My Weekend on the SOFA--Super Soap Weekend 2006

[40-Something Kid]

Okay, only five months late—ta-da!!!—my first ever Disney trip report (which basically means the previous 40 or so trips are undocumented and blurred-together in my memory.)

Why would this trip be the one to merit a first-ever trip report? Well, that is because Soap Opera Weekend is Disney World—only better with all of the glamour kings and queens, which makes it the perfect event and one that cannot be improved upon.

I have arranged my report as My Weekend with the SOFA in 4 Episodes
• The Scene, or how the crazy weekend is set up at MGM Studios
• The Oddities, of various types, which sometimes dominate the Scene
• The Fun, or some of the goofy things that happened along the way
• The Amazing, and I am referring to the Soap Opera Stars, good sports all, who really work hard to make the weekend great

But first, of course, is my pre-trip report, which I posted on Halloween.

Pre-trip Report

I’m excitedly counting down the days to go with my sister and her family to Soap Opera Weekend at Disney MGM, not for the soaps or the soap stars, but to see and to be part of the craziness. This is my fourth attendance at this event.

I don’t really watch soap operas so much--I put the ABC soaps on occasionally while I’m cleaning the house. But, in order to tell an interesting story five days a week, the soap opera writers have to create over-the-top sensational plots, with daily dramatic cliffhangers. How many car accidents, poisonings, arsons, comas and secret love children can one community have? How much more can those accursed people bear? Why don’t they just turn off all the lights and move away?

So, I’m not up to speed on the soaps and the actors, except Susan Lucci (more to follow on her, at some point). But that does not matter at all to me because I am there to watch the other people. THEY are entertaining to ME. And, unfortunately, a time or two I have been entertaining to THEM. Yes, there are famous-within-my-family stories of my policing autograph lines with way-harsh words to eliminate line-cutters. Nothing physical, thank goodness. And there was the time when I forgot to judge the difference between my own normal size and the Size Zero-Minus of an actress—my simple ‘hello’ hug almost knocked her to the ground, which I believe would have shattered her tiny skeleton in the butt region. These are things that will not happen again this year, I’m pretty sure. Of course, other stupid as-yet unknown things will happen.

I borrow my sister’s family for Soap Opera Weekend. I have a husband and two teenaged sons, who are useless for this experience. Semi-retired husband coaches football for fun, and sons are into football and weightlifting. My family is wonderful, just not suited for Soap Opera Weekend.

My sister has two adolescent daughters plus a “surprise baby” daughter, who is three. She has been to Disney more than 10 times, easily. Yes, I’m talking about the baby. Our two families have a Disney addiction.

This time we are staying in two rooms at the Yacht Club, because there is a walkway from this resort to MGM. We plan to walk well before dawn in fashion-forward skirts (or maybe Capri pants--we are not finished deliberating) and sandals both Saturday and Sunday, so we can get in line with the hordes of other fans and wait for three hours or so for the park to open. My sister’s husband and her baby will stay in the hotel room and miss this. However, the baby got to participate in this part last year, when we wheeled her stroller in the dark to MGM from the Boardwalk Inn. Yes, the pathway was lighted--we’re not insane!

When the turnstiles finally cut us loose, we will madly rush in to get in line again to get Fastpasses to see stars that I may or may not know anything about. Each Fastpass will tell us what time later in the day to get in line to meet that star. We repeat this getting-in-line-for-Fastpasses process 2 or 3 times, when there will be no more to dispense for the day. How much fun is that?

As I said, the crowd at this event is entertaining, but the most comical is my own cast. I own up to my sarcasm. Multiply by three and set to nonstop audio, and you can imagine the commentary from my sister and her two adolescent daughters.

Carrie—my three-years-younger sister. Major Fashionista. Always finding that perfect pair of black pants. She now has 17 pairs of black pants, and her closet walls are curved outward. Federal Investigator, meaning she has a badge, the perfect fashion accessory.

Kristen---my 14-year-old niece. Beauty pageant winner and “A” student. Founder and former President of her school’s Fashion Club. I’m not kidding about that.

