Chapter 2: I'll Get That Kid To Eat. Where's My Screwdriver And My Plumber's Helper?
No alarm needed. We’re at Disney World. And we’re parents. We’ve lost the ability to sleep in. “Sleeping in” typically means we make it all the way to 7:00 a.m. before the baby starts yelling for someone to get him out of the crib and I have to wake Julie up to have her go deal with the problem.
Well, Drew is always calling for “Mommy”, you know. I’d certainly go if he was calling for me.
We were showered and dressed and out the door by 8:00, hoping to make it to Epcot by 9:00 a.m. for Rope Drop. The plan was to take advantage of the short walk to the TTC, grab our morning coffee and breakfast at the Joffrey’s stand there, and then catch the monorail and enjoy the ride. It’s not an official Disney vacation unless you ride the monorail, you know.
We stepped out of the Moorea building and were welcomed by this morning view:
Yeah, I could get used to that. Just for reference, here’s how close we were to the Magic Kingdom ferry:
The first part of the plan worked out just fine. The TTC was practically deserted, and the Joffrey’s kiosk was just opening up for the morning. They had some seasonal holiday offerings, and one of them was a peppermint mocha, which is Julie’s kryptonite. She is physically incapable of turning down a peppermint mocha drink. She could be dying of peppermint poisoning and would still fork over the money as soon as she saw it on the menu. She got that, I got some gingerbread creation, plus some pastries, and we got over-charged to the tune of $18 for breakfast. So it was just like being at Starbucks, only this coffee wasn’t nasty.
We headed straight for the monorail to Epcot, still loving the fact that it was such an easy and convenient walk. And then we were turned right around by the CM’s standing guard who informed us that the monorail wasn’t running yet that morning and they didn’t know when it would be online.
So we made a more difficult and less convenient walk to the bus stop by the Great Ceremonial House to get the Epcot bus.
We didn’t quite make it for Rope Drop, but we were close. We managed to veer to the far left in order to get by most of the hordes at the bag check line, and then we were in.
On the spur of the moment, I posted a photo to the DIS Dad’s Club on Facebook. When one of the guys is in the World, we’ll often see a “Where in the World am I?” photo of something obscure and then everyone will try and guess where it is. So I decided to play along with a brain-teaser of my own.
Best response went to Barry, aka
@FreezinRafiki , who suggested I was ready to tee it up on the Magnolia course.
We were already enjoying the Christmas decorations.
Our first FP+ reservation was for Soarin’ later that morning, so we made a beeline straight for Test Track as soon as we were inside the park. We’d wanted to experience the full ride, designing our own car and everything. And we knew the only chance to do that without a colossal wait would be now.
Even first thing in the morning, the standby wait was already posted at 25 minutes. It looked to me like they were doing a bit of line-stacking, though, as we lined up outside the building for a bit, and then started moving fairly well through the queue. Soon Julie and I were trying our hand at car design.
I have a Master’s Degree in Civil Engineering, and I work directly in the highway transportation field. I have 17 years’ experience in road design. I know every bit of the engineering process down cold, from concept all the way through construction. And I learned on this morning that I suck at designing cars.
The problem was that Julie and I were trying to come up with a balanced design, something that worked across all four design categories. So that meant trying out a hybrid engine, instead of going with our instincts and selecting “plasma burner”. Or something with a little more kick: plutonium! We re-learned the age-old lesson that if you try and please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. And your car sucks, like the engine was built with used pinball machine parts. Then we compounded the problem because as the clock started ticking down, we started just adding random crap left and right until we got this monstrosity:
In any case, the ride is still fun. I prefer the older version of the ride. Every Disney ride tells a story, and in the previous version, you knew exactly what was going on and why. Now, it’s a lot of Tron effects and noise, but it’s hard to tell what the story is. But at least you still get to ride just under the speed limit.
It feels much faster, though, doesn’t it? Our crappy design score:
From there, we started scouting Mouse Gear for some gift ideas for the kids, looking for the perfect way to buy our way back into their hearts upon our return. Then we headed over to the Land Pavilion. We still had some time before our FP+ window opened up, so we got on Livin’ With the Land. It was fun to look for the various holiday touches they added to this one.
They still had a fall display as well.
Back to the holidays:
I took this one just for
@pkondz :
Following the boat ride, we used our first FP+ on Soarin’. We didn’t get the front row this time, but Julie doesn’t like being that far off the ground, so she was ok with that. And we experienced the magic of flying over California just under someone’s dangling feet. Soarin’ gets my vote as best ride music in Walt Disney World. Anyone with me? Being a movie geek, it helps to know that it was written by the late, great Jerry Goldsmith, who wrote powerhouse scores in Hollywood for decades (such as Alien, Star Trek, Chinatown, Patton, and First Blood).
