the write-up
Mar. 24th, 2006 10:16 amOkay, so. What I Did On My Vacation.
Day 1: Driving. Driving, driving, and also driving. Sitting in the car while others drive. Reading Anansi Boys, finally-- quite good! I liked it! Several gas stations. Dinner at a Ruby Tuesday's in Georgia. Driving. Sitting in the car. Sitting. Brief moments of excitement upon entering a new state or passing a Cracker Barrel. Driving. FINALLY, arriving in DISNEY WORLD WOO at like 10 at night. Checking in to our hotel, the Pop Century, which was made of kitsch for giants. Blessed sleep.
Day 2: MGM! For some reason, I had remembered this as my favorite park, not realizing that it's really only awesome at Christmastime, when they cover it in lights and let you walk through the backlot. Since it is March, and they replaced most of the backlot with a stunt show, it's not quite so awesome. But still pretty good! We did the Great Movie Ride, Star Tours twice, Muppetvision, all that good stuff. Some brief excitement because my bank decided to put a lock on my debit card, which made it kind of difficult to buy my tickets to the park that morning, but it got cleared up.
Going back to the hotel, we had an awesome bus driver named Jeff, who started the ride with a sing-along of "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah," kept up a hilarious and informative running commentary the whole ride ("I'm not actually sure how Disney plans to theme a hotel around the Great Depression. Perhaps the'll have people in the lobby trying to sell you matches and pencils for $4.50 each-- but, wait, they already do that!"), and finished with a group rendition of the Mickey Mouse Club theme. This is one of the things that makes me love Disney World: sometimes, the people who work there are just awesome.
Went to Downtown Disney that night for dinner, and saw V for Vendetta, which, really? I have no idea why Alan Moore took his name off this movie. It was GOOD.
Day 3: Epcot! So much fun! Practically no lines! We did just about every ride in the park, except for the Imagination pavilion stuff, because the ride there is lame now and I've seen Honey I Shrunk the Audience like eight times. The new rides, Mission: Space and Soarin', were both REALLY COOL motion simulators, especially Mission: Space, which had crazy G forces and whatnot, and a pre-show featuring Gary Sinise telling you about your important mission to Mars. Actually, Epcot has somehow become Random Celebrity Cameo Land-- Patrick Warbuton did the intro for Soarin', making it impossible for me to take the ride seriously. We also wandered around the World Showcase, did the rides in Mexico and Norway, got a turkey leg, lots of cool stuff. Oh, and we had a robot race in Innoventions.
Day 4: MAGIC KINDOM Y'ALL. This was apparently like the BEST TIME EVER to go to Disney World, because we seriously did not spend more than 20 minutes in line ANYWHERE, and judicious use of Fastpasses only played a small part. We did almost every ride and show in the park, except for the kiddie ones like Dumbo and the carousel, and just about everything was very fun. I went on Splash Mountain, for the first time in like ten years, and it was much less scary and more fun than I was expecting. Hall of Presidents had a depressing amount of Dubya, but was otherwise neat, especially the way that robot Andrew Jackson appeared to be making snarky comments to the robot President next to him. Stitch's Great Escape, the show they replaced the apparently too-scary-for-Disney Alien Encounter with, was really funny and actually a little scary too-- it's basically the same show, just with an adorable blue critter instead of a murderous alien, and I imagine the murderous version must have been TERRIFYING. Pirates was already closed, tragically, but we went on the Haunted Mansion twice to make up for it. Oh, and the cast member working the Hook and Smee character greeting outside Pirates swears that there is no ghost named George haunting the ride, nor is Walt's cryogenically frozen head hidden beneath it. I am skeptical. Although I've always thought that if Walt's frozen head is anywhere, it's under Epcot.
So after a loooong day at the park, at the end of which, holy crap, my feet hurt BAD, we went back to the hotel, piled into the car, and set off for Daytona. Our hotel was REALLY hard to find, and would up being tiny, bright yellow, full of dolphin statues, and called the Dream Inn. Oh, and our room only had one bed, but we couldn't do anything about it, because the manager had long since gone home for the night, and actually relayed us directions to our room key via cellphone, which was kind of hilarious, because who puts safes in the laundry room?
Day 5: It was a bit cold and windy for the becah, but the hotel had a heated pool like six feet *from* the beach, which was a perfecly good substitute, especially since my goal was to do as little walking as humanly possible until my feet stopped hurting. So I hung out by the pool and talked fandom with Cody for a while.
Day 6: Sitting in the car, delicious breakfast at the Cracker Barrell, driving, driving, sitting, sitting, findong out that my dad is in the band of our synagogue's production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which, WHAT. Driving, sitting, HOME.
