Ten days of Groucho at SSR, lotsa pics

[Groucho]

Continued...

I go back outside to wait for them and notice some excitement over by the area where you can see the ride. Looking up, we see..........

Those are two CMs standing behind a stopped train. Soon a third came along.

After a few minutes, they start emptying the train, but the back row stays put. After maybe 10-15 minutes, they bring up some sort of chair and they carry down the person in the back row who was a wheelchair user.

What did this mean for our big Everest plans? Stay tuned!

 

[disney-super-mom]

What did this mean for our big Everest plans? Stay tuned!

You are such a TEASE!

 

[Groucho]

Well, after a few minutes, the sister-in-laws re-appear, a little while after the CMs clear out the Fastpass and standby entrance. Turns out they were at the very front of the train that was stopped at the top! They had to walk down 14 floors of stairs, including through the inside of the mountain (which was apparently pretty neat.) That was lots of fun for them and a good story to tell. They got re-admittance passes:

That meant hanging around for a while longer to see if they'd re-open soon. Meanwhile, of course, I exercised the camera some more...

It was getting close to the time when the Safari was going to stop running and we had hoped that this would be our last visit to AK, so we decided to head over there. We ended up walking parallel with the parade for much of the way.

We got there just before the shutdown time and it was a walk-on.

Now, unfortunately, I didn't have good settings for the ride and as a result, most photos didn't turn out well (and since we only went on it once, I didn't get a chance to learn from my mistakes.) This one is pretty cool though, despite being blurry - a hippo going after some ducks.

We did get a very good look at a baby giraffe...

We wandered around a bit, keeping our ears open for Everest news. It wasn't sounding good...

We let Jack play with the drums a little... he was a little shy with the other kids doing it (his tongue always comes out when he's shy!) but after a minute or two, he was having fun!

We hopped on Kali River Rapids...

It was starting to get dark, and Everest still wasn't running, but we headed back anyways, just in case.

The rest of the story, same bat-place, same bat-time!

 

[piglet50]

thanks again for the tr and great pictures. you take wonderful photos.

 

[LIFERBABE]

Great Report!!

Love all the pictures.

I read all 6 pages and now there is no more to click!

 

[MichelleVW]

OMG your pictures are amazing....

 

[kristinanderic]

I just want to say that we were in Animal Kingdom the same day as you. Turns out my husband was actually the guy in the red shirt that was stuck on top of Mt Everest. You may remember him, he was waving to the crowd.

You have some awesome pictures!

Kristin

 

[Groucho]

I just want to say that we were in Animal Kingdom the same day as you. Turns out my husband was actually the guy in the red shirt that was stuck on top of Mt Everest. You may remember him, he was waving to the crowd.

You have some awesome pictures!

Kristin

Thanks! So, this is your husband, eh?

He's actually cut out of most of the "stopped ride" photos since I was more aiming for the cast members. He must have been just behind my sister-in-laws (who we didn't know were up there, as they'd both left their cell phones with us on the ground.)

 

[kristinanderic]

Yes it is, we have a 18 month old so we had to ride the "big" rides seperately. He got to go first on Everest and that is where he ended up. I never got to ride.

Its a small world after all!

 

[kristinanderic]

Here is one I took.

 

[handicap18]

Excellent pics. I really liked one from Pooh's Thougtful Spot in MK and the reflections shot you took at Epcot. And all the models of the various castles and attractions. Well done.

One think I didn't do on my trip in Nov '05 was notice all the decorations on the x-mas tress and the prestents underneith. Can't wait for the next trip later this year to check those things out.

Excellent work my friend.

 

[Groucho]

Yes it is, we have a 18 month old so we had to ride the "big" rides seperately. He got to go first on Everest and that is where he ended up. I never got to ride.

Its a small world after all!

Indeed! You with an 18-month-old, me with a 21-month-old... we probably passed each other several times while they were stuck up there. If you saw anyone tall and skinny taking weird pictures in the gift shop, that was me.

So he was able to ride it later, hopefully? Or did he never get to, either?

We're pretty tenacious... as the rest of the TR will reveal.

 

[Groucho]

Excellent pics. I really liked one from Pooh's Thougtful Spot in MK and the reflections shot you took at Epcot. And all the models of the various castles and attractions. Well done.

One think I didn't do on my trip in Nov '05 was notice all the decorations on the x-mas tress and the prestents underneith. Can't wait for the next trip later this year to check those things out.

Excellent work my friend.

Thanks, I appreciate it! It's always nice to get compliments but especially from the photo board regulars.

As I stated in other places, all the pictures here (and many more - 442 so far and another 34 about to be uploaded, and still many more to go through) are on my site in much higher quality - many lose a lot of detail at the posted size but I don't want to overwhelm the thread with huge pictures, either.

I have several other detail shots of the Christmas tree decorations and presents but not all made it online and fewer still made it to the TR. I like a shot of a Tigger present that was next to the crocodile xylophone. I think it's nice to look at the details because I've never really cared for any of the full-length tree shots of the massive trees - they look fairly dull in such a view, but the details are much more interesting to me.

 

[Groucho]

At this point in our trip, Everest was the only thing left that we had to do at AK. We hung around the area, hoping and waiting for it to re-open. Meanwhile, night fell...

Finally, it got to the point where the park would be closing soon, and Everest showed no signs of re-opening. We talked to a few CMs and they said that it had opened a couple times but quickly shut down again, so possibly it was more serious than what they thought originally. (My sister-in-laws were told that they have two computer monitoring all the trains and if they ever get out of sync at all, the ride is automatically shut down, and that's all that had happened.)

Fortunately, they would honor our fastpasses and re-admittance pass the next day.

