Disney 2013, Days 2 and 3

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With that out of the way, a quick formatting note:  Since we went to the Magic Kingdom on days 2 and 3, I'm going to combine them into one report. Day 2 we went without the Webers, and on Day 3 we carried them around in pokeballs that we threw whenever it was time to go on a ride. Instead of a straight narritive, I'm going to cover all the rides we went on (and I was going to say "all the restaurants we went to," but we only went to Liberty Tree Tavern, and I got the same thing every time [spoiler alert]).

I randomly took this picture while Katie was going to the bathroom in Rapunzel's tower. 

 Jungle Jingle Cruise

This used to be called the Jungle Cruise, but between Dec 1 and the 31st it's got a light Christmas theme. It's a boat ride, and quite honestly, this is one of those rides that's gotten a little long in the tooth; when you can go to Disney's Animal Kingdom and see a herd of real elephants, your tour guide cracking jokes about a plastic one isn't as impressive. The Christmas coat of paint is a nice touch, though.

Pirates of the Caribbean

Pirates has been given two minor touch ups; there's now some ethereal music at the scene where you see the pirates who all killed each other while digging up a chest of gold (this ride is a little PG-13), and the lights have been turned down to hide the aging animitronics (although the much newer Captain Jack Sparrow robots they added after the movie came out still look amazingly lifelike). Both of these are nice touches, but unfortunately can't cover for the ride's biggest problem: Idiots taking flash pictures. There's a reason that rides featuring lifelike robots take place in the dark. Still, I really like this ride; the attention to detail that makes a great ride is all over this one, from the real bottles floating the water next to the drunk robot pirate to the feeling of the whooshing air of a cannonball going through my hair (do not try this at home).

Eatin' at the Liberty Tree

This is the only sit-down place we go at the Magic Kingdom. It's themed like a Revolutionary-era tavern, admittedly one where they serve Angus burgers with bacon and mushrooms. (I got mine sans mushrooms - too chewy). Katie got a desert of baked peaches with vanilla ice cream on top she really liked. The only bad thing here is that the restaurant is sponsored by a fruit company who tries to sneak "Craisins(TM)" into some of the dishes. I'm not an expert, but I don't think that George Washington was eating a lot of Craisins(TM), and neither do I.

Haunted Mansion

Nothing's changed in the Haunted Mansion; It's still haunted. This ride was made over a few years ago and it's still pretty impressive, with the highlights being the scene where you look down into a ballroom where there's a giant ghost birthday party in progress and the big catchy musical number where the ghosts are having a party at the end. Like Pirates, there's detail everywhere you look, and also like Pirates, unfortunately there are idiots taking flash photographs. The only other thing to look out for is that at the end you go home with a ghost, and we got one who switched me and Katie's faces, and we had to go on the ride again to get them switched back.

It's A Small World

Was, unfortunately, closed for renovations. Katie says they're always moving stuff around in there. Hopefully it will re-open by the time we return, as otherwise I'll have no way of knowing if it's a world of laughter/a world of tears, and I certainly won't be aware there's so much that we share.

The Little Mermaid ~ Ariel's Undersea Adventure

Yes, that is the official name. This is a totally new ride about (checks name) The Little Mermaid. It's one of those rides where you climb into a giant clam (do not try this in real life), and then you go through a cute retelling of the Little Mermaid movie. Anamatronics have come a long way - Ariel looks great, and you have to really hate life not to smile when your giant clam that you're inside enters the "Under the Sea" room with a ton of dancing singing robot fish (in real life, if you find yourself inside a giant clam, do not wait for it to take you to a room where all kinds of undersea life are dancing and singing; you will probably just be digested). 

People Mover

I'm not sure if this is really even a ride; it's basically a monorail thing that takes you around the Tomorrowland section of the Magic Kingdom introducing the other rides and making horrible puns where they're looking for "Mister Tom Morrow". Still, it's a chance to sit down, and this is not something to be overlooked in the Florida sun.

Carousel of Progress

This is a endearingly goofy robot theater show where a robot who looks like Norm McDonald appears in 1900, 1920, 1940 and (jarringly) some time period near today where people have HDTVs, Laserdiscs, and Oculus Rifts. The message is nice enough, but what really stands out is the song that you will never, ever, ever be able to forget once you hear it: It's a great big beautiful to-mor-row, shining at the end of every dayyyy!

Originally I think only the first three scenes were part of the Carousel, with the last added after its run at the 1964 World's Fair, but to me the Carousel's lasting legacy is cornering my cat named Greg and serenading him with IT'S A GREG BIG BEAUTIFUL TOMORROW while he looks confused/scared. 

