Month: May 2006

At the Living Seas, Epcot.

UPDATE: The face painting design was called Flower Mask. Katherine got a fun little butterfly finger puppet for helping assemble a puzzle at the Living Seas pavillion. The pavillion itself has been heavily Nemo themed. ‘Nuff said.

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If it’s Tuesday, it must be Epcot day!

1. While in past years, we’ve done Princess Breakfasts — which have usually been hectic, as it’s tough to get to the park before it really opens and sprint across Future World to get to Norway where these shindigs are held.

   So this year we ended up at a Princess Luncheon … which, due to latish start and all, and with an 11:25 a.m. start time, meant that we … well, didn’t sprint, but definitely moseyed quickly across Future World to get to Norway …

   Well. Actually. We got there about 15 minutes early. At which point I remembered, “Hey, I was going to FastPass Soarin’ on the way in.”

   “You’ve got 15 minutes, Dave,” Margie quips.

   So I did sprint over to the Future World, found a map, sprinted to the Land Pavillion, found the ride, ran seven tickets through for FPs, and sprinted back, arriving back in Norway to find everyone seated, and spent the next 15 minutes mopping the sweat off of my face.

   I don’t know how it is that athletics is so big in the South. I really don’t.

   The breakfast was yummy — the Akershus restaurant in Norway is quite nice — and we were right by the Cast door, so Kitten got first crack at all the princesses as they paraded out.

   Ariel had been in a grotto (albeit in her “I got legs and, hey, they don’t feel like I’m walking on razor blades like in the Hans Christian Andersen stories!” outfit) on the way in, so they could take and offer Official Expensive Pictures.

   The first one out the door was — Aurora! Kitten’s favorite.

   Next we got Alice (who, I fear, is not a Princess no matter how you slice it).

   Belle came after, and subsequent to the standard autograph-signing and Kitten pix, I got a photo of myself next to her. She’s my fave.

   We then got Jasmine, who was quite the looker, as usual.

   And then … um … was there another one? No Cinderella, Mulan, Pocohontes, Snow White, nor Mary Poppins … I guess that was it.

   Kitten had fun.

2. We did the obilgatory ride on Maelstrom in Norway. And then the Madness started. Epcot’s World Showcase has stations at each country where you can pick up and color a paper mask that gets a decoration tacked to it at each country (a teddy bear in German, a kite in Japan, etc.). Katherine started this in Norway, and … well, we’ve never done one of those sorts of activities to completion before, but now it became an obsession, the centerpiece of our visit, the sine qua non …

   So when we then proceeded to China, I let the ‘rents and Margie go into the Circle 360 movie there, while we went and did the mask update. Kitten added a new color at each country to the mask, and did a very nice job of it. (Her coloring skills have gotten significantly better in the last few months.)

   Then on to Germany, then Italy, then the US, then Japan, then Morocco, each stop wandering briefly through the shops but mostly tracking down the “Kidcot” station.

3. By the time Morocco had come and gone, it was getting close to our FP time for Soarin’. So we took the boat across the lake.

   Note to visitors: avoid the boats unless you are dog tired, have lots of time, or can see it approaching your spot. The boats run about every 20 minutes, and, frankly, you can walk the third of the lake they chord across in that time or less, and feel like you’re doing something.

   Wandered over to the Land, flashed our FastPasses, cut through the majority of the line, and …

   Soarin’ is a copy of the same ride as in Anaheim’s Disney California Adventure. I hadn’t been on that, though. It’s set up (too complicated to go into how) as though you’re on a large hang glider, flying over a series of California tableaus.

   It is beautiful. It is fun. And it has reestablished to me that Flight is the best super-power one could possibly have.

   Great ride.

   The sole regret was that Ginger wasn’t with us; she was back at the lodge, under the weather. It’s one of her favorite rides.

4. I sprinted off across Future World to see if I could FP Test Track. No such luck — all sold out, and a longish line. So I grabbed FPs to Mission Space (which we ended up not using, nobody but me having any interest in the thing). Then we aite ice cream.

5. From there, we headed back to the World Showcase, to continue our mad pursuit of mask decorations. We’d learned there was a “special treat” for kids who got all eleven of them, so we (well, I) vowed to redouble our effort. First Canada (which is, I think, the most beautiful of the World Showcase areas, and where Ginger rejoined us), then the United Kingdom (where Margie embarrassed me with Mary Poppins), then France (where most of us then sipped Kir Royales, and Katherine got an unexpected photo op with Aurora).

