Day 3 December 14, 2010 Part One
Okay, lets get started on Day 3, shall we? Bout time, Id say! Its almost December 2011 at this point, and Im still not making a dent in this TR. But if there were not so many photos, Id have been done already. Ive whipped out the fast TRs in the past. This requires more time because there are sooooo many pictures, as youve seen.
So what had I accomplished on Day 2? Lets recap. Well, I saved my ice cream cone, my camera and an innocent trash can all in one fell swoop. I stumbled upon some Disney ducks. I sat for a minute on Main Street and enjoyed the holiday music. I explored almost every inch of the Reindeer Round-Up except for the actual cabin in which Santa resides! (Thatll be the next holiday trip.) I wandered around the GCH and the PPH. I took pictures of lamps. I was forced away from ToonTown and onto Main Street by a surly CM. I got in-depth with some window displays, causing a man (and his friend, at one point, which I neglected to mention earlier) to move out of my way twice! I photographed some holiday merchandise. I made a pitiful attempt at trying to catch tiny fake snow particles on camera. I took a few cool Main-Street-at-night shots. I received various curious looks and comments from other people who were confused by my picture-taking. I had a nice chat with a CM who worked in Mickey in Paradise about HalloweenTime, digital photography and the fact that Disney execs co pay attention to message boards for information and general feedback. I ordered a not-so-great burger from PPH room service along with a delicious Kilauea Molten Apple Pie, and I swiped the adorable baby-sized ketchup and mustard bottles in the process. I accumulated more Mickey ears bath products. And I dont know what else I did that Im forgetting, but I was plum tuckered out at that point.
I got a good nights sleep yet again I sleep better at DLR when I am by myself than I do at home. The next day Day 3, which was a Tuesday was my second Magic Morning day. I was going to play it by ear and determine whether or not I had the incentive to make it to the MM hour. I know I can wake up on time thats not the issue. Sometimes I am awake at 3 or 4 a.m. But with all the pain I was having, I had vowed not to keep pushing myself. So if I woke up and felt pain, I was not going to leap out of bed and say, I have to get to Magic Morning!
There was also the issue of the candy cane-striped CALIFORNIA letters. Even though I have one photo of the letters in an uncrowded morning shot from 2008, I wanted to try to get another few before the masses packed into the parks. It was the last season and last year for the letters, after all. It was not on top of my priority list, but it was on the list somewhere, and if I wanted to make a valiant attempt to get these photos, it would have to be in the early morning hours on this specific morning. I knew that the following day my final day I would be packing up to leave, so I wouldnt have time to run over and get the letters on camera then. It was now or never.
But
in the end, as I said, it came down to a matter of waking up and assessing How bad is the pain today and how long will it take to dissipate if I pop a bunch of Motrin? And then I simply had to gauge if I would have enough time to lessen the pain and make it to MM and/or the CALIFORNIA letters in time before thousands of people descended upon the parks.
And the answer was NO. I would not have time and I was not going to push myself because pushing myself would only result in making the situation worse. So I decided to skip the MM and the CALIFORNIA letters and just go at a leisurely pace. I had already done one of the MMs two days earlier, so at least I didnt feel like I was wasting my MMs entirely!
I watched a bit of the morning news on TV. I drank a morning beverage (I used some of my bottled water for the coffee so it didnt have that potentially icky faucet water taste!). Ahhhh
.good ol Mr. Caffeine
.:
I went down my list of things I wanted to accomplish, photographically speaking, checking off anything I had already done. I was surprised at how few of the items I was actually crossing off, given how much I felt I had accomplished. I also had a whole long list of treats/snacks to try, and yet peppermint ice cream was the only one I crossed off the list at that point! Clearly, I was slacking off!
I, of course, looked out the window and appreciated my view
which was fuzzy. I could see it was a foggy morning, which was great because it meant the cloud cover was going to make the day much cooler than the two previous days, which had been HOTTTTTT. It was only expected to be in the mid-70s on this Tuesday, which was quite a relief for me. Believe me, I was not diggin the close-to-90-degree nonsense from the last two days (even though, as previously established, high temperatures feel different in November or December than they do in, say, July or August). Cloud Covers are my friends!! Fog is my friend! Gloom is my friend!
After that, I pretty much repeated my drill from the previous morning. I finished my coffee. I popped some Motrin to let the pain-relieving start to kick in. I hopped in the shower. I fixed my face and hair. I stashed the Mickey ears products in the drawer so Mousekeeping would leave more for me (which they would likely do anyway, but sometimes they dont if you leave the products out in plain sight and they appear to have not been touched):
Notice the drawer has rope accents, in keeping with the whole nautical theme of the hotel:
I put some money on the bed for the maids. I slathered on the sunscreen, grabbed my camera, sunglasses, water bottle and Baggallini. And I was off to face the world. Or the Mouse. Or whomever got in my way of the window displays!
