Oralando Spring 2005 Chapter 2

Let me start with... Epcot is large. It would probably be safe to say it would take 2 days to cover it adequately. The front of the park is mostly rides while the remainder of the park is composed of several simulated countries surrounding a lake. Good rides to ride: Test track and Soaring. Bad ride: Mission Space. Let me describe this ride. You and 3 other lucky people sit inside a box that is about as roomy as a large can of spam. You are secured in by an overhead bar. The control panel is moved forward to make you feel even more cozy. Oh that special claustrophobic feeling. There is a video screen directly ahead with a vomit bag just below. They recommend focusing in on the screen at all times. I did just that, no I fought to do that. The goal of the ride is to take the role like navigator or captain, launch the ship and eventually land on mars. You are instructed to press non functional buttons along the way to feel as though you are part of this mission with your team. To simulate the G-force these metal boxes are spun around and around and around. I was told it maxed at 2G. Now that doesn't sound like much. Some roller coasters pull more than that, but they usually don't stay in an elevated G state longer than a brief second or two. This ride relishes it. First at launch and then when you slingshot around the moon to mars. I felt like my chest was going to calapse and I think my lungs left an impression on the seat. While I couldn't feel the ride spinning, my eyes kept jumping left right left right. I fought to keep them straight with the vomit bag in my peripheral vision just in case. Finally the launch was over and we were headed for the moon. Nice space, no G force good. Oh here comes the moon. I'm ready for this now...here we goooooo. Forget it, where's the frekin abort button. I'm going down with a dishonerable discharge. Well I made it around the moon with my stomach contents in tact. The remainder of the ride was tolerable. I will say it was a pretty cool simulation, but it did make me feel a bit too uncomfortable. On a sad note, one week later a 4 year old boy blacked out on the ride and passed away. There was no evidence of physical trauma and thats all that was reported. We toured most of the countries with Japan being my favorite and finished the evening watching the firework show.

It is May 31. Tuesday blues or foreshadowing against nature. We woke to the sound of rain. Damn, this was MGM day. Rain? I decided to skip the park and went to the conference instead. Around 1pm the rain abated and it was clear the rest of the day. Maybe we should have gone to MGM anyways. Too late now. I went to buy dinner after the conference and brought it back to the hotel. After dinner we called it a night. I decided rain or shine we were going to the Magic Kingdom Wednesday.

June 1, Wednesday. It was rain. Like I said yesterday, we were going to the Magic Kingdom rain or shine. I remember the day before. It stopped around 1pm. Maybe we will have the same luck today. The shuttle dropped us off at the front of the park and we hopped on the tram to the Magic Kingdom. Once inside we waited in a long line for our Mickey ponchos at 7 bucks apiece. The quality was slightly above the lawn and garden trash bag variety. Well worth the dinero. We threw them away after leaving the park due to there made in China quality (sorry Grace). The park was not too crowded yet so we attacked the rides early. The first 3 or so were virtually no wait. As the crowds swelled we started pulling fast pass tickets when possible. The rain continued. Great thing about Disney is all the rides are indoors and are pretty benign in the G-force deriving arena. No Mission Chest Pain like in Epcot. Early afternoon we went to watch the main street parade where all of the Disney characters come out. By this time the rain had lightened up. Its amazing how crowded the parade route gets. Im just waiting for Mickey or Goofy to pass out from heat exhaustion or odiferous suffocation. Note about the characters: It is more rare to see them wandering the park than I thought. And if you see one there is a huge line of kids with autograph books they bought in the gift shops. Note to kids: Save the money. Its just some poor schmuck in an over stuffed felt suit. He aint no more real than Santa Clause.sorry. Please stop crying. Ok, back to the day at hand. We saw some special yawner where Cinderella gets coroneted or crowned or married. I dont know what the hell was going on. Its getting closer to dinner time and I thought (when I shouldnt have) that it would be cool to eat in Cinderellas castle, yeah. I have never been inside, the castle that is. We were told at another restaurant via computer booking system that it was booked for the day. We went over anyways and a nice lady squeezed us in. I should have taken it as booked, but no I had push forward to eat at the Castle. Well we waited and waited, yet another warning to not eat here....