House of Mouse continued...

Our main plan of attack at the House of Mouse was to -

• try to get to each park as early as possible,
• ride the big attractions, hopefully with no crowds
• return to the hotel during the busiest, and hottest, part of the day for a swim/rest
• get back to the park around 16:00 to finish off the day.

In reality the idea of parking and driving twice in one day didn't really appeal, and the crowds didn't seem to be too bad. Anyway turning up early was definitely still the go, first to beat the heat but also to give us the best chance of riding our favourite attractions more than once. Speaking of the heat, it seems everywhere we go the locals are astounded at the local temp for the time of year. Global warming is the subject of the times I guess. Locals told us that the 85-90 degree weather, coupled with high humidity, was very unseasonable for April and more akin to full on mid-summer conditions. Safe to say, it was hot, damn hot. Lots of UV too and we made sure we all had SPF 40+ sunscreen on all the time. The air-con had to stay on all night, not something Jo likes at all while she sleeps but no choice, and it was a noisey bloody machine too.

So back to 'turning up early', Saturday found us rested up and ready to go and the Animal Kingdom had 'Extra Magic Hours' scheduled for the morning. This deal allows Disney hotel guests, like us, to get into the park earlier than non-hotel guests. Since the Animal Kingdom usually opens at 08:00 we were up very early to breakfast in our room before heading off to the park for an Extra Magic Hour starting at 07:00. One of Animal Kingdoms major attractions is the Kilimanjaro Safari and advice we received suggested that the African animals (real ones of course) were far more likely to be out early rather than in the heat of the day. So once we arrived at the park (driving and parking was a breeze really) we raced to the attraction line only to be stopped in our tracks... it wasn't going to open until 07:40, bummer. We chose to stay in line and once 07:40 rolled around we were straight into our truck-sized 4X4 (carrying about 40 ppl I'd say) and our guide 'hit the gas'. The basic plot is that you're on a 2 week safari through Africa and you come across some elephant poachers along the way, you become passengers on a rescue mission to save a baby elephant. To be honest, who cares? It added some colour to the trip but the real attraction was the design of the landscape, frankly it was awesome. Around 40 acres has been lovingly transformed into several different types of African landscape from jungle to grassland. At no point could we see anything else, like buildings and hotels, from our ride and you could easily have sworn you were in Africa. The massive Boab trees were very cool. Obviously some animals have to be kept seperated from the others and this is done in a very creative and very hard to detect way. Some ostriches decided to hold us up for a few minutes by standing on the track and refusing to move and a rhino walked within a few meters of the truck, serious reach out and touch time. Honestly I couldn't imagine seeing all the animals we saw, as up close and personal, on a real safari, and it didn't have any zoo-like feeling to it at all. In all it's a pretty cool experience, and being our first real Disney ride we were pretty happy. Sadly the ride was so bumpy (bloody realistic savanah-style track!) that all of our photos, digital of course, came out badly.

Next up was some pure fun as we walked to Asia (all the theme parks have different areas, Animal Kingdom is broken up into Africa, Asia etc) and jumped straight onto Kali River Rapids with no wait at all (awesome!). The deal here was an 8 seater (4 groups of 2) circular raft with a round centre console for stowing your belongings. The raft is carried up a conveyer and then floats free down a man-made river, complete with rapids, waterfalls, caves and heaps of ways to get wet. Now the main soaking is reserved for only 2 of the 8 riders and you never know which twin-seat is gunna get it. As the raft approaches a long steep drop it's still turning/spinning around... sorta like russian-roulette but you just get soaked unstead. We had jumped into a raft that already had a granny and grandson who had stayed on from the last ride (it wasn't busy at all) and they were already saturated, luckily for us their luck continued and they got drenched again :-). I kept the video camera out for a few shots but it was just too wet to really risk it, check out a short clip by clicking the photo on the right... the signs as you walk into the ride say 'you might get wet', trust me if you're one of the two in the 'wet' seat you're gunna get a dunking! Anyway we stayed on the ride for a second go around and missed out again, on the third go (again we didn't have to get off, excellent!) Jo said she'd had enough as she was a bit wet so I stayed on with the kids... this time it looked like Cam and I were in for it but at the last moment the raft spun and the girls copped the wave of water, nice!

