"A Trip to the Magic Kingdom With No One Else Around! "
by Stuart Newsom

All right, I’m gonna have to do some full disclosure on this one. As Miss Chix0r will tell you, along with anyone else who has known me for a significant period of time, I am a huge Disney parks nut. I love amusement parks in general, but Disney parks take the cake. Ask me any question about any park or any part of the park anywhere and I will probably have the answer somewhere in my abnormally large head (and if not, I’ll find it). Also, as I am writing this review, I currently work at Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL, home of the game’s namesake Magic Kingdom. So, naturally, you can see how this game has a soft spot in my heart. Doesn’t hurt that it’s actually pretty good as well.

In terms of story, it isn’t very deep. You, obviously deciding to cosplay as Indiana Jones for some reason (it must be a Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party night), head into the Magic Kingdom only to find that Goofy has locked the golden key to Cinderella’s Castle inside the castle. OH NOES! Now the parade can’t start! So, Mickey sends you out to search five different attractions while random people ask you Disney trivia questions which help you find the six silver keys in which to open the castle and start the parade.

OKAY, first issue: the castle really doesn’t have a “gate,” per se. Second issue: the parade doesn’t physically go through the castle, so why does the gate need to be open? It goes BY the castle, not through it. (…) Ahem. Pardon my Disney nerd-dom getting in the way of my review. Back to the goods.

On your key-finding quest, you walk around the park to five different attractions: Pirates of the Caribbean, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, the Autopia, Space Mountain, and the Haunted Mansion. Each of these attractions contains different objectives and has a different style of gameplay. Autopia plays like Spy Hunter with no weapons, Space Mountain is a first person flight shoot-em-up, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is “guess which track is safe” (and in my opinion the cheapest of ALL the levels), and Pirates and the Haunted Mansion are both action platformers, with Mansion looking eerily similar to Ghouls N’ Goblins in the beginning.

Personally, my favorite is the Haunted Mansion level (not that I have a ton of Mansion merchandise lying around…or that I happened to work at the Mansion…no, not at all), so I always tend to head there first. BUT WAIT A SECOND. Why is Big Thunder Mountain in Mansion’s spot? Why is Mansion over by Pirates? What the -- this isn’t Magic Kingdom…it’s Disneyland! It should be Adventures in Disneyland! I know all y’all out there are going “StuArT ThErE’s No dIfFeRenCe LoLz!” Well, THERE IS.

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(EDITOR’S NOTE: IT’S FUN IF YOU READ THIS NEXT PARAGRAPH AS FAST AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE. GO!)

You see, at the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, Pirates is at the edge of Adventureland and Frontierland, Big Thunder’s over at the very end of Frontierland, Mansion is in Liberty Square, and Autopia and Space are in Tomorrowland! At Disneyland, there IS NO Liberty Square, instead there’s New Orleans Square! Not only that, Frontierland and New Orleans Square are flipped from the Frontierland and Liberty Square layout at the Magic Kingdom, and Pirates and Mansion are in the same land, which is exactly what’s shown on the game map here! THEREFORE THIS IS THE DISNEYLAND MAP. GAH. ….Must…control…nerd-dom…okay…there.

</RANT>

The difficulty is also all over the place from game to game. It goes from pretty darn easy (Space and the trivia keys), to somewhere in the middle (Autopia and Pirates), to controller-throwing effing impossible (Mansion and Big Thunder). Big Thunder is just the cheapest, luck-filled level ever devised by man. You get on the train and you have to keep choosing forks in the track. As you go down the track, boulders get in your way and the speed grows faster and faster. You spend the rest of the time barreling down the track, choosing forks until you get to the end where you discover that, guess what! Only one of three choices works! So basically, its blind luck because you could potentially fail from the first decision. Awesome.

Unfortunately, there are no NES 8-bit transformations of the classic music from these attractions, like Grim Grinning Ghosts and Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me). However, this game was one of the first games done by game music-composing master Yoko Shimomura. That’s the same woman who composed the music for Street Fighter II, Super Mario RPG, Parasite Eve, Legend of Mana, and, to go completely full circle back to Disney, the Kingdom Hearts series.

All in all, it’s a pretty good game…but still should be called Adventures in Disneyland.

Overall Rating: D Ticket (So, like...9. Ish.)