Trip Report Section 5 - Wherein a journey to MGM is made, and a reference to a cross-dressing ninja appears.
New Interactivity Feature - a Puzzle
The Marketing Department was complaining that the report segments were too "mono-directional." Just us blabbing at an audience member or two. According to them, we needed to "break the fourth wall." They suggested that we include some kind of interactive content to make the audience feel more directly involved. Also we were to quit with the big words and academic blabbing. And post less frequently. To much product on the market cheapens it. And keep the posts to 2000 words max. And ease off on the ancient history stuff, this is a trip report, not a monogram on the elements of Platonism discovered in Disney World. I'm still not clear on why Marketing people never like that kind of stuff, but there they are.
Yes, sometimes I get to work with people who idolize
Action Item.
In our efforts to implement their plans, we were not entirely successful in realizing all that stuff, but we have added a new feature - a puzzle. Somewhere in the trip report below we have secretly (and quite subtly and obscurely) hidden a Disney product/feature/element that does not actually exist. See if you can find it.
Now some wags out there might say something like this: "That puzzle's not very interactive. Maybe not really interactive at all, depending on how you define it."
To which we respond that we are still on Trip Report version 1.1 beta. Once we are ready to release 1.5 we will have a bit more interactive
interactivity available. The road map currently has 2.0 implementing a full 3D virtual reality trip report in which you wander through a 3D representation of Disney World with a narrator with excellent and advanced next-generation artificial intelligence who will relate fascinating and delightful stories of our adventures as one moves through Disney World. This dynamic customer oriented strategy will pipeline an ultra-ergonimic, top down, customer-centric design which will be based on reusable, enterprise ready, dynamically utilizing the advanced enterprise ready core competencies of our market research. At this point 2.0 is driven entirely on marketing's designs, as we haven't gotten engineering's feedback on the specs. yet.
If This Trip Report Segment Fails To Entertain, Blame H.
I will say this explicitly, and in advance. I wrote up a trip report segment full of clever allusions, sparkling wit and witticisms, zany discussions, and the standard slightly eccentric yet entertaining elements that keep trip report segments rolling. Then I cut out all the amusing parts and intentionally made this segment as dull as I can manage so that H. will once again have the opportunity to inject clever witty prose into my monotonous plodding.
Haley's addenda:
Umm, yeah. Right. I am all over that.
Product Review - Genuine Ninja Advantage
There are various ticket upgrades that you can get for your tickets, like Park Hopper, Super Park Hopper, and so on. One that I haven't really seen people mention, but which is a great upgrade is the Disney Genuine Ninja Advantage (DGNA). With the DGNA you can get an (ideally small) group of ninjas who will do your bidding with a fierce, ruthless, and totally silent efficiency.
The least expensive DGNA option is for the "Disney Genuine Small Army of Ninjas Advantage" version, while the top of the line option is the "Disney Genuine Uni-Ninja Advantage" The Small Army version will set you back around $20 a day, but can wind up being worse than having no Ninjas, while the "Disney Ultimate Uni-Ninja Advantage" is the ultimate, but it will cost you roughly the price of a Roll-Royce Phantom for each day you use it.
The reason for the price differences is based on
The Inverse Ninja Law. An army of Ninjas would be most economical, but your Ninjas would be likely trip you a few times, knock your drink over, lose all your keys and FastPasses, and be defeated by virtually any foe, even a five year old girl armed only with a box of raspberries, and perhaps a banana peel. The Uni-Ninja is basically an unstoppable force that can simultaneously get you FastPasses to all your favorite rides, eliminate any competitors for the driver's compartment of the Monorail, "persuade" any competitors for paintbrushes on Tom Sawyer's Island to search for them and then relinquish them to you, and assure that any and all pin trades will be significantly to your advantage.
