Magic Kingdom: Updates again to October 3 and 4

The Magic Kingdom calendar for October 3 and 4, 2008, has been updated again. This time, October 3 went from 9-7 to 9-9 and October 4 went from 9-9 to 9-7. October 4 is now a night for Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party.

How to: Google Calendar

I have just added a "How to" for Google Calendar and MouseCal. In this article, I describe how I used MouseCal and Google Calendar to generate a custom calendar for a recent trip that I took to Disney World. This calendar came in very handy for planning our daily visits. With the calendar, we were able to seen which park had morning and evening Extra Magic Hours. This allowed us to try a strategy that I had heard recently on a Disney-related podcast. The strategy is to go to the park that had evening Extra Magic Hours the night before. The thinking is that many of the resort guests would make use of the extra hours the night before and therefore not visit this same park the next morning. I don't know how well this strategy worked, but I don't feel that it was a bad strategy at least.

I also plan to use this calendar technique for future trips. For instance, this can be helpful in planning dining ADRs. You can request an ADR at a park that you are planning to use Extra Magic Hours in, making the best use of your time by not wasting travel time from the restaurant to the park on that day.

February 2009 dates available

The operating hours for all of the parks are now available in MouseCal. Disney has not updated the extra magic hours page yet to indicate the morning and evening extra magic hours. Once they do, the information will be added to MouseCal.

Currently, Typhoon Lagoon is still schedule to be "Closed for Refurbishment" through all of February now. Overall, the water park is currently schedule for refurbishment starting 10/26/2008 though 2/28/2009. That is over 4 months.

Disney World parks get extra hour for Fay

The four Disney World parks will each open an hour early (8:00 am) tomorrow (8/19/2008) because of the approaching Tropical Storm Fay. The calendars for the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom have all been updated to reflect this.

Waterpark Update: More refurbishment for Typhoon Lagoon

It looks like Typhoon Lagoon will get more refurbishment time. This has pushed the refurbishment for Blizzard Beach up a bit. I have updated the respective calendars to indicate that Blizzard Beach will now be closed for refurbishment from 9/28/2008 through 10/25/2008. Typhoon Lagoon is now scheduled to be closed for refurbishment from 10/26/2008 through the current end of the schedule which is the 1/31/2009.

January 2009 water park operating hours

Disney has released the January 2009 water park operating hours... and Mousecal has been updated accordingly. Basically, Blizzard Beach will be open this January from 10-5 and Typhoon Lagoon will be "Closed for Refurbishment".

Magic Kingdom closing early October 3 and/or 4?

There have been some anecdotal evidence that the Magic Kingdom may be closing early on October 3rd and/or 4th, 2008. The official calendar doesn't indicate an early closure yet though.