Three Kings Day | Limited Time Magic

We previously announced that Disneyland was going to be putting on a Three Kings Day.  They later announced that Three Kings Day would actually be the first event in the Limited Time Magic schedule.  As it is our intent to follow this  as closely as possible, we were excited and ready for the show.

Three Kings Day is a celebration of Hispanic culture and an extension of the Christmas Holiday.  The day, January 6th, represents the 12th day after the birth of Jesus, and the arrival of the three magi.  It is celebrated Latin America, Spain and hispanic communities in the US.  So how did Disney do?  Not very well if you ask me.

Now, I don’t want to put myself out there as the arbiter of what is culurally accurate.  Nor am I any kind of spokesman for the hispanic community.  But I have the same five senses the rest of us you were born with, and those senses were not impressed.  Disney advertised that it would feature special food, entertainments, and educational experiences.  Now, it’s not like we were there for the entire day, so we obviously didn’t see all of the offerings, but there just wasn’t much to do!

So what IS there to do?

The first thing we noticed when walking in to the event was a cast member admonishing (in a friendly, Disney way) a couple of guests for leaving without taking in all of the events.  I could vaguely here them being persuaded to go back in and have fun, then I turned around and sure enough, they were heading back in.  It was kind of weird and sad.  But I’m not sure what it was he expected them to do because there was in fact, as mentioned, nothing to do.

The decorations were nice, but I thought it was kind of lazy in general.  The “crafts” were pretty sad.  You could color the three kings or make a paper crown with some stickers on it.  The food options were no more daring.  Aside from the Rosca De Reyes, you could get tamales or a chimichanga.  Disneyland sells chimichanga’s every day park wide!  There’s also a character meet and greet in a rather festive setting, and a pin trading station.  Neither of which made me feel especially festive and ready to celebrate.

On the plus side, the on stage entertainment was good!  We were present for the Garey High School Latin Jazz ensemble, and their performance was quite a bit of fun.  The rest of the crowd seemed to agree as nearly everyone in there was watching the show rather than doing any of the other activities.  Candi included.  She was chasing the Disney Ninja all over the place trying to get him to dance with her.

Three Kings Day at Disneyland

So all in all I was not impressed with Disneyland’s Three Kings Day.  We were there for about 5 minutes and I already felt like we had seen and done everything we could do.  Here’s to hoping the next event in the Limited Time Magic schedule is better.  It will be crazy if it isn’t as they’re asking $35 for a special annual passholder lunch.  We’ll keep you posted!