We have used Ninjas for the last few times we have gone to Disney World, and it has worked well for us, so we decided to upgrade a few days of this trip as well. One key thing to keep in mind if you do use DGNA is that you should avoid the Magic Kingdom unless you have only one or two ninjas (and Disney Premiere Ninja-Duo Advantage is still way out of our price range). The reason for this is the historic and ugly conflicts between pirates and ninjas that have waged for centuries. Pirates of the Carribean takes on a whole new and much more disturbing character when using DGNA which is definitely not family friendly. If you want to read more on the history of these conflicts see this very scholarly historian's site:
http://drmcninja.com/
We opted for Disney Genuine Ninja Advantage - Quad-Ninja Edition. This gives one most of the reliability of only a few ninjas, combined with an excellent price-point. We upgraded to this option for our second Animal Kingdom day, a few Epcot days, and also for this day, our sole MGM day, since we had no do-overs and wanted to make sure we hit all the things we wanted to do.
MGM
We got up. My notes are really bad. The first thing they say is, "Litanó abuse." Or maybe "Citanó abuse." I had been really tired the night before for some reason, and just sort of konked out the night before around 11:30 while H. was trying to get things done, which did not please H. She explained to me that I was grumpy and that she would have used stronger language, but this was a family site.
Haley's addenda:
He was grumpy. He thought he should be allowed to sleep on his vacation. I do not know where he gets these crazy ideas. We may or may not have eaten breakfast at Everything Pop. If we did I am sure it was good, because it was free. The coffee was carp though. I don't need notes to know that.
Due to Mr Silly being Grumpy I decided we didn't really need to make opening at MGM. Even though only two out of the four of us ride Rockin Roller Coaster we sent the ninjas ahead for four FPs. That way we could ride twice.
Mr. Sillys Response:
We made the opening anyway. TLA.
I set up the pin lanyard with all the pins we wanted to trade on it, and moved the pins we had traded and wanted to keep onto a separate lanyard so we wouldn't lose them. We apparently didn't eat, or eating was uninteresting enough that it was not worth putting in notes. I do have this in the notes: "Sophia flung blue stuff on me." The blue stuff most likely is referring to the blue slushie stuff that is in the Pop cafeteria, which suggests that at least there was some token eating occurring.
Haley's addenda:
Actually I think that would be token drinking. Or slurping.
We got on the bus. According to the notes somehow things got heaped onto me on the bus. On the bus H. discovered that while she had successfully charged the camera's battery, she had forgotten to put the battery in the camera. D'oh. Thus we have no images of this day, our sole day in MGM.
Haley's addenda:
This mad me wolley. By the way. I thought about sending a Ninja back for it, but they are not that trustworthy in some ways and I didn't want to deal with the carnage they might cause if the mousekeeper was in our room...
Baggatello
This trip we were trying to go light on carrying stuff into the parks. Due to input from some Dis. OCD site H. got a Baggatello. Or maybe it's a Baggellini. Baggetini? Or a Baggaroni. Or a Bagopequeño. I never did sort out the name. The one we have every day was medium-small, and we had a teeny one that was occasionally useful as a kind of wallet-on-a-rope for H. The thing has pluses and minuses. The plus is that it's small. The minus is that it never quite hung off the arm in a way that felt exactly right. The way one was supposed to use it made it a pain for accessing its contents, and the way that was more readily accessible felt funny, and it slipped around. But overall I thought that the Bagorama was nicer than a full sized backpack, which is what we usually carry.
Haley's addenda:
The nice thing about the kids not needing a stroller was, of course, not having a stroller to mess with. The problem is, we lost a lot of cargo space. And while we almost never need anything I lug around the park (or Mr Silly lugs around for me) it is nice to have a band-aid handy when you need it. Plus I am not the one who has to lug it around.
Last year we had a small(ish) sling style back pack. It was not perfect. In fact it was heavy, hot, and despite it's size, had little space for stuff. Along with the million and two posts about Crocs, I saw maybe ninety-eight thousand posts (give or take thirty-two) about the Bagalinni bags. So I hunted for discount codes and sales and ordered three. All three turned out to serve us well, even if the strap did slip on the small bag, which was a pain. On this, our second park day, I decided that I was sick of carrying our pack, so I handed it off.
