September 20th, 2011
So, last week was really, really crazy. Mike and Cindy (I will not name last names) came down to Florida for a week. Since they couldn’t get their timeshare on Disney property, they rented a condo off property, wherein they could see the top half of the various Disney Park fireworks at night. I met up with them on Wednesday night, just in time to see the Light Parade at Magic Kingdom. It went down like this:
I got off work, rushed to costuming, got changed and rushed out to the bus ring where I caught the Magic Kingdom bus. I got to the TTC, caught a monorail to the park, rushed up to the locker rental, got a locker. And then marched inside. Cindy texted me that they were in front of the Emporium. I spotted across the street from where I was standing. So, because the sidewalks were crowded with people, I turned left and tried to burrow my way past the crowds to meet up with them. I got a good fifty feet only to realize that the opening for the parade to come through was right between where I was and where Emporium was. So I turned around and rushed back through the crowds in a desperate attempt to beat Tinkerbell. Literally racing her float to get far enough down the street that I could cross.
I paused only once to ask somebody and they pointed further down. So I was forced to “please” and “excuse me” through hordes of people. I got to the crossing and had to shove my way past families to get out into the street. As I crossed, I glanced to my left, where the parade was coming straight at me. Talk about WHOA! Made it to the other side and rushed back down to the Emporium, trying to catch the dancing fairies and the Tinkerbell float as it passed. I finally decided to just stop and watching the parade and then find Mike and Cindy afterwards. Lemme tell you, the parade was beautiful. I saw Peter fighting Hook to the death on Hook’s ship, I saw Snow White dancing in the street with five of the seven dwarves. I saw Prince Charming momentarily. I witnessed a mighty dragon make his way down the street and even saw the biggest, lit-up American flag in the history of American flags. It was, to put it simply, amazing.
Afterwards, the crowd exploded into all sorts of directions, a good percentage stampeding for the exit while another gigantic percentage headed for the Castle to see Wishes. I forged through the crowds up and down Main St, USA in front of the Emporium, looking for Mike and Cindy. I found them, after cautiously walking up to a guy who looked like Mike and circling to stand in front of him. He called my name and I turned. They had me lead them to a good spot for Wishes and I got two pictures in front of the lit-up castle with them. I set them down in a beautiful spot and then, midway through the show, had to abandon them in favor of, quite literally, racing back past the crowds to reach the locker rentals and return my key before all hell br0ke loose. And, when I say that, I don’t mean it in jest. When Wishes ends and Magic Kingdom closes, things get scary. I made if, of course, and stood around waiting outside the gate. I was waiting by turnstiles that weren’t being used to get the masses out. Even so, I watched one family open one of the stroller/wheelchair gates and exit. Of course, that lead to a whole flood of people following. I ran down to the nearest Main Gate personnel and asked if they were supposed to leave that way. At his negative, I offered to close the gate, saying I was a worker from Hollywood Studios. His harried smile was extremely grateful and I darted back to the gate. One woman I tried to stop looked at me as though I was stupid and refused to stop, she forced her way through and went on to catch one of the three modes of transportation out of Magic Kingdom. I stopped the next family and sent them to one of the actual turnstiles where a personnel was waiting.
Cindy texted me that they were sitting in front of the main sign and I rushed down to meet them. They came out of the gate and we headed for one of the monorail lines. The first one we got on, we realized it was the Resort Monorail and left the line to get into the Express Monorail line (Express goes right to TTC, whereas Resort stops at the Contemporary and then the TTC and two other hotels). I convinced them to take the bus and lead the way past the resort ferries, the TTC ferry line (which was huge) and down the wrong path. We had to turn around and go back to where the paths diverged to head towards the buses, only to have a parking personnel turn us around. The TTC bus wasn’t running that night. Why? Because the demand to get back to resorts was higher than the demand to get to the TTC. I disagree, the lines for the two major routes (Express Monorail and TTC Ferry) were horrifyingly long. Still, we headed back with a little tidbit of advice, to take the Resort Monorail since the line was shorter and since the second stop was the TTC.
It took us a while, but we got onto a monorail and headed out. Second stop, we got off and headed to the line for the trams. Got onto a tram, were dropped off deep in the parking lots and then we all climbed into the car that Mike and Cindy had rented for the week. They drove to Chatham Square and waited while I ran off to my apartment and packed some stuff. Then we headed of to their condo. After a little conversation, we all headed to bed. I had a room that had two queen sized beds, a tv, it’s own bathroom (with a lovely shower stall) and the washer/dryer in the hall. It was fantastic. I stayed up watching TV before I finally convinced myself to turn it off and sleep. After sleeping for almost a month with another person in the same room, it was really hard to sleep in that beautiful room by myself. I missed my roomie, Mandy, like mad.
