GoofyIsAsGoofyDoes
If it’s still here tomorrow… I may ignore it again
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2007
Chapter 8: Redemption
Part : 3 - Deciding to get on the train…
Just another way of saying that you’re going to follow along.
You might be starting off on a new adventure, continuing onward with a known one, or just agreeing to be part of the group. All apply here. Philosophically, we’re rejoining the group of misguided soles that count themselves as Disney fanatics. Yes, we’d strayed to the Dark Side, and truth be told, we could fall of that wagon again. But it’s here that we feel at home. Here that we spend long hours recounting previous trips and plotting out future ones.
We’re on that train.
Or maybe monorail might be a better analogy.
Regardless, the journey continues and despite a few setbacks and some general inconveniences, we’re quite comfortable with our choices.
And I’m perfectly happy to get back to telling the story.
Oh, and by the way…
This bit of the tale is kind’a short (reading wise), so there’s even something here for you to be happy about.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Back to Earth
I might have mentioned in the last chapter that Mother Nature had become just a tad bit… ummmm… quarrelsome. I might also have mentioned that we considered this a possible cue that maybe we ought’a consider wrapping up our afternoon explorations of the World Showcase (least we become caught up in a potential deluge). Well the longer we considered these points the more questionable things became.
Time to get a move on. The hope was that we could outrun the approaching storm.
And we’d have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids and their dog…
I mean…
if we’d have run at a dead sprint
But that’s not something that suited either of our sensibilities. As it was we did manage to get about as far as the “Fountain of Nations”…
…before the skys commenced to open up.
Tamara had one of those clear ponchos in her bag and quickly pulled it out.
I, on the other hand, had no such contrivance.
What I did have was a guardian angel named Tamara. She opened hers up and threw the thing over both our heads. Good thing it was clear or we’d then have been playing a rather odd variant of Blind Man’s Bluff.
The nearest shelter from that point just happened to be an Umbrella. The “Electric Umbrella” to be exact. A significant crowd had reached a similar conclusion a mite quicker than us so we merely hopped onto their thought train and joined the crowd hunkered down inside to wait out the monsoon.
It took maybe fifteen minutes or so for that heavy band of rain to pass over head. One good thing about all that wind we encountered is that it meant the storm was moving along pretty quickly. There was a slower and steadier rain following along behind it but that’s something we were unaware of at the time.
When things did calm down, we headed out once again in our poncho built for two toward the front of the park. As we cleared the front of Spaceship Earth, there were two more clear observations presenting themselves…
First was that conditions were again deteriorating a bit.
And second…
that there was virtually no line for Epcot’s original primer attraction.
The choice seemed blatantly obvious.
We got onboard another kind of train…
I miss Uncle Walter telling the story of communication and honestly I’m not a fan of the little interactive “build your future” game/distraction that they’ve added to the mix, but the experience as a whole still keeps SE ranked as one of the better dark rides around.
It’s long enough to allow one to relax and rejuvenate a bit
(which is also why I like to hit this one later in the day).
It tells a good story and plays effectively on your senses in doing so.
And it has that hard to quantify notion of wonder about it.
I mean, who’s not moved at the point where your “time machine” reaches the top of the sphere and everything opens up to the image of our home world and the vast star field beyond it.
I tried to get a couple of images from the inside and none of them turned out all that spectacular.
Not surprising to be sure, but I did get one of them to at least be somewhat discernible…
A vision of my past.
When I first started off in the world of working stiffs, it was in a room that looked very much like this, magnetic tape drives and all. A major part of the day’s work was spent running for and loading hundreds of those reel to reel storage tapes fast enough to satisfy the demands of the applications that were running our business.
Oh but we did have direct disk storage as well
(we weren’t completely archaic, I’ll have you know).
No, there were banks of some the best IBM disk drives available at the time.
Here’s an idea of what the rest of the room looked like…
There were banks of “3350” mass storage unites; twenty eight of them if I remember correctly and in our computer room those behemoths were supplemented by a set of slightly older series “3330” unites as well.
All that hardware combined to offer up a mindboggling storage capacity of just under 1 gig.
Yes I said a gig.
Unum… ένας … uno… einer… une… один …
ceann… אחד … ett… một…
One single solitary gigabyte
I carry a small thumb drive in my pocked on a daily basses that will hold twenty-eight times that, cost me less than $20 and is already considered to be old and clunky technology these days.
Lord I’m old…
Wait a minute…Did I just go off on a tangent again?
Lord I’m old.