I carried it mostly, and it had about the right amount of holding space. The other down side was that once the thing got stuffed with all the stuff H. tried to cram into it with the souvenirs, it was too big, so it didn't fit in the little spots on rides for sticking personal free-floating items in, which meant either wrapping it around one's leg and hoping, or shoving it hard until it finally fit and praying that you were not breaking items inside it.
We got to the gate and met our four Ninjas. For some reason they all had names that sounded like Renaissance artists. Italian Ninjas. Who knew?
Each had a small scarf that was a distinct color (colour for our Canadian readers) which made them easier to distinguish, though I am not sure why, since there was never a real reason to distinguish them. We got into the park, and instructed the Ninjas to get our fastpasses for Tower of Terror (is that spelled Terrour in Canadian?). We would walk to the ride and meet them there.
We met them about 45 seconds later. How is that even possible? I think they might actually have had some FPs hidden in a fold of clothing or something. Anyway, the FastPasses were going to be ready in about 20 minutes, and the standby was very short, so we got in standby for TOT, and had the ninjas grab Rockin' RollerCoaster FPs for us. We go to TOT. There are a boat load of people with Australian accents all wearing red shirts. The fog machines were running full bore outside, so the whole place was covered in mist. They did a nice enough job with the theming of the outside that I really wanted to jump out of line and just wander to the other areas the signs pointed to. But that might be a VLM (Visit Limiting Move), so we stayed in line. While I do think that
DisneyLand is better than Disney World in many details (esp. Pirates and Haunted Mansion), the TOT in Orlando has better theming - I even wrote that in my notebook. The line moved quickly, and we wound up in the boiler room rapidly. It seemed dark and creepy to me, but I wondered how much of that was due to horror-film conventions training me to dread those places. I checked with Sophie who hasn't seen any horror films. She was not at all creeped out by the boiler room.
Warning - Tower of Terror Spoiler Alert
The ride itself was fun.
We did not die.
Once we got off the ride we asked some of the redshirts where they were from and what org. they were with. I forgot the answer. Something about being on an away mission, maybe? Not sure. They did not appear to die on the ride either. We looked at the pictures of people in the ride not dying. The were reasonably funny. We got a photopass card. I think. H. was excited. She wanted to beat everyone on the DisBoards by getting more photos on her photopass than the rest. You can take the fact that she has not bragged about this that the plan did not work. Also we lost it the next day.
Haley's addenda:
I am not that competitive. Except when playing board games against my children. I used to kick butt at Candyland. Mr. Silly will not even play Risk with me. Ever. Chicken.
What I said is that I learned on the DIS that the trick is to get tons of photos on your Photopass card and then buy the CD. Alas, my kids have bought into the "Characters are a waste of time unless there is no line" mindset. Last year we spent about infinity minus two plus half a mole in lines waiting to get the prized autograph and photo. This year, not so much. So the Photopass has a paltry 22 images on it. Two from Test Track, and the rest from the Epcot meet and greet area which had Goofy, Mickey, Minnie, and I think Pluto. Three or Four good shots at most in the whole bunch.
The TOT photo was not set up for the Photopass deal like Test Track was. I think someday all the ride photos will be set up that way. But not yet. I couldn't get the redneck version because I forgot the camera battery. Shucks.
The Rockin' Rollercoaster FPs are up in about twenty minutes so we try to kill time. Sophie is doing a bit of a dance.
Haley's addenda:
Oh and about the redshirts. I didn't get that joke at first either.
Mr. Sillys Response:
I had to explain it actually.
Haley's addenda cont'd:
Also there was this one kid, the redshirts were all teens. He was freaked out about riding TOT. He was being a total spazz in line. In a cute sort of way. I like misfits too. So I think he sat next to me on the ride. And I am pretty sure he grabbed my hand. Also, he screamed like a little girl. After the ride was over he explained that he was afraid of heights, but it was not as bad as he thought it would be. I liked him.
