Mayhem Marauders Meet-up Part Deux!

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Soarin08
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Re: Mayhem Marauders Meet-up Part Deux!

Post by Soarin08 » Jan Tue 31, 2012 9:55 pm

cy1229 wrote:
Amy wrote:Oh my Mousekedude ~ I didn't see the part about the shrimp skewers at Jiko. I'm glad you didn't skewer your mouth :shock: I never have liked those wooden skewers for cooking ~ too many splinters, even if you soak them correctly. Glad you were ok! That would have messed up your long, relaxing vacation for sure :(
Fact: People who chew toothpicks get appendicitis much more often than those who don't. Same goes for people who eat a lot of popcorn.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program, already in progress.
Good thing I never eat popcorn. :wink: Mostly because my high school best friend is allergic to corn but also because I just am not a popcorn fan.
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Re: Mayhem Marauders Meet-up Part Deux!

Post by MmeLeota » Jan Tue 31, 2012 11:08 pm

Soarin08 wrote:
cy1229 wrote:
Amy wrote:Oh my Mousekedude ~ I didn't see the part about the shrimp skewers at Jiko. I'm glad you didn't skewer your mouth :shock: I never have liked those wooden skewers for cooking ~ too many splinters, even if you soak them correctly. Glad you were ok! That would have messed up your long, relaxing vacation for sure :(
Fact: People who chew toothpicks get appendicitis much more often than those who don't. Same goes for people who eat a lot of popcorn.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program, already in progress.
Good thing I never eat popcorn. :wink: Mostly because my high school best friend is allergic to corn but also because I just am not a popcorn fan.
Oh man, I love popcorn! I guess I should lay off... :shock:

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Re: Mayhem Marauders Meet-up Part Deux!

Post by cy1229 » Feb Wed 01, 2012 9:17 am

Amy wrote:
cy1229 wrote:
Amy wrote:Oh my Mousekedude ~ I didn't see the part about the shrimp skewers at Jiko. I'm glad you didn't skewer your mouth :shock: I never have liked those wooden skewers for cooking ~ too many splinters, even if you soak them correctly. Glad you were ok! That would have messed up your long, relaxing vacation for sure :(
Fact: People who chew toothpicks get appendicitis much more often than those who don't. Same goes for people who eat a lot of popcorn.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program, already in progress.
Yikes! I didn't know that about popcorn :shock: That's weird...
The fibers in toothpicks and popcorn hulls are primarily cellulose, which is indigestible, so they tend to "pass through" unaltered. Because they're hard, and not flexible like celery, they can accumulate in the appendix. By "a lot of popcorn" I mean every day, sometimes more than once a day. Toothpicks and popsicle sticks are a bigger problem than popcorn.
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Re: Mayhem Marauders Meet-up Part Deux!

Post by boilerbabe » Feb Fri 03, 2012 11:20 am

Hi All! It was a pleasure to meet some of you and I wanted to apologize for missing the official meet up on Sat. night. I had hoped to feel better after the 1/2 that Sat. There was no way I was going to be able to make it to the Poly. I'm so sorry! :(

I'm trying to get caught up on here. I'm still in phys. therapy so that takes up alot of time. I'm going to upload pictures today so I can start posting! :D
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Re: Mayhem Marauders Meet-up Part Deux!

Post by MmeLeota » Feb Fri 03, 2012 11:28 am

boilerbabe wrote:Hi All! It was a pleasure to meet some of you and I wanted to apologize for missing the official meet up on Sat. night. I had hoped to feel better after the 1/2 that Sat. There was no way I was going to be able to make it to the Poly. I'm so sorry! :(

I'm trying to get caught up on here. I'm still in phys. therapy so that takes up alot of time. I'm going to upload pictures today so I can start posting! :D
Cbog40 and I totally understood, and are glad that we were able to still meet you two...even if it was for only a very brief moment. :D I'm sure we will meet up in Chicago at some point!
Good luck with your therapy...when Cbog40 had his therapy last year, the folks there told him the the "real" meaning of PT...pain and torture! :lol: :twisted: :wink:
Here's hoping yours isn't horrible! Just think about Dole Whips! Keep your eye on the prize! ;)

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Re: Mayhem Marauders Meet-up Part Deux!

