor the son wanted to eat their greens, so the father dumped all his greens on his son’s plate, thinking he’d get away with it. The waiter saw this and got the entire restaurant to watch and chant while he fed the boy’s father while making aeroplane noises.

Over on the other side of the room, a woman in her late 60s forced an obese man in his 40s to eat his greens. It’s a strange place, and not one I’d recommend to the faint of vegetable, but it’s hugely entertaining for everyone else.

The Prime Time Cafe menu includes favourites like meat loaf and fried chicken.

6. Disney World is massive

Sure, four theme parks, two water parks and a whole bunch of hotels sounds big, but it’s really put in perspective when you hear that Walt Disney World Resort is twice the size of Manhattan Island. With that size, it’s not surprising that it employs 66,000 people in Central Florida, making it the US’s biggest single-site employer.

Interestingly, although the Magic Kingdom looks the biggest, and is the most popular park, Animal Kingdom is more than double the size. This is to allow the animals more space to roam around, and not all of that 400 acres is open to the public.

Fun times.

7. If you time it right, you can see surgery being performed on animals

It might not be everyone’s idea of a cool thing to see on a holiday, but one of the highlights of mine was to see surgery performed on an antelope. There are big windows on the veterinary hospital at Disney’s Animal Kingdom on Discovery Island, allowing the visitors to learn more about how the animals are cared for.

This antelope had badly broken its leg, which was easily visible on the displayed X-ray, and the surgeons were explaining step-by-step what they were doing. It was both educational and entertaining.

Surgery is performed here.

8. Disney World food isn’t just turkey legs and burgers

Sure, there’s a lot of that, but some of the best sushi I’ve had in my life was at the California Grill. The restaurant is located at the top of the Grand Floridian Hotel, and while the food is amazing, it’s not as great as the spectacular view over Cinderella’s Castle for the fireworks.

The Flying Fish Café on the Disney Boardwalk has a lot of really great seafood dishes.

If you’re after something a little more hearty, The Liberty Tavern will feed you mac’n’cheese and delicious roast meat until you explode for a reasonable $63 for two, including tax and tip.

Character dining can be quite hit and miss, with the preschool character dining at Hollywood and Vine surprisingly having the best food, including a breakfast sundae bar, and you get to meet Sofia The First! Coral Reef in Epcot is another place with great seafood (and delicious steaks),

and you get to eat while looking at a giant aquarium.

Another place worth checking out, though more for the theme than the food, is T-Rex in Downtown Disney, which is a dinosaur themed restaurant.

9. You can run a marathon at Disney World

If you’re up for a challenge, and don’t mind travelling for your next fun run, Disney World runs several fun run events throughout the year, with distances ranging from 10kms to a full marathon. They all come with medals, characters experiences and a feeling not unlike pride.

If you still need more of a thrill, you can run a marathon here.

10. The whole park has really great, free Wi-Fi

Whether you’re wanting to check on your Fast Passes, or simply need a break to remember that the outside world exists, there is surprisingly good, free Wi-Fi everywhere in the park, even when it’s packed. It was set up for the FastPass system and a few other things, but it’s really useful if you haven’t gotten a US SIM card and want to be able to text or Skype the other members of your group in case you get lost or something.

11. You can drink at three of the parks

While you can’t drink at The Magic Kingdom, you can drink you way around the world at Epcot. It’s a pretty fun prospect if you’re a drinker, but if you’re with kids you might want to do the countries at Epcot in the morning and then do the rest of the park in the afternoon.

It’s a fun outing for the family.