Sorry about breaking up the flow of the report, dear.
Mr. Sillys Response:
NP, I took the liberty of doing the same.
I: Do you have to go pee?
S (dancing a bit more): No.
I: Are you sure?
S (still dancing): No.
I: There's nothing to be ashamed of if you have to pee...
S (still dancing): No.
... a few minutes later...
S: I have to pee.
Haley's addenda:
Yeah, so Sophia does not like public restrooms. They freak her out a tad. And she washes her hands really well because of that so I have made no efforts to get her over it. But the thing is, she tries to wait as long as possible. As if maybe she can hold it for eight more days and just go when we get home. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
H. sees some pins on a CM lanyard somewhere that she likes. I give her our pin lanyard and take S. to the bathrooms (washrooms for our Canadian readers). I wait outside and scribble into the notebook. We (all of me) discover something important at this point. The blue Mead notebook was somehow more than half full already, even though we are really only on day 2. There has only been one full day of park going hitherto, and that tiny sliver of Epcot. Admittedly there were pages and pages about waiting at bus stops. I think at this point it might be clear to some readers why this is so. The key here is what I call the inverse interest effect. To the degree that we are doing anything interesting, to that degree we will not be writing about it. To the degree that we are sitting, waiting in a line, or stuck waiting for Max to finish eating, to that degree I will write about it. So the more I write, the less interesting the topic. This is how it can come to pass that in discussing a day at the Animal Kingdom, virtually half of the discussion will focus on the ten minutes we are stuck waiting inside the Rain Forest Cafe.
A separate phenomenon is that when replying to another person, I am Mr. Terse. This is because I always want to be able to fire off those one line witty rejoinders, so even if I actually never can, I still have that as the unreachable ideal that I blindly grope at. If only I could pull out those Oscar Wilde/Groucho Marx/Churchill/Twain one-liners. I would be so happy. I can't, but I still flail around struggling with the form. Like that guy on the street with the out of tune guitar who can't play, but keeps going at it and going at it. But when left to my own ends to write about carp, I end up just blathering on and on. And on and on. Especially if I am in line or sitting and waiting for a bus.
As an example of this phenomenon, I carefully recorded this in my notes - Sophie comes out of bathroom: "Stupid sink in bathroom! I had to keep my hand on the sensor the whole time to get water to come out!" If someone was telling me about their vacation and dropped a bit about how their daughter was annoyed at a sink fixture, I am sure I would be a bit puzzled about their priorities, but now hopefully you can understand while mundane minutia and inner dramas seem to take a lot more space than the other stuff.
Haley's addenda:
Those sinks always annoy me too. I love the no touch aspect as much as your next girl, but there is a design flaw. They seem to require your hand to be in a position which is no where near the water. If you move both hands under the water the water stops... so I spent a lot of time waving my hand in front of the sensor so Sophia could wash her hands. tfi.
We catch up with everyone. Max wants to know where the Minute Maid Frozen Lemonade is.
Accursed Minute Maid Frozen Lemonade - the Bane of my Existence
Because Max has a number of food allergies, H. collected a list of foods that are Max safe. One of the few frozen snacks that is Max safe is the Minute Maid Frozen Lemonade that comes prepackaged in little cups with a convenient plastic lid that fits on top. Unfortunately, this was to become a source of bitterness. You see, in the past these were easy to find, and since it was Max safe, we talked it up a bit. So Max has his heart set on having Minute Maid Frozen Lemonade whenever possible. But it turns out that they changed things. Instead of the little pre-packaged cups, the place that is supposed to sell it now dispenses it into a cup from a machine. And for whatever reason this is no good. No good at all. H. had marked the map with places to get the stuff, but it turns out that we have been deceived. It's not "real" Minute Maid Frozen Lemonade, and it is totally unacceptable.
