September 15, 2013

Day 9

Also known as my last full day. I have two ADR’s today, lunch at Coral Reef and dinner at Trails End. This will be my first time trying Trails End. So this means I will be park hopping again. I will spend the morning at Epcot till after lunch then park hop to the Magic Kingdom to spend the rest of the night there. Since I have seen Illuminations twice, figure to see Wishes a second time too.

Ever since the power failure the previous night, I never bothered resetting the clock radio next to my bed. I even turn it around so I don’t see the numbers flashing. I use my wrist watch and smart phone for the time. Just too lazy to set it.

I set my smart phones alarm to wake me up at 6:30 to my shoutcast feed of background music heard around Disney World.

Even though the alarm goes off at 6:30, its 8:30 before I get myself out of bed. I am at the bus stations at 9:45. I see a bus already loading for Epcot, so I wait till it leaves before entering the queue.

I get breakfast at Sunshine Seasons,

my usual Big bounty breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon and more bacon as they were out of sausages. I get a Orange Juice.

After eating I head to ride Soarin.

After Soarin, I go on Living with the Land. Here is the video.

Then I leave to ride Journey into your Imagination with Figment, one last time, maybe. Entering the queue, I see something I am not used to, a line. The wait was about 10 minutes. Here is this video.

After Journey, I have a Fastpass plus for Test Track, so I cross the plaza to head to Test Track and ride that.

Here is a still photo of the car I create.

Here is the video.

I then went on Spaceship Earth again. They edited out the interlocking NY again from my hat again. What a bunch of low lifes who operate the ride, how petty they are. To allow personal bias to effect guests vacation experiences is inexcusable. I know when I am dealing with customers, I bite my tongue if there is something I don’t like about a stranger. And my employer isn’t known for promoting customer service. I did send the video to my home, but I was probably so pissed, I mistyped my email address, because I never received it. I did record it with my mini-DV camcorder, but the tape I used turned out to be defective. Probably better off not having it because how angry it gets me. It is just plain wrong. When leaving the ride, I snidely spoke to the CM’s saying interesting software, how it can just erase just the NY logo.

I go and have lunch at Coral Reef. After eating is when I noticed there was a problem with my camcorder when I wanted to view the video I took at Spaceship Earth. It looks like its going to start raining, very dark, matches my mood right now. I am going to World Showcase and ride Maelstrom.

I go into Mexico and ride Grand Fiesta Tour. Here is the video.

Then I go ride Maelstrom, here is the video.

After Maelstrom, I had to watch the movie, as it was already running, and the scooter with the canopy would be in the way of people watching it, so I head to the rear of the theater and watch the movie for a couple of minutes.

After leaving Norway, I did a quick tour around the rest of World Showcase. After Japan, they have the drawbridge up to bring in the boats for Illuminations.

I stop by the train set by Germany, take some photos.

before heading to the monorail station to head to Ticket Transportation Center, to head to Magic Kingdom.

I took the monorail from Epcot to the TTC. Entering the Epcot monorail station, you need to travel 3 ramps to get up to where you board the monorail.  What I didn’t know till I got up there was there is a elevator for handicap parties. Here is a short video of the monorail entering the station.

I thought the trip via monorail between TTC and Epcot was like 18 minutes.  I videotaped the whole thing in less then 5.  Here is the trip on video. I think my car was on a bad tire, notice how the ride isn’t so smooth.

I guess its been too long since I did that trip to remember correctly.  I then took the ferry to the Magic Kingdom. 

Here is that video.

I rode over to the Contemporary to do some shopping. While there, I found a outlet and plugged in my scooter to charge. 

I bought some more pins, not to trade, but to hold onto. I also picked up another towel for my purchase too. At the resorts convenience store, they have some Disney Trivia, I aced it. Here are the questions, will answer it at the end of this resort.

I head out to the terrace and take this photo of Space Mountain as seen from The Contemporary.

I was there for just about 1/2 hr.  The scooter felt better riding back to the MK, but that was it. 