I woke up near to 11am (we’d all gotten to bed at about 2am) and immediately felt bad as we’d planned to head out to Universal Studios that morning. All was well, though. They weren’t mad and we spent several hours watching Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles before I did some necessary homework and we all headed off to the water park at the resort (one of two, I later learned). We went around the lazy river several times, sat around in the sun and generally lazed around. At one point, I called my mom and got the okay to go to Islands of Adventure the next day. I was worried about the expense, but Mom said go for it (I’d gotten my financial aid refund the day before). Later on, Cindy and I went and played Putt-Putt Golf, which was fun and really hard.
The night ended with us going out and getting Chinese, which they kindly paid for, and then another stop at my apartment so my roomies could, very generously, come down and give me my camera/camera case. We went back to the condo and everyone went to bed. I had another restless night, struggling to get to sleep in a too-empty room and turning the tv on and off to try to appease myself. The next morning, my alarm woke me at 7:30am, I sprung out of bed and into the shower. I’d washed my clothes the night before, Mike and Cindy had been kind enough to invite me to use the washer/dryer they had at the condo for free (it’s $1 per load per wash/dry. So, $2 for one load to go through washer and dryer at the apartments). We all got dressed, ate breakfast and left.
We got to Universal Studios, decided on preferred parking and headed into CitiWalk (you have to go through that to get to either Islands of Adventure or Universal Studios). I took pictures of EVERYTHING! I went and bought my ticket to Islands of Adventure while they waited and then we all headed inside. First, we made a beeline for Harry Potter, bypassing Seussland & Lost Continent on the way. We started there by heading right to Dragon Challenge, after first getting some snaps of Hogsmeade and the train. In Universal Studios, you can’t take your stuff on the rides, so they have rentable lockers near every ride. You can rent such lockers for free for a certain amount of time, after that time is up it’s $3 per, like half an hour or something. Except near the water rides, oddly, where it $3 no matter what. So, we rented a locker and got on Dragon Challenge. I have to say, the ride was amazing, but the seats were a little uncomfortable for a bigger person.
We got off and picked up some butterbeer, which Mike very kindly bought for me. We got the frozen variety (there’s the cold variety also, but I learned that that one was waaaay sweeter), which was amazing. It had a nice butterscotch taste without being overly sickly sweet. It took us a while to finish that off, so we meandered over towards the castle. I made a stop at the girls’ bathroom and had a mild freakout when I kept hearing Moaning Myrtle’s voice. It was an awesome, if slightly freaky, feature for the bathroom. I dunno what the guys’ had. I told Cindy and she decided she’d have to visit the restroom later for it. We finished our drinks and headed off for the next ride. The Forbidden Journey. It was AMAZING. I’ll actually go into details, but warning. If you haven’t ridden the ride and plan to and don’t want it to be spoiled DO NOT READ THIS PART:
So, it said about 20 minute wait, which was cool with us. We got into the line and weaved our way up to the door to get into the castle, through a green house with mandrakes! We went through the open doors and saw a statue (none of us had cameras with us for the first time, but we brought them second time around), beautiful with lion near the feet. Of course that’s what I remember most, was the lion. And then we passed the point counter for Hogwarts. I think there was another statue before we got to the big circular area with the beautiful bird. A tapestry on the wall was next. We passed through a wonderful area where Dumbledore was waiting, a room wherein the paintings on the walls were discussing the “muggles within Hogwarts’s walls”. And then, the most exciting moment, we got into a big room where Harry, Ron and Hermione were mid-warning about the adventure to come. They disappeared under the invisibility cloak and left. Just as we were leaving the hall, they were coming back to warn others. The reason it was a 20 minute wait? All the little things to look at along the way.
After the warning from the trio, we stepped onto the ride platform. It was something I was familiar with. You step onto a moving walkway, just like at several popular Disney attractions and climb into your bench and sit down. When I first got in, I sat next to Mike, but the attendant asked me to move down to the end. I did with some confusion and trepidation. I got buckled in and off we headed. Hermione was the first to greet us by asking us to say a spellword and then she threw some dust or powder at us, which let the bench fly. She told us Harry and Ron would meet up with us. We passed through some great stone…areas, can’t really call them hallways, but still. Which is where we ran into Ron and Harry who flew us around the castle. We passed under a bridge wherein Hagrid stood holding an empty chain asking if we’d seen a dragon. That’s when Mr. Dragon showed up. Ron disappeared and we followed Harry through some pretty amazing aerial stunts. We left him and ran into a tower, where the dragon caught up with us. This is where I first learned why the attendant had had me move down. The ride is a combination of simulation and animatronics. And there was a giant dragon waiting for us. It turned it’s head as we passed, preparing to fire at us. I thought that, like most Disney rides, it would just miss us. Nope. It got me. I screamed when it first showed up and then I screamed even more when I realized it was gonna get me. I was enveloped in a plume of smoke and red light. After that, Harry met up with us and took us right smackdab in the middle of a quidditch match. A bunch of dementors showed up and we spiraled out into the forbidden forest. A run-in with some spiders had me freaking and squirming in my seat, in a rather pathetic effort to get out or run away. Those animatronic spiders got really close, I’m telling you!
