Chapter 15: After the Feast, We All Went East!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-ARTHUR C. CLARK,
Profiles of the Future, 1962
Once we had finished our meal at the
Garden Grill, which had included veggies from Disney’s hydroponic gardens, we were ready to explore some magical technology. “…Science and technology take center stage with an up-close look at space travel, vehicle testing, communications, and energy” is how
Passporter describes Future World East. Unfortunately for us,
Spaceship Earth was still closed for renovation at the time, so we would need to explore the field of communications another time. We decided that if we couldn’t do Spaceship Earth, we would go for another type of space travel….
Mission Space!
Now, before you turn green and run for the bathroom
just thinking about flight simulators immediately following lunch, let me assure you that we were definitely planning to do Mission SPACE
Light. (Does anyone else find it ironic that the non-motion sickness option is labeled the
Green Team?) Seems it should be the other way around!
Billy and Tricia breeze toward the breezeway...
Now you may recall that Ed has this inner ear thing that makes it difficult for him to do spinning rides without getting queasy. I don’t think he trusted me completely when I tried to get him on MS last year, even though I kept telling him that the Green Team would not make him sick, because he opted not to try it.
This year I really wanted him to do it with us. He loves aeronautics and I secretly think that if it hadn’t been for his vestibular condition he would have pursued a career in the military as a flier. He definitely has “the right stuff.”
Anyway, the point is, I thought he would enjoy it.
As it turned out, he took AR on a boat ride through the vegetables while I took the kids to see the surface of Mars!
Your Mission, should you choose to accept it...
There was a CM standing outside of the MS building…which I think looks really cool, BTW, and he was holding a handful of orange tags in one hand and a handful of green tags in the other. He asked everyone which “team” he or she was interested in joining and provided a description of the difference between the two for guests who were not aware of the distinction. We grabbed our green cards (ha!) and continued toward the entrance where yet
another CM stopped us and made sure we would be entering the correct queue. There are also huge WARNING signs everywhere…I have to admit it would be a bit unnerving to me if I were planning to do the Orange Team! The crowd level was so light that they weren’t even doing FastPass, just letting everyone through on standby, which is always a good sign.
We filed through the lobby of the International Space Training Center and, since the queue was moving slowly, we had the chance to read all about the milestones in space travel: past, present, and future. The backstory for this attraction has us doing our training about 30 or 40 years in the future, so the Imagineers had to make up some “future-past” milestones, such as the First Family in Space, 2025!
The long, winding queue was moving along nicely until we got about halfway to the best part of the attraction (getting “briefed” for our mission by Gary Sinise!) The Orange queue, which was shorter than the Green BTW, kept moving but we greenies were at a standstill for about five minutes. I was just about wonder whether or not we should exit the line and try back at a later time when the queue began inching forward once more. Billy was bouncing up and down like Tigger and kept chanting, “Mission SPACE, please, Mommy!” over and over. “Yes, yes, Mission Space, I promise!” was my mantra. When we finally boarded our simulator, I quickly stowed my
baggallini and made sure Billy was secured…which was a minor challenge since he continued to bounce, bounce, bounce up and down in his seat!
The cabin is designed for four, so we were sharing our flight with a woman in her mid-thirties who must have been doing the single-rider line. It may have been her first flight, because she seemed quite preoccupied with making sure she knew what to do with her control panel.
I tend not to even pay attention to the whole “crew assignment” portion of the ride…I just keep looking at the screen (and my kids.) Billy presses both his buttons furiously during the entire flight, so he more than makes up for my lack of involvement I think!
It was a fun flight and we exited to the Space Base playground and
no, Billy was not even going to go
near those hamster tubes this time! The two began to play one of the games (in English, mind you) and were busy moving their virtual astronaut over the surface of Mars when Ed called and told us to meet them at
Test Track. Billy did not need to be told twice… TT is one of his favorites!
Time to get some windburn!