Post by Amy » Feb Fri 03, 2012 12:21 pm

Glad to know you are alive and kicking after your return. Looking forward to your pictures :D

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Re: Mayhem Marauders Meet-up Part Deux!

Post by cy1229 » Feb Fri 03, 2012 12:41 pm

boilerbabe wrote:Hi All! It was a pleasure to meet some of you and I wanted to apologize for missing the official meet up on Sat. night. I had hoped to feel better after the 1/2 that Sat. There was no way I was going to be able to make it to the Poly. I'm so sorry! :(

I'm trying to get caught up on here. I'm still in phys. therapy so that takes up alot of time. I'm going to upload pictures today so I can start posting! :D
Physical therapy is one of those things that requires a lot of patience because it takes a looong time and sometimes hurt more when it first starts. Looking forward to seeing your pictures!
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Re: Mayhem Marauders Meet-up Part Deux!

Post by Mousekedude » Feb Fri 03, 2012 2:30 pm

Glad to see you back on here, B-babe! Looking forward to your pics, and your additional details on the events I post about. I'm hoping you can help jog my memory and fill in the blanks on some of those days! :lol:
I'm only up to Day 2, so far. I'm hoping to post Day 3 soon. In a nutshell, it's when Mouseoholic and I went to MK early and then met up with you guys to head to the expo. More details when I have time...
By the way, you might want to check out the "Disney in the Dark..." photo thread. I've posted a bunch of cool night shots from this trip. :D

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Re: Mayhem Marauders Meet-up Part Deux!

Post by Amy » Feb Fri 03, 2012 2:45 pm

Mousekedude wrote:Glad to see you back on here, B-babe! Looking forward to your pics, and your additional details on the events I post about. I'm hoping you can help jog my memory and fill in the blanks on some of those days! :lol:
I'm only up to Day 2, so far. I'm hoping to post Day 3 soon. In a nutshell, it's when Mouseoholic and I went to MK early and then met up with you guys to head to the expo. More details when I have time...
By the way, you might want to check out the "Disney in the Dark..." photo thread. I've posted a bunch of cool night shots from this trip. :D
Tooooooo many margaritas ~ shakes head sadly ;) :lol:

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Re: Mayhem Marauders Meet-up Part Deux!

Post by MmeLeota » Feb Fri 03, 2012 3:41 pm

Amy wrote:
Mousekedude wrote:Glad to see you back on here, B-babe! Looking forward to your pics, and your additional details on the events I post about. I'm hoping you can help jog my memory and fill in the blanks on some of those days! :lol:
I'm only up to Day 2, so far. I'm hoping to post Day 3 soon. In a nutshell, it's when Mouseoholic and I went to MK early and then met up with you guys to head to the expo. More details when I have time...
By the way, you might want to check out the "Disney in the Dark..." photo thread. I've posted a bunch of cool night shots from this trip. :D
Tooooooo many margaritas ~ shakes head sadly ;) :lol:
Yeah, it was tough trying to keep him from wandering over to Mexico while we were headed toward Germany... :roll: He heard those margaritas calling his name...

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Re: Mayhem Marauders Meet-up Part Deux!

Post by Mousekedude » Feb Fri 03, 2012 5:02 pm

MmeLeota wrote:
Amy wrote: Tooooooo many margaritas ~ shakes head sadly ;) :lol:
Yeah, it was tough trying to keep him from wandering over to Mexico while we were headed toward Germany... :roll: He heard those margaritas calling his name...
Grrrrr!!! :evil: :wink: :lol: The truth is, we didn't carry the camera every day, and when we did carry it we didn't take a lot of pictures. I've always relied on my pictures to remind me later of what we did, so now I'm kinda stuck. But anyway.....