“Bunny”---my 11-year-old niece. Another “A” student, with amazing artistic talent. Very cute. Has perfected the art of spontaneous witticism—that is, she’s a really skilled smart-aleck.

Olivia—my 3-year-old niece. Big, round hazel-green eyes and soft dark curls. Has the upper-hand in all transactions. Way too much smarter than the rest of us. Big fan of JoJo and Cinderella.

Mark---my wonderful brother-in-law and one of my favorite people. Adores all those girls he lives with. Part owner and manager of a hotel. Admires and imitates Mickey Mouse. Master of the corny joke.

Me, Deborah---Part-time cost analyst, wife, and mom to teenaged boys. Disneyholic, and not in any recovery program—hubby says, correctly, that I have “drunk the Kool-Aid.” Love the Redskins, “The Office,” my German Shepherd, and the gym. Favorite princess is Tinkerbell, not because of her supposed moodiness, but because she is the only one with a wand, dummy. She can FLY—the other ones walk. (Oh yeah, or worse—Ariel swims.)

Anyway, Soap Opera Weekend is only two days, which is not an acceptable length of stay for Disneyholics like Carrie and I. She and Olivia fly down from Providence, and I fly down from Washington, DC, on Wednesday, November 8. The others in her family come down the following evening, in consideration of school. We stay till Monday.

The rest of my report will follow our trip, and describe the crazy people we meet and see, as well as our own struggles with temporary insanity. I expect we will have a great time!


Super Soap Weekend November 2006 – It Was All About the SOFA—Episode 1—The Scene

Disney schedules Soap Opera Weekend on the second weekend of November to promote its ABC Daytime line-up of “All My Children,” “One Life to Live” and “General Hospital,” which are always referred to by the savvy fans as AMC, OLTL and GH. Disney owns ABC, so of course there is no mention of “Passions,” or other such daytime dramas, which don’t exist during ABC Super Soap Weekend.

Coming down to Florida from the Northeast (OK, Northern Virginia for me—close enough), that weekend is the last kiss of summer. Sandals in November—toes feel very good. The experience has to last me until April, and my sister’s Connecticut family sometime into July, as I recall from childhood.

You can call the 2nd weekend in November the perfect storm for people trying to stay at the same hotel that I am staying at, the Yacht Club. This is a popular place, because that hotel on that weekend is perfect a great place to stay for
1. Super Soap Weekend—you can walk to MGM at Oh-Dark-Thirty from the Yacht Club and only a few other Disney resorts
2. The last chance weekend of the six-week-long Food and Wine Festival at EPCOT, also an easy walk from the hotel
3. Veterans Day, as some vacationers want to take advantage of the holiday weekend
4. Seeing the stars---many of the soap stars stay at the Yacht and Beach Club; we have seen them at the pool—yes!

So we got none of the discounts we usually find for Disney Resorts, but knew better than to complain. Carrie and I are delighted with our way overpriced standard rooms with a view of a nicely maintained plot of grass. And that is because we are assured of being able to walk to MGM pre-dawn, and getting our spot near the front of the line. We have well-located accommodations, to be sure.

However, Super Soap Weekend does enlarge and improve every year, as successful events usually do. One of the wonderful improvements this year was that the Disney staff, for the first time, allowed cars to enter the MGM parking lot in the middle of the night and their drivers to get in line for considerably less than the price of our hotel room. This is a good thing for soap fans in general, I admit, though it interfered with our own plans just a little.

One of the other changes this year was that the event’s unofficial expansion to 3 days seemed incrementally more official. The first day, Friday, is clearly intended to be the big-time merchandising day---one of the fast food restaurants, The ABC Commissary, partially converts to a Super Soap Weekend shop, and the line just to get into the shop was an hour long. That store was open all weekend, but was never as shoulder-to-shoulder crowded as it was the first day. Note to event planners: please pump in some oxygen next year.

