My first overly huge comedic trip report: Day 1

[skr8pn]

First, was the flight from Raleigh to Orlando. We took the last flight out of RDU at 7:55 to MCO. We actually got to leave a little early. We flew over Daytona while the Rolex cars were testing (not sure if they were testing but it was lit up, very cool). We arrived at MCO about 15 minutes early, that they didn’t even have a jet way ready. No biggie, that only took about 5 minutes. Our luggage was ready when we got to the pickup then we hoofed it back over to the Magical Express check in. What was this, a line?! A line at 9:45 on a Friday night in late Jan!? This could spell bad news. So we finally got checked in, which took about 15 minutes. From there we then had our first “experience” standing in an actual line together to ride the Magical Express bus to Pop Century. We couldn’t have been there 5 minutes till they let us walk out to the bus. Again, the bus was full. Did the general public not get the message that they are not supposed to be at Disney in the “off” season? Only known to us insiders, right? So, the full bus, come to find out, is going to like 4 hotels. On the way, some woman is frantically dialing the phone trying to get a hold of reservations. Come to find out, she booked a vacation through Expedia and Expedia lost the reservation. So who knows the truth, but what I heard her repeat as she was speaking to Disney was they only rooms available were the presidential suite at the Poly, one room at Saratoga Springs and I think one at the Grand Floridian. Wow, 3 rooms in the entire place, what is this, Christmas? So then we got off the bus, I sent the wife on in to check in and I got the luggage. About 30-45 minutes later we get the keys. I paid the extra cash on the reservation for a “preferred” room and called that morning and requested a bottom floor close to the bus stop. We got a 4th floor in the 50’s side. We ran back down stairs and got a 16” pizza and 2 cups. We’ve been on property for 10 minutes and spent $45……And so it begins. You win some, you lose some. We finally got in the room at 11 pm, leaving RDU at 7:55, kind of surprising! First day, well, sucked.

2nd day, Day 1 (in park)
Well, based on what we figured it was going to be like, plus FL locals, we went to EPCOT, what some people consider the borrowing park, but not us. Sure enough, hordes of people. We got in, soft opening, and then followed the CM’s to Soarin’. En route, ran into a guy wearing a sweeper type sleeveless coat with 400+ pins. Pretty sure that’s what he told me, I later heard about 45lbs.worth. Really neat, little overboard for my personal taste, but to each his own. Actually ran into him later and spoke to him and he willingly let me take a picture of him, then he showed me his Donald tattoo. Finally got in to the “standing on gliders phase” and some poor kid was freakin’ out in a major way. He eventually popped and literally puked before getting buckled in. Him and his dad went out and I could tell, somebody was not going to have a magical day. But back to us; we got on Soarin pretty quick, maybe 2nd group in. Grabbed a fast pass on the way out and signed up for the “Behind the Seeds” tour. Crossed the huge crowds and made our way to Test Track. Got right on! Then, stopped at the newly renovated Spaceship Earth. Little tip, smile big at the first part when they take your picture. So we left there and used our Soarin’ fast passes. Hit up our favorite ride available in every park, this of course, I mean, is the rest room. Then we did our Behind the Seeds tour. Very cool if you’ve never done it. Well worth it. Only about $12 each with a Disney Visa. Then lunch at Seasons and we hit World Showcase. We realized in 5 times in 2 years we had never seen the China or Japan display in depth. We saw those shows and went on into Japan and my wife got a 8mm pearl from the pearl case thing. Very cool experience. I had no idea I could get away with a $15 pearl and get so much credit for it.  We ended up having it set in a little cage so as not to damage the pearl itself. We haven’t had it appraised but it was worth the $15 for the experience and the memories. By the time we get done with all that, we walked to Boardwalk to catch the boat to get to MGM. We just really like Boardwalk, so we wanted to take our time. This was also the time we got that familiar feeling that only seems to show up when in this area of FL and around the NASCAR Bristol races: sore feet, hips hurt, back hurts. Ah yes, we have found the point of total exhaustion. However, we did get to see a wedding party stirring around the pavilion, so that was cool too. We got to MGM and then we see the dreaded “flag people”. You know the ones, 200 people from another nation that travel together and wreak havoc throughout the park by moving in one huge group. It’s 5:30 by now, so we walked on over and checked out the line at ToT and RR. To long! So I jumped in the pre-staging of Fantasmic and the wife went for ice cream. After getting tapped on the shoulder 5 times and being asked, “is this the line for popcorn?” I moved over 2 steps to the right. It was quite fun telling people, “yep, these 200 people all really want popcorn”. Tee hee. Just as we are walking in to Fantasmic it starts to rain. Then it occurs to us that we’ve left our ponchos, not in the room, but in NC. Darn, goodbye $14, could be worse though. We got a great seat and I squeezed 6’-3”, 225lbs and a camera bag into a $7 poncho……um, so after I ripped the chest of it open so I could get in, life was better. It spit rain for maybe 20 minutes. Once it quit, I shook mine off, folded it up and sat on it and then dried my camera bag. Actually just the weather cover (lowepro rocks!). We laughed and joked with all of the peole around us. I really enjoy communicating with folks from other places in the US much less other countries. It’s like you have a certain language you can speak but it’s not a verbal one. You can poke fun at some people in the crowd and both get a laugh even though you couldn’t speak to each other if you tried. It’s also fun to help parents psych their kids up for the evening show. Good show, no major obstacles leaving, other than a rude bus line herder person. But that’s a rough job, who wouldn’t be crabby. Back to the room, and surprise, the wife finds the flowers I had delivered. I had them delivered early so she could enjoy all 5 days of them. Guys, for the cash, it’s worth it for the look on her face. Being sneaky is so much fun. Then we ran back down to the food court to eat a bite, surprisingly good and worth it in my opinion. Came back, and dumped 250+ pictures off the memory card and wrote this up. Off to another day…

