I'm not quite sure how to start here. My TR mojo is missing. But if I wait longer, my brain will be missing, and that's no good at all.
So I supposed I'll start with the flight. The flight was far too early. Mistake. I got far too little sleep. Mistake. But those things were dealt with, Robert and Eamon got home fine after dropping me off, and I had plenty of time to get through the airport, so that was fine.
They wanted to send me through the nakey machine, so I took the patdown (radiation is cumulative, and I want my radiation to MEAN something to me, to either get info about my innards, or get me to a far away place...not just to see if I have anything on my person, when they can get the info with their hands instead). She had to go through the whole spiel, and I was just "get on with it!" but with a smile and already assuming the patdown position, so it was amusing. She thanked me for my attitude, which was nice. I'm sure she gets lots of grumpy people, but I have nothing to hide.
Got my Dilettante coffee...mmmmmm. it's really too bad that the kiosk is on the other side of security, because I love their espresso. This man in front of me ordered a scone from Dilettante, while calling over a drink order to his buddy in line at the Starbucks kiosk close-by. I thought he was bananas. To want s'bux over Dilettante? Odd. And it's not like the scones are any different, between the two, so why??? Confusing.
Got to my gate, stood around (tiny gate, no seats). They told us that the flight was not full, and they needed to make sure we sat in our assigned seats, to make sure the weight was scattered around correctly. AHA! So when you see the seats available online, and you see few available options, it does NOT mean that the flight is that full, but that they might be making sure that the front isn't full with an empty rear... I knew that already, but it was good to get extra reasons for why the website might not be telling the whole story.
I had the aisle, my seatmate had the window, no one in between. He was a good guy; plays "session" music at a local irish pub, and had a nice combo of silence (because he was working and using the "gogo" inflight internet) and chatting (when he wasn't looking at his screen).
Soon enough we were in Anaheim!
I was nervous that I wouldn't recognize Laurie, and if you'd asked me what she looked like a second before I saw her I couldn't have told you, but then I saw her as I came down the escalator, and boom I knew her. It was neat.
We wandered out to the shuttles, the coordinator guy told us where to wait, and we got a decent ride to PPH.
The CMs at the front desk were being silly. One was singing. They had our keycards and all was good.
We dropped our stuff in the room (though Laurie made me wait to come in until she took some nice pictures!
...usually I'm the one making people wait until pictures are taken!) and I still didn't know what I was going to do even as I left the room!
But no matter what, I knew I had to go through the Grand to do it, so off I went.
Turns out that some of my photos are experiments in flash or no flash. Here's the first one.
NO flash:
Flash:
I only got those pictures because there was a family taking umpteen pictures of the doors, and magically there was no one coming through them on the other side! At first I was just waiting, not wanting to ruin their moment, but then I pulled out my camera. It is so rare that there's no one coming through, you've got to take advantage of it.
I decided that I needed to get my one-day ticket turned into an AP, and so I went out to the ticket booths to accomplish it. Although I had a hard time getting into the line (where's the entrance to the line???), there was a CM inside the maze pointing to the next available CM. So that was good. The process was simple and painless, and the APs are cute. Remember, I've only had APs in the two years of a million dreams, and both times it was YOaMD-themed.
At the last minute, I decided to head to DCA. When I told them later, Laurie and Sherry did not seem at all surprised by this. Guess they know my feelings about the place.
My feelings about the place are on hold right now, though. The Beach Boys music is gone, it looks like Hollywood Studios from outside, and I'm really unsure about the whole ElecTRONica area, so I'm on the closer-to-iffy side right now. But still, it was good to be back.
The back side of Soarin'...
They had some cute merchandise kiosks back there, which gave it some life.
But I was glad to see:
We're ONE WEEK away!!!!! 
