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WHAT IS JULY LIKE AT DISNEY WORLD?

Because pretty much every US schoolkid is on break in July, while shorter periods the rest of the year are more crowded, July overall has traditionally been the most crowded month at Disney World.

Note however, that the last three summers have been unusually good at Disney World in terms of crowds. If this trend continues, then July 2019 will be better than I’ve noted.

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THE 4th OF JULY IN 2019 AT WALT DISNEY WORLD

Disney World celebrates the 4th of July at several parks–and on July 3rd as well!

Nothing is official yet, but this is what I expect:

On Wednesday, July 3, 2019, the Magic Kingdom will have a special fireworks show “Fantasy in the Sky” at 9.15p.

On Thursday, July 4, 2019

• The Magic Kingdom will have the same show at the same time–“Fantasy in the Sky” at 9.15p
• Epcot’s IllumiNations will likely have a special holiday ending added, and may be shifted from its normal 9p time to 10p

Those following this site’s Higher Crowd Itinerary for Walt Disney World as is will be at Hollywood Studios the third and Magic Kingdom the fourth.

If you want to see the Magic Kingdom fireworks, see them on the 3rd–so swap Wednesday and Thursday in both the itineraries and their To-Do List. If you want to avoid the fireworks crowds entirely, swap First Sunday and Thursday.

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(For the first page of this review of the Holiday Inn Orlando, see this.)

PHOTO TOUR OF A POOL VIEW ROOM AT THE HOLIDAY INN ORLANDO

The Holiday Inn Orlando in the Disney Springs Resort Area has two accommodations buildings.

One is a mid rise tower where you will find regular rooms.  I have a photo tour of a tower room at the Holiday Inn Orlando here.

The other is a six story building where most rooms have pool views. and are sold as such.  This photo tour is of a pool view room at the Holiday Inn Orlando.

Two queen bed pool view rooms are very similar to tower rooms–I got most dimensions within a couple of inches–with a couple of minor exceptions.

First, there’s an angle to the bath wall that makes the bedroom space feel a bit more open and spacious.

Second, the mini-fridge–at least in my room–did not have the freezer compartment that my tower room had.  These rooms all have microwaves, and microwaves are a bit more useful if you can also keep your Stouffers macaroni frozen.

As you enter the room, the closet, mini fridge, and coffee service are one side, and the bath on the other.

The undivided bath has the basics.

The toiletries provided.

The tub/shower combo.

Across the hall is the closet and other stuff.

Inside the closet. Note the safe.

I did not measure the safe, but my book is 6″ by 9″, so it’s plenty big.

Next to the closet is the mini fridge, microwave, and coffee service.

Inside the mini-fridge. Note the absence of a freezer compartment, which makes the microwave less useful.

Beyond this area you’ll find two queen beds on one side of the room.

The bed side from the back of the room.

A closer view of one of the beds…

…and of the towel animal, rare these days.

Between the beds is this bedside table with a drawer and a storage cubby below.

The other side of the room has a dresser with a TV above and a desk.

The TV side of the room from the back.

I got the TV as having a 48 inch diagonal.

The three large dresser drawers are likely enough storage for the four people this room will hold.

Deeper in the room you will find this small desk.

It includes a small drawer.

Beyond it is the entrance to the balcony.

Pool view rooms–especially those that are lower in this six story building–are close to the pool deck and its noise, but I did not find this an issue during my cool December stay here, when few people were in the pool.  If you’ve stayed in one of these rooms when the pool has been quite active, let me know how noisy it was for you using the comment form below!

I got this Holiday Inn Orlando pool view room as being about 360 square feet, slightly larger than a tower room here and comparable to the smallest of Disney’s deluxe hotels, but with a larger bed/living area and a smaller bath area than those.

The microwave and balcony are nice touches, and rare among the Disney Springs Resort Area hotels, but the absence of a divided bath and of an easy chair or other seating beyond the desk chair (although I suppose you could drag in the balcony chairs) makes it less family friendly than other possible choices.

AMENITIES AND DINING AT THE HOLIDAY INN ORLANDO

This review continues here.

MORE ON THE HOLIDAY INN ORLANDO

• Summary and overview
• Photo tour of a standard tower room
• Photo tour of a pool view room
• Dining and amenities 
• The pool 

OTHER KEY PAGES FOR WHERE TO STAY AT DISNEY WORLD

• Where to stay–the Basics
• Where first-timers should stay
• Reviews of all the Disney World resorts, based on my 160+ stays in them

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Welcome back to Fridays with Jim Korkis! Jim, the dean of Disney historians, writes about Walt Disney World history every Friday on yourfirstvisit.net.

HARPER’S MILL ON TOM SAWYER ISLAND

By Jim Korkis

While the man-made Tom Sawyer Island was completed before the Magic Kingdom opened in October 1971, it would not open to the public until May 20, 1973. It is the one of the few locations at WDW that has changed relatively little since it first opened.

