the real robp
Trip Reporter Extraordinaire
- Joined
- May 13, 2003
- Messages
- 22
I'm Rob, she's Aimee. Our first romantic trip together continues!
Day 3, In Which Aimee and Rob Conquer The Magic Kingdom With Their Commando Plan
Sunday morning the phone rang at the ungodly hour of 6am (or "3am Pacific Time", as I like to call it) and I let Aimee answer it. I don't know if it was Mickey Mouse on the other end of the line. It could have been Walt Disney himself for all I cared at the time... it was SIX IN THE FREAKING MORNING and all I can remember thinking is "unnngh." Note to self: try to minimize future pap intake. But despite the ridiculous hour we somehow managed to screw up our resolve and roll out of bed, because The Plan required it.
Before I go on, I should say a few words about The Plan. Some people take a carefree, relaxed approach to vacationing. They want to take it easy, stroll around, soak up the "Disney magic" as it were and just sort of experience whatever they manage to stumble across. Well that's certainly their prerogative... I mean who am I to judge? Besides, natural selection will surely weed those dummies out of the gene pool within a generation or two. Aimee and I are planners, baby... we spent weeks researching every last detail, developing contingency plans to deal with any foreseeable situation, and basically organizing our entire trip strategy for maximum efficiency. The core of The Plan was to slavishly follow the instructions laid out in Bob Sehlinger's "Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World (2003 edition)". Bob claims to have used sophisticated computer models to devise park strategies that are 98% optimized -- one can only assume that optimizing it all the way to 100% would probably just make it way too rigid and suck all the fun out of the whole experience. The only alternative to Bob was from TourGuide Mike, who brilliantly advocates "leaving the park every afternoon to take a freaking nap back at the hotel". Note to Mike: say hi to Mr. Darwin for me.
So the plan for Day 3 required us to go to the Magic Kingdom to take advantage of the "extra magic hour", and it said to be there 40 minutes before the park opened at 8am. This is where I discovered that trying to actually analyze the Plan is fraught with peril. "If the park doesn't open until 8:00," I wondered, "then why does Bob say we need to be there at 7:20?" Aimee correctly pointed out that I was wasting precious minutes questioning the computer instead of fixing my hair, so I stopped trying to figure it out and concentrated on spraying my coif into submission instead. But the question still haunts me... and somewhere, I'm pretty sure Bob is laughing.
We managed to actually leave our room at around 7:15, and I could intuitively sense that we weren't going to make it to the Magic Kingdom by 7:20. We walked to the shuttle bus stop and waited by the Magic Kingdom sign. And waited. And then waited some more. Buses came for the Animal Kingdom. Buses came for Epcot. Why?? There was no extra magic at those places -- it's almost like they were taunting us. Could they not see that nobody was lining up to go to the closed parks? And with every passing minute, more people sauntered down to wait along with us... all of them muttering about how they never ever had to wait this long for the bus on any of their other trips to Disney (even if they'd only been waiting for 90 seconds). After 20 or 30 minutes our bus finally came and dropped us off at the Magic Kingdom -- the time was 8:20 and we were already an hour behind schedule. Surely we'd doomed ourselves to a day of miserable, miserable failure but we were determined to make that hour up somehow and wring every last ounce of fun out of the place, even if it killed us.
Bob says to ride Space Mountain first thing, so we ran like the wind to Tomorrowland and there was almost no lineup at all so we rode that bad-boy to start our day. Cross one item off the list. Woo! Next was Buzz Lightyear, at which Aimee had promised to "kick my ***". Lucky us, no lineup so we rode that and I won, sitting on the right side of the car. Still no lineup when we were done and Aimee was bent on proving her whole macho ***-kicking thing, so we rode it again right away and I won (again), sitting on the right side of the car (again). Besides, the next scheduled item was Winnie the Pooh and that was closed so we figured we could afford the double-shot of Buzz. Next Bob says to ride Snow White, and there was a 5-minute wait. But "It's a Small World" was right there and the posted wait was (I kid you not) one minute so we rode that instead. As we were leaving a bunch of people yelled that I'd forgotten my sunglasses on the boat -- I was mortified, I mean who gets yelled at in the Magic Kingdom?? Anyway we crossed that off our list and did Snow White. Is it just me or are all the Magic Kingdom attractions starting to seem really cheap and dated? I wasn't really feeling all magical at this point, more kind of... sad. Depressed. Also I seem to remember Snow White being fun and scary-ish but now it just kind of sucks. Maybe it's just my memory that's at fault but I missed the old days where you'd exit the ride amongst a bunch of screaming kids. Oh well... at least I had a bunch of screaming adults to remind me I'd forgotten my sunglasses again. Next on the list was Peter Pan's Flight, so we dashed over there but found (to our horror) that the line was like AN HOUR. No lineups for anything so far, but suddenly there's AN HOUR wait to ride Peter Pan. Insane. We decided to skip it and proceed with the rest of the Plan.