We were getting pretty hungry since we hadn't eaten since our Crystal Palace breakfast, so we decided to try to go to Flame Tree BBQ, where we hadn't been yet. Drat! Curses! It was closed when we got there, 30 minutes before the park closed! We had to find another counter service. We headed for the exit, while I stopped a couple times for more night photos of AK (since it's rarely seen at night).

I liked the colorful lanterns that were all around.

We decided to hop on the Beach Club bus and see how Beaches and Cream looked - for some reason, I thought it counted as a counter service, not a table service.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. The sole counter service at Yacht and Beach Club was the food court with a very poor selection (disappointing after seeing the food courts at SSR and, on our last trip, Pop Century, both of which have quite good and varied selections). We decided to just hop on the Downtown Disney bus and hit Earl of Sandwich. The Beach Club trip wasn't a total bust, though - I hadn't seen the resort before, and Jack loved the old car at the entrance!

His mommy and daddy drive stick shifts exclusively, so he knows all about working the shifter...

One more Jack photo, with his new stuffed animal that we (or rather, he) had picked up at World of Disney. He's generally not interested in stuffed animals (he loves his blankets instead, just like Linus) but he liked this one, so we got it for him.

We ate at Earl of Sandwich for the first time and really enjoyed it. Very good! Afterwards, we wandered over to World of Disney again to look for something specific (I don't even remember what now)... the jewelry room has some interesting decorations.

I like the Ursala and captured souls that are around the watch case but the photos didn't turn out quite as well as I would have liked.

Also, at the pin store Downtown, my wife found a pin for me, since cars are one of my big passions. It's a tachometer and a couple other gauges, and is now attached to my camera bag:

We walked back to our room and called it a day. Our plan was to go back in the morning to AK, just to ride Everest, then over to MGM to finish up there, and on to Epcot in the evening - we had a full day ahead of us!

Details in the next installment...

 

[kristinanderic]

We only spent one day in Animal Kingdom so that was our only chance to ride Mt Everest. We got fast passes as soon as we got there that day.

The next day as we were heading out to Epcot we handed our fastpass good for 2 riders to a couple who were standing in the Animal Kingdom bus line. Hopefully we made their day.

 

[Groucho]

Well, we got up and headed for the bus stop to attempt Everest once again. I tried using the phone at the stop to check to see if see if it was running today but didn't get a chance to get the answer as the bus showed up.

We got there and, yet again! made a beeline for Everest. With a couple quick stops along the way for pictures.

We got there...... and argh! The ride had just stopped and they were pulling people off it again! Well, we didn't come all this way just to turn around, so we waited around. We did see a Dream Team but nothing for us! Still, they're a pretty rare sight.

So we waited...

At this point, my wife had been much decided that there was no way she was going to do it, between the big drop and the possibility of getting stuck up high! So she took Jack and wandered down to the Tea Company while the remaining three of us decided to go on together.

We started seeing empty trains being sent through now the then... I started to get a vibe like things were getting ready, and we got ourselves into the short and disorganized fastpass line - meanwhile, a standby line had been created on its own and was getting pretty long. I noticed more CMs near the load area, and then the standby wait time changed from "--" to "60" and a cheer went up. Of course, the lines still weren't open, but it was a good sign.

After another couple minutes, a couple CMs walked from the load area up to us and I overheard something about letting the fastpassers through first. Sure enough, they opened the line and we all nearly ran through the queue (almost a shame, there's a lot there I'd like to see better), and we were able to get on the very first train! All of the riders were cheering as we headed out onto the track...

...and up the big hill...

As you can see, everyone was pretty jubilant, especially to get past the spot where it had been stuck before.

Of course, we know what happens here...

Down the big drop...

The ride ran perfectly and everyone on the train was cheering through the whole thing. Was it worth the two days wait? Well... probably! It's a really, really great ride.

Even better - we still had my wife's fastpass and my sisters-in-law decided that I could use it, so I promptly headed right back into the fastpass queue and got right back on again, this time with a different lens on my camera.

You can see Kali River Rapids and some backstage from the main hill.

Detail shot of the ripped-up track.

...and the guy doing the ripping!

A few last photos and we were DONE with Animal Kingdom! (Until next trip...)

On to MGM to finish there...

 

[PKWallaby]

Thanks again for the wonderful photos!!! Yeah, I finally got to see Yeti! I think I had my eyes closed for over half the ride...somewhere between going backward and the parts in the dark, I must have missed him

I'm building my courage up to try it again in March...nothing ventured, nothing gained!!

 

[Groucho]

That's just the 2D yeti... the 3D one is much more impressive!

 

[BrerMama]

Thanks for the tip on the camera strap. I never considering actually wearing my camera around my neck the entire time. Did you also carry a camera bag? I'm the mom, so I'm going to have to carry at the very least rain ponchos (going in June, the season of daily afternoon storms) and our tickets. I've got a Prosumer camera (Fuji FinePix 5100) and a P&S that is awesome in low light (Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ1). So I'm wanting to carry both -- the FinePix for portraits and detail shots when I can get the right lighting. The Panasonic for indoor character meals or other indoor shots. Because, like you, I do not use my flash unless we're having serious dire circumstances. So I guess this whole ramble is to ask... would you wear the Fine Pix, not take a camera bag and take a larger bag to store the smaller camera (and the big camera when it rains?). Definitely getting an Op/Tech strap... maybe I should start wearing it on my daily walk, just to get used to it.

 

[Gdad]

Very nice Groucho- I am enjoying thoroughly.

BTW- I like the idea of the pins on the camera bag! I have seen a few pins over the years I really liked but never bothered to buy them since I'm not wearing a pin thing around my neck. Cool idea!