In the store, you can buy the ubiquitous Super Soap T-shirt, matching coffee cup, photo album, CDs that the soap stars have recorded, and so on. Best though, is the assortment of fashions that the stars have worn on the episodes, all in Size 0 and Size 2, of course. This means that teen-aged girls, i.e., like my 14-year-old niece Kristen, can buy stuff for glamorous events that will hopefully occur while they are still Size 0 or Size 2. So about $250 lighter, and 2 hours later, we finally have survived the line and the chokingly crowded store, and we have scored two evening frocks for Kristen that have been Seen on TV.

They are really wonderful dresses, one of them worn by poor Simone (Terri Ivens) of AMC, who was murdered just after Super Soap Weekend for a rather far-fetched reason—i.e., not because of anything the character Simone had done, but just to make another character depressed about it. (What is wrong with those lunatics in Pine Valley? Is there lead in the water?} Poor Simone, she was cool—I “wikipedia’ed” her just now—she is going to be 40 this year—thought she was in her 20s. Anyhow, because Kristen now possesses Simone’s high fashion dress and another evening gown as well, we had to book a double-family cruise in June so Kristen would have a venue where such garb is expected. (Ok, I’m exaggerating about the reason we are taking a cruise, but this dress thing does work out nicely, right?)

Later in the day on Friday at MGM, Luke and Laura (of GH, of course) reenacted their wedding from way back when I was a 20-Something Kid, but we did not stick around to see it because we were tired and needed to rest up for our middle-of-the night wake up call. Plus we were getting pretty bad cases of Florida Hair, which is ultimate limpness, topped off by serious frizziness. Carrie and I have deadly weak fine and wavy hair to start with. Florida Hair is an epidemic for which there is no known cure or truly effective treatment. However, we did see a lot of fans in MGM that day who were very excited to relive Luke and Laura’s epic, passionate, make-believe wedding.

4:30 Saturday morning. We have all decided to wear Capris, after some debate. But we did dress things up a bit with bling belts and jewelry, and we were absolutely matching—not with each other, of course, that would be gross—I am talking about matching our purses to our sandals. Mark and baby Olivia are fast asleep, but we four Super Soap fans are up and at ‘em, even without the caffeine that Carrie and I require to function. We go to the elevator, and are met there by a strange woman who we infer must be equally determined to get near the front of the Super Soap line. This is a bad omen, and since she is a competitor, we do not like her, but remain silent. We see with dismay that, not being held back by the inertia of a 4-person group, she is far quicker than we are, and will easily fade into the walkway ahead of us.

The lighted walk is about ½ mile long, and runs next to the Disney waterway that connects MGM to the EPCOT resorts and EPCOT. As we near MGM studios, I hear a very loud Christmas fugue, which is surprising considering how early we are. Who are they playing the music for at 5 am?

Turns out, there is a good answer, specifically the thousands of people who are in line already. This means we are going to see maybe 3, at most, soap stars today. And that is a strange circumstance, since on the one hand I am putting a lot of effort into this, but on the other, I am not sure why it matters.

So we wait for two and a half hours in the line that doesn’t move with interesting and funny women, who talk about their lives and their kids. If I had written this when I was supposed to back in November, I would remember this part better, but there was one woman who made me laugh because we both had experienced so many sports injuries with our sons. She said she always told her son to “Shake it off!” and “Rub some dirt in it!” whenever he got hurt—only an experienced mom could do that; your kid would definitely let you know if he were really hurt.

At last, and after numerous raids by the Disney cigarette police to intercept rude smokers who had bad addictions, I can only assume, the line starts to move. We did not go through the turnstiles, but had our card visually checked and stamped as we were lead through a makeshift entrance on a very long snaking march through vast expanses of the normally unseen parts of MGM. There was a coffee stand at one point. My sister warned me not to risk getting out of the snake line, but I could not fight the urge; I ran out, and I threw my money down to handle my own bad caffeine addiction. I fumbled with those little creamers as fast as I could, and somehow managed to run and find my group again. My day instantly improved, and so did Carrie’s, as I caught up to her holding 2 cups of coffee, otherwise known as the caffeine delivery systems.