Next Bob says to hit the Haunted Mansion, which filled Aimee with joy because it's her all-time favorite ride. I like it when she's happy, so we ran to the Mansion, fully expecting the worst after the whole Peter Pan debacle. But no lineup, hurray! We went in and expertly made our way to where the secret door opens so there'd be none of the annoying waiting. Halfway through the ride I turn to Aimee, intending to jokingly offer "you can hold my hand if you get scared," but my brain freezes and I can't form any words when I notice she's got a little mirror out and she's touching up her makeup. Weird! The Haunted Mansion is great, so we immediately rode it again... besides, I figured I could use the opportunity to fix my hair.
Off to Frontierland where we got a fastpass for Splash Mountain (as instructed by Bob) and then rode Big Thunder Mountain. Ho hum. At least there was no lineup. Next we ran to adventureland and rode my all-time favorite ride, Pirates of the Caribbean. I think they can shut down the rest of the lame attractions and just go with all Pirates, all the time, baby. Back to Splash Mountain to use our first fastpass of the day. There was only a 10 or 15 minute wait in the standby line but we literally ran down the fastpass line, brandishing our fastpass tickets at all the waiting people and shouting "fastpass! fastpass!" to befuddle and annoy them. I really think most people just can't figure out how it works. Suckers. Anyway I love Splash Mountain, and by hunkering down behind a couple of really big people we barely got wet in spite of sitting in the last row. Luckily after we got off some friendly people were kind enough to scream at me that I'd managed to forget my sunglasses. Yay!
Bob said to eat lunch so we did... unfortunately he didn't say where to eat or what to buy so that slowed us down a bit but we eventually settled on Pecos Bill's (cheeseburger for Aimee, salad for me -- $100). Bob also doesn't say when you're supposed to stop to go to the bathroom, so we played it safe by stopping every 15 minutes or so throughout the day. After lunch we caught the railroad over to Mickey's Toontown Fair, which turns out to be the lamest thing ever. EVER. The only entertainment value at all was a couple of kids who jumped over the guard rope in Mickey's house to play in his living room while security sirens blared and their mom stood around obliviously taking pictures. We opted to bail, although a small part of me wanted to stay and watch the beating Mickey's Magical Security Force was surely going to lay on those kids. Next we were supposed to get a fastpass for the jungle cruise but there was no wait so we decided to just ride it instead... our guide was hilarious, I swear to god he was stoned right back to the dark ages. He had a whole "Steven Wright" kind of delivery, I laughed hysterically every time he deadpanned something like "Ahhhh. Watch out for the alligators. Wow that was close." We hit the Enchanted Tiki Birds, which is always fun. Bob said to go see the Country Bear Jamboree next, but the 5-minute wait for the Aladdin Magic Carpet ride was too tempting so we rode that bad-boy before hitting the always-amusing Jamboree. Bob says to do the Swiss Family Treehouse but we both agreed "Swiss Family Treehouse blows" so we went on to the Hall of Presidents. Sadly we just missed the show so we decided to go on to Alien Encounter instead. Alien Encounter is a new one for me, I thought it was great despite all the hand-wringing ninnies who whine about it being too scary and violent... it was almost enough to make me forget the dingy crapitude of "Snow White" and "It's a Small World."
Speaking of dingy crapitude, this is where we went back and did Peter Pan because dammit, we weren't going to be denied. It said "20 minute wait" but we waited more like 35 -- our only actual wait of the day, as it turns out. What a colossal waste of precious, precious time.
