{"id":411,"date":"2004-01-07T23:59:30","date_gmt":"2004-01-08T04:59:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2004\/01\/07\/\/"},"modified":"2005-10-19T20:39:13","modified_gmt":"2005-10-20T00:39:13","slug":"trip-day-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2004\/01\/07\/trip-day-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Trip: Day 5"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Wednesday was our last full day in Florida, and as such it was a bit of a catch-all day. It was also semi-relaxed, as we’d decided already that we weren’t going to try and get to Animal Kingdom and we’d already hit almost everything we wanted to in the other 3 parks.<\/p>\n

We slept in (though for normal vacation at home, we got up quite early) and didn’t get up until around 9. The day was cold — the low 60s (though, of course, as I write this, it was -10 last night and schools across the state were cancelled because of the temperature) — and a bit grey. But it wasn’t raining and it was otherwise quite nice.<\/p>\n

The Magic Kingdom was our morning destination. Splash Mountain we went to first, to find it completely abandoned by the wimpy park-goers. But all the better for us: Bob and I got a log to ourselves, after asking the attendants if we could, so we now have a picture to match E’s.<\/p>\n

Also on the agenda were a third riding of Small World and Peter Pan, which were both quickly accomplished. I then bought a T-shirt, failed to convince Bob to do the same, and we headed to Space Mountain, our last intended ride in the Magic Kingdom. The line was again short and we zipped right through that. By now it had gotten sunnier and warmed some, but not a great deal.<\/p>\n

We went back to Epcot, originally intending to ride those things which we’d skipped on the first day, just to satisfy my mania for completeness. But we changed our mind after arriving. Hit Alfredo’s in Italy for lunch; though a sit down restaurant, they were about 20x faster than Pizza Planet at MGM. (Sorry E, I can’t eat fettucini alfredo. It doesn’t agree with me.) Then we went to Innoventions, where I discovered that while one could circumvent the internet filters and get online, because I hadn’t linked in the page with the Java applet to the AF website, I couldn’t get on to any games where there were people I wanted to talk to.<\/p>\n

Lesigh.<\/p>\n

It was then time for last minute shopping! The large gift shop in Epcot is, I must say, probably the most -complete- gift shop in the parks, not counting all of the large stores in Downtown Disney. We got small gifts for my mom and my brothers, and Bob eschewed the T-shirts in favor of a tie. And he also pointed out to me that they were selling watches as well.<\/p>\n

As I think I mentioned before, one of my planned purchases at Disney was a watch: my watch with the Japanese kanji as the numbers had lasted through 3 batteries, damage by the idiot guy at Alpha Omega, and numerous dunkings. But last October the hour hand suddenly decided to stop moving and I found this too confusing, so had to retire it. I considered buying a new watch right away, but then decided instead to wait until we visited Disney World and find one there. (I did, on impulse, buy a cheap Care Bears digital watch in December, while Christmas shoppin with my mother. But it is plastic and probably will not last very long. So it didn’t count. It was only $6.) However, though I had stopped and looked at every watch display we’d passed, I hadn’t been able to find one that I wanted. I didn’t want Mickey or Minnie or Pooh — what I really<\/i> would have wanted was Belle, but all of the princess watches were plastic. So I’d resigned myself to settling for Tinkerbell — and then there weren’t any decent watches of her<\/i> either.<\/p>\n

Until we came here. They had one! Finally! A small Tinkerbell watch without plastic attachments, without rhinestones stuck all over it, without a metallic watchband (I hate them.) I hesitated; we’d already spent more than I wanted to on souvenirs; but unlike with the Chicken God and the figurines, on this I gave in. And I’m so glad. I like it a lot.<\/p>\n

After our successful shopping excursion, we returned to the hotel, and soon found ourselves enthralled by the siren song of TV Japan. A very strange children’s show was on, featuring a man and a woman driving along in a car. Every so often they would stop.<\/p>\n