**K note---The 4th room is updated periodically to prevent the ride from becoming too dated**

The Train That Goes From The Entrance to Frontierland And Then Fantasyland And Then Back To the Beginning Again While A Narrator Who's Pretending To Be An Old Train Guy Keeps Saying Folksy Things

Again, I'm not sure this is even a ride, but we rode it all the way around the park. This is another chance to sit down and get out of the sun. Worryingly, while we were walking to Futureland on Day 3, someone on the train lost their wheelchair, which was left laying in the grass by the tracks, one wheel spinning forlornly. :(

Hall of Presidents Feat. The Resident in Thief Barack NObama 

I used up all the sarcastic nicknames for Obama last trip review (except for Oafbama), (and OBuma) so I don't have much to say about this. Wait, no, I did realize something! I figured out the reason that they include the entire Gettysburgh address isn't because it's a famous or influential speech; it's here because it's only about 270 words. Also, Katie told me that they used an extra Warren G Harding head from this ride as a stern-looking Egyptian guy in Spaceship Earth. The end.

Big Thunder Mountain

Yes, you read that right; me, the guy with the taste in rides of a 6 year old girl with an upset stomach and intense vertigo went on Big Thunder Mountain, a scary rollercoaster-type ride whose theme is that you're in a out of control train. I actually wasn't that scared, honestly. Most of my fear on a rollercoaster is a feeling that I'm going to come out of the car, but there's very little of that in Big Thunder Mountain; you go very fast on a curved track, but there's no big drops, and although the track is almost always tilted and at times quite heavily, you're in a sturdy cart I never felt like I was going to fall out of. It was fun, although I don't know if I feel the need to go on it more than once. 

The Enchanted Tiki Room

I honestly don't know why this attraction is still open. It's ludicrously, embarrassingly, and often entertainingly old and broken. Basically, you sit in a room and have an annoyingly catchy song sung at you (in the tiki-tiki-tiki-tiki-tiki room!), presented by a crew of birds who have ridiculous European accents, and the Spanish one talks about taking a siesta. Half the anamatronics don't work anymore, and about a third of the audience bolted into the hot Florida sun rather than sit through the show. If you visit, go on this once to say that you did, but unless you have a thing for busted 50's robots pretending to sing and play drums, you can skip this, I think.
This ride isn't beyond saving; they could start with fixing the anamatronics and updating the song to something closer to this this version; in searching for it, I've doomed myself to a lifetime of YouTube suggesting Hilary Duff songs. I don't use the word "hero" often, but I think it's at least mildly appropriate here. 

Misc. Notes

I should mention that after doing Big Thunder Mountain on Day 3, we got stuck on one side of the park by a parade. I may have mentioned this previously, but the biggest peril in the Magic Kingdom is a parade. I personally don't care for parades, although I will admit that seeing Stitch pretending to pedal a giant bicycle candy farting machine is mildly entertaining. Whatever you do, if you go to Disney and a dream comes true or you make a memory that lasts a lifetime, do not let anyone from Disney know about it; the resulting parade will cut me off from the Enchanted Tiki Room, which is really what's important here. 

Also, when we were entering the park on Day 3, there was an African guy standing there screaming "This is YOUR Kingdom!" at everyone passing by. I believe he was being paid for this. This is my dream job. "What do you do for a living?" "I stand on the Main Street of the Magic Kingdom and scream lies at people walking past." (awkward silence)

Finally - the most Magical thing about Disney is clean bathrooms. I know this probably sounds sarcastic, but how they keep so many bathrooms so clean is honestly impressive.

Day 4 is EPCOT, which is capitalized here both because it stands for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (an idea totally discarded to make a cool theme park), and because I like shouting. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Disney 2013, Day One

A VERY QUICK NOTE ABOUT THE TONE OF THESE RECAPS

I've heard that it can come off that I'm not enjoying myself on these trips. Nothing could be further from the truth; I'm not taking 10 days of time off and spending thousands of dollars to fly down to Disney every two years because I hate it. If it seems like I'm complaining, take it in the same spirit as my drunken heckling of the President Obama robot at the Hall of Presidents to show me the birth certificate.

A SECOND VERY QUICK NOTE MORE ABOUT THE CONTENT OF THESE RECAPS BUT I GUESS ALSO KIND OF THE TONE TOO, THE AUTHOR SHOUTED

We've already been to many of the rides and events that will be discussed here, and to keep things fresh and interesting, I've come up with a foolproof method to spice up the trip report: Making up a bunch of crazy shit. If you're interested to see what may have been exaggerated, check the end of the trip report, where I'll come clean to anything I can remember.

Now with that out of the way - It's that time again. Every two years myself and my partner in rhyme take a break from driving the converted schoolbus that we live in around middle schools performing inspirational rap numbers and edu-tational skits about how crack is whack to come spend a bunch of days in Disney. This year we're staying at the Wilderness Lodge, a resort that I believe is "deluxe" - one notch down from the top tier. Our room is very nice - one of these days I'll take a ton of pictures.
And that day is today!!! (Well, okay, no, it was various days throughout the vacation; today is the day I embed them with Blogger. Even still!!!)

The shower has mosaics of Bambi, Chip & Dale, and the Pocahontas raccoon. You guys.