I have a ADR at Trails End, so instead of going in the park. I head to the boat that goes to Fort Wilderness. Getting on the boat and off at Fort Wilderness, the charge on the battery makes the scooter feel weak.

Here is a photo as we approach the water bridge that takes us from Seven Seas Lagoon (Disney Created) to Bay Lake (Nature created)

Here we see the road that the water bridge goes over. This road is used by Disney Buses to take guests to the Magic Kingdom.

On the way over to Fort Wilderness, I get some shots of River Country with a good zoom camera. What I can see, I remember from over a dozen years ago, the swing arm platforms and rock face. It still looks like it can reopen, but I am sure it cant that easily. It just looks abandoned. Here are the photos. Remember, I was in a moving boat, so some are a little blurry due to boat movement. When we are approaching the water bridge, we have to go slow, as the signs show.

This was the first time eating at Trails End.  It was ok, but not worth the effort to make it there.  I had lots of fried chicken.  The Mac and cheese was also good.  The had a carving station of brisket, but the meat was very fatty.

I left most of it over.

As I am typing this.  Its 9:30 pm at night.  MK is open till 1 am.  I originally thought to go there, but with concerns about the charge of the batteries on scooter, and oh yea.. my camcorder broken, really soured my mood. And yes, Spaceship Earth too.

I carry a Sony mini –DV camcorder because of how it works in the dark rides like Haunted Mansion, Pirates, etc.  I used it yesterday and even today.  I went to play it back, and no picture or sound.  Its broken :(  When I get back to Brooklyn I will see if a known good tape has playback or not.  If a known good tape doesn’t play back, then its possible that it did record, but the playback doesn’t work.  If a known good tape plays back, then all is lost :(

I don’t know what bothers me most tonight, The jerks at SE erasing the logo again (we discussed this year after year, this was done on purpose and malice as far as I am concerned) the broken camcorder, or it’s the end of my trip.

I was planning to go back to MK, but when I got at Trails End, I wanted to give the scooter some type of charge, but they had no outlets available.  So I didn’t want to chance getting stuck with a dead battery.  The only attraction I didn’t go on was Country Bear Jamboree.  I can live with that.  Besides which, CBJ is one of those attractions that stays open mid day only.  Oh yea, Tiki birds too I missed out on. Everything else I wanted to go on, I did at least once, some rides two to three times.

This is the longest vacation I spent here in about a dozen years.  I feel I could even stay longer by spending complete days at the water parks, and several hours at night at Disneyquest.

Probably sleep allot on the train ride home.

I take the boat back to the Magic Kingdom, then head to the bus for Pop Century.

I get back to the room, I find a cute towel animal.

I take once last swim by the 50’s pool.

My room is in the building that I placed the arrow on. My room was in the rear, second room from the right.

After my late night swim, I head back to my room. Just have the morning to pack up. Hey Yogi, its over L

P.S. Once back home in Brooklyn, Concerning my camcorder, I used (or tried to) two different Mini-DV tapes. It turns out the first once worked just fine, but the other two brand new tapes I bought years ago, but never opened, were bad, when placed inside the camcorder, it dirtied the heads. After I got back from my trip, I bought a tape cleaner and used it on my camcorder. The first tape I used, had all the video, but the second one didn’t. It turned out the new tapes were no good, and immediately dirtied the heads. I had to use the tape cleaner every time I tried them. At least the camcorder wasn’t permanently broken. The salesman at the store told me the feature I love with this camcorder, the dark infrared recording technology system is only found on top of the line camcorders now, not on models in this price range.

Answers to trivia questions.

1) Imageworks is found in the post ride area of Journey into your Imagination with Figment, found at the Imagination Pavilion in Future World at Epcot.

2) An imagineer, possibly Tony Baxter, was watching Magnum PI when one of the characters said Figment. The rest is history.

3) In the opening day attraction, Dreamfinder and Figment sang you the One little Spark song throughout the ride.

4) One little spark creates Imagination.

5) I will admit, I wasn’t sure on this one. Without thinking too hard, Eric Idle came to mind as the actor in the question, but I kept thinking it was a rock musician’s name I was getting confused with, but I was right.