So there we were, nicely into our Disney experience, fascinated, thrilled (a bit at least) and wet. And it was only 9:00 in the morning. A new attraction had just opened, the major new attraction at DisneyWorld for 2006, Expedition Everest a roller coster featuring the Yeti and running backwards at 90kph in the dark. Jo and the girls went on it first and then I went on alone, Cam was too short and missed out, although that was probably for the best. It was pretty cool, but since it was in the dark there wasn't much to see and, for me anyway, it took the edge off the scare not being able to see the corners and drops. Anyway the mountain was impressive and I can attest to it being a pretty good scaled down version of the actual peak (Dad has hooked me onto the real Everest through some books and films).

Each Disney park has a central landmark, at Magical Kingdom it's the ubiquitous Cinderella's Castle, at Epcot it's the golf-ball-like Spaceship Earth, at Disney-MGM it's Mickey's huge wizards hat from Fantasia. At Animal Kingdom it's the 15 or so storey high Tree of Life. Directly under the tree, in a huge cave modeled like an ant burrow is the ‘Its Tough to be a Bug’ 3D cinema where we saw a pretty cool 3D show complete with squirts in the face when the bug on screen sneezes, disgusting smell when another bug stinks up the place and a seat that rippled under your bum to simulate termites in the wood work. All fun and full of surprises, not sure who liked it more, us or the kids. So far we really hadn’t had to wait in line for anything, not more than 10 minutes, but the advice for the Lion King show was to get there nice and early and we did end up waiting in line for 30 or so minutes before the doors finally opened on that one. Thank goodness it was air conditioned, awesome! Anyway there were several other attractions but that’s the best of it for now. Disney-MGM, Epcot and Magic Kingdom to go... but that can wait for next time, I’m stuffed (it’s been 35 degrees here and our air-con aint working)! Cya.

Into the Jaws of a Mouse

To put our Disney World trip into perspective I'd like to tell you about a book that we borrowed from a local friend called 'The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2005'. I both loved and hated this book. It's structured in a similar way to many Lonely Planet guides for various countries of the world. In fact the Disney guide has 800+ pages, only about 80 less than my Lonely Planet guide for Canada. How can a set of theme parks warrant a similar number of words as a whole country? I think that there are several reasons...

Firstly these aren't just any theme parks, Jo and I have dreamed of going to Disneyland since we were kids and Disney World is Disneyland times four (there are four theme parks not just one). Our expectations were pretty high as Disney is the original and has the reputation, quality, attention to detail, wonderous and pure kids magic. Certainly Disney is still marketed in this way, more so now that there is lots of competion in the forms of Universal Studios, Wonderland, Busch Gardens etc. Funnily enough I don't think the kids had the same expectations that we did... they weren't as 'in awe' of Disney as we'd grown up being.

Secondly, from what we've heard and seen lots of people plan their Disney holidays to an incredible level of detail, so the more info you have up front the easier it is to do this. Some restaurants in Disney need to be booked 12 months in advance if you go in peak season. Imagine having to book every meal and every move you'll make on a holiday one year in advance...

And finally, Disney is a freakishly popular place and it gets busier than you can imagine. The guide lists all sorts of tips and tricks for beating the crowds and saving cash (cash being something that Disney is phenomonally good at extracting from its guests). The book has numerous touring guides for every park (one for singles and couples, one for parents with young children, one for those with 2 days to spend per park) designed to keep you ahead of the crushing crowds and walking onto rides and into attractions with minimal waiting in line.

