Fair warning, folks - this is going to be a book-length trip report! to make things a little easier to follow I've broken up the report into several sections. Because of the length of the report, it's going to take me a while to post everything, so if it seems like I've stopped in mid-trip report, please be patient - the rest is coming. Enjoy!

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• Your Full Name: Paul Schnebelen
• Your Email Address: schnebs@hotmail.com
• Dates of Trip: 1/5/07 – 1/21/07
• Travel Method: Plane
• Resort: Port Orleans Riverside
• Accommodations: Standard Room
• The Ages Represented in Group: 2 Adults
• WDW Experience Represented in Group Veteran, Frequent
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Cast of Characters:

• Paul (your humble narrator), age 38. Disneyland veteran (more times than I can count), 4th trip to WDW since 2000.
• Suzy (my beloved fiancée), age 43. Disneyland and Walt Disney World veteran, many trips to WDW since 1991.

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Planning:

Actually, I don’t have much to tell you as far as planning. Suzy and I go to WDW every two years every January and stay either at Port Orleans Riverside or Port Orleans French Quarter, booking the room months in advance at the rack rate and then switching to the Annual Passholder room-only rate when it comes out. We’ve never been disappointed with the discount rates when they become available, and this year was no exception – although the AP rates didn’t start until several days after the both of us arrived, the discount more than made up for a couple of days of having to pay rack rate.

Tickets are another thing we don’t do a lot of advance planning on. Since we stay at WDW for two weeks or more when we visit, we both purchase Annual Passports. We usually buy our APs when we arrive, but this year Suzy decided to buy hers in advance via the Walt Disney World website.

As far as transportation, Suzy would be traveling from California to Orlando in her minivan, since her schedule’s a bit more flexible than mine. Since I had to stay at work over the holidays like a good little worker drone and I had to get back to work before Suzy had to return from Florida, I booked a round trip nonstop ticket on United between LAX and MCO and made arrangements to get to and from the resort via Disney’s Magical Express. These arrangements turned out to be relatively painless, although we had a little trouble making Disney understand that Suzy and I would be arriving and leaving separately.

We DID do some planning when it came to where we were going to eat! Suzy and I had heard how difficult it was to get into WDW restaurants thanks to the Disney Dining Plan, so I came up with a list of places I wanted to try, Suzy did the same, and we used those lists as a basis for booking lunch and dinner reservations. Our lists were longer than our vacation, so we booked what we agreed on and kept our fingers crossed for openings at the rest of the restaurants we might want to try. (Needless to say, we don’t recommend this strategy during peak seasons.) Suzy picked up a Disney Dining Experience card along with her AP, which our experience has shown more than pays for itself in the discounts we receive when we eat on-property.

It had been a couple of years since we’d done any tours, so we booked a bunch of tours for our second week together at WDW. I’d never done UnDISCOVERed Future World before, so Suzy booked a reservation for me. We wanted to see if a couple of tours one or both of us had taken previously had changed, so we booked Keys to the Kingdom at the MK and Backstage Safari at DAK. Last but not least, we decided to try out the new Mickey’s Magical Milestones tour at the MK.

As far as touring plans… yep, you guessed it; we didn’t use those, either. That’s the nice thing about being at WDW for longer than a week; you don’t feel as much pressure to get everything done as quickly as possible at the theme parks. It also helps tremendously when you go in January like we do; January tends to be one of WDW’s slowest months, so crowds have tended to be manageable on our past visits, and we didn’t expect things to be different this time.

The downside to traveling in January is that there’s always a risk that a favorite attraction or part of your resort may be down for rehab, and unfortunately such was the case for us; Rock N Roller Coaster at the Studios, El Rio De Tiempo at Epcot (a guilty pleasure for me) and Splash Mountain at the MK would all be closed while I was there. Typhoon Lagoon would be closed for rehab (but given how cold it can be in Florida in January, no great loss); more importantly, the Riverside Mill food court at Port Orleans would be undergoing rehab, which had the potential of making a quick lunch or dinner at the resort a hassle.

The only other pre-planning we did for this trip was to pack a little of everything. Based on our past experience, the weather in Orlando in January can be unpredictable; in a two week stretch, it may be warm enough for shorts and a T-shirt and cold enough to wear gloves and scarves. Suzy packed a lot of our cold weather gear in the minivan as a precaution.

Hmmm… guess we did more pre-planning than I thought! On with the trip!

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Day 1 – Friday, January 5th

I had reservations for an airport shuttle from Oxnard to LAX with one of our local shuttle companies; they were scheduled to pick me up at about 7 and were actually a couple of minutes early. The drive took about 1 ½ hours to cover 60 miles – which is actually pretty good for a weekday morning in southern California.

I wish I could say my experience at LAX went as smoothly as my ride on the shuttle. I think the experience of flying gets worse and worse every time I go someplace; when I got to LAX, the United check-in area was packed with people and there were long lines for everything. I was able to bypass a lot of the lines because of United’s Internet check-in service, but I still had to wait about 10 minutes to check my bags at a self-service kiosk. (The main reason for the wait? I had to wait for someone from the airline to come over to the kiosk to check my bags – that part’s still done by hand. Go figure…)

The slow lines at the United check-in counter were good preparation for the TSA screening. Lines and more lines, the hassle of taking your shoes off, putting all your carry on items into the plastic bins, emptying everything out your pockets so you can pass through the metal detector – it’s kinda hard to argue that the terrorists haven’t already won when we have to go through all this to fly. I’m expecting we’ll all have to fly naked the next time I have to travel somehwere.

I made it through TSA screening with plenty of time to spare. When I got to the gate, I saw a sign informing the passengers that they had to pay for food service on the flight. Since when did food become an option on a transcontinental flight? Whatever. With visions of a 7-Eleven-quality meal from United (let’s face it folks, most of those meals weren’t all that good when they were free), I decided to check the terminal restaurants for something to bring on the plane. I settled on a chicken pesto sandwich, chips, and a bottle of Diet Coke from the Wolfgang Puck Café for 15 bucks and hoped for the best.

The flight to Orlando was full, but otherwise was fairly pleasant. It turned out that I needn’t have bothered with Wolfgang Puck; for 5 bucks, you had your choice of a cold sandwich or one of several snack boxes with a pretty good selection of items. If you didn’t want to part with any money and didn’t bring your own meal, United offered soft drinks and mini-pretzels for free. The in-flight entertainment wasn’t as tempting as the snacks; the movie was “Gridiron Gang” starring The Rock, and United now offered radio channels from XM instead of their own programming. I stuck with my iPod and my book.

The flight got to MCO in the early evening. Other than a lack of cell phone reception in the satellites, I think MCO is a pretty good airport; they make a real effort to keep things clean and in good working order, which is more than you can say for LAX.
My favorite part of arriving at MCO is hearing Jack Wagner welcoming me to central Florida on the shuttle to and from the satellite; it’s a nice Disneyesque touch to start off and finish an Orlando vacation!

Before heading down the escalator to find my way to Disney’s Magical Express, I decided to make a quick stop in the Disney gift shops. (Yeah, I know, I’m not even on-property yet and I’m going souvenir shopping – not a good sign…) I was surprised to discover that you can no longer purchase APs at the MCO gift shops; this is a real shame, since I enjoyed saving myself the hassle of buying the pass at the parks, and it was nice to have an activated AP when checking into the resort if you needed it. Of course, you can still purchase Magic Your Way tickets at the gift shops, at the same price they sell them for at the theme parks. Hmmm…

I took the elevator down to the baggage claim level and started looking for some indication of how to get to the Disney’s Magical Express counter. It wasn’t too difficult – just look for the Disney cast member wearing the big Mickey Mouse gloves at the foot of the elevator! She directed me to go down one more level and keep walking to the end of the terminal. The check-in desk for DME was fairly easy to find with the directions I was given, and was very efficient; there were 3 or 4 cast members serving 6 or 7 passengers. The folks at the check-in counter asked for my information, checked and stamped the booklet I received in the mail, and directed me to one of several queues, each marked with a sign listing a couple of Disney resorts. The check-in took all of about 5 minutes.

It looked like I’d picked a pretty good time to use DME! There couldn’t have been more than a dozen people in all of the queues, and most of the folks there didn’t have to wait for more than a couple of minutes before they were taken to a bus. One tip for you folks planning on using DME: Keep your ticket book out until you’re seated on your bus, because you’ll have it reviewed and scanned several times between the check-in counter and the bus! Unfortunately, the time you get to the bus isn’t much of an indicator of how long it’ll be until the bus will actually leave; it took about 15-20 minutes from the time my group boarded the bus to the time the bus actually left MCO. One party actually had to get off the bus and get a cab when they realized that with the delay they’d never make it over to Wide World of Sports to check in for the following morning’s WDW Half-Marathon, but the rest of us on the bus took it all in stride.

I have to share one minor quibble here. For some reason, Mears (the company that actually runs the DME busses) can’t manage to keep a supply of busses that are clearly being used for DME; at the DME platform, we had busses painted in DME livery, Disney Cruise Line livery, and a couple (like the one we were on) painted in Mears livery. This actually confused a few of the people using DME, since they weren’t 100% sure they were getting on the right bus! Considering how big a contract Mears must have to operate this service, I think they should at least have enough busses in DME colors to serve the guests.

We left MCO with 8 people on our bus; it took about 30 minutes to get from MCO to WDW, and once we got there, the bus made three stops to discharge passengers (POR was the second stop for our bus; we also stopped at POFQ and WL). There was a “Year of a Million Dreams” video that talked about check-in and check-out procedures for DME guests and folks going from WDW to DCL, as well as giving previews of the new attractions at WDW. It was a nice distraction – once I was able to find a monitor that (a) worked and (b) didn’t have a distorted picture. Again, doesn’t Mears have enough money from this contract to maintain these busses? I think a little quality control on the part of Mears and Disney would go a long way.

Since Suzy had already arrived at POR and checked us in several days before, all I had to do once I got off the bus was to grab my carry-on bags and walk over to our room, which was in the Parterre Place section of Magnolia Bend. I got to the room and spent not nearly enough time saying hello to Suzy, then Suzy showed me the room. It looked like Disney had redecorated the room since our last visit, with new wallpaper, a new cabinet for the TV, and a new smaller wood cabinet for the refrigerator (which is now included with the room – nice touch, Disney!) There was a beautiful lithograph of Disneyland’s Mark Twain that I was tempted to unscrew from the wall and take home. Best of all, the beds’ headboard and footboards had been changed! This may not seem like all that big a deal, but I still had memories of all the times I’d banged my knees on the old footboards, and I was more than happy to see them gone. The only real negative I could see to the room was that although Disney now offered high-speed internet in the room, the only place you could plug in to the connection was next to the phone – which was on the other side of the room from the table you’d most likely use your laptop on. Overall, though, the room looked great.

It was about 8:30 or so by the time I met Suzy, so we decided to grab a bite to eat at Riverside Mill. The service was limited because of the rehab of the court, but the selection was too bad; they had a nice selection of cold sandwiches, desserts, and fruits near the registers, the soda and coffee machines were still running, and in one of the dining areas they’d set up a couple of serving lines where you could pick up a 4-course meal. We opted for food from the serving line, and the food was actually pretty good; since the set-up probably scared away a lot of guests, we had no problem finding a quiet table to enjoy our dinner.

We took a walk around the resort, admiring the themeing of the Alligator Bayou and Magnolia Bend buildings; we’ve always loved the look of this resort, and we love walking around the walkways in the resort. It’s a shame more folks don’t spend a little more time taking the appearance of their resorts! We returned to the room to catch up on everything that had happened since we last saw each other, and to wait for DME to deliver my luggage. My luggage arrived at about 10:30 p.m. -- not bad, considering all the horror stories I’d read about how slow luggage got to guests using DME. I decided to pass on unpacking for the time being, and Suzy and I went to bed.

Day 2 – Saturday, January 6th

This was the day of the Walt Disney World Half- Marathon, and like many of my fellow guests, I started my day out with a nice long walk. Unlike most of them, though, I started my walk at about 9:30 a.m., and I confined myself to an hour’s walk along the paths of Port Orleans. I did see a lot of the racers come limping back as I walked, and since I’ve done several marathons and half-marathons myself, I made sure to congratulate each one that I saw. Maybe next year I’ll get up at 3 in the morning and join them for the actual race – or maybe not…

Once I was done with my walk, I went back to the room, Suzy and I got dressed, and we headed off to Epcot. I expected that the race would make for tough going as far as getting into the Epcot parking lot (since the start and finish of the race is in the Epcot parking lot), but things actually weren’t too bad. We even got a parking spot fairly close to the entrance – one of the real advantages of going to WDW in the slow season, I guess.