6. We had late (8:30) dinner reservations in Italy, at Alfredo’s, which was going to overlap the fireworks show at 9:00, alas. Margie and Jim headed over there to see if they could get earlier reservations, while we circled the lake the opposite direction in pursuit of the final mask decoration.

   Epcot was having its big flower and garden event, and I wanted to stop by some stores at the the top of the World Showcase to see if they had any interesting swag. No such luck, but Kitten had a very nice birthday experience.

7. At last! The last stop! Mexico!

   And Katherine got her last mask decoration, and got … a kind of cheesy mini-poster of various Disney characters. Big whoop.

   But everyone had much fun with the “take a digital picture and sent an e-postcard to a friend” kiosk, so we made do.

8. With both Jim and Margie on the case, I expected that not only would be get dinner immediately, but they’d whisk us all over on a helicopter and roll out the red carpet. Or maybe let us ride Segways there …

   … well, not quite. But they did discover that “reservations” at the World Showcase restaurants means you have priority seating — when you show up, no matter what time you asked for, you are put on the wait list for the next tables (vs. the long line of schmucks on “stand-by”).

   So we did wander over to Italy, and get seated at the Alfredo restaurant in about ten minutes, which was great.

   This Alfredo’s restaurant is an extension of the original Alfredo’s in Rome which, well, is where the whole “Fettucine Alfredo” thang came from. Which is what I had, even though the veal stew also looked to die for.

   The food was faboo, the service professional and competent, the ambience — well, one of the disadvantages of eating at Disney is that there are lots of kids. Often tired kids. Often tired kids with parents who don’t give a rat’s ass about whether Junior’s screams, grunts, and other shrill vocalizations (which are the only way Junior can get anyone’s attention, or even a chuckle) are bothering anyone else.

   After a full dinner, we didn’t have room for dessert, but Kitten wanted something, and she’d been behaving, so we ordered some yummies. And then the staff brought out a chocolate birthday mousse for Kitten … and we just had to eat that, stuffed or not …

   See, when Margie had been making her final reservations, she’s spoken to a very nice lady who’d made a note on all the various events that it was Katherine’s birthday. So the restaurant knew, and Katherine also returned home early in the trip to find an autographed picture of Princess Aurora (with birthday wishes and a balloon) waiting in our hotel room. Fun.

9. It was getting darkish as we exited, so we wanted back over to the top of the World Showcase (and so quickest to the exits) to wait for the firework show, IllumiNations. We actually got quite nice seating standing.

   It was a very nice show (despite the nattering/wrestling British parents and kids behind us), Interestingly, though thought of as a fireworks show, fireworks is a small part of it. There’s laser lights, a big video globe, a huge flame generator in the middle of the lake, water fountains — a whole multi-media thing, most of which keeps the cost way down for Disney (though I’m sure it’s not cheap).

10. When the show was over, we hot-tailed it back to the bus depot. We were amazed to find the line for our bus not only filled the queue area, but extended again as long behind it. And no other queue we could see was that long. Yikes. Obviously a bus routing problem.

    The traffic control gremlins fixed that, though, assigning several extra busses to our line, so that we actually got out of there in 15-20 minutes, and were back to the hotel, Kitten in my arms, for a good night.

Actually posted on 6 June, but backdated to the day it happened.

Waiting for fireworks …

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Our lodge at Port Orleans.

UPDATE: Parterre Place is part of the Magnolia Bend area of Port Orleans Riverside. We stayed at Magnoilia Terrace (another massive neo-Plantation Manor House sort of building) the first year we went to WDW, though the past two times we were in Aligator Bayou, which has nearly identical rooms inside, but clustered in smaller units amidst more trees.

Pretty, regardless. This shot was taken from the boat that shuttles over to Downtown Disney.

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Bits and pieces of the day:

1. Very crowded, it being Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. Though it was less humid than the last couple of days, it was hotter.
2. Animal Kingdom day. I had one goal for the day: to ride on the new Expedition Everest roller coaster.

   I was not to succeed.

3. The front of the park remains one of the hottest and most sere. It’s not just things not having grown up yet — there are some large patches of bare pavement that don’t have anything planted on them, so it will always be a bit daunting in hot weather.