So I started reading the guide book about 3 months before we left and frankly it scared the shit out of me. The number of things the book told us to consider in making our choices boggled my mind in ways it had not been boggled before (and I've worked for the government before so that takes doing). Just choosing a hotel became a task of monumental proportions and rather than giving me comfort in my choice the book gave me so many things to consider that I had no idea whether I'd done the right thing... All this sounds pretty stupid on reflection, Jo and I are pretty mellow when it comes to planning stuff, we're more go-with-the-flow people (as anyone who has expected us to arrive on time will atest to). But against my normal instincts I wanted to make sure that this would be a perfect Disney experience, let's face it we're unlikely to go back for a long time if ever. In the end I booked three restaurants (effectively locking us into going to those parks on those days) and left the rest to chance.

On Wednesday Jo and I kicked the kids off the school while we finished packing. Just after lunch we dropped into school, picked the kids up early and set off for Buffalo, New York state. It's much cheaper to fly within the US than it is to depart from Toronto so we've previously driven over the border to Buffalo, stayed overnight in a hotel and then flown out from there. Works nicely and saves us about $1000 in airfares. Not realising that we'd left Cam's stuffed toys (including the ever-present Bunny) in the hotel room we made our flight to Orlando, Florida and cruised south for two and a half hours into warmer weather.

We picked up the rental car, a Chevy HHR much like the PT-Cruiser, and headed to the Port Orleans Riverside hotel inside 'the World'. Now our original plan had been to hit a water park on our arrival day (like Wet'n'Wild on the Gold Coast), but I had checked the NASA website and saw that a rocket launch was now confirmed for today so we switched our plan and immediately after checking in took the one hour drive out to Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Centre. Almost straight after we arrived the power went out (something to do with some construction of a new Shuttle simulator ride) and we lost lights, air-con, IMAX cinema's and the snack bars couldn't prepare any more food (with the kids staving!). Nice start. The Centre was pretty packed given the launch and we had to wait 40 minutes in the heat for a bus to the Apollo/Saturn5 exhibit where we planned to view the blast off. All in all the kids were pretty awesome, with only minor complaining (or maybe my memory is fading already).

The Cape is pretty wicked. It's a swamp and it's full of alligators. On top of that our guide told us that it's monitored by over 3000 remote camera's, presumably so security can watch you being eaten in air-conditioned comfort. Many roads have water on both sides (reclaimed land I guess) and signs telling you not to stop or you risk becoming a snack. We saw plenty of gators in the water from the safety of our car and then on the bus tour. If I blew a tire out there I'd run on the rim and bugger the sparks. The bus tour took us around the VAB (the huge building where they assemble the rockets) and we saw the crawler that takes the shuttle out to the pad. At the Apollo/Saturn centre we finished the Apollo 8 launch recreation tour (first manned flight around the moon) and had 7 minutes to make it to the bleachers for the launch, finally some good timing and luck! We watched the Atlas5 rocket blast off from the grandstand where VIP's watch the shuttle launches, cool. The pad was about 4-5 k's away so the sound of the blast off took a while to reach us, the ultimate in time-delay, and while the rocket was pretty small compared to the shuttle it was still pretty cool to see. Imagine the sound of cloth being torn, turn up the volume to 11 and you have an idea of the noise. We figured that we'd had enough and after some time and cash spent in the NASA shop we headed back to the hotel, hitting our pillows after a very long day.

Disneys Blizzard Beach is a themed water park where the idea is that although it's hot there's snow everywhere. Everything is themed around snow and ice (all made out of unmeltable fibreglass and plastic of course) and looks really cool. There's about 20 water slides from tame ones for the kids to the Summit Plummit which sents your almost vertically straight down 120 feet and hit almost 100kph (that changed my hair style I can tell ya). Family favourite was Teamboat Springs where we all piled into a big raft and headed down a huge, wide water slide with lots of twists, turns and drops. All in all a great mellow out day, and while it was fairly busy we were able to get on most slides fairly quickly which was great.

More to come, that’s only the first two days... sheesh!