The interior of the island feels very much like a wilderness that encouraged exploration, with the indications of civilization like Aunt Polly’s house and Harper’s Mill placed along the shoreline facing Frontierland and the steamboat.

Of course, the island was inspired by a similar location at Disneyland that has since significantly changed, but also originated as a representation of Walt Disney’s rustic boyhood and his dreams of adventure.

One of the significant landmarks on the island is Harper’s Mill. (Disneyland’s Harper’s Cider Mill was changed to Lafitte’s Tavern in 2007.)

Outside the Walt Disney World building, a sign supposedly scrawled by a young Tom Sawyer himself states: “This here deserted grist mill wuz (sic) named after my frien (sic) Joe Harper’s old man. If ‘n’ you chooze (sic) to go inside, please don’t scare the birds that you will find there unless some no good done scared ‘em before you did.”

The mill represents a working grain mill of the sort that used to be quite common on the Mississippi River. In Mark Twain’s novel, Tom and his friend Huck Finn ran away and accompanying them was another boy, Joe Harper. According to the sign, the mill belonged to his father.

However, if you talk with Imagineers who worked on the park, the name of the mill (like the one at Disneyland) was meant to be a tribute to Imagineer Harper Goff, who contributed so much to the design of Frontierland at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World. As with much of WDW history that was just passed along orally rather than being officially written down, it is almost impossible to verify whether this is true.

What is indisputably true is that inside Harper’s Mill is a tribute to the Disney Academy Award winning animated short The Old Mill (1937), the first cartoon to make use of the multiplane camera. In the cartoon, animals seek refuge from a thunderstorm inside an abandoned, decrepit old mill.

In the short, one of the bottom sockets in the gear has become a temporary home for a mother bluebird and her eggs. However as the storm rages, the wind causes the gear to start to turn and now those eggs are in danger of being crushed by an upper prong from another gear as they join together. Luckily that upper gear is missing one of its teeth and so disaster is averted after several tense moments.

The Walt Disney World mill looks nothing like the one in the cartoon (and is attached to a waterwheel rather than a windmill), and even the interior gear configuration is different, but there is no mistake that this was a conscious nod to the film.

Looking upwards, guest will see an owl similar to the one in the cartoon and sitting in her nest in the socket hole is the blue bird. As an added treat, as the gears move, the Imagineers have the gears “creak” to the tune of the classic song Down by the Old Mill Stream.

*  *  *  *  *

Thanks, Jim! And come back next Friday for more from Jim Korkis!

In the meantime, check out his books, including his latest,  The Vault of Walt Volume 7: Christmas Edition, and his Secret Stories of Walt Disney World: Things You Never You Never Knew, which reprints much material first written for this site, all published by Theme Park Press.

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For the first page of this review of the Hilton Buena Vista Palace, see this.

PHOTO TOUR OF AN ISLAND BUILDING ROOM AT THE HILTON BUENA VISTA PALACE

The Hilton Buena Vista Palace in the Disney Springs Resort Area has two groups of accommodations buildings.

One is a connected set of mid and high rise towers, where you will find “Tower rooms.” I have a photo tour of a Tower room at the Hilton Buena Vista Palace here.

Island Building from Above

The other is a connected set of three mid-rise buildings, each with an atrium, collectively known as the Island Building.

The Island building offers rooms with either two queen beds or one king bed, and a bunch of suites.  The combination of design and structural choices made means that some layouts are unusual. The image shows a floor of one of the three buildings.  The spaces marked with a blue dot are king rooms, the green dots are queen rooms (although the one at bottom center is drawn incorrectly–I know because it’s the room I stayed in), and the unmarked spaces are suites.

Because the building dimensions create a space too short for a standard bath layout and two queens as well, many–perhaps all–Island two queen rooms have the bath offset into the next-door suite space, and the closet turned 90 degrees from what you will typically find in a hotel room.  My room was one of these.

As you enter the room, the bath is on one side, the closet around the corner on the other, and the beds and living area dead ahead.

The divided bath has an outer space with a sink on one side…

…and a table with a coffee service and some open storage on the other.

A closer view of the coffee service.

Beyond these is a full bath in its own space…

…with another sink on one side…

…and the tub/shower combo and toilet on the other. The harper eyed among you will note the shower curtain is missing. A quick call to housekeeping resolved this issue.  Odd things happen in hotels…

Back out to the hall, and then into the room and around the corner, the closet is in an unusual spot…

…but is otherwise unremarkable.

The closet is at the side of one of the beds, as you can see from this shot taken from the back of the bed side of the room. There’s plenty of clearance, but the lightest of sleepers might be annoyed by its placement if they are in the closer bed compared to having the closet more isolated in the entry of the bath space, as is more common. Although I suppose if one is that light a sleeper then one would have been already awakened before the closet even came into play…

Anyway, here’s the bed side from the entry part of the room.