Once we got to the entrance, I noticed that Disney had several security guards posted to keep guests from approaching the ticket booths and the entrance gates without going through a bag check, but there was only one bag check line. That didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me – since the guards are in position anyway, why not have several bag check stations so that people could get through to the booths and entry a little faster? To be fair, Disney also had a separate line where folks who didn’t have bags could just pass through – something I’d love to see at Disneyland, frankly.

After having our bags checked, we joined the one of the ticket booth queues. Again, the staffing issues were a little baffling to me. There were two or three ticket booths open, and one booth couldn’t process cash transactions, so the lines were long and they took about 15-20 minutes to get through. If you’re running a business and people are lining up to give you money, wouldn’t you want to have as many people as possible serving them quickly? The folks at Epcot did try their best to speed things up, though; a supervisor walked the queues to let people know which was the non-cash queue and was pulling the people who didn’t need to pay for their tickets out of the queue. Suzy had purchased an AP voucher online and was able to get her pass without waiting thanks to this supervisor; I had to purchase mine, but considering the size of the queue, I purchased my AP fairly quickly.

With APs in hand, Suzy and I headed for the gates. This was our first encounter with the new single-finger scanners at the gates, and like many of the folks in line, Suzy and I had a little trouble getting used to only presenting one finger for the machine. The cast member helped us out, though, and we soon got into the park. We didn’t spend too much time taking in the sights, though – we had a lunch reservation to make!

I’m a big fan of things Japanese, especially Japanese food, so I asked Suzy to make reservations for Mitsukoshi Teppanyaki. This was the first time for both of us in the restaurant, and it was Suzy’s first encounter with teppan-style cooking (the kind where the chef cooks your items to order on a griddle at your table, a la Benihana of Tokyo). The decoration of the restaurant was very beautiful, and appeared to be traditional Japanese; the restaurant was divided into several small rooms (although the rooms weren’t fully partitioned off) to make for a more intimate atmosphere. Suzy thought it was a little too intimate; she felt that the available space at the tables was too narrow and that there wasn’t enough space between the tables and the walls. I understand that the restaurant will be going down for rehab soon, and that Disney will be rearranging the dining rooms, so maybe this problem will be fixed.

Our chef was Hiromi, a nice lady in her mid-20s from a town just outside Tokyo. She told us that she was in her 10th month of a 12-month international program, and that prior to coming to Epcot she was a Tokyo Disneyland cast member; she’d been in North America before, selling ice cream in Vancouver, and she was looking forward to doing some sightseeing in America before returning home. In addition to Hiromi, we had a couple of other parties at our table with us (the seating at Mitsukoshi is communal); one party had a mother and daughter who would be participating in the WDW marathon the following day, and there was also a couple with a young child who were transplants from California. The mother was a website designer for Disney, so we ended up quizzing her on what it was like to work for the Mouse and she quizzed us on what websites we frequented and what we thought of the WDW website (she didn’t look all that happy with our answers).

Considering Hiromi had no training as a chef before coming to Epcot (and that teppan isn’t a very common style of cooking in Japan anyway), she did a great job with the food. The portions were pretty generous considering the price; Suzy and I both had the strip steak and chicken breast combo, which was served with mixed vegetables, some noodles and a bowl of rice. We opted to add a salad to our meals, which rounded out the meal pretty well. The meal wasn’t cheap, by any means - it worked out to about $25 each – but it was as good as any meal I’d had at a Benihana. Glancing at the menu on the way out, I was glad Suzy had booked us in for lunch – the meal is exactly the same but costs about $9 more at dinner!

Suzy and I decided to walk off our meal by wandering around World Showcase. I was surprised to find Christmas decorations still up and some Christmas music playing at some of the pavilions; on our past trips, the decorations were usually gone from the parks right after New Years Day. We walked through the shops in Germany (Suzy was on the lookout for Christopher Radko ornaments, but she didn’t find any), then went to Norway to ride Maelstrom.

Riding Maelstrom turned out to be a good choice – the attraction only had a 10-minute wait. The attraction was a lot of fun, although I’ve done it so many times I suspect the next time I meet a Norwegian I’m going to be tempted to start off the conversation with “You are not the first one to pass this way…” We ended up skipping the movie; I always felt a little bad about that until I heard that the captain of one of the Disney Cruise ships, who is Norwegian, did the same the last time he was at Epcot! If a Norwegian can’t stand to watch the Norway movie, I don’t feel so bad about not watching it myself…

After Maelstrom and the obligatory walk through the gift shop, we entered the stave church to see the new exhibit on the Vikings. It was interesting seeing some of the Viking artifacts and seeing figures of famous Vikings like Erik the Red and St. Olaf, but I kind of miss the exhibit on stave churches that was here previously. Disney apparently made the right choice in replacing it, though, since there were more people in the Viking exhibit than I’d ever seen in the stave church exhibit.

I was in the mood to try some faster attractions – which is usually Suzy’s cue to find someplace to relax, since her motion sickness doesn’t allow her to get on fast or spinning rides. Suzy decided to go to the Electric Umbrella and read a book she’d brought with her, and I headed for Test Track. I got into the single rider line, which took about 20 minutes to get through (compared to about 60 minutes for the regular stand-by line); I always enjoy going on the ride, particularly on the fast stretch at the end.

I went back to the Electric Umbrella and met Suzy; when she saw me, she jokingly asked if now that I’d done Test Track I was ready to get on Mission: Space. Unfortunately for Suzy, I thought she was serious, and I said sure! Fortunately, she was a good sport about it; she agreed to go back to the Electric Umbrella, and I went off to the ride.
I’ve ridden the spinning version of Mission: Space, so I decided to try out the non-spinning version to see how it compared. I joined the stand-by line for the “green team”, and apparently a lot of other people had the same idea, since it took about 20 minutes to go through the queue! The “green team” ride wasn’t all that much different from the regular ride, except for the lack of G-forces on you during the flight; it reminded me of riding Star Tours, except in a much more confined space. Just to be sure I was giving the ride a fair comparison, I grabbed a Fastpass for another ride on Mission: Space and re-joined Suzy at the Electric Umbrella. Since there was lots of time until my Fastpass became valid, Suzy and I decided to let her choose what we should do next.

Suzy and I headed over to Spaceship Earth; as usual for late afternoon, there was no wait. The lack of a queue for Spaceship Earth most of the day always has me wondering why so many people insist on getting on at park opening; the ride’s worth a wait, but it’s not really necessary to do so. Suzy and I really enjoyed the ride; Suzy thought that they’d done some work on the figures and the special effects, but I still thought scenes at the end showing “modern technology” looked dated. Siemens, the new sponsor of the attraction, still hadn’t opened the post-show exhibit are, but they did have a sign up indicating they’d be opening it soon. It’ll be interesting to see what it’s like when it opens.

We discovered a large, cushioned row seat at the exit to the attraction right across from the post-show exhibit entrance, and Suzy decided this looked like a pretty nice place to sit and relax while I used my Fastpass for Mission: Space, so she decided to wait for me in the Spaceship Earth post-show area. I walked over to Mission: Space and entered the orange team queue (along with most of the people with Fastpasses). The ride in the “orange team” simulators confirmed what I suspected – that the ride is better with the G-forces from the spinning. Neither ride’s really for the claustrophobic of for folks that don’t want to be jostled around a bit, but I think Disney made a good choice giving folks some options as far as how they experience the attraction.

I returned to Spaceship Earth and found Suzy taking a nap – apparently that row seat is really comfortable! We headed for the exit, but were stopped in the Leave a Legacy area and were asked if we wouldn’t mind completing a survey. I’ve been told by a lot of Disney fans to always agree to a survey, because sometimes you get to see previews of coming attractions or resorts, so we said OK; Suzy got to complete a detailed survey about her dining experiences at Epcot that day, and I just got the chance to rate my day at Epcot on a scale from 1 to 10. Oh, well, maybe next time…

It was starting to get dark by the time we left Epcot, so we decided to drive over to the Disney-MGM Studios to catch the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights, which was in its final weekend for the season. The drive to the Studios was quick, although the trip from parking to the front took a little while since we ended up being parked pretty far back; the queue through the security checkpoint was pretty quick considering all the folks just coming in to the park. Like Epcot, most of the holiday decorations were still up at the Studios. I’d heard complaints about how the Studios seemed under-decorated this season, but the decoration seemed OK to me. I recognized the “shooting star” lamppost decorations that are recreations of the decorations you see in the real Hollywood around Christmastime, which I thought was a particularly nice touch.

This was my first visit ever to the Osborne Lights, and I was absolutely amazed. If there was anywhere on the Streets of America they didn’t decorate with lights, I didn’t see it; there were even lights covering a barbeque grill and a set of lawn chairs! I especially enjoyed the “dancing” lights, where the displays blinked on and off in time to one of three songs that were played every couple of minutes. The Streets of America were absolutely packed, but there was no real problem getting around, and I didn’t have any problem getting lots of photos of the lights.

I was getting a little hungry at this point, so I convinced Suzy to come with me to Herbie’s Diner, a little quick-service eatery next to the entrance of Lights, Motors, Action! They had several items, but the one that caught my attention were the barbeque pork steamed buns. For you folks who are fans of Chinese or Hawaiian food, this is the Disney version of char siu bao or manapua; they’re a little smaller than what you’d usually get at a Chinese restaurant, but they’re not bad, and the price was reasonable for Disney (about $2 each). It was enough food to keep me going through the rest of the light displays and through a photo opportunity with Herbie the Love Bug.

Once we got through the Osborne Lights, Suzy and I decided we really needed to get something for dinner. The question was, where should we go, since we hadn’t made any dinner reservations? We passed on Backlot Express and Toy Story Pizza Planet, since we weren’t in the mood for fast food; we checked the 50s Prime Time Café, but one look at the full lobby convinced us that it wouldn’t be a good choice. I suggested the ABC Commissary, but the offerings struck Suzy as a little too exotic for her tastes.

We settled on Sunset Market, but we didn’t settle on where to eat; Suzy decided she wanted to try Catalina Eddie’s, and I decided that a burger from Rosie’s All American Cafe sounded good. I got a cheeseburger, fries, and a Diet Coke; Suzy ended up getting a mini-pizza and chocolate cake. The food was OK: the burger was a typical Disney fast food burger, nothing to write home about, and Suzy’s pizza was done pretty well, although it seemed to be more crust than anything else. I think the biggest disappointment was the chocolate cake; it was pre-packaged and was more the size of a cupcake – a real disappointment compared to what we were used to from Disney. (As long as we’re talking about disappointments, why does a restaurant with a name like Catalina Eddie’s, and which is covered with decorations about fish and fishing, not have a single seafood item on the menu? Odd…)

Suzy and I decided we wanted to get one more attraction in before leaving the Studios, so we walked over to The Great Movie Ride. Suzy and I have always been big fans of this attraction and we still are; it was the first time I’d ever seen a female gangster hijack the ride vehicle, and I liked that they’ve added a few more recent clips to the finale (like scenes from Pirates, Finding Nemo, and Chronicles of Narnia), but I wish they’d add a few more scenes to the attraction itself. There wasn’t much of a wait, though – which is actually a shame.

Suzy and I left the Studios and made a quick trip off-property so we could pick up some supplies from the Walgreen’s on SR 535. It’s so much easier and so much cheaper to get anything you need off of the property than it is to get it onsite! We decided that it was too early to head back to the room, so we went over to the Downtown Disney Marketplace. Since it was Saturday night, the Marketplace was packed. Suzy was in the mood for a Ghirardelli sundae, but the line was out the door; she decided to brave the line and I decided to take a peek into the World of Disney.

