Plus…Epcot Segway Tour no longer available for booking, News on Cinderella’s Royal Table, and more!
by Don Myers
It’s hard to believe it, but we’re nearly two months into 2013 now. And as the calendar shifts over to March, we find ourselves quickly approaching the Spring season. This transition brings us a plethora of exciting news from Walt’s beloved Florida Project. So let’s get to it. Time for the latest edition of the WDW Radio Newswire…..
We begin this edition of the Newswire inside Magic Kingdom. For this newsbit, let’s head down Main Street and make our way through Cinderella Castle and into Fantasyland. It’s here in the land of Fantasy where we find a restroom refurbishment nearing completion. Now usually I wouldn’t make a restroom refurb the headlining topic, but these are no ordinary restrooms. These are the themed restrooms based off the Disney film Tangled that have been under construction at the site of the former Skyway Station. The last remaining pieces of the Skyway Station were removed back in June 2011, and the restroom transformation has been ongoing at the location since March 2012. But it looks as if we are just days away from completion now, as the themed restrooms are slated to open up at the end of the month. For those of you who may be wondering, the location I’m referring to is right next to it’s a small world, just across the way from Peter Pan’s Flight. When completed, the expanded area should open up the flow of traffic between Fantasyland and Liberty Square tremendously. Guest flow can get quite congested in this area, but the newly expanded paths should help to avert this problem significantly.
Continuing in Magic Kingdom, let’s head back to Cinderella Castle for some news on Cinderella’s Royal Table. Cinderella and her Princess pals will be going on a brief hiatus later this year, as the dining location will close on Monday May 13th and re-open four days later on Friday May 17th.
Time to park-hop over to Epcot now, where there’s some news to report on one of the park’s tours. As of last week, the Segway tour “Keep Moving Forward: See the World, Share the Dream” is longer available for booking, and has thus been discontinued from service. The Segway tour took Guests around World Showcase in the early morning hours before that area of the park was open to the public. A few years ago Segway tours were commonplace at Epcot, but the recent removal of Keep Moving Forward signals the end of these types of tours at the park. But Segway fans fear not; as there’s still one last option remaining in existence. The Wilderness Back Trail Adventure Segway Tour is still being offered at Fort Wilderness, and there are no current plans in place for its removal anytime soon.
Time to venture over to Animal Kingdom now for some follow-up news on a new indoor Character meet and greet spot. In the June 12th 2012 edition of the Newswire, I detailed plans for the transformation of Beastly Bazaar into an indoor Character meet and greet location. Well, construction is nearing completion and a recent announcement has shed further light on the situation. The location will be known as the “Adventurers Outpost” and will be the new meet and greet spot for Mickey and Minnie Mouse! Adventurers Outpost is slated to open sometime this Spring, and when an exact date is announced I’ll be sure to report it right here on the Newswire.
For our final bit of news, let’s hop aboard the Walt Disney World Monorail System. Last week, Monorail Red 
re-emerged with its classic paint scheme. The monorail had been covered with a special wrap based on the Marvel film “The Avengers” since March 31, 2012. Monorail Red sported the special Avenge-o-rail wrap for nearly eleven months, similar to the sixteen month stint Monorail Coral had as the Tron-o-rail from March 2010- July 2011. With the success of these special wraps, it will be exciting to see which Monorail will be next to don a special alias (maybe Star Wars-o-rail?!!!).
Well, that’s gonna do it for today’s update. But before we call it a wrap, let’s take a look back at the results of our last poll. The question was:
What is your favorite room in The Great Movie Ride?
. Footlight Parade/Mary Poppins
. Gangster Underworld
. Wild West
. Alien
. Indiana Jones
. Tarzan
. Casablanca
. Wizard of Oz
. Finale
And the winner is…….
Wizard of Oz with 36% of the total vote! Second place honors went to Indiana Jones with 16% of the votes. Gangster Underworld followed closely behind with 15%, followed by Alien with 11%, Finale with 8%, and Wild West with 7%. Once again, a big thank you to everyone that took the time to vote! Okay, on to this week’s question:
[poll id=”103″]
Don Myers covers news and recent events in Walt Disney World. He has been enamored with the World of Disney since his first trip to WDW in 1986. As they say, the rest is history! Don also has been a contributing writer for Celebrations magazine since 2009.
