DisneyWorld Diary Day 3

Continuing on from last month (sorry, got distracted with December Drama), here's more of our Disney vacation diary:

Day 3
Monday, Nov. 13, 2006

It seems that staying up late the previously night has the unexpected result of making us tired the next morning. Go figure! As Magic Kingdom is really THE park, the original, the most magical and ride-packed, we wanted to spend a good chunk of time there, so that was our first park in the morning. Well, sort of morning. We made it there around 11. Of course, I had to get IN to the park, which was much more difficult than usual. I’m utterly cursed. My card didn’t work the previous night, and so I replaced it back at the hotel, and the NEW card didn’t work either. Growl. Thankfully, the CM just ran and got me a temporary card. All the rides were walk-ons AGAIN; Space Mountain, 10 minutes. Splash Mountain, 20 minutes, Winnie the Pooh, 50 minutes (although we didn’t bother to wait in line for that one. 50 minutes?? Forget about it). Yeah, what the heck is with that? We ate, and can I tell you, every place that sells burgers should have sauté pans of onions and mushrooms next to the ketchup. It took us a while to get going, but we also wanted to actually SEE the parks rather than merely run through screaming KEEP GOING!! WE NEED TO MAKE MEMORIES, DAMN IT! This time, we just watched other people do that. Can I just mention, though, that Christian apparently has a tantrum filter that I don’t possess? He also has a muffin top filter. Why do I notice these things? We did decide to keep track of all of the hilarious/terrible/memorable things other guests said while touring. The first one that we actually noted was yesterday on the Jungle Cruise when a woman said to her mother that her husband and daughter were currently on Pirates of Penzance. Of course, they were also the ones who held up the ENTIRE line so said husband and daughter could catch up.

I find Tomorrowland a little depressing if I’m in it too long, as the fine detailing and beautiful architecture of the other lands is so spoiling, so I made Christian leave after we saw Buzz (again with the crappy scores) and Stitch’s Great Escape, which was much more amusing than advertised, and made scornful comments about the “High School Musical” pep rally. We made the enormous mistake of using the bathrooms in Fantasyland (at 3 pm, prime tantrum hour) but REALLY wanted to go on Splash Mountain, my perpetual favorite ride, but we forgot our ponchos we bought for $.89 at Target before leaving home, so we had to beg for Mickey Mouse ponchos, and had to also swear that we weren’t just using them for exactly the purpose for which we WERE going to use them. I wanted to shake my finger at the little clerk and tell him that, if he had spent the first day of his honeymoon in wet underwear, and not for any good reason, that he would buy a poncho, too. The ride broke down, but we spent the half hour waiting (yes, whoopee do as the first time I rode Splash we waited two and a half hours) talking to an adorable and extremely well-spoken young girl and her younger sister, who kept us amused by stories of their hillbilly hometown. Other people were jumping ship, not wanting to wait for the ride to be back up again, but we knew that the line would be all the shorter because of it, and we should just wait. You know, I really am so cynical about some things, but that damn ride kills me every time. I’m usually grinning like an idiot and giggling at the bees and swinging, singing possums. Worth the wait. We had to leave the park at around 6, as we had a 7:50 pm dinner at the 50’s Prime Time Café at MGM, and then stay for the Extra Magic Hours.

I have to say that the whole Evening Extra Magic Hours, while wonderful and a really efficient use of time, they would have been much more useful when I was in my 20’s. I’m so old and fat that I have no stamina any more. However, dinner was delightful. The food was fine, but the diner is designed to look like 50’s kitchen interiors, and the waitstaff acts as your mother/sister/cousin and lectures you to eat your vegetables, gets mad if you tell on them (our waitress stole our silverware from another table and we were tricked into telling on her and boy, did we get an earful!) and generally acts like a louder version of a normal family. (Christian: I also accidentally touched a waitress as she was speeding by with one of my grandious, ill-timed arm gestures. For the rest of the evening she would yell “coming through” and “don’t touch me!” anytime she passed by to the kitchen.) Apparently, it used to be much more boisterous, according to our dining room neighbor. Guests would be made to stand in the corner, wouldn’t get dessert until they ate their vegetables, would have to sing a song about elbows on the table if caught, etc. It’s still a pretty hilarious place to eat dinner.

We made it on Tower of Terror, which is just such a brilliant ride, Rockin’ Rollercoaster (0-60 in 2.8 seconds, not 2.3.), Magic of Animation, the Great Movie Ride and browsed through the shops in the two hours we had remaining after dinner. I had a epiphianic moment when I realized that I need caffeine and Tylenol to make it through the evening. As I usually have an IV tea drip on most days of the week, I can’t figure out why it took me two days to figure out why I was cranky in the morning.

When the park closed, we made one of those idiotic mistakes that make your feet seem to decide that they simply no longer want to be associated with your body and suddenly hurt so much that you know for certain that they’re just torturing you because they can. We ended up having to make a huge and ill-advised loop around all of the bus stops because we went the wrong way out of the park gates. God, we were tired. We made it back to the resort and crashed like the sugar-crazed children we are.