We dispatch the ninja (educational note - the plural of "ninja" is often "ninja"). They throw some smoke bombs on the ground and disappear. Three appear again in a few minutes:
Leonardo: Most honorable Mr. Silly-san. Our honor has been shamed. We searched the whole park and could not find a Minute Maid Frozen Lemonade that was not dispensed from a spigot.
I: Where's Donatello?
Michelangelo: He has made a pair of
ninja floating shoes, and is walking across the water between here and Epcot to see if they have any in Epcot.
(Donatello returns - panting - I haven't seen a ninja pant before)
I: Wow, you walk on water very quickly.
Donatello: Most honorable Mr. Silly-san. We searched the park and found no prepackaged Minute Maid Frozen Lemonade, I travelled to Epcot and found that several kiosks there do sell them. I acquired one for you, but in my journey across the water I met up with an army of GDNA ninja, also using ninja boat shoes. To my deepest regret, a pirate frigate appeared and began firing her cannons at us. We outnumbered them greatly, so we lost terribly, many perished. While I killed seven pirates with five shuriken, eventually their lesser numbers were too overwhelming. While I escaped with my life, a ninja knocked the Minute Maid Frozen Lemonade out of my hand. Both the Minute Maid Frozen Lemonade and my honor were lost. I returned only so that I could commit seppuku (ritual suicide for our Canadian readers) in front of you to save you suffering dishonor by my failure.
I: I thought seppuku (ritual suicide for our Canadian readers) was a Samurai thing? Don't you guys hate the Samurai almost as much as pirates?
Donatello: Wait, maybe you are right.
Leonardo: Donatello , as punishment for your failure, you must dress as a female ninja for the rest of the day!
Donatello: I submit humbly to this horrific punishment, a fate far worse than death.
Leonardo: And we will get photos of you on rides dressed as a female ninja and silently screaming like a little girl. Then we will post them on the internet!
I: Okay, you guys can work out that punishment stuff and everything, just no killing yourselves, okay?
Leonardo: No ninja shall die by their own hand today. But I solemnly swear that if any one of us is to fail again again, we will all be getting jobs with
Ninja Burger!
I feel a slight twinge of guilt here. Max wanted to get an accursed Minute Maid Frozen Lemonade yesterday at some point, but I nixed it since it would have cut into us doing a ride we were walking to (Max takes a minimum of fourty minutes to eat one). But as far as I could tell they had real ones there. But how was I to know that MGM would do this cruel and horrible switcheroo thing to us?
Haley's addenda:
I feel it is only honorable to mention that I too was down on the Lemonade thing when we saw them the day before. Also where is Raphael? Well, he always was the hardest one to find.
FP time is close enough to start meandering over towards the ride. Sophia is not up to riding Rockin' Rollercoaster. I don't especially like most roller coasters, and mostly do them to make the kids happy. Of all the roller coasters in Disney parks, Rockin' Rollercoaster is my second least favorite, my least favorite being the back-breaker one in DinoLand USA. Though I need to be careful not to bring up DinoLand USA, because Mr. Crankypants can be a deadly adversary of Apollo, and defenses are weak when it comes to anything in DinoLand, especially the utterly vile Chester & Hester aesthetically crushing carnie monstrosity.
A brief account of why I don't really like Rockin' Rollercoaster
The main reason I am not into Rockin' Rollercoaster is because of Aerosmith. There are so many things that could be said here, but I will try to tone things down. Mr. Crankypants and the Intellectual part of the soul grapple on this particular question regularly, though they both concur that Aerosmith was not the appropriate choice for a theme of a Disney ride.
At the temple of Apollo in Delphi there were two inscriptions that embodied the principle of leading a good life. Those inscriptions were "Know Thyself," and "Nothing Too Much." They were treated as important wisdom to the ancient Greeks and have been important to philosophers through the ages (up to the point that philosophy took its modern turn and became little more than a excuse for actively not seeking wisdom, but that's a whole separate rambling verging on ranting discourse).