At a couple of points, our line snaked around so that we were face to face with the most exalted First In Line people. And of course, we had to ask, “What time did you get in line?” Turns out, they never left Friday evening, and spent the night on the asphalt. Wow, I don’t know whether to commend them for their fortitude or just shake my head. Even crazier than the rest of us, and stranger still, a couple of them were wearing hospital scrubs. I don’t believe they were doctors—just a guess.

Finally the snaking line came back to where it started, basically, and turned into 3 lines, one for All My Children (AMC), one for One Life to Live (OLTL), and one for General Hospital (GH). I must say, GH has by far the most fans. We got in the GH line—a show I never watch, but the others wanted to see a very popular character named Sonny. After being in this line for an hour, and meantime hearing Sonny’s Fastpasses had run out, we settled on Laura Wright, also very popular, and one of Bunny’s favorites. During the next few hours, we went to the back of the lines for 2 more sets of tickets, for Cameron Matheson (Ryan on AMC) and Aiden Turner (Aiden on AMC). Each Fastpass had a specific time and place to meet the star, and thus our day was mapped out. By 11 am, all 3 lines had finished dispensing Fastpass tickets.

Line control was much better this year than last, with Disney security doing a great job of preventing people from cutting into line. This helped me immensely, because I was involved in some nasty verbal exchanges last year, and came as close as I have in my adult life to a physical altercation. Imagine getting thrown out of Disney world for fighting in the Soap Opera line? Now, that would be a good story and would make a fine trip report.

One thing about rides during Super Soap Weekend--they are just props--large, nearly useless buildings that serve only as navigation aids. When we are not waiting our turn to see a Soap Opera star, we are shopping, or having lunch (Sci Fi on Saturday), or watching one of the many events on the stage in front of the giant Mickey Sorcerer’s Apprentice hat. This is where there are group interviews of the stars pretty much all day long. At night, this area becomes the music stage. Without Super Soap Weekend, I would never have known how versatile soap stars are required to be, but apparently, they all have bands and recording contracts.

We end our Saturday evening at MGM rather late (having put up with the Florida Hair since mid-morning), with 8:20 reservations at the Brown Derby, all of us exhausted by the time we trudged back to the Yacht Club. We showered at 10:30, knowing that the wake up call would ring at 4 am, and that we would once again enjoy the lining up experience.

Next—The Oddities

 

[podroma7]

Hi,

Was the line up at MGM at 4:30 on Saturday something you did extra or was it the regular entrance to the park? I am planning on being at MGM the Saturday of Super Soap this year (not because I like soaps but because that is when we chose to go) so will there be thousands of people waiting when we get there to enter?

We have heard that MGM's rides dont' have long waits at all during supersoap b/c everyone is waiting on the soap starts, did you happen to see any of the wait times for rides while you were there?

Any advice you can give would be very helpful.

Pete

 

[40-Something Kid]

Pete,

The short answers are (1) no special entrance; (2) did not notice the wait times; and (3) think it's probably okay to go that day, but not 100 percent sure you would agree.

There was no special line for Super Soap Weekend when I went in, which was well before posted MGM opening. Disney handled the hordes of soap fans by letting everyone in early. Once inside, however, we lined up again and stood in place in our respective soap opera lines--All My Children, One Life to Live, GH. The lines don't move, and none of the attractions open until official park opening time. I noticed that later on, whether soap fans or not, guests came in through the regular turnstiles.

If you are there and not interested in the event, I would say the park is definitely more crowded. I'm sure many of the soap opera fans have little interest in the rides, but I don't know if the large crowd and lack of ride interest balance out. But I would say that, early in the day, all of the soap fans are focused on getting Fastpasses for soap stars, and not for Rock 'n Roller Coaster.

Overall, I think it's okay to go to MGM that day, even if you are not a crazy soap fan. You may even enjoy the extra music and entertainment, and you may recognize a soap star or two.

Hope you have a great time,

FSK

 

[KimAshton]

A word of advice there are freaks so you are going to have to get in line real early for fastpasses are youwon't get them.