Aunt Rae was quite firm about sitting this one out, so we left her on a sunny bench where she sipped her water and did some people watching. Once again we found that the GAC was not necessary….standby queue only. So far, the only attraction that we’d seen using
FP was Soarin’. So much for the dreaded Jersey Week crowd predictions! (It was still only Monday, however.) We walked all the way through the noisy queue to the second CM with nary a stop and were positioned in front of the doors to the pre-show. I laughed at Billy because he had his fingers in his ears (but a smile on his face) as he walked through the testing plant. I should’ve put his earplugs in. Did I say the queue was noisy? I could’ve used those earplugs myself!
The automatic doors flung open and we moved from the brightly-lit waiting area to the darkened room. “Scary!” Billy said as he clung to Ed’s arm. (He recently has begun to be somewhat afraid of the dark…I think it’s the age…they tend to get nightmares a lot around 8 or 9.) But he was soon engrossed in the pre-show up on the screen. We were given a glimpse of what to expect from our automotive test…as if we didn’t already know…and the second set of doors opened and we joined the winding final stage of the queue as it snaked around and around, bringing us closer to the track. Its always fun to see the “test” vehicles filled with guests who had just finished their ride…everyone is usually laughing, or wiping the tears from their eyes, or fixing their hair, or trying to undo their seatbelts too soon.
TT Trivia Tidbit: Each vehicle carries three onboard computers that combine to exceed the processing power aboard the Space Shuttle!
Eventually we made it to our car…we got a bright yellow one this time…and Tricia and I took the back seat so that Billy and his daddy could ride up front. Billy was giggling, stomping his feet and rocking to and fro with anticipation. “Here we go!!” he shouted as we began to accelerate uphill and then took a very bumpy ride downhill. He laughed and laughed! We got roasted and cooled, then twisted and turned around a series of curves going ever faster to my son’s delight. We all couldn’t help but laugh as we turned in toward the barrier crash test and he shrieked with anticipation. “Here we go!!” he yelled again, and we braced for the rapid acceleration and bang! We were outside in the dazzling sunlight tearing up the straightaways and banking around the hairpin curves!! Even with my sunglasses on my eyes always water from the wind! It was over in a flash and both kids begged to do it again. “Perhaps later, if we have time,” I placated them. “Your Aunt Rae has been waiting for us all this time, you know.”
“All this time” was actually just 25 minutes.
We checked out our picture…nah…not very good…and treaded through the gift shop and out again into the sunlight. (Lots of Hummer merchandise in there, it seemed.) We circled around to where we had left Aunt Rae and…she wasn’t there! “She probably just went to the restroom,” I said, but we found her not far away sitting on a bench in the shade. “The sun was too bright for my eyes,” she explained. I know it must have been bothering her if she left a warm spot to sit in the cooler shade. AR is always cold.
It was a gorgeous, sunny day and it felt like the temp was pushing 80 degrees, yet she was wearing a tee shirt, a sweatshirt, jeans and a jacket! “Aunt Rae, you have no blood,” Tricia said as she held her aunt’s hand. “Your hand is like ice!”
“How’re you feeling, Aunt Rae?” I asked. Remember, we were staying all day without a break. It was now 2:20pm; we typically would be back at the resort trying to rest by now. “I’m okay,” she said just a little too quickly. “Well, I don’t want you ankle to start acting up again,” I warned. (If you recall, she went to the hospital with an attack of gout just a couple of weeks earlier.) She was looking tired, too. Our next stop would give her a good chance to rest, however. We were off for a long visit with Ellen and her friends, the dinosaurs, at
Universe of Energy.
AR feels like ice, but Tricia feels the need to cool off in the mist...
The F&WF is over, but the colorful signs are still everywhere...
Time to get energized...
A rainbow of color decorates a solar-powered building
We seem to be in luck...looks like the last group is getting out...
Who will fall asleep during the ride, I wonder, and who will we miss bumping into by only a few minutes??
Kathy
