More RideMax Roulette at the Magic Kingdom, Pecos Bill Cafe Southwest Burger Review

I headed out to the Magic Kingdom this morning for another round of RideMax Roulette. The catch is that I was primarily Periscoping the experience and didn’t have my regular camera with me, so the photos in this post will be somewhat, er… limited — both in quantity and quality.  🙂

Before I get too far, I should note that you can find my Periscope feed here, though Periscope deletes the videos after 24 hours, so you may not find this too helpful, unless you’d like to follow me for future broadcasts.

For those not schooled in the great RideMax Roulette tradition, this is basically where I use a random-number generator to give me a list of attractions, which I then plug into RideMax. The software then spits out a game plan to cover those attractions, which I take to the park.

For today’s round of RideMax Roulette, I basically had twelve attractions to cover. Here they are, in no particular order:

  • Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
  • Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
  • Peter Pan’s Flight
  • Pirates of the Caribbean
  • it’s a small world
  • Barnstormer
  • Jungle Cruise
  • Mad Tea Party
  • Prince Charming Regal Carrousel
  • Tomorrowland Speedway
  • Liberty Belle Riverboat
  • Swiss Family Treehouse

In looking at this list of attractions, my primary interest for FP+ was for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Big Thunder, and/or Peter Pan. Unfortunately, all three were either sold out or had limited availability, so I had to plan on visiting all three of these standby. (By the way, this is what you get when you wait until the day before to set up those FP+ reservations.  🙂 )

As a result of the limited FP+ availability, I settled on using FP+ for Pirates, the Tomorrowland Speedway, and Jungle Cruise.

I plugged my ride selections into RideMax, along with the FP+ choices listed above, and here’s the plan it gave me (I specified the 12:50pm stopping time):

RideMax Plan - Magic Kingdom Walt Disney World

Fortunately, I was also able to line up my FP+ slots to match the plan, as shown below.

FP+ Selections - Magic Kingdom Walt Disney World

I headed off to the park, plan in hand.

Ferry Dock - Magic Kingdom Walt Disney World

As I mentioned, due to the Periscoping I don’t have too many pictures to share, but here’s a quick iPhone picture of the scene at 8:08am, as I hopped in line to board the ferry boat from the TTC…

Entrance Tunnel - Magic Kingdom Walt Disney World

…and here’s a pano of the line to get into the park, taken at 8:40am, just before I began the broadcast. The ferry boat ride took WAY longer than I had expected, which is just one more reason you’ll want to make sure you arrive early, especially if you’re visiting the Mine Train first thing.

Those who followed along on Periscope already know this, but I’ll just cut to the chase and let you know that the day went really well. Due to the park opening early and my beating the ten-minute estimate for Mine Train right at opening, I was ahead of schedule the rest of the day.

Someone on Periscope asked if I’d report actual versus estimated wait times for each ride, so let me just hit some of the highlights I remember:

  • The longest wait was for Big Thunder, at fifteen minutes, rather than the twenty-three estimate RideMax had given. It probably helped that I was something like twenty minutes ahead of the game by the time I arrived at the Big Thunder queue, but the posted wait as I exited the ride at about 10:45am was still “just” twenty minutes. Since Disney typically estimates on the high side, it’s likely I still would have beaten the RideMax estimate had I boarded closer to the time shown on the plan.
  • The second-longest wait was for Peter Pan, at eleven minutes, or exactly what RideMax had predicted.
  • All of the other wait times were pretty close to the RideMax estimates, though I was able to walk-on to the Barnstormer and the Treehouse.
  • I used the “Free Time” on the plan for a lunch break, and after lunch I did call an audible, choosing to visit the Liberty Belle right after Lunch, rather than at the end of the day. This was due to the fact that I left Pecos Bill’s at about 11:50am, so the timing for the boat seemed good, as it would be departing in ten minutes.

All in all, I considered the day very successful from a RideMax standpoint, and if you were one of the 800+ Periscope viewers who joined in to view the broadcast at some point, thanks for taking the time to follow along!

Before I wrap up today’s post, I did want to do a quick review of my lunch at Pecos Bill’s, since I didn’t “scope” that part of the day.

Southwest Burger Pecos Bill's Café - Magic Kingdom Walt Disney World

Sorry for the poor iPhone pic, but I opted for the Southwest Burger. Disney lists this as “topped with Pepper Jack and served with a side of Tortilla Chips.” This clocks in at $13.99.

Pecos Bill's Toppings Bar - Magic Kingdom Walt Disney World

I also loaded up a small plate from the toppings bar, which gave me access to pico, corn salsa, and guacamole. I used the guacamole for both the chips and the burger.

You may recall from a recent round of RideMax Roulette (scroll down about halfway through the linked post for the lunch recap) that I had the Fajitas last time, and I’ll get right to the point and let you know that I MUCH prefer the Fajitas to the Southwest Burger. The burger itself was nothing special — just a patty, the cheese, and some lettuce, all on an undersized bun. Access to the toppings bar helped the situation, but the chips accompanying the burger were thick and perhaps a bit old. If you’re going to eat tortilla chips, I much prefer thin and light to these heavy things.

So if you do eat here, take my advice and get the Fajitas instead of the burger. The Fajitas are a dollar more than the burger, but that dish is worth the extra buck in my opinion.

Leaving the park - Magic Kingdom Walt Disney World

I had promoted my day on Periscope as “Twelve Attractions Before 2:00pm,” and as you can see, I was headed out of the park a good hour sooner than that.

Thanks to everyone who participated on Periscope today, and if you’d like to follow along in the future, please add me to your “follow” list on Periscope.

As always, if you’re planning a trip to Disneyland or Walt Disney World in the near future, be sure to check out RideMax.

Thanks for stopping by!

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2 thoughts on “More RideMax Roulette at the Magic Kingdom, Pecos Bill Cafe Southwest Burger Review”

  1. Matt, expect August dates to be available in RideMax sometime next week. We’ve got a lot coming next week, including the August update, along with the addition of the new Jungle Book show at Animal Kingdom, the new Frozen attraction at Epcot, and at DCA, the new Frozen Musical.

    Stay tuned!

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