In the spirit of knowing myself, I will recognize my ability (tendency even?) to rail angrily about bad music for aeons, and in the spirit of "nothing too much," I will just list a few things and not go into the angry (potentially endless) ranting diatribe that I could have spilled forth. Embracing the spirit of moderation, here are my concerns:
0) The theming is weak. After going through it once, there is nothing new to see.
1) Aerosmith. Why Aerosmith? They are such a second rate band. Remember that thing with Run DMC where they did the rap version of "Walk This Way"? They didn't just jump the shark, they pushed the envelope of shark jumping to new levels of extreme shark jumping. Were there one, they would clearly win the X-Games shark jumping competition. This whole thing just screams Eisner. To put it in management terms, "A list" people hire "A list" people because they want the best. "B list" people hire "C list" people since they are afraid of being shown up. This is not an "A list" decision. And really, is Aerosmith really Disney material? Jerry Garcia said they were "the druggiest bunch of guys I've ever seen."
Jerry Garcia!
2) My parents had a Ford Aerostar mini-van when I was a teenager. It was an unreliable piece of crud. Whenever I hear Aerosmith, I think of Aerostar. This might be partly reinforced by the fact that I had a friend who was a big Aerosmith fan and played them too often, so it was amusing to get their name wrong. This friend also bought and loved Don Johnson's album. Yes, that Don Johnson, the one from Miami Vice.
3) Revolution X - the Aerosmith themed video game. You are forced to hear "Walk This Way" just shy of a quadrillion times during this game, and guess what you get to do if you win? You get to go on a rampage destroying all of Aerosmiths trophies. Does it make sense that if you win you get to vandalize Aerosmith's most prized possessions? It definitely felt right at the time when "Walk This Way" had been played on the radio enough times that it had become a kind of assumed background noise.
Okay, some of those are not so much concerns as anecdotes, but let's not get caught up in the details and miss the big picture.
Since Sophie was uninterested, and I was happy to give it a miss, we volunteered to hang out in the little shops in MGM, while H & M did the ride. We agreed to meet at the store where there is Nightmare Before Christmas and pirate stuff. The ninjas got four passes, so the fam. are going to loop it. We separate at 9:45. They take off to go on that ride, and S. and I went looking to see if we could find some pins to trade. I took out the lanyard and put it on for easier reference. We usually keep it in the bag to avoid pins falling off and getting lost. We meandered around in the store, and looked at things. Mr. Crankypants was not pleased. The merchandising had gotten worse and was still overpriced. It was all not quite as good as last time we were there. Apollonian thoughts of light press forth - try to "find gifts for friends", "enjoy the fact that you are in the second happiest place on earth," etc. I have one coworker (named Beans - no, seriously) who really loves Nightmare Before Christmas stuff. So I got a way overpriced Jack Skellington antenna topper for him. It somehow got lost, and we haven't seen it since. I also was really hoping to find a blank book/notebook with either a Nightmare Before Christmas or Pirate theme, but alas, there were none to be found. I occasionally just pause and adore Sophie, who is so amazingly cute, clever, brilliant, and fun to be with. During one adoration period a disquieting conversation breaks out:
Sophie: When you were in Elementary School did they have P.E.?
(Dear God, this is
not a question I want to discuss)
I: I, um, uh, well, yeah.
Sophie: Did you play games?
(fine - I will just go ahead and admit it)
I: Yeah. But as a kid I was bad at throwing balls. And I was bad at catching balls. And I was regarded as a spazz. And weird. And I never paid attention to the games when they were being played. So I was always picked second to last.
Sophie: Second to last? Who was picked last?
I: The kid who had had Polio.
Sophie: What's Polio?
(Thank goodness - talking about Polio is far preferable to talking about my time in P.E.)
I: Polio is a disease that makes it so that you can't use some of your muscles after you get it.
Sophie: So then is it like a cold, and you get better?