 

[skr8pn]

Day 2 was fairly uneventful other than being completely exhausted when we got back. We got up, I had oatmeal in a cup and Mandy had a small bag of breakfast muffins. We went to the Animal Kingdom thinking again, that the locals/weekenders would not go there. It wasn’t nearly as bad. We opened the park as usual. Made our hard walk to Everest to ride it first. We requested to ride in the back, which always throws the cast members, but it’s the best ride. On the way out we got fast passes to ride again later since it was busy. We hoofed it over to the safari to see what could be seen. We didn’t see nearly the quantity of animals but we finally did get to see the lions, both of them. A first for us. We also got to see several giraffes, very cool. We swore we wouldn’t but took a ton of pictures as usual. Not sure what we’ll do with them but if we have kids and they ever need pictures for a school project, we’ve got them covered. We blasted through AK rather quickly, rode everything then went to see the Animal Kingdom Lodge. Very nice, reminds me a lot of Wilderness Lodge. Then we headed to Downtown Disney. We hung out there for a good bit of the day then headed back to the hotel. From there, we went to Magic Kingdom for the parade and fireworks. We didn’t stand a chance of getting a good spot for the parade so we grabbed the first semi good spot in front of the train station. I didn’t realize the parade started there, so that made it convenient. Then we walked, against all traffic, up Main Street. I commandeered a trash can and set up a tripod on top of it. While trying to get setup every stooge was taking their point and shoot and holding it up as far as they could taking pictures. Not that I haven’t done the same, but doggone it, I’ve got a tripod this time. Can’t you people see that there is somebody that halfway looks like they know what they are doing.  Eventually everybody calmed down, yea, it took an hour for the fireworks to start but all those picture takers finally quit. Then the fire works picture takers started. They were basically ruining my pictures. By that I mean, they were all using flashes, for some reason. People just don’t get that using a flash doesn’t help. It was reflecting through my eye piece so I had to cover it up, which then led me to drop my remote. I about flipped out. Remote found, crisis over. The MK had extra magic hours that night. Apparently, everybody also didn’t get the memo that they were supposed to leave once the fireworks were over. We walked around a bit taking tripod pictures of the castle from various angles and the Haunted Mansion. So we finally left and it became quite obvious that then entire park was staying at Pop Century. We watched them load 6 buses, 2 at a time before we could even get close. When the bus driver said they had a dozen places left, standing room only, we ran to the bus because the stroller wranglers weren’t fast enough. We made it back, Mandy went to grab the food and I went to grab the cups. As I was rinsing them out I had to bend over a bit to get to the sink, when I almost fell over with lower back pain, I thought, maybe I’m over doing it a bit. Anyway, got the cups rinsed, Mandy showed up with the pizza, we ate and went to bed.