On the way into the World of Disney, I had my first encounter with the spitting Stitch; I managed not to get spit on, but a couple of kids got wet (but then, they were trying to).
The store had been reorganized since my last visit to WDW, and I wasn’t all that thrilled about the reorganization. You have the Boys Room (or as I like to call it, the Room O’ Pirates); the room has been thoroughly decorated in a pirate motif, with stuff like skeletons in jail cells and a Chuck E. Cheese’s –caliber pirate Audio-Animatronic (does WDI know you guys bought this thing?); they were mainly selling toys themed to Pirates of the Caribbean, like Fill a Skull, where you could buy a plastic skull and fill it with all kinds of plastic loot. Next was the Princess Room, which used to be the toy and plush room; as you might guess, this is where you’d got to get all the princess junk your daughter could possibly ever want and then some. The other rooms were also re-themed to specific types of merchandise, like housewares, pins and watches, plush, clothing for various ages and genders and so on. The menswear section had been moved to a smaller room – which was fitting, since the selection had gotten even smaller. The book and CD section – which had always been my favorite part of the store – had been relegated to two shelves. Overall, it seemed to me that even though there was plenty of floor space, there was even less to choose from; even the World of Disney at Disneyland seemed to have a better selection of merchandise to me. Not that any of that would stop me from shopping, of course!

The line at Ghirardelli went a lot faster than I thought it would, because by the time I left the World of Disney Suzy had ordered ice cream for us, gotten a table, and started on her sundae. Suzy mentioned that Ghirardelli had a full staff and all their registers open, so the wait to order was only about 10 minutes and the ice cream was delivered in about 5 minutes. Disney could take a few lessons from Ghirardelli on staffing in anticipation of crowds.

The sundaes were excellent, as always; we each had our usual – hot fudge for me, caramel for Suzy. By the time we were done, it was getting pretty late, so we decided to head back to Riverside and call it a night.


Day 3 - Sunday, January 7th


I started out my morning with a walk around Port Orleans in tribute to all the people who were giving their bodies a beating running in the WDW marathon. It was a nice day for a walk or a race, but it was a bit humid – I didn’t envy them racing that day! I congratulated some of the early finishers I saw while I was on my walk, and I kept my fingers crossed for the folks who were still trying to finish.

After finishing up my walk and getting dressed, Suzy and I headed over to Old Key West to have lunch at Olivia’s. Suzy loves Olivia’s and I like it (I loved it until they took my favorite item off the menu). The staff there’s absolutely wonderful – very friendly and very helpful; we even ran into a waitress who quizzed us about the book I was reading about “The Amazing Race”, because she happened to be a big fan of the show. The food at Olivia’s was excellent. I had their barbeque chicken and chipotle sandwich and Suzy had their tuna salad sandwich; we both had the cream of chicken soup after hearing our waitress rave about it, and she was right – it was great!

Suzy and I decided the best way to handle the road restrictions due to the marathon was to get off the property for the day, so we drove up I-4 to the north end of International Drive to the Prime 1 Orlando Outlet. For you folks that have been off-property in Orlando, you may have known the place by its old name, Belz Factory World; the place has changed owners and is in the process of being rebuilt. Unfortunately, this means one of the two Disney outlets at the mall is closed; only the Character Premiere shop, the smaller of the two, is currently open. We were told, however, that when the mall renovation is complete Disney will be moving into a larger location in the new building.

It’ll be nice when the bigger Disney outlet opens, because there wasn’t a lot to choose from at Character Premiere; there was a decent selection of items, particularly leftovers from the Happiest Celebration on Earth, but we didn’t find all that much. I picked up some sticky note sets for everyone at work back home and a couple of discounted pins; Suzy tends to be a little more secretive about her purchases, but I do know she got a keychain with a HCoE antenna ball attached – so she could remove the chain and place the antenna ball on her car. Since the keychain with the ball was actually cheaper than the ball alone on WDW property, I ended up doing the same.

We were torn as to whether to go to the Florida Mall or the Holy Land Experience. The Florida Mall’s appeal should be obvious – it’s the largest mall in Orlando – but we also wanted to see Holy Land out of curiosity more than anything else. Fortunately, the folks who run Holy Land made the choice for us; we drove up to the place and discovered that the place is closed on Sundays! (Kinda odd for a religious theme park that was declared to be a church by a Florida judge a couple of years ago to be closed on the day you’d most expect people to go, but hey, I don’t run the place…)

An employee at the guard shack at Holy Land gave us directions to the Florida Mall. After following his directions for a while, I thought for sure the guy had intentionally gotten us lost. By following his directions, we ended up at the guard shack for Lockheed Martin’s Orlando facility; the guard, apparently used to dumb tourists ending up at their security gate, waved us on to an alternate road, which merged on to the correct road to the Florida Mall. Guess the guard at Holy Land Experience knew what he was doing after all!

The Florida Mall was extremely busy; we tried to find a parking space to no avail, so we just gave up and had the valet park Suzy’s minivan. We walked in, grabbed a map, and went exploring. Suzy wanted to see Hoopla, the chain that replaced the Department 56 Store at the mall; Hoopla still carries the Department 56 stuff, but it now carries a bunch of other knickknacks and impulse buy items like art and kitchen equipment as well. Personally, my favorite part of the store was the pair of leather recliners they had in the corner of the store. They’re not there to buy – they’re there for guys who have no interest in shopping there (like me) to sit in while their significant others shop! More stores should have sections like this.

After Hoopla, we walked over to Waldenbooks, and Suzy picked up a few books about Orlando and Florida. I contented myself browsing the shelves; my favorite discovery was finding books on Disneyland in the international travel section! We stopped off at Auntie Annie’s for a pretzel and an Icee-like drink (I think they’re called Dutch Ices, but don’t hold me to that), and then trudged all the way to the other side of the mall. I managed to convince Suzy to peek into the Apple Store to see all the iPods and iPod goodies, but once I saw the prices they were charging, I decided that I could put off buying more goodies for another day. Finally, we arrived at the mall’s main draw – M & M World.

M & M World is the ultimate M & M retail experience – you name the item and chances are that if it’s M &M themed, it’s in this store. At the entrance, you can have your picture taken with a walk-around M& M character; once you’ve done that, all you can really do is shop, shop, shop. They have more colors of M & M’s that I’ve ever seen before (at $9 a pound!) and a color analyzer that determines what color M & M best suits the person who tries it. (Unfortunately, the line for the color analyzer was pretty big, so I’ll never know what color best suits me.) I think the thing that best summed up M&M World was a tag on an M & M collectible that read, “This isn’t a museum – go on and buy something!” Between that blatant approach to retail and the loud music they were playing, I was pretty much ready to leave, but Suzy was having a good time perusing the stuff, so I decided to look around until she had finished her shopping. It would have been nice if they’d at least had an exhibit on the history of the M & M; since it was all about retail, I think I could live without ever going back again.

We walked around a bit more and checked out a couple more shops, but nothing really caught our attention all that much; if you’re from a big city and you’ve got a decent-sized mall or malls nearby, you’re probably not going to find anything at the Florida Mall that’s much different that what’s at you’re local mall (except for M & M World, of course), so unless you’re a real shopaholic or you don’t have a big mall near home to visit, I’d probably advise skipping it.

After leaving the Florida Mall, we drove down Sand Lake Boulevard all the way to the WDW property, then drove over to Saratoga Springs. Suzy wanted to visit the Spa at Saratoga Springs to get a massage and she tried her best to convince me to do the same, but I wasn’t interested; we decided to have dinner together at Artist’s Palette, after which I’d go back to Port Orleans via the boat service.

My feelings are mixed about Artist’s Palette. The food’s actually pretty good, and fairly reasonably priced for a location on-property; Suzy and I had a cheese-stuffed meatloaf with mashed potatoes and broccoli that we both really enjoyed, along with some fresh-baked brownies. My main objection to the place is their combined food court/general store setup, especially the fact that you have to use the same set of registers for either type of purchase and that you have to purchase the food at the registers and then go back and present your receipt before you can claim your food. When the place gets busy or there’s only one register open, this can mean you’re in for a wait before you can eat, and a freshly prepared meal sitting under a heat lamp because you have to wait to pay for your food doesn’t make for a great dining experience.

Before dropping off Suzy at the Spa for her appointment, we took a walk through Saratoga Springs’ other food location, the Turf Club Bar and Grill. I think what they did here was to add food service to a location that was previously a bar and recreation area for DVC members, but it looked like a pretty good choice on Disney’s part to do so; the place is beautiful, and judging by the diners I saw I think the DVC members were pretty happy with their menu and the dining experience. I made a mental note that I had to give this place a try eventually.

I walked Suzy over to the Spa for her appointment, and then walked out to the dock near the Turf Club to catch the boat. Getting to Port Orleans was a little more convoluted than I first thought it’d be, since there’s no direct service between the DVC resorts and Port Orleans; you have to take the boat to Downtown Disney and then transfer to the boat to Port Orleans. Still, the service was pretty efficient; the boats’ arrival and departure schedule allowed me to transfer between boats almost immediately, and the cruise is so relaxing that you’re not in much of a hurry to get where you’re going anyway. I had a good time watching the herons line up on the riverbank under the lights – why they did it, I’m not sure – and peeking into the Treehouse Villas, which the boat’s captain said were now being occupied by International Program cast members. I didn’t really see anything, but I though it was great to see them occupied again. Now, if they’d only offer them to guests again…

Once I was back at our room in Riverside, I caught up on my reading and on writing my trip report notes, and then got on the computer to catch up on the latest Disney news. The big story on my favorite discussion boards was Tigger “hitting” a child at the Disney-MGM Studios; from the preliminary reports and the video available online, I was already suspicious, because calling a 15-year-old almost as tall as Tigger a “child” was a bit of a stretch and because the kid didn’t seem much bothered by the whole thing until he was egged on by his dad in front of the cameras from the local TV stations. Once Suzy got back, she had a look at the tape, and we both agreed something didn’t sound right. We were both more interested in getting some rest than debating Tigger’s guilt or innocence, so we went to bed.

Day 4 – Monday, January 8th

This was the day I would be making my first visit to the Magic Kingdom, so I decided to get up at about 7:30 to get dressed and hit the parks. Suzy, who didn’t share my enthusiasm for getting over to the MK early, decided to sleep in; to be honest, once I got up, I wasn’t all that enthused about being an early riser, either. While I got dressed, I came up with an idea I thing would appeal to a lot of WDW guests – “Disney’s Magical Bed Rest.” Don’t want to get up bright and early to go to the parks? You don’t have to. At a time you choose the night before, the bed leaves the hotel room and transports you to your favorite theme park; when you get there, you just hop out of bed and play in the parks. (Okay, so you’d either be running around in your pajamas or you’d have to go to bed in your clothes, but we can work on that part. Disney, if you’re interested in this idea, give me a call and we can discuss the particulars…)

The day was overcast and a bit drizzly, so I bundled up accordingly. I grabbed a bowl of cereal and took it down to the pool so I could eat breakfast without disturbing Suzy, then walked over to the Riverside bus depot to hop a bus to the MK. There were already about 2 dozen people there, and as soon as the first MK bus showed up, everyone at the stop hopped on. I talked to another couple from California on the bus that were on their first trip to WDW; aside from the fact that they were both UCLA grads and I was wearing my USC T-shirt, we got along just fine. It’s amazing how you can travel three thousand miles and still find people who live so close to you!

The bus arrived at the MK by 8:30. Since the park wouldn’t open until 9:00 and everyone was bunched up inside the gates but outside of the tunnels under Main Street Station, I didn’t see much point in passing through the gates. Instead, I went over to the MK monorail station and hopped the resort monorail for a ride around the Seven Seas Lagoon (I’m a big fan of monorails and I pretty much take any opportunity for a monorail ride).
It took a lot longer than I expected to do this and I didn’t get back to the MK until after the park had opened, but since I’d gotten a ride on the monorail and I’d seen the opening ceremony before, I really didn’t mind.

Town Square had quite a few people there by the time I got in, but things weren’t really crazy; the PhotoPass photographers were out, but the characters weren’t, so most of them were standing around without much to do. I convinced one photographer to take a picture of me on the bench with the Roy and Minnie statues, and then debated sticking around to be photographed with a character; when I heard one of the WDW railroad engines coming into Main Street Station, I pretty much abandoned the idea of waiting and hopped on the train instead. (Yep, I’m a steam train fanatic, too!)

When I got on the train, I got to see a tour group that had just completed “The Magic Behind Our Steam Trains” tour disembark and say their farewells, and I was a little disappointed that I didn’t book a spot on the tour on this trip; I took the tour back in 2000 – back when you still got a railroad spike for participating instead of a pin – but I’d love to do it again. (Actually, I’d love to do it at Disneyland – I wonder why nobody’s proposed doing that tour over there yet?) I pretty much had the second car on the train to myself, and I had a great time riding all the way around the park. Now that I had fulfilled my membership obligation to the Carolwood Pacific Historical Society, I could enjoy the park!