Ok, we were just getting off of Spaceship Earth. I think. Well that’s where I’m going to pick back up on this unnecessary part of this unnecessary TR.
So if you’re goofy enough to still be following along, then that’ll just have to be good enough for ya’.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Pictures for no good reason…
As I was sayin’…
Once hopping off that train, we quickly determined that the storm had moved on; which was a good thing.
We also determined that it had been replaced instead by a steady light drizzle…
…not such a good thing.
So now what?
How about hopping on a different train then?
Done.
Time to hit the Epcot Monorail.
Is far as I’m concerned, a couple of turns on Disney’s monorail system is a moral imperative. Riding all three lines is also a fine idea but if you’ve got to pick only one (and bless your heart if that’s the case), I’d choose the Epcot line. My reasoning is simply because it’s the longest, and in the midafternoon it’s generally not too crowded either. That second condition makes the ride that much more enjoyable.
We climbed aboard the first train bound for the TTC and set back to enjoy the ride. The rain gave a different and maybe a somewhat gloomy look to the scenery, so pictures weren’t a bright idea. At least not at first.
By the time we got to the TTC though, I’d changed my mind…
And being as the ride back to Epcot offers a famously tantalizing sneak peak of Future World to those that have never seen it before (and to those that have seen it for that matter), I kept snapping pointless pictures.
As such I now intend to inflict said pointless pictures on you.
Suckers!!!
(or you could just scroll on down, ya’ know.)
That crappie picture there illustrates the one flaw with this plan
(well, maybe just the first flaw, but certainly a flaw),
that being you actually don’t get a particularly good view of the park’s icon from the monorail.
This is partly due to proximity as the track basically hugs the outline of the Spaceship Earth. It’s also partly due to the fact that every other site is best seen from the right hand side of the car and I therefor had forced myself to shoot across the cab just to capture any of it at all.
But since I’m just showing you pointless pictures in the first place…
making sure that their crappie as well just adds to the total effect of this section.
Don’t ya’ think.
But, if you are looking out the other side of the car (and past all the rain water beading up on the windows), then right off the bat you end up with a rather nice view of Mission Space…
Followed by the new façade of Test Tron…
errr ummm… I mean
Test Track
At the apex of the loop you get your first glimpse of the American Adventure
Commanding its spot at the heart of a rather soggy World Showcase…
Swinging around to the west side of the loop you encounter the Jumping Fountains with
Journey into Imagination looming in the back grounds
(somewhat pitifully, but looming none the less)…
Then in quick succession you catch site of The Land pavilion peaking up through the canopy of trees like a distant glass mountain…
And The Seas, stoically tucked into its cozy corner…
Next stop…
Back to the monorail station and the end of this day’s visit to Epcot.
Time for just one more “ride”
A short trip on another type of train…
To rest our feet a bit more we climbed aboard the tram and let it haul us back out into the parking lot.
After that, it’s but a short drive over to Riverside and a refreshing break back in our current home in the Bayou.
Time to wait on the guys and get organized for our final bit of park time.
Wonder where that should end up being?
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Meanwhile, back on the bus…
Now as I recall, the boys weren’t with us during the taking of the showcase.
No, they had headed off to catch a movie.
An opening day viewing of this one I do believe…
I figured that I should add their side trip to the TR, because their experiences were most certainly part of the overall journey. I did quiz them on this side mission afterward. That resulted in a hand full of mostly monosyllabic answers and descriptions. But to help with the process they did have a sum total of zero pictures that I could also use in the telling of the adventure.
So now what?
Well I think I’ll just enlist some of the folks up there in that last picture to help tell the tale then.
Surely they can do as good a job of it as I could.
So let’s get started then…
?
Now if I remember correctly it is possible that the guys encountered a just bit of trouble navigating the bus system, but it truth that didn’t really set them back all that much.
Well… that’s not entirely true.
Actually the bus did end up having a hand in interfering with their plans somewhat.
But it had nothing to do with the rout or schedules or the like.
No, the trouble came in the form of a repeat performance.
All was going smoothly at first. They’d sorted out their problems catching the right bus pretty quickly, got to DTD, and made a bee line for the theater. On the way one of them thought to make a quick check of the time to ensure sure that their scheduling was till good. For folks their age (and most everyone younger than me for that matter), checking the time means reaching into one’s pocket to retrieve the ever-present cell-pho…
Wait a second, It’s not here!
What’s not here?
Dude… I think I left my phone on the bus.
Again!
Seriously!
Yep… seriously.
Toncy had succeeded in re-misplacing the same phone that he’d only recently retrieved after having initially misplaced it just the night before.
