Well, I’ve been back from Florida for a few days now (Tpau, I have a bar of chocolate for you as requested), so I figure it’s about time for an update.
Florida was nice. Warm, and very little rain. Wish I could say the same about Waltham these past few days. We had a very nice set of lodgings, although it wasn’t well designed for six people. Most of our days were spent doing the Disney thing, between the four major parks and the two major waterparks. We didn’t try too hard to do more than that because there was enough there to take up our time. I was last in Disney about ten years ago, and while many things were the same, Animal Kingdom and Blizzard Beach were new to me. For my parents, this was even more the case, my father having never been, and my mother not having been since the late 70’s, when Magic Kingdom was the only park. I wasn’t surprised that they were unable to see and do everything they wanted to. I was surprised that my brother and his girlfriend weren’t, because they’ve both been in the last decade or less. Speaking of which, if any of you are going, I’m still holding onto two non-expiring tickets with one day left on them, so if you’d like an extra day, or a day pass for a guest, talk to me; perhaps an arrangement can be made.
Of the four parks, I still like Epcot’s for it’s World Showcase the best. It’s got the best restaurants, and a wonderful variety of little things to see and do without terribly many lines. MGM ran a good second, with the Animation Studio, the automobile stunt spectacular (Imported from Disney Paris for this year), and the ever popular Indiana Jones stunt show. The best part, however, were the fireworks and lightshows. We went back to Magic Kingdom just to see the fireworks again.
Animal Kingdom was new to me, and to be frank, a bit of a dissapointment. I can tell that if I go back in five or ten years, that I’ll likely reverse my opinion. I had a good time there, but was still let down by a few things. First, while we were able to see plenty of birds, particularly dozens of different ducks and other waterfowl, there was a distinct shortage of other animals. It may have been that it was the middle of a hot day, but on the safari tour, we mostly saw antelope, a few elephants, and a few other animals. We didn’t see any of the lions or giraffes, or other big game. We did see a few gorillas chilling in the shade, and a meerkat that I wanted to take home. The petting zoo was a complete failure, as I’ve seen better petting zoos at local town fairs. On the far edge of the park I could see that they are building a new addition to the park. Hard to miss it, as they’re building an artificial mountain in the middle of Florida, a land not known for its peaks. The prevailing guess is that it will be a new Himalayas section.
Downtown Disney was a mixed bag. I think it’s a great idea, and I can see that it is very popular for a certain crowd, but we were there on our last night, and were doing more of the family oriented stuff with my parents, so we didn’t hit the meat of the nightlife there. We did see Cirque’s La Nouba show, which proved excellent, and worth the cost. The big joykiller there was that we were unable to get access to Disney Quest, the 5 story arcade, despite having a supposedly all-inclusive pass. The reason being that the tickets we purchased were through the local navy outpost, so we could get the military discount. They purchase non-expiring tickets in bulk and then resell them to navy families. The tickets we got were from a bulk pack ordered in December of ’04, before Disney Quest was added to the all-inclusive (Ulitiamte Park Hopper for those familiar with the tickets) pass. I was very put out, especially as it turns out we could have gotten the military discount purchasing fresh tickets right from Disney. I guess the moral is that tickets are just like milk; always get the freshest you can. *grin* I got over that though and as with every other part of the vacation, managed to have a good time in spite of any snags that came up.
Since then I’ve been playing catchup at work, with my e-mail, and with all the little things that can pile up (Still trying to go through back articles nabbed by my RSS reader). Work is heading into rollout season, and there’s a certain amount of prepwork with deadlines. I’ve also got to get back in a musical frame of mind, as I have a concert on Saturday (see previous posts for more information), and I’d like that to go as well as possible.
Once that’s out of the way, I’d love to get together with people again. It’s been weeks, or months in some cases, since I’ve been able to hang out with you; so if you’d like to get together at some point, let me know and I’d be happy to.