Day 1: Driving. Driving, driving, and also driving. Sitting in the car while others drive. Reading Anansi Boys, finally-- quite good! I liked it! Several gas stations. Dinner at a Ruby Tuesday's in Georgia. Driving. Sitting in the car. Sitting. Brief moments of excitement upon entering a new state or passing a Cracker Barrel. Driving. FINALLY, arriving in DISNEY WORLD WOO at like 10 at night. Checking in to our hotel, the Pop Century, which was made of kitsch for giants. Blessed sleep.
Day 2: MGM! For some reason, I had remembered this as my favorite park, not realizing that it's really only awesome at Christmastime, when they cover it in lights and let you walk through the backlot. Since it is March, and they replaced most of the backlot with a stunt show, it's not quite so awesome. But still pretty good! We did the Great Movie Ride, Star Tours twice, Muppetvision, all that good stuff. Some brief excitement because my bank decided to put a lock on my debit card, which made it kind of difficult to buy my tickets to the park that morning, but it got cleared up.
Going back to the hotel, we had an awesome bus driver named Jeff, who started the ride with a sing-along of "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah," kept up a hilarious and informative running commentary the whole ride ("I'm not actually sure how Disney plans to theme a hotel around the Great Depression. Perhaps the'll have people in the lobby trying to sell you matches and pencils for $4.50 each-- but, wait, they already do that!"), and finished with a group rendition of the Mickey Mouse Club theme. This is one of the things that makes me love Disney World: sometimes, the people who work there are just awesome.
Went to Downtown Disney that night for dinner, and saw V for Vendetta, which, really? I have no idea why Alan Moore took his name off this movie. It was GOOD.
Day 3: Epcot! So much fun! Practically no lines! We did just about every ride in the park, except for the Imagination pavilion stuff, because the ride there is lame now and I've seen Honey I Shrunk the Audience like eight times. The new rides, Mission: Space and Soarin', were both REALLY COOL motion simulators, especially Mission: Space, which had crazy G forces and whatnot, and a pre-show featuring Gary Sinise telling you about your important mission to Mars. Actually, Epcot has somehow become Random Celebrity Cameo Land-- Patrick Warbuton did the intro for Soarin', making it impossible for me to take the ride seriously. We also wandered around the World Showcase, did the rides in Mexico and Norway, got a turkey leg, lots of cool stuff. Oh, and we had a robot race in Innoventions.
Day 4: MAGIC KINDOM Y'ALL. This was apparently like the BEST TIME EVER to go to Disney World, because we seriously did not spend more than 20 minutes in line ANYWHERE, and judicious use of Fastpasses only played a small part. We did almost every ride and show in the park, except for the kiddie ones like Dumbo and the carousel, and just about everything was very fun. I went on Splash Mountain, for the first time in like ten years, and it was much less scary and more fun than I was expecting. Hall of Presidents had a depressing amount of Dubya, but was otherwise neat, especially the way that robot Andrew Jackson appeared to be making snarky comments to the robot President next to him. Stitch's Great Escape, the show they replaced the apparently too-scary-for-Disney Alien Encounter with, was really funny and actually a little scary too-- it's basically the same show, just with an adorable blue critter instead of a murderous alien, and I imagine the murderous version must have been TERRIFYING. Pirates was already closed, tragically, but we went on the Haunted Mansion twice to make up for it. Oh, and the cast member working the Hook and Smee character greeting outside Pirates swears that there is no ghost named George haunting the ride, nor is Walt's cryogenically frozen head hidden beneath it. I am skeptical. Although I've always thought that if Walt's frozen head is anywhere, it's under Epcot.
So after a loooong day at the park, at the end of which, holy crap, my feet hurt BAD, we went back to the hotel, piled into the car, and set off for Daytona. Our hotel was REALLY hard to find, and would up being tiny, bright yellow, full of dolphin statues, and called the Dream Inn. Oh, and our room only had one bed, but we couldn't do anything about it, because the manager had long since gone home for the night, and actually relayed us directions to our room key via cellphone, which was kind of hilarious, because who puts safes in the laundry room?
Day 5: It was a bit cold and windy for the becah, but the hotel had a heated pool like six feet *from* the beach, which was a perfecly good substitute, especially since my goal was to do as little walking as humanly possible until my feet stopped hurting. So I hung out by the pool and talked fandom with Cody for a while.
Day 6: Sitting in the car, delicious breakfast at the Cracker Barrell, driving, driving, sitting, sitting, findong out that my dad is in the band of our synagogue's production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which, WHAT. Driving, sitting, HOME.
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