I honestly do not know what we’re gonn’a do with that boy.
Sully had a good suggestion on the subject though…
The two of them quickly spun around on their heels and sprinted back to the bus stops, hopping beyond hope that they could find and catch the ride that had just dropped them off.
Not likely right?
Well, as it turns out the bus in question was still sitting there.
Inconceivable!
The only problem was that when they got to it, the driver was gone. Driver shift changes often take place at DTD, and that’s exactly what was happening here. The new wheel jockey listened to their tale of woe and happily allowed them to search the bus. To no avail, though. It was then suggested that the other guy may have found it as they generally make a quick sweep of the vehicle looking for such wayward items before turning it over to the next driver. If that were the case, then he may also turn it in to DTD’s Lost and Found.
So now they had to trek down toward the Market Place part of Downtown to find Customer Service.
Upon arrival it was determined that none of the drivers had brought anything in recently, but even if someone had or might later on, everything would be forwarded on to the main location over near the TTC at the end of the day. The best bet was going to be inquiring about it tomorrow morning.
Instead of the phone, all they had to show for the retrieval effort was one of these…
This unplanned odyssey also caused them to miss the start time on the film that was the goal of the entire expedition. Being opening day and also being on the grounds of the place that was behind the film in the first place did ensure that it was showing on multiple screens though. That said, they still had a bit of time to kill at this point so they poked around a bit in the single most ridiculous and over the top gift shop on the property…
World of Disney
They didn’t buy a thing, but that’s actually an accomplishment when one ventures into one of the ultimate eye-candy stores for the Disney fanatic. And it allowed them to pass the time rather painlessly.
After a while they did finally get back over to the recently renovated theater…
…and found that there was a healthy line just to get in the front door.
Apparently they weren’t alone in deciding this was a good idea.
I asked them what they thought of the updates to the theater.
The reaction was something close akin to…
Wow, indeed.
To get an idea of want they were on about, here’s a publicity photo of one of the theaters with the dining tables built into each of the rows…
All in all, it turned out to be a pretty good way to relax and enjoy a film.
Not cheap, but we’re talkin’ Disney here, so that’s par for the course as well.
That leaves only one more question then.
So guys…
What did ya’ thin of the movie?
And I’m not surprised one bit.
Next up: The last hurrah
Part : 3 - Deciding to get on the train…
Just another way of saying that you’re going to follow along.
You might be starting off on a new adventure, continuing onward with a known one, or just agreeing to be part of the group. All apply here. Philosophically, we’re rejoining the group of misguided soles that count themselves as Disney fanatics. Yes, we’d strayed to the Dark Side, and truth be told, we could fall of that wagon again. But it’s here that we feel at home. Here that we spend long hours recounting previous trips and plotting out future ones.
We’re on that train.
Or maybe monorail might be a better analogy.
Regardless, the journey continues and despite a few setbacks and some general inconveniences, we’re quite comfortable with our choices.
And I’m perfectly happy to get back to telling the story.
Oh, and by the way…
This bit of the tale is kind’a short (reading wise), so there’s even something here for you to be happy about.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Back to Earth
I might have mentioned in the last chapter that Mother Nature had become just a tad bit… ummmm… quarrelsome. I might also have mentioned that we considered this a possible cue that maybe we ought’a consider wrapping up our afternoon explorations of the World Showcase (least we become caught up in a potential deluge). Well the longer we considered these points the more questionable things became.
Time to get a move on. The hope was that we could outrun the approaching storm.
And we’d have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids and their dog…
I mean…
if we’d have run at a dead sprint
But that’s not something that suited either of our sensibilities. As it was we did manage to get about as far as the “Fountain of Nations”…
…before the skys commenced to open up.
Tamara had one of those clear ponchos in her bag and quickly pulled it out.
I, on the other hand, had no such contrivance.
What I did have was a guardian angel named Tamara. She opened hers up and threw the thing over both our heads. Good thing it was clear or we’d then have been playing a rather odd variant of Blind Man’s Bluff.
The nearest shelter from that point just happened to be an Umbrella. The “Electric Umbrella” to be exact. A significant crowd had reached a similar conclusion a mite quicker than us so we merely hopped onto their thought train and joined the crowd hunkered down inside to wait out the monsoon.
It took maybe fifteen minutes or so for that heavy band of rain to pass over head. One good thing about all that wind we encountered is that it meant the storm was moving along pretty quickly. There was a slower and steadier rain following along behind it but that’s something we were unaware of at the time.