 

[skr8pn]

Day 3
Since we were exhausted we slept in. We went to Magic Kingdom that day. Since we hadn’t got to ride the Monorail yet, we went to EPCOT and then rode it to Magic Kingdom. Again with the busyness on a Monday! What the heck is going on? Some kind of freakin’ convention or something? We did get to see Samantha Brown from the Travel Channel shooting some stuff. 99% of the people just walked by and had no idea. We took some pictures of her and just moved along. We didn’t do much that day. We actually ended up going back to the room then went to dinner at the Big River Grill over by Boardwalk. It was an excellent dinner, little chilly, had to sit outside but the dinner was great. We cashed in on our Disney Reward points so the bill wasn’t quite so high.

 

[skr8pn]

Day 4
We got up early after resting for the last few days and went to MGM. We opened the park as usual and got to see Flavio Fellini and Hubert Hayseed. They are such a riot. Park attendance wasn’t nearly as high today, which was good. We booked it to Rockin’ Roller Coaster and stopped on the way and grabbed fast passes to the Tower of Terror. So after we got off RR we jumped right on ToT. The attendance was so low we actually went back and rode each 2 or 3 times. Then, off the The Great Movie ride. Just in time to see the crowds gathering for high school musical show, so everybody was at that, so we didn’t have to wait. Then we hoofed it over to Indiana Jones, it had been a long time since we’ve seen that. Got some pretty good seats there. Then we got out and got to watch the Jedi training academy, which made me so wish I was 10 years old again. We went on to the Back Lot Tour, then back to Star Tours. By now it’s time for the parade which we had never sat through so we went and got a seat on the curb. The cool thing was the various Hollywood characters all showed up and almost all of them stopped to talk with us and pose for pictures. They were great. That was worth it by itself. After that, back to the room for warmer clothes, then over to EPCOT to catch Illuminations. We tried to run hard to catch the last ride on Soarin’ and got there in time. I wasn’t feeling to hot by this time and that hard push to get there by 6:55 didn’t help. We waited for 45 mins to get on and I was feeling quite miserable by then. We’ve learned over the years not to pay attention to the que times because they never seem to be true. This time, it was. The cruddy thing was by the time we got out around 7:45, they were still letting people in, even though they closed at 7. Go figure. So we walked around the World, starting in Canada. We went all the way to the American Pavilion and sat there for a second with me being all sickly, thinking, “it’s going to be a lot of people to stand behind to get back to the hotel. So we started walking again and made our way to the shop in front of main area from Future World to World Showcase. After that, pretty uneventful. We watch the show and went back to the room. Actually in bed by 10:30. Doing good.

 

[skr8pn]

Day 5
As of day 5 we didn’t have much that we “had” to do, so we slept late since I still felt like death warmed over and eventually made our way to the MK. Before we left, I called in a doctor’s appointment for the next day. We didn’t really do too much, just walked around a bit, took some pictures, and rode Haunted Mansion, Pirates, and Buzz. (I think Buzz is broke because I always lose) and TTA. Eventually, we made our way to EPCOT. More or less did the same thing and just hung out and killed time. Nothing to spectacular. Just walked around and enjoyed the ambiance. Then back to the hotel to get our bags and re-sort everything and then on the bus to come home. Oh, what fun it was to fly home with a sinus infection. It felt great as we were ascending, not so much descending. We got home around 10 and I’ve been sick in bed for 2 days. Woo Hoo.