Back to the Hall of Presidents at around 4:31pm... that is, we just missed the 4:30pm show because of the aforementioned waiting. Sigh. We decided to wait around anyway, since our schedule was pretty much done at this point and we were beat from all the running. You know you've had a magical Disney day when it's late afternoon and you're feeling gross, sweaty and tired. While we're standing there, a cast member stops to empty a nearby trash can and as he's doing that, a guy walks up to him and asks -- I kid you not -- "hey, are there any rides over this way?" It was funny to see the cast member's Disney brainwashing fail him in his moment of greatest need... I don't think he even answered, he just kind of walked off shaking his head and laughing. At around 4:36 a couple of old women saunter up, and after another couple of minutes the Hall of Presidents cast member guy comes out to announce "the next show is at 5:00 but hey y'all can sit in here in the sweet, sweet air conditioning". One of the old women turns nasty and starts berating the guy, demanding "well what happened to the 4:30 show?" and deceptively insisting they'd been waiting for over 20 minutes after he explained they'd missed it. She got really irate, yelling at the guy and calling him a liar, and I couldn't help but laugh when he totally blew her off with "well 800 other people managed to get here on time, sorry." Not willing to be denied, she took it up with another cast member, a nice elderly Martha Washington kind of woman, who apologetically tried to explain that there really was a 4:30 show and that these two ladies had simply missed it and there was nothing they could do but wait for the next one. The angry old bat made a big scene, vowing to report these two cast members to someone of authority and bring the full fury of Walt Disney himself down on their sorry, sorry asses, and then she stalked off with her friend in tow (missing the 5:00 show in the process). Aimee and I thoroughly enjoyed the Hall of Presidents, which is to say Aimee touched up her makeup while I snoozed through whatever the animatronic George Bush was saying. Afterwards Bob's only remaining instructions were to go back and hit anything we missed but there wasn't anything, so we did the Haunted Mansion again (no waiting, also touched up our makeup and hair), rode the Tomorrowland Transit Authority, and finally hit space mountain again (no waiting). And thus it ended the way it began. Yay.
Summary of our Magic Kingdom day: we managed to hit everything, much of it twice, without any real waiting. Except for the Swiss Family Treehouse, which totally blows. Armed with our plan and our steely resolve, we managed to be the most efficient people in the park that day... I still feel sorry for all the people who spent just as much money but didn't have nearly as much magical fun as us.
This has gone on way too long so I'll just conclude by saying we ate at Cosmic Ray's (two salads in a quiet corner -- $100), waited forever on a bus back to the hotel where we were briefly awed again by the wild, grazing animals, and then we watched a bunch of TV. I'm probably glossing over a few details somewhere, but I figure it's way more interesting to hear what we did all day at the Magic Kingdom than what we did all night at the hotel.
Coming soon: Aimee and Rob Take on the Animal Kingdom!
Day 3, In Which Aimee and Rob Conquer The Magic Kingdom With Their Commando Plan
Sunday morning the phone rang at the ungodly hour of 6am (or "3am Pacific Time", as I like to call it) and I let Aimee answer it. I don't know if it was Mickey Mouse on the other end of the line. It could have been Walt Disney himself for all I cared at the time... it was SIX IN THE FREAKING MORNING and all I can remember thinking is "unnngh." Note to self: try to minimize future pap intake. But despite the ridiculous hour we somehow managed to screw up our resolve and roll out of bed, because The Plan required it.
Before I go on, I should say a few words about The Plan. Some people take a carefree, relaxed approach to vacationing. They want to take it easy, stroll around, soak up the "Disney magic" as it were and just sort of experience whatever they manage to stumble across. Well that's certainly their prerogative... I mean who am I to judge? Besides, natural selection will surely weed those dummies out of the gene pool within a generation or two. Aimee and I are planners, baby... we spent weeks researching every last detail, developing contingency plans to deal with any foreseeable situation, and basically organizing our entire trip strategy for maximum efficiency. The core of The Plan was to slavishly follow the instructions laid out in Bob Sehlinger's "Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World (2003 edition)". Bob claims to have used sophisticated computer models to devise park strategies that are 98% optimized -- one can only assume that optimizing it all the way to 100% would probably just make it way too rigid and suck all the fun out of the whole experience. The only alternative to Bob was from TourGuide Mike, who brilliantly advocates "leaving the park every afternoon to take a freaking nap back at the hotel". Note to Mike: say hi to Mr. Darwin for me.
So the plan for Day 3 required us to go to the Magic Kingdom to take advantage of the "extra magic hour", and it said to be there 40 minutes before the park opened at 8am. This is where I discovered that trying to actually analyze the Plan is fraught with peril. "If the park doesn't open until 8:00," I wondered, "then why does Bob say we need to be there at 7:20?" Aimee correctly pointed out that I was wasting precious minutes questioning the computer instead of fixing my hair, so I stopped trying to figure it out and concentrated on spraying my coif into submission instead. But the question still haunts me... and somewhere, I'm pretty sure Bob is laughing.