As I walked down the hall of the PPH to the elevator, I snapped these from the window:
In case you cant tell, it says Slurpin USA on the tent:
Hmmm
thats 12 stories down
This is another one of my favorites:
Light fixture alert! Shawn had actually pointed this out to me two days prior, but this was my first chance to get a shot of it. Its a seashell-esque light. Specifically, its more oyster shell-esque or clam shell-esque. Maybe scallop-esque. Its all about the details!!:
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you
the hallway Carpet!!!
Inside the elevator:
This character dining sign in the elevator reminded me that I should eat. I was playing with fire by going so long on the previous day without any substantial protein, and I really know better than to do that given past blood sugar episodes. I have come to the conclusion that I eat much better at DLR when I am with people. Thats alternately a good thing and a bad thing. Its good because I get the necessary protein in the morning to fuel my day and keep from getting blood sugary. But its bad because I spend more money. If I am alone, I dont spend as much money on food. I dont plan it out that way, but thats how it goes.
I felt like I wanted to eat, but I didnt quite want to spend money on a character meal. See, this is what happens. I would like to try Surfs Up with Mickey and Friends at some point. Heck, it was right there in the PPH. Id like to eventually try Minnie & Friends. Every time I kind of walked by Surfs Up and poked my head in for the character meal, it looked rather empty. (In fact, it only looked busy in that restaurant at night, when I wanted dinner.)
The bottom line is, I will never give up Goofys Kitchen for breakfast. I have had almost 20 years of good meals, good character interaction and good times at Goofys. Its a winner for me, and for Shawn, and for any of my other good friends who Ive referred there. Why mess with success? Why tempt fate? Ive done the Critter Breakfast a few times, and while I love Chip and Dale, I could not care less about Koda and Kenai.
But
because Goofys is so costly, after Ive eaten there early on in the trip I have a hard time justifying spending more money on another character meal - especially if I am running low on funds to begin with - if I am by myself. I would be more willing to spend the money and have the extra experience if I am with someone else who wants to eat there. But since I wasnt, I skipped it. Im never going to replace Goofys with another character meal, so therein lies the quandary for me. I have to have enough money to feel I can afford another character meal and I have to be with someone else who wants to do that same character meal too. Those circumstances have not presented themselves yet!
Yes, I could have just gone back to Goofys and done a solo character meal, but I had already been there once on that trip and I didnt want to spend that kind of money a second time.
(Unintentional) Bow Quest entries Im sure Ive posted some of these bows before, from the previous day I cant recall - but I was drawn to the bows again!:
There I am, in the ornament:
The bows and ornaments on the PPH tree remind me that I should point out at this time that one of the reasons why I prefer the beauty of the holiday season over, say, the colors and aesthetic appeal of the Halloween season (and I mean at DLR, specifically, but this could apply anywhere) is the fact that you can go many more places with holiday decor than you can with Halloween décor. You can add much more variety. Sure, the red and green color foundation is expected and traditional, but you can go with all blue lights. You can decorate with white and pink. You can go with more elegant, muted tones like at the GCH beiges and browns and cream shades. You can go with silver and gold. You can go shiny or glittery. You can go with more rustic patterns, textures and colors (like at the Round-Up). You can go with all white lights or with colored lights. You can adapt to the different themes, such as the bright primary colors of ToonTown, or the Mardi Gras-inspired motif of New Orleans Square. You can put big, giant Nutcrackers, toy blocks, hobby horses and dolls around the Christmas trees. You can hang snowflakes, stars, bells, candy canes, snowmen
on and on.
It seems there are endless ways to decorate for the holidays using all kinds of colors, patterns, textures, shapes, themes and materials and yet, any way you choose to decorate definitively says holidays. Its not the same for Halloween. Halloween has a very limited color palette. You cant go as many places with it as you can with the holiday season and so, visually, I think I get bored with it after a while. There is only so much orange I can take. I think the Halloween icons such as pumpkins, black cats, ghosts and other spooky figures are cute (or scary), but you just cant add too much variety to the ways to present Halloween décor.
So not only would people probably steal it from an antenna, but the head would probably go flying off!
This day has felt odd to me - it doesn't feel like a Saturday, for some reason, but it doesn't quite feel like a Sunday, either. I don't know what day it feels like but I am all thrown off!
).
Guess we will just have to wait to see how this episode turns out!