The Mousekecouple’s Day 3, Thursday January 5th.

Today would be the day that we go to the Expo at the ESPN WWS complex to sign in and pick up our stuff for race day. We had an 8:20 a.m. ADR for breakfast at Crystal Palace, and the plan was to bolt in and quaff down our chow, then try to get in some ride action before leaving MK and heading back to the Boardwalk to posse up with the Boilers and head over to the Expo. Our plan worked! :D 8-)

We finished eating a few minutes before the park opened at 9:00, and immediately set off for some ride mayhem before the hordes could invade. It was amazing how well that worked out! By 10:20 a.m. we had ridden Dumbo, BTMRR twice, Snow White, Pooh, Pirates, and Peter Pan! Everything was walk-on! In fact, the longest wait was about 5 minutes at Dumbo, the first ride we did! On pirates we even had the entire boat to ourselves! By that time the Brazilians had started to arrive in droves, and it was getting pretty thick, so we figured it was time to go. We needed to get back anyway. So we crowd-surfed our way back to the front of the park and headed to the Boardwalk.

The Boilers and her parents weren’t quite ready to leave, so we just chilled in our room for a little while. When they were ready we all met up at the bus to the Expo and headed over there. We ended up spending most of the day there, and finally had to take off to get ready for our ADR at Victoria and Albert’s.

Dinner at Victoria and Albert’s was amazingly good! We did the seven-course wine pairing dinner, and it was exquisite! We even saw Len Testa (from the “WDW Today” podcast crew and “TouringPlans.com”) come in. He and his posse were dining at the Chef’s table that night. We’ve met him at other reunions in the last couple of years, and he’s really a great guy. So we had our waiter send him a bottle of champagne as a token of our appreciation for all his hard work. We didn’t tell him who it was from, and we wondered if his curiosity would get the better of him so that he’d come out to see who sent it. He never did (I’ll explain why in a minute), so when we finished up we went ahead and left. It was late, we were tired and stuffed, so we went home and crashed… tired and satisfied with the day.

Okay, now about Len: it turns out that after we got home from our trip, Mouseoholic was listening to the WDW Today podcast, and heard Len tell the story of that night! He said that as he was leaving the waiter gave him the champagne and told him he had fans who were in the restaurant (so the fool waited until after we had left before he gave Len the champagne, which explains why he didn’t come out while we were there). Anyway, Len was thrilled, and was saying “thank you so much, whoever you were…” and stuff like that. It was pretty cool. Mouseoholic keeps saying that she’s going to email him and confess, but she still hasn’t done it (grumble, grumble…). :evil:

That’s it for now! Sorry we didn’t have any pictures from that day… I just didn’t feel like carrying the camera around. :roll: :wink:
More later!

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Re: Mayhem Marauders Meet-up Part Deux!

Post by Amy » Feb Fri 03, 2012 5:12 pm

Wow - you made it through the buffet in record time! That is great you were able to get in as many attractions in as you did before the crowds descended.
Too bad about the waiter not delivering the champagne sooner. It would have been nice if you could have at least spoken with Len.
I can't believe you went to a character brekkie and a fancy schmancy dinner at V & A and didn't bring the camera :shock: :( although it was probably nice and relaxing not to have taken any photos...

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Re: Mayhem Marauders Meet-up Part Deux!

Post by theBIGyowski » Feb Fri 03, 2012 5:13 pm

M-Dude...I am the same way. As long as I take plenty of pictures during the trip, I can recall everything that happened. If I didn't take a picture of it, I will either forget it or start mixing trips together with past trips.