We managed to actually leave our room at around 7:15, and I could intuitively sense that we weren't going to make it to the Magic Kingdom by 7:20. We walked to the shuttle bus stop and waited by the Magic Kingdom sign. And waited. And then waited some more. Buses came for the Animal Kingdom. Buses came for Epcot. Why?? There was no extra magic at those places -- it's almost like they were taunting us. Could they not see that nobody was lining up to go to the closed parks? And with every passing minute, more people sauntered down to wait along with us... all of them muttering about how they never ever had to wait this long for the bus on any of their other trips to Disney (even if they'd only been waiting for 90 seconds). After 20 or 30 minutes our bus finally came and dropped us off at the Magic Kingdom -- the time was 8:20 and we were already an hour behind schedule. Surely we'd doomed ourselves to a day of miserable, miserable failure but we were determined to make that hour up somehow and wring every last ounce of fun out of the place, even if it killed us.
Bob says to ride Space Mountain first thing, so we ran like the wind to Tomorrowland and there was almost no lineup at all so we rode that bad-boy to start our day. Cross one item off the list. Woo! Next was Buzz Lightyear, at which Aimee had promised to "kick my ***". Lucky us, no lineup so we rode that and I won, sitting on the right side of the car. Still no lineup when we were done and Aimee was bent on proving her whole macho ***-kicking thing, so we rode it again right away and I won (again), sitting on the right side of the car (again). Besides, the next scheduled item was Winnie the Pooh and that was closed so we figured we could afford the double-shot of Buzz. Next Bob says to ride Snow White, and there was a 5-minute wait. But "It's a Small World" was right there and the posted wait was (I kid you not) one minute so we rode that instead. As we were leaving a bunch of people yelled that I'd forgotten my sunglasses on the boat -- I was mortified, I mean who gets yelled at in the Magic Kingdom?? Anyway we crossed that off our list and did Snow White. Is it just me or are all the Magic Kingdom attractions starting to seem really cheap and dated? I wasn't really feeling all magical at this point, more kind of... sad. Depressed. Also I seem to remember Snow White being fun and scary-ish but now it just kind of sucks. Maybe it's just my memory that's at fault but I missed the old days where you'd exit the ride amongst a bunch of screaming kids. Oh well... at least I had a bunch of screaming adults to remind me I'd forgotten my sunglasses again. Next on the list was Peter Pan's Flight, so we dashed over there but found (to our horror) that the line was like AN HOUR. No lineups for anything so far, but suddenly there's AN HOUR wait to ride Peter Pan. Insane. We decided to skip it and proceed with the rest of the Plan.
Next Bob says to hit the Haunted Mansion, which filled Aimee with joy because it's her all-time favorite ride. I like it when she's happy, so we ran to the Mansion, fully expecting the worst after the whole Peter Pan debacle. But no lineup, hurray! We went in and expertly made our way to where the secret door opens so there'd be none of the annoying waiting. Halfway through the ride I turn to Aimee, intending to jokingly offer "you can hold my hand if you get scared," but my brain freezes and I can't form any words when I notice she's got a little mirror out and she's touching up her makeup. Weird! The Haunted Mansion is great, so we immediately rode it again... besides, I figured I could use the opportunity to fix my hair.
Off to Frontierland where we got a fastpass for Splash Mountain (as instructed by Bob) and then rode Big Thunder Mountain. Ho hum. At least there was no lineup. Next we ran to adventureland and rode my all-time favorite ride, Pirates of the Caribbean. I think they can shut down the rest of the lame attractions and just go with all Pirates, all the time, baby. Back to Splash Mountain to use our first fastpass of the day. There was only a 10 or 15 minute wait in the standby line but we literally ran down the fastpass line, brandishing our fastpass tickets at all the waiting people and shouting "fastpass! fastpass!" to befuddle and annoy them. I really think most people just can't figure out how it works. Suckers. Anyway I love Splash Mountain, and by hunkering down behind a couple of really big people we barely got wet in spite of sitting in the last row. Luckily after we got off some friendly people were kind enough to scream at me that I'd managed to forget my sunglasses. Yay!