I: No, once you lose those muscles it's over, and you can't use them ever again. The guy that I usually got picked before always sort of held one arm up, and couldn't walk right. He sort of wiggled back and forth when he walked since he had to use different muscles. And he couldn't actually throw. So me being picked after him speaks volumes. Volumes of bad things. Like a complete Encyclopedia Britannica of bad things.
Sophie: Oh.
I: Did you know that one of our best presidents had Polio? FDR did (to our Canadian readers, see
here for more info on FDR). He was in a wheelchair because of Polio, though you never saw many pictures of him where it made that clear, because the media was respectful back then. He started a charity called The March of Dimes, where you could donate a dime to the charity to help doctors prevent and cure Polio. And after he died, they put him on the dime, which is extra cool.
(we briefly talk about dimes)
Another thing we did as we waited was that we went from CM to CM looking for pin trades. We scored a few nice ones.
We also looked at the candy store. At one point H. told
someone that you can use a snack credit to get one of those tubes full of flavored sugar, so whenever the kids see the tube/sugar dispenser things they obsess over them. So Sophie looks at the sugar dispenser for a long while, carefully thinking over each flavor of sugar. She's so cute while she does this that I sort of melt inside.
Haley's addenda:
Yeah. We are not in trouble in, say, seven more years. Nope. Not at all.
Then we went across the street and looked for CMs in the clothes stores. We looked at the old cars on the street. I have a thing for pre-40s cars, they're just so lovely to look at or some reason. I had big picture books full of images of the cars of the 20s and 30s as a child.
We meandered and checked out pins. We went back to the original store where we were supposed to meet H., and waited. We waited some more. Checking lanyard, we have traded pins like there is no tomorrow. It is 10:40. We are wondering in earnest where the heck Max & H. have gone to.
Haley's addenda:
Gosh, they are meandering a lot. It takes awhile to ride RnRC. After the preshow they dump you into a second line, so even though there was "no wait" there was a wait. No wait up to the pre-show, 20 minute wait after it. We ran into redshirt spazz guy again. He liked Disney. He liked MGM. He loved RnRC. I found him very entertaining while waiting in line. Tfi they were a choir group from the land down under.
Then the most remarkable thing happens. It is so remarkable, that I have virtually no notes on the topic. And we have not photos due to the camera battery situation. We went out into the street again. There's a cast member in nerdy character "Bucky" - "Hollywood's Next Great Leading Man." He is doing a little schpiel with a Ukulele. This is difficult to resist.
Haley's addenda:
Actually it was impossible to resist.
I approach Bucky. He plays "Ain't She Sweet." I casually mention that I play the Uke. He hands it to me. It's a cheap Lanikai, slightly out of tune, but good enough. I play "I'm Confessin'" Bucky is impressed. I play "Ain't She Sweet" using crazy tremolo. Bucky is more impressed. He gives me the "I'm not worthy" sign. I play "I'll See You In My Dreams," and give it back to Bucky. He asks me if I take lessons. I explain that I am in a Ukulele Secret Society, though I can't say the name out loud. I whisper the name to him - the "Uke-Illuminati." This is true by the way - I am a co-founder of the Uke-Illuminati. As I am playing the second tune Haley and Max show up. Haley comments on the lack of batteries in the camera. After I played the second song, he noticed my shirt, and began to put the pieces together.
Haley's addenda:
I wonder which shirt it was...
Mr. Sillys Response:
That's one of those questions we never can really answer for sure, due to the missing batteries. But it was some Aloha shirt.
Disney World in general can be a swell place to be. If you happen to be an obsessive Uke. player, and you suddenly have a chance to play Ukuleles.
Haley's addenda:
And me with no batteries in my camera. For a second I calculated the time it would take to run into the nearest store and purchase a disposable one. But, alas, it would have taken too long. I forgot all about the Ninjas too. Darn.
Next up - on to Star Tours and whatever I manage to come up with.
)!!!!