I returned to Town Square and noticed all of the characters and all of the people waiting to be photographed with them and decided that I could put off pictures for another time; instead, I boarded the Horseless Carriage and rode that from Town Square to the Plaza. When I got there, the Dreams Come True stage show was going on in the castle forecourt; it looked cute, but I decided to skip it for the time being and headed into Tomorrowland.

My first stop in Tomorrowland was Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, which had no line; I had fun going through, but I think the attraction’s more detailed and a bit more fun at Disneyland. (Of course, I could be saying that because I get much higher scores at Disneyland…) After getting off Buzz, I found a cast member to trade pins with, and a guest came up for me to trade with, too; I wasn’t all that thrilled with the pins either had, but I trade more for the fun of trading and less in the hope of getting a good pin, so I was happy with just getting the chance to trade.

I felt like I really needed to hit the attractions that I couldn’t find at Disneyland, so I rode Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress. We had about 20 people on the theater, which is pretty good for this attraction at that time of year; I love the show, but I really wish they’d update the last scene. From the Carousel of Progress, I hopped on the Tomorrowland Transit Authority. Now this is an attraction I really miss at Disneyland; it’s so relaxing and a great way to get a look around the area. I really hope they bring it back.

The crowds were starting to build up at Space Mountain by this point, so I picked up a Fastpass and walked over to Stitch’s Great Escape, which only had about a 5-minute wait. Stitch isn’t my favorite ride in the park, but I like it more than Alien Encounter – I’m a fraidy-cat, what can I say? Stitch is cute, but it’s definitely for kids.

I still had a little time left until my Fastpass for Space Mountain was valid, so I walked over to the Mad Tea Party and rode the WDW version for the first time. I’d forgotten how dizzy you can get on that thing, since it’d been a while since I’d ridden it at any Disney park (Suzy can’t handle it because of her motion sickness, and I usually won’t ride it alone), but I was reminded pretty quickly after getting a good spin going! I got to witness one of the Year of a Million Dreams “Magical Moments” when Alice and the Mad Hatter showed up, pulled a little girl out of the queue, and took her for a ride in a teacup; that had to have been the highlight of that little girl’s day!

I guess I figured that after being spun around in a teacup, I could handle just about anything, because I headed over to Space Mountain. I had a good time riding Space Mountain, but I have to admit that I’m a lot less impressed with the attraction than I used to be. I’m already so used to the refurbished Space Mountain at Disneyland that the Magic Kingdom version seems really rough and bumpy, and the special effects seem more dated than anything else. Hopefully, the MK’s Space Mountain will get the TLC that its sister in Anaheim received.

After leaving Space Mountain, I got a call from Suzy letting me know that she’d arrived at the Magic Kingdom, so I walked over to the Plaza to meet her. We managed to get there in the middle of another performance of Dreams Come True in the castle forecourt, so we decided to save the show for later; since I’d been there for a while already, I let Suzy pick our first ride together for the day. We walked over to Fantasyland to get Fastpasses for Suzy’s second-most favorite attraction at the MK, Winnie the Pooh, then walked over to it’s a small world.

The queue for it’s a small world was crowded but fortunately it’s a small world’s one of those attractions that can get a lot of people through quickly, so we were able to get through the queue and onto a boat in about 5-10 minutes. I was looking forward to seeing the attraction, because the last couple of times we’d been to WDW the attraction had been closed for rehabs; I liked the re-decoration of the interior to make it look more like its sister in California and I like the “flooded room” look more than I like the flumes in the version at Disneyland, but overall I still prefer the Disneyland version. It doesn’t seem as detailed to me as Disneyland’s it’s a small world, more of a “small world lite”. It’s still a lot of fun, though. Suzy didn’t agree with me as far as my assessment; as far as she was concerned, there were a few minor differences, but both versions were actually pretty similar.

We still had a few minutes to kill until our Fastpasses for Pooh were valid, so I convinced Suzy to take a walk with me through Pooh’s Playful Spot. There were a bunch of kids running around the place, and they looked like they were having a good time, but all you could really do as an adult was walk around and watch the kids. It’s well-themed, but it’s really for toddlers more than anyone else. I think I’d rather be able to ride on the Nautilus instead.

Suzy and I walked over to Pooh and rode the attraction. We both really enjoyed the attraction; I think the ride is really well done and the motion effects of the vehicles fit what’s going on really well. Disney did a much better job with this version of the attraction than they did with the Disneyland version (yes, there’s actually a WDW version of an attraction I like more!). Suzy loves this ride, although she said she preferred the outdoor queue at Disneyland. I had to disagree with her on this one; I thought the oversized pages of the book made for a better introduction to the ride, like you were literally stepping into the pages of the book.

After seeing the silly old bear, Suzy and I walked through Cinderella Castle (I love the castle and the murals in the walkway) and walked through the Plaza and down Main Street to Tony’s Town Square for lunch. Tony’s was quiet enough that the folks responsible for seating us had to wait for us instead of the other way around, and we got a table close to the statue of Lady and the Tramp. Lunch was pretty good, but not spectacular; I had a serving of spaghetti and meatballs that suffered from a marinara sauce that was too bland, while Suzy had a chicken panini that she said she really enjoyed. Both of us had cups of minestrone soup, which we both liked.

When we finished lunch at Tony’s, we walked around the Main Street Exposition Hall an admired the exhibits. We were both disappointed to discover that what was left of the auditorium was now being used for DVC video presentations; we enjoyed having a quiet place where you could watch classic Disney cartoons. We decided to take a walk over to Adventureland; once we were there, Suzy got us Fastpasses for the Jungle Cruise (which already had a tremendous stand-by line) while I went over to Adventure Isle and refreshed myself with a Doctor Scopa’s Magical Elixir (that’s a Dole Whip float for you folks who don’t listen to the WDW Today podcast). Suzy insisted that she didn’t want a float for herself, but after a few minutes of watching me drink mine, she couldn’t resist having a little pineapple Dole Whip.

Having polished off the Dole Whip float, we returned to Fantasyland by way of Liberty Square and entered Tinker Bell’s Treasure so Suzy and I could window shop. Suzy somehow managed to keep from buying a My Little Princess Pony (Suzy loves all animals but especially horses, and these were really cute) and we went over to Peter Pan’s Flight and braved a moderately long standby queue (about 15 minutes or so) to ride a pirate ship. I love the WDW version of this attraction; the load system with the Speedramps makes it quicker and easier to get on and off, and the story makes a lot more sense here because there are more scenes. Wish they could do something about the wait, because I think that the long lines that form the attraction somehow draw even more people in, and I can’t really imagine that anyone waiting for an hour or more in the stand-by queue feels that the ride’s worth that much of a wait, no matter how much they love it.

It was almost parade time, and sharing one Dole Whip float didn’t really satisfy either one of us, so we went over to Sleepy Hollow so we could kill two birds with one stone. Suzy got herself an ice cream sandwich, which she generously shared with me, while I grabbed a prime spot at the entrance to Liberty Square for the Disney Dreams Come True Parade. I had been a big fan of the Share a Dream Come True Parade, so I was a more than a little disappointed to see that the “new” parade was a slightly altered version of the prior parade with a new soundtrack. Neither Suzy nor I cared for the new music; Suzy thought the rest of the parade was all right. Once the parade and the ice cream sandwich were done (and, by the way, if you’ve never had one of the ice cream sandwiches from Sleepy Hollow, you really need to get one!), we headed back to Adventureland.

When we got to the Fastpass queue for the Jungle Cruise, we were very glad we’d gotten the passes – the standby line was still incredibly long. A few minutes later, we boarded a boat with a female skipper named Aja. Aja was hilarious, but unfortunately she got a crew that didn’t feel like laughing on that trip. Suzy and I had a great time – the Jungle Cruise at the Magic Kingdom is almost a totally different experience from the attraction at Disneyland.

Since Pirates of the Caribbean was close by, Suzy and I decided to walk over and give it a shot; since I’d seen the new Jack Sparrow and effects at Disneyland, I was looking forward to seeing it. The time in the standby queue was reasonable – about 20 minutes total – and we got the chance to go through a section of the fortress queue I’d never seen before. Even with the new effects – which I thought were well done – I think the Magic Kingdom version of Pirates still suffers in comparison to the Disneyland version.

Once we left Adventureland, we walked past the Pecos Bill Café into Frontierland. This would have been the point in the day where Suzy and I would have ridden Splash Mountain, which is Suzy’s favorite WDw attraction, but since Splash was down for rehab, all we could do was have a look at the dry flume. We walked along the Rivers of America, picking up a box of popcorn to enjoy, and walked over to Liberty Square to ride the Haunted Mansion. We were both pretty disappointed with the Mansion; Suzy thought the show looked worn and that the effects were lacking compared to the effects on the Disneyland version of the attraction. I noticed that the soundtrack in the Doom Buggies and the visual effects on the attraction needed a lot of TLC; scrims were dirty and wrinkled, and Little Leota seemed to have a facial tic. I really hope they do some major rehab work on the attraction soon.

After riding the Haunted Mansion, we headed back into Frontierland to see an old favorite that I really miss from Disneyland – the Country Bear Jamboree. I really enjoyed seeing the original show; I know Suzy won’t agree with me on this because she loves The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, but I’d much rather have this show in Anaheim.

Once we’d sung along with the Country Bears, we walked over to Fantasyland and had dinner at the Village Haus. I’d been dying to come here since I’d heard about and tried a recipe for Figaro Fries; for those of you who haven’t tried them yet, Figaro Fries are French fries topped with lettuce, dressing, cheese and bacon bits – kind of a combination of French fries and salad. I ordered the Figaro Fries and an a la carte order of chicken strips; Suzy got herself a pepperoni pizza, salad, and chocolate cake. I was happy with the chicken strips and I was really happy with the Figaro Fries – the fries tasted better than the ones I made for myself back home. Suzy enjoyed her pizza, although she thought the pizza was a little light on the pepperoni; the cake was another pre-packed one prepared by an outside vendor, and Suzy was really disappointed with this. The restaurant reminds me a lot of a similarly named restaurant at Disneyland, although at the Magic Kingdom the restaurant is larger and has big picture windows where you can look at the load area of it’s a small world, which I think is a really nice touch.

We left the Village Haus and walked through the Castle and staked out a spot on Main Street near the Plaza; although we were smack dab in the middle of the crowds, this seemed like it’d be a great location to watch both SpectroMagic and Wishes – and it was! I hadn’t seen SpectroMagic for several years, and it was absolutely amazing, although it kinda made me miss the Main Street Electrical Parade. Wishes was spectacular, especially since I got to watch it right in front of Cinderella Castle – the fireworks, the music and the lighting effects on the Castle are all amazing.

It was starting to get cold after Wishes was done, but we decided to move to another part of the Plaza and let all the other guests file out of the park. Even though we waited for about 15 or 20 minutes, we still had another 8 to 10 minutes to wait for the resort monorail. We rode the monorail to the Polynesian; once we were there, we peeked into ‘Ohana, then went downstairs to Captain Cook’s and played around with the new touch-screen menus and gazed longingly at the new Dole Whip dispensers (which were out of order, darn it!). We liked that they’d reconfigured Captain Cook’s to allow for more seating and for easier access to the food and refrigerated goods. As we walked around in the Polynesian’s lobby, Suzy said that she hoped that when we finally visited Hawaii, the hotels there would be a lot like the Poly!

We drove back to Port Orleans Riverside and stopped into Fulton’s to pick up USA Today and the Orlando Sentinel, then went over to Riverside Mill, got some hot chocolate, and took a walk through Ol’ Man Island back to the room. Tired but happy, we decided to get some sleep.

Day 5 – Tuesday, January 9th

Winter finally came to central Florida that day. When I went outside the room for my walk, it was really cold. Even with my jacket and gloves on, I was more than happy to finish my walk and get back in the room!

Suzy and I got dressed and got in the minivan to drive off-property to the Dr. Phillips area. We wanted to get a better feel for the central Florida housing market, so Suzy scheduled an appointment for us with a real estate agent. The agent drove us over to the nearby neighborhood of Windermere so we could see a few of the new projects; Suzy and I weren’t all that happy with what we saw, so she took us over to some older housing developments near John Young Parkway. We saw a couple of houses we liked, so now that the agent had a better idea of what we were looking for, we made arrangements with the agent to review the real estate listings for other houses we might like.