Our balcony

The headboard

Whoa, wait, I guess I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Let me go back to the beginning: Nothing interesting happened in Albany. Try and contain your surprise.
Once we landed, we immediately began the proud Florida tradition of perspiring heavily. Disney has a service called Magical Express where your bags are checked directly through to your room, so all we had to do was get on a bus and perspire heavily until we arrived.

At check in we were presented with the vaunted "magic bands" - a wristwatchy little piece of plastic that does everything the old "key to the world" card used to. It's your room key, meal plan card, credit card, and I found out the hard way that it really has to be pressed right up against the reader as I stood outside our door doing karate poses and the door didn't open until I gave up and pushed the band right up on the reader. (Also, when we checked in, the front desk guy was like "Make sure you both use your magic band on the door. The Lodge has to know you're here!" So if we vanish, you'll know where we went. We are one with the Lodge now.)

what's in the box

I HAVE THE POWERRRRRRRRRR

We barely had time to check out the room (I took a bunch of those pictures on other days), because we had a 12:00 reservation at the Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney. Here comes my only actual complaint about Disney: The bus system sucks. You can be waiting for up to 20 minutes for a bus, in the hot sun, because for some reason there's very little shade and one bench for a bus-full of people. It's the only thing I don't like, and sure enough we ended up waiting 20 minutes in the sun with nowhere to sit and then had a 30 minute bus ride on top of that. Don't ask how I felt when they started playing a Creed song. *

Once we got to Rainforest Cafe, we were seated four feet away from a skeptical elephant who proceeded to watch us eat. Being that we were in the Rainforest Cafe, I oped for the exotic jungle dish known as chicken tenders. I also got the chicken stir fry - well, okay, I got the shrimp stir fry and asked for chicken instead. For desert we had mango sorbet, which was both very tasty and light enough so that I was able to move afterwards.

No, that's not creepy, elephant. You just keep staring at me eating these chicken fingers.

After a quick look through the stores, we were ready to leave, which meant it was time to contend with the buses again. At this point we'd sworn to avoid the buses whenever possible. Luckily, our resort has a boat launch that goes to the Magic Kingdom, from where we can catch the monorail to Epcot. Since our two most visited parks are Epcot and the Magic Kingdom, there's going to be a lot of complimentary boat rides in our future.

This is the boat launch. The boat on the left goes to the Magic Kingdom.

Here's a boat. Not the boat we were on, because we were on the boat we were on when we took this boat picture. Of the boat we weren't on. But it's like the boat we were on, which we were on.

After a rest for a couple hours we took a tour of the resort. We're at Wilderness Lodge, which is "inspired by turn-of-the-century National Park lodge" - kind of a generic, woodsy upstate or even Canadian feel.

There's a Christmas tree in the lobby that almost reaches the ceiling and I swear must be over 70 feet.

Left: It's so big I had trouble getting more than half of it in the frame.

Right: It's so big I couldn't hold the camera straight long enough to get an in focus picture! Just pretend it's vertigo.




There's a river that starts in the lobby, goes under several bridges, a waterfall, and then into the pool. There's even a fake geyser that erupts randomly. (Oh, and a beach. It makes no sense having a beach in the north woods, but there you go.) Here's a nice picture of the walkway back from the bus (it's nicer than it sounds, honest):

Wow! Such Christmas! So festiveness!

Our last venture of the day was taking the boat to the Magic Kingdom dock to meet two buddies of ours who are in Disney for a couple days, Sir Nicholas "Web Unit" Weber OBE, and his wife Lady Akiko "Keeks" Weber, a noted sculptor of collector-grade equestrian ceramics. They'll probably be making cameos until they grab rope ladders dangling from helicopters and leave the property on Tuesday.

Before bed, let's take a look at the cute towel animals we were left:

Alligator / Thing I used to wipe up a orange juice spill

Turtle / Disability fraud criminal

That's about all there is to report for day one. Tomorrow we're hitting the Magic Kingdom.

K.Ham Korner: Alliteration! People need to be way more cognizant of the crowd and not congregate smack dab in the only artery in or out of somewhere.  I can't believe we're finally here!

* As it turns out, we had great luck with the buses and more often than not waited less than 30 seconds, thus rendering that entire paragraph pointless. Whoops!

CORRECTIONS

- We do not live in a converted schoolbus. We live in a normal house with two stupid cats who are also secret agents when we're not looking.

- When I stated "We are one with the Lodge", this is not true. Not yet. We watch; we listen; we wait for the moment to strike; we use a little plastic wrist strap to unlock our door and make incidental purchases.

- Sir Weber is not actually a member of the Order of the British Empire. He is in fact an imaginary elf who feeds on tender feelings. 

Disney 2013 Introduction

At the tail end of 2013 we went down to Disney for ten days at the Wilderness Lodge. This time we were both armed with cell phone cameras, and as a result there's a bunch of pictures to add to the report. This does mean it's going to take a little time to get each day's report ready, but hopefully the addition of photographs will more than make up for this. Stay tuned.