Man: Heeee~
Woman: Kore wa…
Man: Mafuraa da!
[an animated scarf appears in front of the car and walks across the road]<\/p>\n

This went on for a while.<\/p>\n

Then there was a song about dangos, which had something to do with the 3 dango brothers, and I was very confused. <\/p>\n

But we could not linger and see what would come on next, because it was back to Downtown Disney for us, to check out DisneyQuest, their “virtual themepark”. Our sad AAA Park Hopper tickets didn’t include admission, so we had to pay extra to go in, but we were both highly interested. And I think it was worth it, though next time I might devote a full day to it, so you wouldn’t feel so rushed.<\/p>\n

Inside DisneyQuest are a lot of different areas. The main attractions are the VR games. The first of those which we tried was Cyberspace Mountain — you begin by designing on a computer a roller coaster, sticking together bits of track in whatever manner you so desire. Then your coaster is input into the computer and you go into a booth and virtually experience the ride in a little car that turns and whirls around and goes upside down if it has to. It was pretty cool; we rode both Bob’s and my creations. If I were to do it again, I can see now which bits work better than others in the simulation. We didn’t have time to do it again this time, though, as we only had about 4 and a half hours when we got there.<\/p>\n

The other VR games include a Jungle Cruise (you’re in a raft, which is raised up on a sort of aerobed thing to simulate the water, and you actually row to try and steer your raft down the river rapids. A very exhausting game.), Pirates of the Caribbean (you’re on a pirate ship and your goal is to sink as many ships as possible and plunder them.), Aladdin’s Carpet Ride (you’re an Apu clone, who needs to collect jewels and hurry to rescue the Genie as you fly along on your magic carpet — very similar to the video game in many ways) and something called Live in the Comix (or something), in which you had to fight a lot of comic book villains who were tired of fighting just superheroes.<\/p>\n

We also discovered that this was the place where Alien Encounter had been spirited off to when the location in Tomorrowland was needed for the future Stitch ride. (Bob kicked my butt on that, but I won on the Comix — the former was shooting with a gun, while the latter was swordfighting. I have better aim with a sword.)<\/p>\n

Another area is a ticket-giving game area, a la Chuck E Cheese. These games are not free; you need to pay extra in addition to your admission to get in, but your entry gets you 5 free tries at the game, trusting that you’ll get addicted and want a better prize than 5 plays will get you. However, we managed to amass over 100 tickets with our free games (I rule at whackamole) and that was quite enough for all of the prizes we needed.<\/p>\n

Especially since throughout the building, there are old arcade games (Q-bert, Pacman, Donkey Kong, Asteroid, etc) which are completely free to play, and which you may play as long as you like, unless there’s other people waiting for them. I could use a day just for that<\/i>. I have lost all of my skill at Q-bert.<\/p>\n

There was also a Cheesecake Factory Express inside, and so we had a snack — well, several snacks — and sat in booths which had internet access (though again heavily filtered). These filters were different; I couldn’t get to the AF site, but I could get to yahoo, which was not allowed in Epcot. So we sent some emails and then went back to playing.<\/p>\n

Other things which were there were a Buzz Lightyear arena, where you and a partner manned a sort of bumper car and shot giant nerf cannon balls at the other cars. A station similar to the Animation Academy at MGM (unfortunately closed while we were there :() A station where you could ‘create a toy’ like Sid from Toy Story. Booths where you could make your own song and listen to it.<\/p>\n

Overall, it was a very cool place.<\/p>\n

We left around 11, browsed through a store or two, then went back to the hotel. There, as we were intending to sleep in the next day, we indulged in far too much Toon Disney. Gargoyles, Darkwing Duck — I miss them.<\/p>\n

We also packed, since we’d be leaving the next day.<\/p>\n

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Wednesday was our last full day in Florida, and as such it was a bit of a catch-all day. It was also semi-relaxed, as we’d decided already that we weren’t going to try and get to Animal Kingdom and we’d already hit almost everything we wanted to in the other 3 parks. We slept in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}