By the time we were done with the real estate agent, it was lunchtime, so we drove over to Panera Bread in Dr. Phillips. Suzy’s already a big fan of Panera, but I’d never been there before; the place was crowded, but the food more than made up for the crowds. We both had broccoli and cheese soup (which was excellent) and chicken panini (which was also really good). We had chocolate cake for dessert, which was a little dry but otherwise wasn’t too bad.

After lunch, we drove up I-4 to Winter Park. We drove around downtown, admiring Rollins College and doing a little window shopping in the van. (The shops were so upscale that I had the feeling that window shopping was about all I’d be able to do!)
We drove over to the Scenic Boat Tour dock and bought tickets for the 1-hour tour. The Scenic Boat Tour takes visitors on the lakes of Winter Park on a fleet of small watercraft, showing off Rollins College and the gigantic and beautiful homes on the shores of the lakes. The skipper of our boat was very knowledgeable and had a great sense of humor – how’d they miss this guy for the Jungle Cruise at WDW? The lakes are connected by very small and very narrow canals, with boat houses on either side of the canals. The canals were barely big enough for the watercraft; I couldn’t imagine how the folks who owned the boathouses managed to get the boats in and out without seriously banging them up! The cold day really started getting to me while we were out on the water; Suzy was kind enough to let me borrow her gloves and share a blanket she had brought with her. Between the gloves, the blanket, and holding Suzy, I managed to stay warm for the rest of the trip.

Once the cruise was done, we drove around Winter Park a bit more; we had hoped we could visit the Morse Museum so we could see their collection of Tiffany glass, but the museum closed at 4:00 and we didn’t get back from the cruise until after then. We left Winter Park but we didn’t feel like braving the rush hour traffic on I-4 to get back to WDW, so we went the other direction and drove up via State Route 46 to Mt. Dora. Mt. Dora was a very pretty little town; the neighborhoods have lots of beautiful older houses. I could really see myself living there, even if it meant a longer drive to WDW! We didn’t get to do a lot in Mt. Dora because we’d gotten there so late, but I would definitely like to go back to have a better look at the town.

We left Mt. Dora by driving south on U.S. 441, and then took State Route 423 to the Florida Turnpike and I-4. We stopped in Dr. Phillips again to visit the Barnes and Noble bookstore there and to pick up a few needed supplies at Publix. We drove back down I-4 to Lake Buena Vista, making trips to Walgreens to pick up some prescriptions and to Chik-Fil-A for dinner. The food at Chik-Fil-A was excellent; Suzy had a chicken salad and I got a broiled chicken sandwich with cross-cut fries. I really wish there were more Chik-Fil-A franchises on the West Coast!

We still weren’t in much of a mood to return to Port Orleans, so we drove over to the Orlando Premium Outlet so we could visit the Disney’s Character Warehouse outlet store. The selection at the Character Warehouse was very similar to what we saw at the store at Prime 1 Outlet, so we didn’t pick up anything. We couldn’t come up with anything else we wanted to do and it was still very cold, so we headed back to Port Orleans Riverside. We stopped off at Fulton’s to get some reading material (Suzy got a copy of the National Enquirer and I got a copy of the Sentinel) and returned to the room to get ready for bed.

Day 6 – Wednesday, January 10th

It was still a little chilly out – I would be wearing gloves and heavy sweater for most of the day. After my walk, my plans were to get over to Disney’s Animal Kingdom as early as possible, but Suzy asked me to go to the laundry room to get our washing started.
I grumpily complied, then walked over to the bus stop to catch the bus to Animal Kingdom. My timing actually worked out pretty well; the bus to Animal Kingdom had just arrived and was loading an ECV when I got to the bus top.

I arrived at Animal Kingdom at about 11:30, and the crowds were already pretty significant; all the new attractions really seem to have made a difference as far as attendance. I knew what I really wanted to do first – get on Expedition: Everest! Unfortunately for me, a lot of other people had the same idea; by the time I got to the entrance of the attraction, the Fastpasses for the day were gone and the standby queue had a wait time of 50 minutes! I decided that I should get some lunch first, and then brave the standby queue.

I checked out Flame Tree Barbecue, but I wasn’t really in a barbecue kind of mood; I walked over to Restaurantosaurus, saw they had McDonald’s French fries on the menu, and decided I was in the mood for comfort food. I ordered their double cheeseburger combo (a Disney cheeseburger and McDonald’s fries) and a Diet Coke. Needless to say, I loved the fries – but then I’ve always been a sucker for a good batch of French fries. As for the burger… well, it was your typical Disney burger - not bad, but not all that good, either. I was much more impressed by the themeing of the restaurant than I was by the food – there are a ton of little details to notice all over the dining areas, and the whole place overall has the feel of what you’d expect a place populated by a bunch of college students to look like. One thing puzzled me about the place (and all the DAK restaurants); I understand why you don’t get lids and straws (it’s to keep the animals from inadvertently choking on them), but why do they put wooden stirrers in the cup with your soft drink? Do a lot of people stir their sodas?

I made my way back to the entrance of Expedition: Everest, where the standby time had dropped to 40 minutes. By then, the standby queue snaked out of the standby entrance, through the Fastpass distribution shelter, and about another 50 feet or so toward Anandapur. The wait gave me a chance to admire the scenery in the area and in the queue, which I was glad for. The themeing of the town of Serkha Zong and the queue is wonderful; I’ve never been to Nepal, but it’s not hard to imagine that it looks a lot like the area around the attraction. Even if you’re not a fan of coasters, don’t send your coaster fanatic friends or relatives into the queue while you find a bench to sit on – go through the queue and admire the work the Imagineeers did and exit the queue as the rest of your party boards.

Now, as to the ride itself: I wish it had been as impressive as the themeing. As far as thrills, Expedition: Everest was somewhere between Big Thunder and Space Mountain; most coaster fanatics would probably consider it to be fairly tame. There are several tight turns, and the backwards segment was fun, but I walked away thinking that the attraction needed to be about a third longer. The Yeti is impressive, but you only see him for a few seconds; most of the other effects were pretty good, too – except for the bird you see at the end of the first forward segment.

My next stop in Animal Kingdom took me from the impressive to the depressing; I walked over to Chester and Hester’s Dino-Rama! Somebody please tell me this place will be torn down soon! Yes, I understand that it’s supposed to be a tacky roadside attraction, but if that’s what I really wanted to see on my Orlando vacation, I’d save my $67 and drive over to U.S. 192. My first stop was I rode was Primeval Whirl – it was cute and mildly amusing, but not worth a wait (fortunately, there wasn’t one). Next, I tried out Triceratops Spin – again, cute, but it’s basically Dumbo with dinosaurs instead of elephants. With the “attractions” done, I walked through Chester and Hester’s to do a little window shopping – I like the tacky décor in the shop, but the merchandise seems to have gotten a lot more generic since my last visit – then walked through Discovery Island over to Africa.

I love the themeing in Harambe as much as the themeing in Anandapur and Serkha Zong – again, I’ve never been to Africa, but Harambe is what I’d expect it to look like. Although there was quite a large standby queue for Kilimanjaro Safaris – about 40 minutes – I decided to ride the attraction. This was the first time I’d really had a chance to take a good look at the queue, and I was really impressed by the level of detail. It’s too bad most people never really notice all of it. I had a great time on the attraction and got to see a lot of animals (but I can’t think of a time I haven’t seen a lot of animals on the attraction! I noticed that the warden’s plane and the preserve guards’ jeeps are now populated by dummies – it’s better than their being empty, but it was a little more authentic when there were actual people out there. I hear the whole subplot with the poachers and Little Red is going to be cut anyway, so I guess it’s not going to matter for much longer in any case.

After Kilimanjaro, I decided that it was close enough to showtime for Finding Nemo: The Musical that I should walk over to Theatre in the Wild and get in the queue. (I hadn’t realized before I started writing this how many times I criss-crossed the park on that day!) I began to question my decision when I got there about 25 prior to showtime and saw a queue that extended all the way from the theatre entrance to the entrance of Dino-Rama! Despite my misgivings, I was able to make it into the theatre; I got a seat in the sixth row just to the left of the runway extending from the stage.

The show was worth standing in the long queue. The show’s characters are puppets, but they don’t really try to hide the puppeteers/singers; they’re as much a part of the show as the puppets themselves. I had some doubts about turning a movie that just had a musical score into a musical, but the songs they came up with worked pretty well, especially “In the Big Blue World”. The kids in the audience were absolutely enthralled; they had them from before the start of the show, when they noticed Nemo “swimming” in the set decorations, and Disney kept their attention with all the scenes where puppets went out on the runway and through the aisles. One tip for the folks who see the show: if you like a certain flock of seagulls from the movie, stick around for a couple of minutes as people leave the theatre.

Once I’d seen the Nemo musical, I decided to call it a day. I boarded the bus to the Polynesian to meet Suzy for dinner at ‘Ohana (Suzy had decided to take a flower decorating class at Saratoga Springs while I was at DAK). The bus was a little more efficient than I expected, getting me there about ½ an hour prior to our reservation time, so I grabbed a chair in the lobby, ordered myself a virgin margarita, and read my book until Suzy arrived.

I love eating at ‘Ohana; the food’s wonderful (and there’s plenty of it) and the views of the Magic Kingdom from the restaurant are spectacular. There had been a few changes on the menu since my last visit, most notably the substitution of bread pudding for the pineapple chunks and warm caramel sauce, but it didn’t detract from the meal at all. I was still stuffed from all the food at the end of the meal, in spite of my best attempts to pace myself. I even got the surprise of celebrating my birthday about 2 months too late (or 10 months too early) thanks to the efforts of a certain party who thought it’d be cute to see my reaction to the wait staff making a fuss over me.

To give all of the food from ‘Ohana a chance to settle, Suzy and I took a monorail tour of the Magic Kingdom resorts, walking through the lobbies and shops to take in the ambiance, especially the floral arrangements. Apparently you learn quite a bit about floral arranging at that class at Saratoga Springs! We made it back to the Poly just in time to watch Wishes from inside the Great Ceremonial House; with a perfect ending to a perfect evening with the perfect lady, I was happy to return to Port Orleans and get some rest.

Day 7 – Thursday, January 11th

I got up for my morning walk (fortunately, the weather was a little better today, so I didn’t have to bundle up to do it), then stopped off at Fulton’s to get Suzy a copy of USA Today and myself a copy of the Orlando Sentinel. After returning to the room and getting dressed, Suzy and I drove over to the Beach Club, parked the van, and walked over to the International Gateway to enter Epcot.

NOTE: You may notice throughout this report that Suzy and I park at the resorts for easier access to the theme parks. Although we generally get away with it because we’re going to WDW in one of the slowest seasons of the year, Disney highly discourages guests from doing this, and in busier times of the year they’re very diligent in their efforts to make sure you can’t use the resort parking lots unless you’re staying there or are having a meal there. Don’t bother trying this at busier times of the year. Actually, don’t try it at all. We’re very bad people. Don’t be like us.

We started our day at Epcot with lunch at Le Cellier. I went with my version of the “Scopa special” (New York strip steak, with mashed potatoes substituted for the Yukon potatoes) and Suzy had a burger (which they served on a large English muffin – how’d they come up with this one?). We both loved our lunches, although the burger patty was big enough that Suzy ended up leaving most of the English muffin behind.

The new annual passholder room-only discounts were released the night before, so Suzy decided to get on her cell phone and sit on a bench and work on making changes to the reservations; I decided to take advantage of this and see “O Canada”, since I love Circle-Vision films and Suzy’s motion sickness make it impossible for her to sit through them.
I still love the film, although I have to admit it seems to be a bit dated; every time I see the movie, I always want to call my travel agent and book a trip to Canada! I understand that the film will be updates soon; I just hope that they keep the theme song from the current version of the movie.

When I left “O Canada!” and met Suzy, she was still busy fighting with WDW reservations, so I took a seat next to her and alternated between reading my book and watching the ducks as they squabbled with each other for any food they could get from the passing guests. It took a while for Suzy to finally get everything straightened out and booked, but once she was done, we walked over to The Land and got Fastpasses for Soarin’ and then walked over to The Seas with Nemo and Friends.

This was our first opportunity to see the new attraction and the revamped pavilion. The Nemo attraction was a lot of fun and really well done; the effects in the queue that simulate your going from the shoreline to under the sea was really impressive, as were the visual effects that allow the “Finding Nemo” characters to be in the tank with the real fish. The attraction did have its problems; several of the figures already weren’t working!