When things did calm down, we headed out once again in our poncho built for two toward the front of the park. As we cleared the front of Spaceship Earth, there were two more clear observations presenting themselves…
First was that conditions were again deteriorating a bit.
And second…
that there was virtually no line for Epcot’s original primer attraction.
The choice seemed blatantly obvious.
We got onboard another kind of train…
I miss Uncle Walter telling the story of communication and honestly I’m not a fan of the little interactive “build your future” game/distraction that they’ve added to the mix, but the experience as a whole still keeps SE ranked as one of the better dark rides around.
It’s long enough to allow one to relax and rejuvenate a bit
(which is also why I like to hit this one later in the day).
It tells a good story and plays effectively on your senses in doing so.
And it has that hard to quantify notion of wonder about it.
I mean, who’s not moved at the point where your “time machine” reaches the top of the sphere and everything opens up to the image of our home world and the vast star field beyond it.
I tried to get a couple of images from the inside and none of them turned out all that spectacular.
Not surprising to be sure, but I did get one of them to at least be somewhat discernible…
A vision of my past.
When I first started off in the world of working stiffs, it was in a room that looked very much like this, magnetic tape drives and all. A major part of the day’s work was spent running for and loading hundreds of those reel to reel storage tapes fast enough to satisfy the demands of the applications that were running our business.
Oh but we did have direct disk storage as well
(we weren’t completely archaic, I’ll have you know).
No, there were banks of some the best IBM disk drives available at the time.
Here’s an idea of what the rest of the room looked like…
There were banks of “3350” mass storage unites; twenty eight of them if I remember correctly and in our computer room those behemoths were supplemented by a set of slightly older series “3330” unites as well.
All that hardware combined to offer up a mindboggling storage capacity of just under 1 gig.
Yes I said a gig.
Unum… ένας … uno… einer… une… один …
ceann… אחד … ett… một…
One single solitary gigabyte
I carry a small thumb drive in my pocked on a daily basses that will hold twenty-eight times that, cost me less than $20 and is already considered to be old and clunky technology these days.
Lord I’m old…
Wait a minute…Did I just go off on a tangent again?
Lord I’m old.
Ok, we were just getting off of Spaceship Earth. I think. Well that’s where I’m going to pick back up on this unnecessary part of this unnecessary TR.
So if you’re goofy enough to still be following along, then that’ll just have to be good enough for ya’.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Pictures for no good reason…
As I was sayin’…
Once hopping off that train, we quickly determined that the storm had moved on; which was a good thing.
We also determined that it had been replaced instead by a steady light drizzle…
…not such a good thing.
So now what?
How about hopping on a different train then?
Done.
Time to hit the Epcot Monorail.
Is far as I’m concerned, a couple of turns on Disney’s monorail system is a moral imperative. Riding all three lines is also a fine idea but if you’ve got to pick only one (and bless your heart if that’s the case), I’d choose the Epcot line. My reasoning is simply because it’s the longest, and in the midafternoon it’s generally not too crowded either. That second condition makes the ride that much more enjoyable.
We climbed aboard the first train bound for the TTC and set back to enjoy the ride. The rain gave a different and maybe a somewhat gloomy look to the scenery, so pictures weren’t a bright idea. At least not at first.
By the time we got to the TTC though, I’d changed my mind…
And being as the ride back to Epcot offers a famously tantalizing sneak peak of Future World to those that have never seen it before (and to those that have seen it for that matter), I kept snapping pointless pictures.
As such I now intend to inflict said pointless pictures on you.
Suckers!!!
(or you could just scroll on down, ya’ know.)
That crappie picture there illustrates the one flaw with this plan
(well, maybe just the first flaw, but certainly a flaw),
that being you actually don’t get a particularly good view of the park’s icon from the monorail.
This is partly due to proximity as the track basically hugs the outline of the Spaceship Earth. It’s also partly due to the fact that every other site is best seen from the right hand side of the car and I therefor had forced myself to shoot across the cab just to capture any of it at all.
But since I’m just showing you pointless pictures in the first place…
making sure that their crappie as well just adds to the total effect of this section.
Don’t ya’ think.
But, if you are looking out the other side of the car (and past all the rain water beading up on the windows), then right off the bat you end up with a rather nice view of Mission Space…
Followed by the new façade of Test Tron…
errr ummm… I mean
Test Track
At the apex of the loop you get your first glimpse of the American Adventure
Commanding its spot at the heart of a rather soggy World Showcase…
Swinging around to the west side of the loop you encounter the Jumping Fountains with
Journey into Imagination looming in the back grounds
(somewhat pitifully, but looming none the less)…
Then in quick succession you catch site of The Land pavilion peaking up through the canopy of trees like a distant glass mountain…
And The Seas, stoically tucked into its cozy corner…
Next stop…
Back to the monorail station and the end of this day’s visit to Epcot.