After that, we had a bit of a gap before the next FP+. Normally I would have been running somewhere trying to get another paper FP, but with the new system, it made for an oddly relaxed touring experience. So…what do you wanna do now? We decided that Nemo was typically a fast-loading ride, so we hopped in line there.
It didn’t load that fast. I think it was posted as a 20-minute wait, and it felt like it took every single one of those minutes to get to the ride. Anyway, the ride is cute. Nothing special to me, but I think it’s worth doing just to see the characters projected into the large aquarium at the end. That’s such a cool effect.
That killed enough time for us to head to our next FP+ ride. Since Epcot’s FP+ choices are in tiers, the Tier 2 category leaves you with some slim pickings. We went with Spaceship Earth.
It looked like the standby wait was 30 minutes, so this actually turned out well. One thing we noticed with the new FP+ system was that it seemed to be having the desired effect of spreading guests around the park. Of course, this meant that the wait times were greater at almost every attraction. It felt like we were getting less done each day than we did before under the paper FP system. But I’ll talk more about that in the Magic Kingdom chapters later. For now, we were doing well just using our existing reservations and the Rope Drop strategy.
As always, you must take the opportunity when riding the Big Golf Ball to class the place up a bit.
We had a little time before lunch, so we wandered out to the entrance again to see if the Photopass lines had died down. They had, so we got in line for a photo op. The only downside was that the photographer was shooting into the sun at that time of day. Or that might be the reflection off of my ever-growing forehead.
We left and started on our long walk to the World Showcase. It was nice to just take our time and wander, listening to Christmas music and checking out the flowers and decorations everywhere. On the way, we passed the giant tree, and happened to catch a monorail gliding by.
"What are you thinking about?" asked Julie.
"Oh, the silent majesty of a winter's morn...the clean, cool chill of the holiday air..."
And schnitzel. What, you thought I was going to say something else?
Our lunch destination was another new experience for us. We entered the Biergarten.
We knew we’d wanted to try out another place in the World Showcase, and this one always seemed to be at the top of the list when we looked at the restaurants we hadn’t tried yet. We were seated inside next to a family of four from the Quad Cities region of Illinois, and across from a nice older couple from Louisiana.
We didn’t take long to start filling our plates at the buffet. I loaded up on sausage, pork schnitzel, cheese spätzle, and of course pretzel rolls with beer cheese sauce. No photos because we were sitting with strangers and give into peer pressure easily. But just picture a plate full of meat and starches and you can pretty much envision any meal I’ll ever eat.
We enjoyed talking to the couple across from us, although we did have a slight panic moment when the husband mentioned that he was “getting sick” of Disney.
You mean, that can happen?? Turns out they were retired and his wife kept wanting to come back, so this was their 7th visit over the last 10 years or so. This might be blasphemy here on the boards, but I can understand the desire for some variety. Still, I didn’t think it was actually possible to get tired of Disney World.
Anyway, the conversation was nice, when we could hear it. The oompah band played in the middle of our meal and pretty much drowned out any hope of a chat, so we just enjoyed the music instead.
I was most looking forward to the dessert, since I’d seen apple strudel on the menu. I am a sucker for any pastry with apple filling. This love affair started many decades ago when I was a child and my mom made me my first apple pie. Now I ask for that in place of a birthday cake every year.
So, it was with great anticipation that I grabbed a piece of apple strudel and dug in. The warm, flaky pastry easily gave way to warm, gooey apple filling in that same combination that makes it a little taste of heaven, especially when you add dead grapes to—
Wait, what is this??
Raisins???
Blech. Why would you ruin a perfectly good dessert by putting dead grapes in it? I even have some (weird) friends who like raisins, and yet I have still never heard anyone utter the sentence, “Oh, good, this has raisins in it.” It’s always a more neutral, “Oh…this has raisins in it.”
So that was a bummer. Peer pressure or not, I performed emergency surgery with a butter knife while our new Louisiana friends looked on in bemusement (or maybe it was polite disgust). I dug every last dead grape out of my strudel and then covered over the gaping wound with vanilla sauce. Thankfully, the patient survived and was perfectly edible after that.
So, the verdict on the Biergarten was a solid thumbs-up. Julie liked it more than I did, although my judgment may have been biased due to the attempted raisin poisoning. But we both agreed that Boma was tops on the meal ranking thus far.
Coming Up Next: Julie conquers a ride! A DIS meet! More decorations! And if that’s not enough to make you come back, we have pyrotechnics!
That one never gets old either. 
Well, aren't you just a party pooper.
And I was in the very last row which makes it even more --> 
Thanks for joining in! Gee, that itinerary sounds so familiar...I'd be rushing to go back, too!
Are we long lost brothers? 