We walked around Seabase and enjoyed the exhibits. While we were there, the trainers were doing a “double-blind” shape recognition test with the dolphins (the dolphins didn’t seem to be doing all that well); the manatees were apparently off exhibit, which really disappointed Suzy. The new shark exhibit with Bruce and his friends from the film was a lot of fun – if there hadn’t been so many kids ahead of me, I would have gotten my picture taken in Bruce’s mouth! I seem to remember that there was an exhibit that had the real-life counterparts of the characters in “Nemo” the last time we were there, but I wasn’t able to find it. We skipped Turtle Talk with Crush just because the queue waiting to get in was gigantic and we’d seen it previously. The changes they’ve made at The Seas seem to have made a difference, as there were a lot more people in the pavilion than on our last visit to WDW in 2005. Hopefully, it’s not just because of the novelty of the changes.

We returned to The Land, but we still had some time until our Fastpasses for Soarin’ could be used; we hopped on Living with the Land, which had no wait. The recorded narration is an improvement to the attraction; in the past, rides on the attraction have been ruined for me by a cast member who was so bored or so unintelligible that you couldn’t tell what they were saying. Overall, it’s a nice attraction, and it’s a shame that it’s overlooked because it’s not thrilling enough.

Exiting Living with the Land, we entered Soarin’. We noticed how long the standby queue was and we were very glad we weren’t in it! Epcot’s version of the attraction appears to be a little better than the version at Disney’s California Adventure – the film is in better shape and the sound seems to be better in the Florida version. But why, oh why, are they offering a film on California? I can’t wait until they offer a new film just for WDW.

After leaving Soarin’, we walked around Sunshine Seasons. The serving area is more compact than in the old food court, and the selection appears to be much improved; both the food made to order and the pre-prepared food looked really good. It looked like there was also much more room to sit in the food court, as well.

We left The Land and I talked Suzy into walking over to the Imagination! Pavilion so I could visit the ImageWorks. I admit it – I’m a Figment fanatic, and I wanted to see what they had available. I fell in love with a Figment hand puppet, but it seemed to me that the puppet was made for smaller hands than mine, so I had to leave him behind. (Sorry, Figment.)

It was at this point we started The Great Wonka Bar Hunt. After being disappointed in my search for Wonka bars at the MK, I was determined to find some Wonka bars to try, so I ended up searching several pavilions to see if I could find any. For some reason, I got the idea that Wonka bars might be Canadian, so we checked the Canada pavilion – no luck. Suzy remembered that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was written by an Englishman, so we checked the shops in the U.K. pavilion; we fond a lot of candies we’d never seen, but no Wonka bars. Suzy was about ready to leave Epcot, but I was undeterred, so I convinced Suzy to check the gift shop near the International Gateway while I checked the gift shop at The American Adventure. No Wonka bars there, either. I couldn’t see Wonka bars being sold in Japan, Morocco, or France, so I admitted defeat and headed back to join Suzy.

As I walked back to the International Gateway, it looked like I’d chosen to walk through at about the time the entertainment got started (this was about 5:00 on Friday). At The American Adventure, the fife and drum corps began a performance; as I walked through Japan, a storyteller was beginning her show. In Morocco, Mo Rockin’ had begun their performance, and Aladdin, Jasmine, and Genie were out meeting guests; in France, Belle and Aurora were out meeting the little princess fans. The UK pavilion seemed oddly quiet as I passed by, but I found out from Suzy when I met her that the Beatles tribute band had played while I was gone; I was almost as bummed out about missing their show as I was about not finding any Wonka bars.

In any case, we left Epcot and took the van back to Port Orleans; it was only a little past 5:00 p.m. when we got back to the room, and our dinner reservations weren’t until 6:30, so we decided the best course of action was to take a nap. We left Port Orleans a little after 6:00 and made a couple of wrong turns in the vicinity of Epcot, but we still made in to Downtown Disney in plenty of time for dinner at Raglan Road.

We decided to visit Raglan Road based on all the rave reviews by Nathan Rose of the (now former) Mouse Tunes podcast; once we tried the food there, we understand why he raves about it so much. The restaurant and pub is located on the former site of Pleasure Island’s jazz club, and the place is gigantic; there are several rooms, all well-themed. We were given a table in the main hall; our server was very helpful in choosing our meals, since all we knew about Irish food was corned beef and cabbage. The food was excellent! Suzy had the fish and chips, which she said tasted very fresh (which makes sense, since they claim that the fish they use goes from catch to being served in 36 hours) and not too oily. I got the Raglan Road version of shepherd’s pie, which is served on a plate covered with mashed potatoes instead of in a bowl with the mashed potatoes as a topping and has other meat besides the traditional ground lamb, but was really, really good. I topped off my meal with another Nathan Rose recommendation, a Shandy. For those of you that have never experienced this wonderful libation, it’s part beer and part Sprite -- and trust me, it’s better than it sounds. Suzy decided to be a little less adventurous than me when it came to drinks and had a glass of wine, which she also enjoyed. Thanks for the dinner recommendation, Nathan!

After dinner, we walked through Pleasure Island and through Downtown Disney West Side to the Virgin Megastore. This was my first visit, and I was itching to go through their CD racks to see if they had anything good, but the noise on the first floor was too much for Suzy, so we retreated to the DVD and book shelves on the second floor. Suzy found a couple of books she liked; I didn’t find anything, but I was surprised how many TV shows that were only middling successes were now available on DVD. We walked through the West Side, where I continued the Great Wonka Bar Hunt by checking the Candy Cauldron. No Wonka bars there, either; I was beginning to wonder if Wonka bars were just a myth.

We decided to walk over to the Marketplace and peruse a few of the smaller Disney stores. At Once Upon A Toy, I spent my time drooling over the new monorails with the compartment ceilings and doors that opened, but in the end decided I could just buy them at Disneyland. I looked their Disney music CD collection, but found myself wishing they had a way for customers to listen to samples of the music like you can at Borders and Barnes and Noble. Mickey Mart has apparently gotten very popular, because it now takes up about half of the shelf space in the Disney Tails store in addition to the alley it originally started in; I still wasn’t too impressed by the selection there. I was a lot more impressed by the items at The Art of Disney – it’s too bad I can’t afford all the stuff I want from this place, particularly the WDW attraction posters and the commemorative items from the Magic Kingdom’s 35th anniversary. The scrapbooking store next door had expanded their book section to include books on non-Disney topics; I would have rather scene and expanded Disney section like the one at Compass Books at California’s Downtown Disney. Last but not least, we visited Disney’s Pin Traders so I could make a list of all the pins I would buy once my paycheck was deposited in the bank.

After such a wild evening at Downtown Disney, we decided to return to Port Orleans and turn in; we were in bed by 10:00. We’re just a couple of night owls, what can I say?

Day 8 – Friday, January 12th

No walk this morning, since I usually take Mondays and Fridays off from working out. Instead, I decided to head downstairs and take care of my dirty laundry (much to the delight of Suzy and the people from housekeeping, I’m sure). Considering how few people seemed to be staying in our part of Riverside, there seemed to be a lot of people in the laundry room – at least 3 or 4 other families were down there while I was there. I kept myself entertained listening to my iPod while I did the wash; I’m glad I wasn’t drinking anything at the time, because I probably would have done a spit-take half way through listening to an interview where Imagineer Joe Rohde. Joe stated that that Disney didn’t niche-market attractions. Really? How many teenagers have you seen at Pooh’s Playful Spot or seniors at Rock N Roller Coaster, Joe?

Maybe this reaction was my inner Disney geek preparing itself for the day ahead, because this was the day we’d be having Lunch with an Imagineer. After laundry was done and Suzy and I got dressed, we headed over to the Studios. We had a little time to kill before we had to be at the Brown Derby, so we walked into Sid Cahuenga’s One-Of –A-Kind Shop. While I was perusing the celebrity artifacts (do they sew the stars into their costumes?), Suzy had a great time talking with a CM named Jim, who worked at the Studios with his wife to supplement their income as full-time RVers. Living full-time in an RV has always been a dream of Suzy’s, so she was eager to get more details about his experiences; I was intrigued to hear about how flexible Disney can be as far as the hours you can work and the places you can work. Someday, that could be us working behind the counter – you never know…

Bidding a reluctant adieu to Jim, we walked over to the Hollywood Brown Derby, arriving a few minutes before our scheduled lunch appointment. When we checked in, we were given special guest nametags that read “Dining with an Imagineer” and had our names on them. That’s fair, I thought – the Imagineer would be wearing his name tag, so we should each be wearing one, too! Based on the number of nametags I saw, it looked like we were going to have 6 people for lunch that day. After a few minutes, the manager of the Brown Derby called the people participating in the lunch together and walked us into the Derby’s main dining room. The manager told us the story of the original Hollywood Brown Derby and the creation of the Florida counterpart. This was the first time I’d ever visited the Derby, and I was just wowed by both the story of the Derby and by the look of the Derby itself; if I didn’t know any better, I would have sworn that we’d walked through a time portal into Hollywood in the late 1930s.

We were escorted from the main dining room into the Bamboo Room, a private room made up to look like a lounge that Hollywood’s Brown Derby had in the 1940s. We took our seats, and we were each given a personalized menu listing three or four entrée selections from the Brown Derby menu and two or three appetizers and desserts. Suzy wasn’t too thrilled with the limited selection of the personalized menu and was allergic to a couple of the items besides; fortunately, the waitress told her she could order any item from the regular menu, and Suzy was able to find some things that were better for her.

After we reviewed the menu and made our selections, we introduced ourselves to Alex, an art director at the Magic Kingdom. Alex told us about his background in art and computer technology; he explained that he got into Imagineering thanks to a person who he knew from a class he was involved with in college. He explained to us the job duties of an art director at a Disney theme park, which consists of keeping up what’s already been placed in the parks by WDI and adding and changing little things at the park based on the needs of the people that operate the theme parks. For example, he was working on a project where one of the Main Street eating establishments (the Main Street Bakery, if I remember correctly) was being re-done to allow more guests to use the facility. He was responsible for increasing the guest capacity of the café, but he also had to make sure that the look of the eating location still fit with the look of Main Street; he was proud of the work that he and his team had done to make sure that everything worked well and looked right. Another project that Alex had recently worked on was the addition of a Mr. Toad figure to the pet cemetery of the Haunted Mansion; while this might seem like a simple project, Alex explained that he had to convince key people at the Magic Kingdom to let him install the figure, figure out a way to get a concrete base put into the cemetery, and get the figure installed as quickly as possible so that the figure would be as much a surprise to the attraction’s cast members as it was to the guests! While we weren’t able to get Alex to divulge any juicy tidbits about upcoming projects for the Magic Kingdom (and believe me, we tried!), we had a great time hearing about what it was like to be an Imagineer and the daily challenges they face keeping everything in the parks looking and working its best. At the end of our meal, we were each presented with crystal plates engraved with the Sorcerer Mickey logo of WDI; Alex was also nice enough to sign and add an inscription to each plate with a gold marker.

The food at Lunch with an Imagineer was as good as the conversation was interesting. The standard menu for the luncheon consisted of oyster and brie soup, a miniature Cobb salad (how could you go to the Brown Derby and not have the salad that was invented there?), and a choice of one of three items; for our lunch, the choices were grilled New York strip steak, Thai noodle bowl with chicken, or pan-fried grouper.. I chose the Thai noodle bowl, which was spicy but absolutely delicious. As I mentioned, Suzy ended up ordering from the Brown Derby’s regular menu; I’m afraid that between listening to the conversation and eating my own lunch, I didn’t notice what Suzy had, but she assured me later that what she had was delicious! The only item we were a little disappointed with was the dessert; the standard menu for Lunch with an Imagineer offered crème brulee for dessert, but Suzy remembered eating the Brown Derby’s grapefruit cake when she was a little girl, so we asked for slices of the cake instead. The cake was good, but not spectacular; Suzy was disappointed because the recipe was different one from the one she remembered from eating at the original Brown Derby. Overall, though, the food, the ambience, and the service at the Brown Derby were all excellent. It’s worth a visit even if you can’t find time to dine with an Imagineer!

