Seeking, seizing the Kingdom

Yesterday started with the previous post, while my wife slept soundly. She stirred about an hour after I made some coffee in the room. We didn’t get on the Boardwalk until about 12:30p, which put us at MGM Studios around 1p. Joy and I were on our own for the day. We had to catch the rides we didn’t have time for the night before, so we went on the Great Movie Ride, which features scenes from a lot of classic movies, many of which are old black and white movies, The Little Mermaid the musical, and Drew Carey’s “Sounds Dangerous”.

From there, we bused to Epcot, where we hopped on Test Track, the fastest ride at Disney World. We were waiting in line where we met up with my family. We got to ride on the track with them, which was great fun. Joy and I split off again, the fam was going to finish up at Epcot, then rest at the hotel before taking in the Magic Kingdom around 7p. We went on Mission: Space. I was on the Orange team, Joy was on Green. The forces were so intense, there were a couple seconds where I thought I could have blacked out, even with my pilot training.

We saw Honey, I Shrunk the Audience. After that, we went to the World Showcase in Peru, and sampled some duck with cilantro rice, in Greece we tried a spinach & cheese pastry, followed by bangers & mash at the Rose & Crown Pub in the UK.

We made our way to the monorail system, which took us to the Magic Kingdom, which is Joy’s favorite park. We called the fam to see where they were. They were running late (a bit of a theme throughout, but not a bother), so we started in on the attractions. We started with Stitch’s great escape, which used to be the Alien Experience. I liked it more before they changed it, because it was such a thriller. After that, we went on the Indy Speedway, a lot like antique cars at Valleyfair, but a little faster.

The fam caught up with us after the speedway, and we stopped for a bite at the burger joint. They had a nice topping bar. I loaded up on pickes, onions and tomato. We finished there around 9p, just in time to see the fireworks show from just a few feet away! Now comes the best part, where the park closes for most of the guests, but members get to stick around for “extra magic”. It took a while, but things cleared out, which made the rides much more accessible, and the lines shorter. We yo-ho-ho’d our way through Pirates of the Caribean, made our way through the Jungle Cruise boat ride with my cousin guiding us safely through the ancient temple.

We concluded our time with two trips through Space Mountain. Joy sat in front the first time, then I sat in the front the second time. They have two tracks, so we got to scream our way through both of them! We got to finish with a shoot-em-up ride with Buzz Lightyear’s spin ride, where we travel though space and shoot all of Zurg’s equipment. My family did really well at that, I think they had some practice in their time here in years past.

Today I’d like to head through Epcot’s World Showcase one last time, seeing all the attractions if time allows. I’ve become much more interested in history and world cultures in the past couple years. Later this afternoon, we’re heading to Vero beach, where I should be able to post finally. If all goes well, you should be able to read this by tonight. Thus shall begin the second, longer, slower, and more relaxing half of our vacation.

Disney charges $10 a day for internet here at the World, and I couldn’t justify it to myself. I haven’t been able to check on my team yet this week. Occasionally, I think of them, and hope they are fairing well without me… and Jeffrey. Jeffrey is one of the senior members of the team (I don’t just mean in experience either ;^) ), and is our lead engineer for the project. He takes all the great ideas I have ;^), and figures out how we’re actually get them to work. Wouldn’t you know, our vacations ended up on the same week?

It’s quarter after 9 now, so I should get going if I’m going to make it all the way around the showcase. Later!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 8:22 am and is filed under Entertainment, Family, Food, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.