   Even more daunting when there’s a huuuuuuge throng of humanity ahead. Part of the problem is that there are now three chokepoints in front of any of the WDW parks. Last is the actual ticket turnstiles, where things get slowed down because everything now has a connect-the-park-pass-to-the-fingerprints system that, despite clear signage, half the visitors don’t seem to be able to operate. Middle is the actual ticket purchase kiosks, which we were able to bypass. But first in line, and newest, is the package check.

   I’m not sure what they’re looking for at these. They first appeared post-9/11, so supposedly it’s for security, but short of spotting, I dunno, someone carrying in a pistol or something, what’s the point? Nobody’s being patted down, and if I were actually trying to sneak something in, it would be trivial.

   Most of the line guards are pleasantly professional; the one in charge of the section we went through at AK was — well, not, really. He was not-quite-haranging folks to make sure that they had their package zippers open, etc. He sounded like a harried parent trying to get his kids to do somethign the right way, which is probably not the “good show” Disney is looking for.

4. Got inside and grabbed a stroller. On our way toward the Tree of Life, we did one of our very few PhotoPass picture sessions. All the official in-park Disney photographers store their pics digitally, and transmit them back to the mothership. People can either check them out on their way out of the park, or go online for up to 30 days to view them there. We did a lot less of that this year than we have before.

5. Did Africa first. FastPassed the safari ride, then took the train up to Rafiki’s Eco-World — which, though a bit hokey and heavy-handed, also has some nice educational materials for kids, which Katherine had a lot more appreciation for this year. Plus, they have a petting zoo.

   Rode on the Safari after that, which was, as always, fun (and the FP was definitely worth it, bypassing a huge hunk of line).

6. From there, we went over to Asia — FPed the Kali River Rapids ride, then Margie went off to see if she could do FPs on Expedition Everest (no). She caught up to us at the Maharja’s Palace, which, like so much else in this particular park, is intensely “environmental,” showing attention to detail in the buildings and landscaping that’s truly remarkable. While many pooh-pooh AK as the poor cousin at WDW, it is, in many ways, the “best done” park.

   Everyone cooled off at a big public fountain, then we wandered over for lunch (which, after the hell of getting it, was a tasty, shady, relaxing interlude). Hopped over to the Bug’s Life show (again, cool and shady), then headed over to our FP time on Kali River Rapids.

   The FP got us through a lot of line, and was well worth it. The ride remains about half too short and insufficiently wet after climactic rapids drop, but it was still nice and cooling.

   Expedition Everest was out of FPs for the day, and was going to be a two hour wait, so we bagged that, and decided to come back another day for Dino Land USA. We headed back for the lodge.

7. We got about twenty minutes of swimming before lightning closed the pool. We went back to our rooms and got ready for shopping and dinner — after cocktails.

   The shopping part was heading down to Downtown Disney Marketplace, where Katherine finally got some face painting in. Did a bit of poking around in the shops, then headed over to the Marketplace bus depot at 8:20, which was more than enough time for our 9:00 p.m. reservations for Boma, right?

   Well, barely not. Big Lesson to Remember: Downtown Disney is an awful transportation center; busses seem to take forever to get there, and being in one corner of WDW and interacting with “real world” traffic, it takes a long time to get anywhere. Easy to get there, tough to get away.

   As it was we got to AK Lodge at 9, and I trotted inside to let them know we were there.

8. Boma was, as we remembered it, great. A wonderful buffet potpourri of food, both “western” and African themed. Everyone found many somethings to eat, and we had some good South African wine to go with it.

   Kitten crashed late in the meal, having been a real trooper all day. I carried her back to the bus depot.

   A note about the Disney bus system, in case it wasn’t obvious through the notes here. Every resort has busses that go to all parks and entertanment centers (e.g., Downtown Disney), and, thus, every park/center has busses that go to all the resorts.

   But the corollary to that is that, in most cases, if you want to go from one resort to another (e.g., Port Orleans to Animal Kingdom Lodge), you have to do it in two legs — PO to a park/center to AKL.

   There are a couple of exceptions — some of the locations are connected by water (e.g., Disney-MGM to Swan & Dolphn to Yacht Club to Boardwalk to Epcot), and there’s also the Transportation Center (busses to/from everywhere, plus a tie to the monorail system), but it remains more difficult to get between resorts than one woiuld immediately think.

   Which is why, when we caught the bus from AK Lodge to Downtown Disney, planning on going from there to Port Orleans, and we were the only seven people on the bus, the bus driver, a very nice gent named Bruce, called to get cleared to take us straight back to PO.

   Which was a nice way to end the evening.

Actually posted 6 June, but backdated to the day in question.