After lunch, we decided to walk around a little to try to work off the sumptuous lunch we’d just had. We walked over to the Journey into Narnia exhibit, which had a few minutes’ wait to enter. The exhibit started out promisingly; we were escorted into the soundstage and found ourselves face-to-face with a large wardrobe that looker similar to the one the children walked into in the movie. We walked through the wardrobe into the Narnian winter scene similar to the one in the movie, and then the White Witch appeared and gave us a brief warning about entering her territory. From then on, the exhibit was disappointing; we spent several minutes in the second room watching a trailer for “The Chronicles of Narnia”, and then we were escorted into a very small third room that featured perhaps 10 or so props, illustrations, and maquettes from the movie. We couldn’t even spend much time looking at the items from the film, because the second room was not really separated from the third room, and we were asked to leave after only a couple of minutes so that they could reset the film and the effects for the next group coming through. I was lucky enough to see “The Chronicles of Narnia” at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, which featured a nice walk-though exhibit of props, illustrations, and maquettes; while the exhibit at the El Capitan lacked the special effects of this show, there was a lot more to see and people were given a lot more time to see it.

Suzy wanted to get some rest and I had to get over to the Magic Kingdom, so we decided to leave the Studios; Suzy dropped me off at the TTC and drove back to Port Orleans. I’d never entered the Magic Kingdom by way of the TTC, so walking around there was fascinating to me; although the TTC was relatively quiet, it wasn’t hard to look at all the queues and gates and imagine what the TTC must be like on a busy day. The anticipation that builds up when you get to the Magic Kingdom by way of the TTC was a lot of fun to experience; going through the TTC feels like you’re leaving the “real world” to enter into a more magical place.

While I could have taken the express monorail to the Magic Kingdom, I wanted keep doing things differently from the way I usually do them when I visit the MK, so I boarded the passenger ferry instead. I loved the slow ride across to the entrance to the Magic Kingdom – it really builds up the anticipation and the excitement seeing Cinderella Castle and Main Street Station getting closer and closer as you travel on the Seven Seas Lagoon.

I had come to the Magic Kingdom to participate in something that few guests have a chance to do. Every afternoon, The Magic Kingdom holds a flag retreat ceremony; if you’re a current or former member of the military, you can volunteer to be a part of the ceremony. On my first visit to the Magic Kingdom, I went to City Hall and asked if I could participate in the ceremony; I was asked to meet the security guards that would be conducting the ceremony in Town Square about 15 minutes prior to the ceremony’s start time. I got to the Magic Kingdom with plenty of time to spare, so I walked over to the front porch of Exposition Hall and sat in one of the rocking chairs and watched the guests enjoying their day. I spent about half and hour in the rocking chair, then walked over to the Town Square flagpole; Joe, the head of the security detail, met me there, introduced me to the rest of the guards on the detail, and explained how the ceremony was done. We did a very quick dry run of the ceremony, and then took our places across from Main Street Station. At the start of the ceremony, the WDW Marching Band marched into Town Square and took their positions at the Cinderella Castle end of the square while the guards and I stood at attention; once they were in place, we marched up to the flagpole. Joe and the guards lowered, retrieved, and folded the flag, and then Joe handed the flag to me. One of the guards introduced me to the guests and cast members watching the ceremony and handed me a folder that I held behind the flag; once I had the flag and the folder, the detail turned and followed the marching band to the corner of Town Square between Tony’s and the DVC information booth. When we got there, I handed the flag to one of the guards, and the guard showed me the folder I had been handed during the ceremony. The folder contained a certificate naming me the Magic Kingdom Veteran of the Day, a Veteran of the Day pin, and a voucher for a free photo of me during the ceremony. Shortly after, a PhotoPass photographer came up to us, took some photos of me with the detail, and handed me a PhotoPass card that listed all of the photographs that he had taken of us during the ceremony. I thanked the guards in the detail for making sure I didn’t make a fool of myself and went on my way; as I walked around Town Square, I had several people come up to me and thank me for my service to the nation. I felt really special participating in the ceremony, but I think the most touching part of the whole thing was being thanked by those people.

After taking part in the ceremony, I walked around and looked around the shops in Town Square. As I was window shopping, I remembered that I still hadn’t found any Wonka Bars, so I walked over to the Main Street Confectionary. At last, success! The Confectionery had a bin full of Wonka Bars, so I picked up several of them (I wasn’t going to take the chance that I wouldn’t be able to get more Wonka Bars if I really liked them). I left the Confectionery and stopped at the pin cart just outside, where I bought a few pins and traded a few more pins with a couple of cast members and one child that were nearby.

I have to admit that by this point I was getting discouraged about pin trading. I’d been wearing my lanyard just about every time I’d visited a WDW theme park, and I’d made sure to bring plenty of Disneyland pins with me so I’d have something good to trade, but there wasn’t much worth trading on other lanyards; several CMs saw my disappointment and commented that “pin sharks” commonly showed up at the parks early in the day and traded the best pins on the lanyards for the undesirable ones they’d picked up. About the only CMs who had any nice pins were ones who only traded with kids. I’d given up on trading at Disneyland after seeing this sort of thing often, and I was beginning to wonder if I should do the same at WDW.

I decided to get my mind off the disappointing pin trading and went over to the Hall of Presidents. The show was a lot of fun, although the one of the projectors was a bit blurry; at the end of the show I made sure to take a minute to look at the seats in the theatre, since Alex had mentioned during lunch that they’d replaced the old red plastic seats with something more appropriate for the theatre. They did look nice, but I’m sure my inspection got a few quizzical stares.

I walked over to Frontierland and checked the standby queue at Big Thunder Mountain Railroad; the queue time was about 60 minutes and Fastpasses were being given out for 45 minutes later, so I picked up a Fastpass and went over to the WDW Railroad Frontierland station and rode over to Main Street. From there, I walked up Main Street tot the Plaza and noticed they were showing the Dreams Come True show in the forecourt – do they put on this show continuously or something? By the time I’d walked back to Big Thunder, the Fastpass was valid, so I entered the Fastpass queue. I love the WDW version of the attraction – there’s so much more detail and there are more vignettes as you travel along. You can even try the infamous “goat trick” from Disneyland when you come off the second lift hill, although you probably look a bit silly doing it because there’s no goat to stare at!

I walked through Adventureland after I left Big Thunder and noticed that the Swiss Family Treehouse was almost completely empty, so I went in and walked around. I miss not having this attraction at Disneyland, but considering how few people went through this version and how I heard a mom have to explain to her child who exactly the Swiss family were, I can see why it was replaced in California. I suspect it may not be at WDW for much longer, either.

It was almost time for Wishes when I left the treehouse, but since I’d already seen it twice that week, I felt like I could afford to skip it. Instead, I left the MK and hopped the bus back to Riverside and met Suzy (who’d had a very relaxing evening in the room). I made myself a quick snack from the food we’d brought with us to the room worked on my notes and did a little reading, then went to bed.

Day 9 - Saturday, January 13th

When I got back from my usual morning walk and got dressed, Suzy gave me 3 choices for things we could do that day: Ride an airboat, visit the Henry Leu Gardens, or visit Holy Land Experience. The vision of me riding around on an airboat like the characters on “Gentle Ben” sounded to me like the most fun option, so I chose the airboat. We got into the van and started driving south from the WDW property, stopping for lunch at Chik-Fil-A. This turned out to be quite a long drive, even for us drive-happy Californians; in order to get to Boggy Creek Airboat Rides, we drove on Poinciana Boulevard from where it intersected with US 192 to where it changed names, proceeded past several miles of swamp and cattle ranches, and then finally dead-ended. You know you’re in the middle of nowhere in central Florida when you get to a place where the nearest housing development is several miles away.

Boggy Creek operated out of the ranger station of a state park; it looked like the most popular activities at the park where picnicking (there was a large area set aside for this purpose right next to the ranger station), bass fishing (there was a small fleet of bass boats at the ranger station’s marina and boat ramp coming back from a fishing contest when we arrived), and the activities offered by Boggy Creek. The folks at Boggy Creek offered us a couple of choices: A 30 minute tour for up to 18 people on a large airboat, a 45-minute ride for up to 6 people on a small airboat, and a monster truck buggy ride through their adjoining nature preserve. (During the summer, they also offer night airboat tours – apparently some critters are more active at night in the warmer months.) As it happened, they also offered combination tickets besides the individual tours, so Suzy and I decided to purchase the buggy ride & large airboat combo ticket (which cost us $35 each after the AAA discount).

We hung out in the ranger station for a little bit, getting our pictures taken with an enormous stuffed gator and perusing the gift shop (I’m not sure there was any room for a ranger anywhere in this ranger station!) before we heard the call to board our buggy tour. The buggy was a radically modified former school bus; the bus had basically been stripped down to its engine, roof, and chassis, had all the original seats ripped out and replaced with two rows of side-facing seats, and had the chassis modified to allow the bus to drive around on a set of monster truck tires (gigantic truck tires are best for going through swamps and mud). We walked up a large gangplank to get up to the passenger area, and then took our seats; the bus pulled away from the gangplank and crossed the road into the company’s nature preserve, which had previously been a cattle ranch. The driver assured us that the road through the preserve had recently been graded, but we still experienced a fairly bumpy ride and had to deal with a lot of dust; I’d hate to think what this trip must have been like before they graded the road! The company had placed several feeders that were rigged to dispense food a couple of times a day throughout the property, and the natural denizens of the preserve were out availing themselves of the feeders as we went through. The variety of animals we saw on the buggy trip was impressive; on our 45 minute trip, we saw wild turkeys, raccoons, whitetail deer, and sandhill cranes. We even spotted a nest with a bald eagle and her chicks. For the benefit of those people who insist that a swamp trip just isn’t a swamp trip without alligators, there was also a fenced enclosure with a couple of gators that had been raised in captivity. (For the record, wintertime just isn’t the time to go looking for gators, wild or captive. In the cold months, the wild gators go into hibernation and are very well hidden, and the captivity-raised gators, while not hidden like their cousins in the wild, aren’t very active.)

Overall, Suzy and I thought the Boggy Creek buggy tour was pretty good. The only thing we’d done that could compare with this tour was a swamp buggy tour we did with the Nature Conservancy at the Disney Wilderness Preserve a few years ago; the Nature Conservancy tour was cheaper ($10 vs. $35 at Boggy Creek), but since the Nature Conservancy didn’t want to resort to sneaky (and unnatural) stuff like timed feeders, we didn’t see anywhere near as many animals on their tour.

After the Buggy tour, we returned to the ranger station marina and when we heard the call proceeded to the main dock for the airboat tour. As we approached the airboat, we were each handed a set of earphones and the children were handed lifejackets to wear (kids have to wear lifejackets on boats per Florida law). The earphones were most definitely not for decoration – the airboat engines were extremely loud and they’re no more than about 20 feet from where the passengers were sitting. This didn’t seem like it would be very conducive to finding wildlife on the lakeshore as promised in the brochure, but what the driver would do would be to take the boat up to speed to get us to a particular part of the lakeshore, then cut the engine speed down to where he could maneuver slowly (and more importantly, to a noise level where we could hear him) to get into narrow coves; when he found some wildlife, he’d cut the motor completely and let the boat drift to where the animal could be seen. Since airboats aren’t encumbered by propellers and rudders that can get fouled in the reeds and cypress branches near the shoreline, the driver could get us close into areas where most boats couldn’t get to, and the procedure the driver used when we got close to the critters allowed us to see them without their being startled. There was almost as much variety on the lake as there was in the nature preserve. We saw lots of herons and cranes, we spotted another nest of bald eagles, and we even found a few small wild gators.

We spent about the first 20 to 25 minutes looking for wildlife, then the driver took us a little farther away from the shoreline (but still close enough to the shoreline that we were amongst the reeds) and opened up the throttle on his engine to show us what an airboat could do. It turns out that what an airboat can do is go very, very fast and make very wild pivots and tight turns! It was fun, but it definitely wasn’t comfortable; besides the noise from the engine and the wind and spray that was kicked up from going so fast, the boat tended to swerve (the airflow from the engine passes a set of rudders which control the steering, and the rudders don’t keep the boat totally under control) and at high speed the ride on an airboat becomes similar to driving on somewhat uneven concrete without the benefit of shock absorbers. The maneuvers and the bumpy ride were too much for Suzy; when we got back to the dock, she had to find a bench and lie down for a little while just to get over her motion sickness. I felt all right after getting off the boat, so I got out my camera and got some pictures of the wild birds hanging out at the marina while Suzy rested. The airboat ride was fun, but I don’t think we’ll be doing it again any time soon.