We pulled out of the spider infested forest and ran into more dementors. One of them sucked my soul out, or tried to. Apparently Harry saved my poor, soulless butt. We pulled out of the forest and nearly got clobbered by the whomping willow (like seriously, animatronic willow, freaked me out). But we helped Harry save the day and everyone clapped. As I got off, Dumbledore reminded us to grab our belongings from the back of the seat. As I got up, I noticed a little area of the seat that could be popped out to slid cameras and phones into. Nothing huge, very small, but useful as, when you’re on the ride, it’s part of the seat.
We caught a ride on a hippogriff after that and then headed out of Hogsmeade and over to Jurassic Park. We stopped in the Discovery Center for a meal wherein Mike and Cindy paid for three all-day meal days, once more providing food for me. With our new meal-deal wrist bracelet things on, and a fully stomach, we headed out to catch a ride in Jurassic Park itself. We saw some very friendly dinosaurs on the ride only to get diverted, probably by the raptors, into the dangerous area where the raptors were wrecking havoc. We heard some ominous sounds from T-Rex and ran right into him before falling down a huge water-hill and getting soaked. It was terrifying and awesome. All of the other rides in the area, there were only three altogether, were either kiddy rides (the pteradactyl ride) or closed. So, we headed to Toon Lagoon where, again, only one ride was open. Ripsaw Rapids.
Ripsaw Rapids had us helping Dudly Dooright save the girl and beat the badguy, and get soaked doing it. It was spectacular fun and we all walked off with squelchy shoes. We headed over to Island of Heroes or whatever where the Marvel Superheroes were wandering around. I considered a picture with Captain America before deciding against it (I later regretted this choice). We got on the Hulk, which also had uncomfortable seats, even the “modified” seats were uncomfortable, but the ride itself was amazing. It took you up on the chain like any other roller coaster and, near the top, shot us up and out. I screamed myself hoarse. We, as a group, decided to get on the Spiderman ride, which turned out to be worth it when we realized it used similar technology to Forbidden Journey. Except with 3-D glasses and we were in a car, running around getting pictures of the Super-Action for Peter Parker’s jerk of a boss. Spiderman had to save our butts quite a lot.
We headed over to Seussland, where we caught the cute, crazy Cat in the Hat ride and then got on the people mover which was almost annoyingly cute. The Lost Continent had nothing of interest for us, no rides, just shows. So we forged back to Harry Potter, where we finished by re-riding Dragon Challenge and Forbidden Journey (I got the same seat and screamed my fool head off, again). This time, for Forbidden Journey, we took our cameras and spent the “20 minute wait time” taking pictures. Ferserious, the wait time is just all the time spent taking pictures. At least, in off-season. Otherwise, it’s a walk-on ride. Again, off-season. With a second dose of Butterbeer, we went back to Suessland for a second meal. We went back to Harry Potter to do some mild shopping (I bought a chocolate frog and some Pumpkin Juice, that’s it), but we found most things to be too expensive. For instance, the robes are $100 apiece. No way.
It was about the time that we were heading out of Islands of Adventure that I took another look at my ticket. I realized that the ticket booth guy had up-talked me into buying a ticket for both parks. A two-park ticket. I told Mike and Cindy, feeling frustrated that I got tricked like that. Cindy told me that, with an hour left, I could head over and hit the ride I really wanted (the Hollywood Rippin’ Rocket). And guess what? I hit it twice! It’s another, oddly enough, ride that has a moving belt, so you have to hurry to get on and they had to press the bar a notch further than I would have liked, but what can a big girl do? Anywho, then you have to quickly choose some music or, as I found out on my second ride, it’ll choose for you. Then you, quite literally, go straight up. And are shot straight back down. Both times I got on the ride, I was lucky enough to get right in front. BOTH TIMES! And it was freaking AWESOME!! There’s a camera that tapes your ride and you get to view it afterwards, which is hilarious.
I left the park and headed back to the parking lot where I met up with Mike and Cindy again. Cindy asked if I’d made it to the Mummy. I told her I hadn’t, as I’d been too afraid of wasting time with walking. She told me next time I came I had to hit that ride as it was well worth it. And, I’m sure, next time I go, I’ll go to Universal Studios and I’ll hit all the movie-rides. Although Harry Potter alone is worth choosing Islands of Adventure over Universal Studios.
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