Bob said to eat lunch so we did... unfortunately he didn't say where to eat or what to buy so that slowed us down a bit but we eventually settled on Pecos Bill's (cheeseburger for Aimee, salad for me -- $100). Bob also doesn't say when you're supposed to stop to go to the bathroom, so we played it safe by stopping every 15 minutes or so throughout the day. After lunch we caught the railroad over to Mickey's Toontown Fair, which turns out to be the lamest thing ever. EVER. The only entertainment value at all was a couple of kids who jumped over the guard rope in Mickey's house to play in his living room while security sirens blared and their mom stood around obliviously taking pictures. We opted to bail, although a small part of me wanted to stay and watch the beating Mickey's Magical Security Force was surely going to lay on those kids. Next we were supposed to get a fastpass for the jungle cruise but there was no wait so we decided to just ride it instead... our guide was hilarious, I swear to god he was stoned right back to the dark ages. He had a whole "Steven Wright" kind of delivery, I laughed hysterically every time he deadpanned something like "Ahhhh. Watch out for the alligators. Wow that was close." We hit the Enchanted Tiki Birds, which is always fun. Bob said to go see the Country Bear Jamboree next, but the 5-minute wait for the Aladdin Magic Carpet ride was too tempting so we rode that bad-boy before hitting the always-amusing Jamboree. Bob says to do the Swiss Family Treehouse but we both agreed "Swiss Family Treehouse blows" so we went on to the Hall of Presidents. Sadly we just missed the show so we decided to go on to Alien Encounter instead. Alien Encounter is a new one for me, I thought it was great despite all the hand-wringing ninnies who whine about it being too scary and violent... it was almost enough to make me forget the dingy crapitude of "Snow White" and "It's a Small World."
Speaking of dingy crapitude, this is where we went back and did Peter Pan because dammit, we weren't going to be denied. It said "20 minute wait" but we waited more like 35 -- our only actual wait of the day, as it turns out. What a colossal waste of precious, precious time.
Back to the Hall of Presidents at around 4:31pm... that is, we just missed the 4:30pm show because of the aforementioned waiting. Sigh. We decided to wait around anyway, since our schedule was pretty much done at this point and we were beat from all the running. You know you've had a magical Disney day when it's late afternoon and you're feeling gross, sweaty and tired. While we're standing there, a cast member stops to empty a nearby trash can and as he's doing that, a guy walks up to him and asks -- I kid you not -- "hey, are there any rides over this way?" It was funny to see the cast member's Disney brainwashing fail him in his moment of greatest need... I don't think he even answered, he just kind of walked off shaking his head and laughing. At around 4:36 a couple of old women saunter up, and after another couple of minutes the Hall of Presidents cast member guy comes out to announce "the next show is at 5:00 but hey y'all can sit in here in the sweet, sweet air conditioning". One of the old women turns nasty and starts berating the guy, demanding "well what happened to the 4:30 show?" and deceptively insisting they'd been waiting for over 20 minutes after he explained they'd missed it. She got really irate, yelling at the guy and calling him a liar, and I couldn't help but laugh when he totally blew her off with "well 800 other people managed to get here on time, sorry." Not willing to be denied, she took it up with another cast member, a nice elderly Martha Washington kind of woman, who apologetically tried to explain that there really was a 4:30 show and that these two ladies had simply missed it and there was nothing they could do but wait for the next one. The angry old bat made a big scene, vowing to report these two cast members to someone of authority and bring the full fury of Walt Disney himself down on their sorry, sorry asses, and then she stalked off with her friend in tow (missing the 5:00 show in the process). Aimee and I thoroughly enjoyed the Hall of Presidents, which is to say Aimee touched up her makeup while I snoozed through whatever the animatronic George Bush was saying. Afterwards Bob's only remaining instructions were to go back and hit anything we missed but there wasn't anything, so we did the Haunted Mansion again (no waiting, also touched up our makeup and hair), rode the Tomorrowland Transit Authority, and finally hit space mountain again (no waiting). And thus it ended the way it began. Yay.
Summary of our Magic Kingdom day: we managed to hit everything, much of it twice, without any real waiting. Except for the Swiss Family Treehouse, which totally blows. Armed with our plan and our steely resolve, we managed to be the most efficient people in the park that day... I still feel sorry for all the people who spent just as much money but didn't have nearly as much magical fun as us.
This has gone on way too long so I'll just conclude by saying we ate at Cosmic Ray's (two salads in a quiet corner -- $100), waited forever on a bus back to the hotel where we were briefly awed again by the wild, grazing animals, and then we watched a bunch of TV. I'm probably glossing over a few details somewhere, but I figure it's way more interesting to hear what we did all day at the Magic Kingdom than what we did all night at the hotel.
Coming soon: Aimee and Rob Take on the Animal Kingdom!
! LOL 