As we drove back along Southport/Poinciana, Suzy noticed all the new housing developments we were passing, and she got a case of what I like to call “real estate fever”. We wound up stopping at a development that was under construction so that we could have a look at some of the homes they were building, and then we drove through a couple of the established developments in Poinciana looking for “for sale” and “open house” signs. Suzy was having a pretty good time, but I wasn’t too thrilled at wandering around aimlessly looking at houses; after a little while, Suzy noticed and took pity on me, driving us back toward WDW. Still, even I have to admit the housing prices are really reasonable in Poinciana, and the houses look really nice. Who knows? Maybe we’ll be living in Poinciana someday.

It was getting dark by the time we were getting close to the WDW property, so we started discussing our options for the evening. We considered a trip to DisneyQuest, but I was getting a bad headache (maybe that airboat ride DID affect me!), so the last thing I wanted to deal with was playing video games. We decided that dinner at Beaches and Cream sounded like a better option. We stopped to gas up the van at the Downtown Disney Hess, and then drove over to the Beach Club. Since it turned out that Suzy’s Disney Dining Experience card entitled us to free valet parking with dinner at Beaches and Cream, we decided to live a little and leave the keys with the valet.

Dinner at Beaches and Cream was excellent, as always; I think that the place is the best place to get a burger on the WDW property. (Let’s keep that to ourselves, shall we? The place is busy enough as it is!) Suzy and I both had cheeseburgers; Suzy decided to be healthy and get fruit as her side, while I decided to stick with the traditional French fries.
For dessert, Suzy got a great chocolate cake with ice cream. I decided to be different and got a Frozen Sunshine, a shake with vanilla ice cream, orange sherbet, and seltzer. It was absolutely wonderful, and the portion you get when you order it makes it a good value; for $4.99, you get a large glass plus half a metal mixing cup of Frozen Sunshine. My headache was long gone by the time dessert was done.

We were ready to go back to Riverside after dinner; I worked on my trip report notes for a little bit while Suzy read her book, but after a while I decided that a little TV might be a nice change of pace. We watched “Top Seven Things to Do at WDW”; who puts these shows together, anyway? The host was just plain annoying, the camera was one quick cut after another and lot s of jarring camera work and odd camera angles. I swear, the student productions from the old Disney Institute were better than this, and the students had only been working with the cameras for a couple of days! A little less hip, a little more magic for the next one of these things you put together, guys.

Day 10 - Sunday, January 14th

We got an early start that day – the alarm clock went off at 6:45 and Mickey and Stitch called in to make sure we were up at 7:00. It’s a good thing Mickey didn’t bring up what “big doin’s” we had planned for the day – we were going off property to someone else’s theme park!

We left the WDW property and headed out on I-4 toward Tampa. We were headed for Busch Gardens Tampa, but we weren’t sure how bad the drive was going to be, so we had decided to get an early start. It turned out that we needn’t have worried so much; we made the 50 mile trip to BGT in under an hour, arriving at the park a little before 9:00, and there was little traffic and not an accident in sight. We’d kill for freeway conditions like this back home! When we got to the BGT parking lot entrance (which we almost missed – it was hard to tell if it was the entrance to the parking lot or just the water park!), we were given the choice of paying $9 for regular parking or $14 for preferred parking. I overcame my inner cheapskate and we ponied up the extra 5 bucks. We were directed to a road that took us out of the main parking lot and underneath the main thoroughfare; we ended up in a smaller lot near the main entrance and were told to park a couple of rows from handicapped parking. That’s a pretty significant difference in parking for $5!

We walked over to the main entrance and purchased our tickets. I picked up a one-day ticket, which was $60 with the AAA discount. Since Suzy planned to be in town for a little longer than I would be and she wanted to visit SeaWorld, she purchased a BGT/SeaWorld combo ticket. Her combo ticket didn’t qualify for the AAA discount, but at about $100 it was significantly cheaper than buying separate admission to both parks, and unlike the Disney Magic Your Way base tickets, she had 30 days to use the ticket instead of 14. It seems like other parks are a lot more flexible on admission than Disney.

We’d heard that BGT had a pretty good selection of tours, so we visited the Adventure Tour Center and asked about our options. There were plenty of options – including individual tours, group tours, tours with an animal focus, tours with a roller coaster junkie focus, and a 5-hour general orientation tour – but very few of them were available; even though we’d gotten there almost at park opening, most of the available tours were already sold out. BGT offers the option to purchase tours prior to the day you visit, and based on our experience. I’d highly recommend you consider doing so if you want to take any kind of tour at BGT! The prices on the tours range from about $35 plus admission to the “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it” price range.

We’d heard so much about BGT’s newest attraction, Rhino Rally, that we decided to try that attraction first. Unlike the Disney parks, BGT’s layout isn’t all that logical, so it took us a little more work and a little more reading of the signs and maps than we’re used to, but eventually we found our way to the entrance – or more correctly, to the rope line blocking the entrance until the ride’s official opening time. The attraction can best be described as part Kilimanjaro Safaris, part Jungle Cruise; the story is that you’re participating in a off-road race around Africa in Land Rover-like vehicles, but the drivers all appear to be frustrated stand-up comedians that love bad jokes (even cornier ones that at Disney, folks) and occasionally point animals in what are obviously enclosures. The big difference on this attraction is that partway through, the bridge you’re traversing over in the vehicle “separates” and carries you on a mild raft ride. It’s a fun ride, but it’s a rough and a bumpy one; if you get on this attraction expecting to see a lot of animals like you do on Kilimanjaro Safaris, you’re going to be disappointed.

The Serengeti Express, BGT’s steam train, had a station right next to the entrance to Rhino Rally, and we’d hoped to hop a ride on the train after we’d ridden the Rally. No such luck – we’d just missed the train and the wait time for the next train was more than 20 minutes! We’d noticed that BGT still had a sky ride, so we searched around for the entrance (Like I said, BGT isn’t well laid out) and boarded the vehicle. The chance to get in a sky bucket was enough of a treat for me, but it turned out that’s it’s a very long ride and that it gives you the chance to get a good look at the animals on the Serengeti Plain, so we were glad to have ridden it.

Like all good sky rides, the BGT sky ride is one-way, so we hopped off in the Stanleyville section of the park and walked around to have a look. This was when we got our first look at BGT’s latest and greatest coaster, Sheikra. For those of you that haven’t heard about it, this is a stand-up coaster that consists of fun stuff like two 90-degree drops (complete with momentary pauses just before the drops), several inversions, and a section of the attraction that kicks up a giant streak of water as you pass. Suzy’s not a coaster person at all, and this coaster looked like way more than I could handle, so we both decided to give Sheikra a wide berth. Instead, we picked up a big bag of popcorn from a concession stand and walked around looking at some of the exhibits and animal enclosures in the vicinity.

Our first stop was Lorikeet Landing, a large aviary full of the eponymous lorikeets and several other species of birds. Suzy had fun talking to a blue macaw that had an extensive vocabulary (and especially loved the word “cracker”). We’d bought nectar to feed the lorikeets in other zoos, so we didn’t feel much need to buy some here; of course, the lorikeets felt no particular need to have anything to do with us, since we weren’t feeding them. Fortunately for us, a handler named Dan who had more lorikeets hanging around him than he knew what to do with saw Suzy noticing all the attention he was getting, and Dan perched a couple of “his” birds on Suzy’s head. When a spooned hornbill came up to Dan for a meal, Dan gave Suzy some treats to give to the hornbill – a handful of mealworms! Suzy had a wonderful time in the aviary.

We walked by Dragon’s Lair, a large and very elaborate children’s play area. The play area had lots things to do, such as suspension bridges, mazes, electric cars on a track and a jungle gym. If someone came here with small kids, I have no doubt where the kids would want to spend their day! After we passed Dragon’s Lair, we walked though a second, smaller aviary with large birds, then admiring the beautiful landscaping in the southwestern corner of the park. By the looks of things, this had been the original entrance to the park; you could even see what had to be the former ticket booths, which looked like they hadn’t seen any activity in a long time. Wonder why they decided to close this entrance? I think the most… interesting, for lack of a better word… horticultural exhibit was the floral Anheuser-Busch logo. I got a picture of myself in front of the thing, and as I left I saw a lot of other people doing the same.

We visited the park’s conservation gift shop (which looked old enough to me to be the park’s original gift shop), then I noticed there was a small restaurant next to a lagoon across the way. A closer inspection revealed that this was better than a restaurant – it was where Anheuser-Busch handed out free samples of beer! Suzy must have noticed my eyes light up, since she suggested we go over and see if they had anything to eat while I got a sample. It turned out that the place did have a small quick-service location, so we got a slice of pepperoni pizza that was big enough for the two of us to share, an equally large slice of chocolate cake, and two individual side salads. (Amazingly, we both passed up on their premiere item – the pizza and fries special.) I went over to the sample counter and got an AB special ale – which I hated so much I tossed it after one or two sips. Unfortunately, this meant that I had just squandered my free beer, and I wouldn’t be allowed to get another one for two hours. Suzy to the rescue! Suzy doesn’t drink, but she was kind enough to get a Bud Light and give it to me, saving me the trouble of getting a Coke from the restaurant. We grabbed a table out on the patio facing the lagoon and ate our lunch as a jazz combo started up behind us. As I ate, I also noticed a Bud NASCAR display and a TV showing old Bud commercials. Apparently, they’d like you to stay in this area for a while…

Since Suzy indulged me by letting me drink free beer, I though it’d only be fair to return the favor and let her choose where we’d go next. As it happened, there was an amphitheatre next to the Hospitality House and it had a bird show that was about to start, so Suzy decided we should go there. We both liked the bird show, but I liked it more than Suzy did. I liked the variety of birds they used in the show, including some species I hadn’t seen before; Suzy thought she had seen better bird shows at other zoos.

Maybe it was the beer, maybe it was the fact that we’d already been at a theme park that was knows as a coaster park for half a day and I hadn’t actually ridden a single coaster, but it was at this point I decided I had to tackle one of BGT’s headliner coasters. (That was just fine with Suzy, since this would give her a chance to sit on a bench and read or take a nap.) We were close to Gwazi, and that sounded like a good coaster to start with, so I decided to brave the 45-minute wait in the standby line. Now, for those of you reading this report and saying to yourself, “What’s a Gwazi?”, it’s a wooden racing coaster (in other words, it runs two trains that go along at the same time on parallel tracks); it’s named after a mythical beast that’s part lion, part tiger, so the two tracks are known as the “Lion” and “Tiger” tracks. As it happened, only Lion track was running, which explained the wait; however, the BGT employees were doing a great job of getting people through the attraction, so the actual wait ended up being only about 30 to 35 minutes. Gwazi has to be the wildest wooden coaster I’ve ever been on! I’d ridden Ghostrider at Knott’s Berry Farm and the coaster at Belmont Park in San Diego, so I thought a wild wooden coaster wouldn’t be a problem for me, but this wooden coaster is very fast and has many sharp turns and banks, and even with two restraints (a seat belt and a lap bar) on, I could still feel my rear end coming out of the seat several times during the ride. It’s a great coaster, but it’s definitely not for the timid; if the Disney coasters are too much for you, this one will be, too.

After I survived Gwazi, Suzy and I walked over to the Nairobi train station (the one next to Rhino Rally where we’d missed the train earlier) to see if we could ride the Serengeti Express. There was only a 10 minute wait, but the platform was packed; I wasn’t really sure if we’d get on the train, but I knew that if we didn’t, we’d be in for a long wait for the next one. The crew we had was a good one, however, and they managed to get almost everyone who was waiting on to the train. The engines of the Serengeti Express, like their sisters at WDW, are actual steam trains(although they’re propelled by natural gas instead of oil or coal); unlike their counterparts at WDW, the trains are so slow and the route’s so meandering that the trains are not a good bet for in-park transportation even though there are 3 stations in the park. It does offer great views of the animals on the Serengeti Plain, especially, if you sit on the left side of the train facing the engine, so it’s worth a ride. Let me warn you in advance about one of the stations, though – the Stanleyville station is the only railroad station I’ve seen that has a platform with a “splash zone”! You see, the station is right underneath the track for Sheikra; the section of track it’s under happens to be the one right after the section where part of the coaster trains kick up a ton of water, and the coaster trains still have plenty of water on them when they pass over the railroad station – water which drips all over boarding and departing passengers who don’t pay