Time for just one more “ride”
A short trip on another type of train…
To rest our feet a bit more we climbed aboard the tram and let it haul us back out into the parking lot.
After that, it’s but a short drive over to Riverside and a refreshing break back in our current home in the Bayou.
Time to wait on the guys and get organized for our final bit of park time.
Wonder where that should end up being?
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Meanwhile, back on the bus…
Now as I recall, the boys weren’t with us during the taking of the showcase.
No, they had headed off to catch a movie.
An opening day viewing of this one I do believe…
I figured that I should add their side trip to the TR, because their experiences were most certainly part of the overall journey. I did quiz them on this side mission afterward. That resulted in a hand full of mostly monosyllabic answers and descriptions. But to help with the process they did have a sum total of zero pictures that I could also use in the telling of the adventure.
So now what?
Well I think I’ll just enlist some of the folks up there in that last picture to help tell the tale then.
Surely they can do as good a job of it as I could.
So let’s get started then…
Now if I remember correctly it is possible that the guys encountered a just bit of trouble navigating the bus system, but it truth that didn’t really set them back all that much.
Well… that’s not entirely true.
Actually the bus did end up having a hand in interfering with their plans somewhat.
But it had nothing to do with the rout or schedules or the like.
No, the trouble came in the form of a repeat performance.
All was going smoothly at first. They’d sorted out their problems catching the right bus pretty quickly, got to DTD, and made a bee line for the theater. On the way one of them thought to make a quick check of the time to ensure sure that their scheduling was till good. For folks their age (and most everyone younger than me for that matter), checking the time means reaching into one’s pocket to retrieve the ever-present cell-pho…
Wait a second, It’s not here!
What’s not here?
Dude… I think I left my phone on the bus.
Again!
Seriously!
Yep… seriously.
Toncy had succeeded in re-misplacing the same phone that he’d only recently retrieved after having initially misplaced it just the night before.
I honestly do not know what we’re gonn’a do with that boy.
Sully had a good suggestion on the subject though…
The two of them quickly spun around on their heels and sprinted back to the bus stops, hopping beyond hope that they could find and catch the ride that had just dropped them off.
Not likely right?
Well, as it turns out the bus in question was still sitting there.
Inconceivable!
The only problem was that when they got to it, the driver was gone. Driver shift changes often take place at DTD, and that’s exactly what was happening here. The new wheel jockey listened to their tale of woe and happily allowed them to search the bus. To no avail, though. It was then suggested that the other guy may have found it as they generally make a quick sweep of the vehicle looking for such wayward items before turning it over to the next driver. If that were the case, then he may also turn it in to DTD’s Lost and Found.
So now they had to trek down toward the Market Place part of Downtown to find Customer Service.
Upon arrival it was determined that none of the drivers had brought anything in recently, but even if someone had or might later on, everything would be forwarded on to the main location over near the TTC at the end of the day. The best bet was going to be inquiring about it tomorrow morning.
Instead of the phone, all they had to show for the retrieval effort was one of these…
This unplanned odyssey also caused them to miss the start time on the film that was the goal of the entire expedition. Being opening day and also being on the grounds of the place that was behind the film in the first place did ensure that it was showing on multiple screens though. That said, they still had a bit of time to kill at this point so they poked around a bit in the single most ridiculous and over the top gift shop on the property…
World of Disney
They didn’t buy a thing, but that’s actually an accomplishment when one ventures into one of the ultimate eye-candy stores for the Disney fanatic. And it allowed them to pass the time rather painlessly.
After a while they did finally get back over to the recently renovated theater…
…and found that there was a healthy line just to get in the front door.
Apparently they weren’t alone in deciding this was a good idea.
I asked them what they thought of the updates to the theater.
The reaction was something close akin to…
Wow, indeed.
To get an idea of want they were on about, here’s a publicity photo of one of the theaters with the dining tables built into each of the rows…
All in all, it turned out to be a pretty good way to relax and enjoy a film.
Not cheap, but we’re talkin’ Disney here, so that’s par for the course as well.
That leaves only one more question then.
So guys…
What did ya’ thin of the movie?
And I’m not surprised one bit.
Next up: The last hurrah
Last edited:
I mean...
Agreed