A closer view of one of the queen beds.

A bedside table is between the two beds, with a shelf you could use for stuff.

Further on this side of the room, in a fun angled section, you’ll find this easy chair. The top comes off of the small round table on the right, and what remains then functions as an ottoman–a clever touch.

The other side of the room has a dresser, mini fridge, desk, and a small bench.

The TV side from the back of the room.

The dresser has a large TV above.

The three drawers are deep, and probably have enough space for the four people this room will hold.

Next to them is a cabinet with a safe above and mini-fridge below.

I did not measure the safe, but my book is 6″ by 9″, so you can see it is large.

The mini fridge.

Next to the dresser is this desk.  It’s main component is a rolling table that can be repositioned in the room for other uses–for dining, or to play games.

Beyond the desk is this small bench.

The balcony is accessed from a door in the triangular part of the room…

…and is itself triangular.

Island building room views vary.  Mine was a lovely view of the pool–but led to a fair amount of pool noise leaking into my room.

Pool view rooms are also near the elevators in these buildings, and there was also a lot of noise that leaked through the entry door to my room–not just from the elevator, but from folks on all  floors of the building, with their noise echoing up through the atrium. I can’t recommend a pool view room in the Island building for those who can’t tolerate a fair degree of noise.

Otherwise, these are pretty good rooms.  The Palace is the only one of the Disney Springs Resort Area hotels whose standard rooms have both balconies and divided baths, making them the most livable rooms for families. At ~385 square feet, this room is as big as or bigger than most Disney Deluxe rooms.

Island rooms at the Hilton Buena Vista Palace are (generally) closer to the pools and to Disney Springs than tower rooms here, but are further from the rest of the amenities at the hotel.  They seem to sell at a bit of a discount compared to tower rooms, but be prepared to deal with some noise.

AMENITIES AND DINING AT THE HILTON BUENA VISTA PALACE

This review continues here.

MORE ON THE HILTON BUENA VISTA PALACE

• Overview and summary
• Photo tour of a standard tower room 
• Photo tour of an Island room
• Dining and amenities
• The pools 

OTHER KEY PAGES FOR WHERE TO STAY AT DISNEY WORLD

• Where to stay–the Basics
• Where first-timers should stay
• Reviews of all the Disney World resorts, based on my 160+ stays in them

Follow yourfirstvisit.net on Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest!!

DISNEY WORLD NEXT WEEK: JANUARY 5 TO JANUARY 13, 2019

The material below details next week’s Disney World operating hours, Extra Magic Hours, parades, and fireworks.

For more on more on January 2019 at Disney World, see this.

OPERATING HOURS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 1/5-1/13/19

The Magic Kingdom will be open from 9a-11p 1/5, 9a-9p 1/6, 9a-8p 1/7 and 1/8, 9a-9p 1/9, 9a-8p 1/10, 9a-9p 1/11, 9a-11p 1/12, and 9a-9p 1/13

Epcot will be open from 9a-9p every day

Disney’s Hollywood Studios will be open from 9a-8p every day

Disney’s Animal Kingdom will be open from 8a-8p 1/5, and 9a-8p 1/6 through 1/13

EXTRA MAGIC HOURS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 1/5-1/13/19

Saturday 1/5 Morning: Animal Kingdom Evening: none

Sunday 1/6  Morning:  Hollywood Studios Evening: none

Monday 1/7  Morning: Epcot Evening:

Tuesday 1/8 Morning: none Evening: Epcot

Wednesday 1/9 Morning:  none Evening: Magic Kingdom

Thursday 1/10 Morning: Animal Kingdom Evening: none

Friday 1/11 Morning:  Magic Kingdom Evening: none

Saturday 1/12 Morning: Animal Kingdom  Evening: none

Sunday 1/13 Morning:  Hollywood Studios  Evening:

PARADES AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 1/5-1/13/19

The Magic Kingdom: Afternoon parade: 3p every day

FIREWORKS AND EVENING SHOWS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 1/5-1/13/19

Happily Ever After at Magic Kingdom 8p every night

IllumiNations at Epcot: 9p every night

Fantasmic at Disney’s Hollywood Studios: 8p every night

Star Wars Show and Fireworks at Disney’s Hollywood Studios: 8.30p 1/7 through 1/13

Jingle Bell Jingle BAM at Disney’s Hollywood Studios: 8.30p 1/5 and 1/6

Rivers of Light at Disney’s Animal Kingdom: 6.30 and 8p 1/5; 6.30 and 7.45p 1/6 through 1/13

SHOW SCHEDULES FOR WALT DISNEY WORLD 1/5/-1/13/19

See Steve Soares’ site here. Click the park names at its top for show schedules.

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