That stinks about the champagne! I have emailed Len a few times with questions about the parks and the "Guide", but have never met him in person. I did get to meet Lou Mongello back in 2010...such a happy little Italian man.
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The final day of my trip report

Post by mindflipper » Feb Sat 04, 2012 12:25 am

It's Sunday morning, and I decided to head over to Disney's Animal Kingdom (DAK). I've been only to this park once ever, but I have never been to the park since it officially opened so that will give you an idea of how long it's been. I decided to take the bus from Yacht Club - which given my experience on this trip with Disney transportation might be a foolish move; and unfortunately for me, Disney transportation didn't fail to disappoint me. We boarded the bus around 8:55 AM, but unfortunately had an irate visitor from the UK who wanted to go to Blizzard Beach. As the water park did not open until 10 AM, no buses were yet running to Blizzard Beach. The UK gentleman went on a tirade, and the bus driver in order to pacify the man agreed to take the man and his young daughter to the park. We arrived at Blizzard Beach around 9:15 AM and dropped them off, but that's when the problem began...

The bus just sat there at the intersection light waiting for a green light to go. We waited. And waited. And waited. The bus driver took a bit too long to realize that the light was not going to turn green. It appears that Disney is a bit crafty with its traffic control. Certain lights won't function when the parks are not open in order to maximize the flow of traffic the other way. It wasn't until around 9:30 AM he realized this, and got on the radio in order to help with lights. Finally, they got the light to turn green and we were finally on our way, passing the runners along the way. Upon arriving at DAK, I got these shots of the DAK Christmas Tree (and remember, this is the first weekend of January):

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It's now 9:40 AM. I departed from Yacht Club at 8:55 AM. The total time for the trip was 45 minutes.

Thanks, Mr. UK. I headed into the park and took a right at the Tree of Life:

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And proceeded to Asia:

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And finally arrived at the most unpopular attraction of all at WDW:

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It's called Expedition Everest. I've heard all the hype here on Subsonic about how incredibly busy this attraction is:
Mousekedude wrote:I also remember that the crowds were horrible, and Mouseoholic was extremely disappointed because she had been looking forward to riding E.E. ... After the Lion King, we made another attempt at E.E., but it was just no use.
I got my Fast Pass, which was for 10:15 AM, but then I discovered how deceived I had been! I've been told how popular this ride was but in fact no one wants to ride it! After I got the Fast Pass I then noticed the stand-by line was 0 minutes. I thought it was broken, but it turned out it wasn't. It was 0 minutes! No one was waiting in line. I walked straight through to the boarding and got on the ride. In fact, there was so few people to ride it that they were dragging marathoners out of the race to fill up the trains:

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And for roller coaster, it wasn't bad - a pretty good one in fact - given that nobody wants to ride it. Maybe it's that drop:

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So after I got off the ride I noticed it there's still nobody in the line so - what the heck - I rode it again. And then again. By the time 10:15 AM rolled around, I decided to pass on the Fast Pass. After all, by that time, I have riden Expedition Everest four times in a row and it just seemed...well...old. The novelty was gone in less than 30 minutes.

Instead, I headed off the jungle trek where I got to spend some cuddly time with some feral cats:

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Fortunately, I don't have to feed these cats. Next, I moved onto "It's Tough to Be a Bug", the 3D movie I didn't see during my first visit to the park. After that, I hoped a bus to Disney Hollywood Studios, which was another long, gruesome ride as many of the roads were closed off due to the marathon (the run was over, but they still hadn't re-opened the roads yet as they were still cleaning them). Finally, after another 40+ minute bus ride, I arrived at DHS:

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I checked with the Mousekecouple and their plans was to be at the park between 2-3 PM as they had an ADR at 4:30 PM. With some time to kill until they arrive so I went on Star Tours, MuppetVision 4D, Star Tours, Great Movie Ride, Star Tours, lunch, and then Star Tours. Hmmmmmmm, there seems to be a pattern there. I admit I was testing the claim that the "randomness" of Star Tours would not give the same journey you had before. They were wrong. Here are my results:

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As you can see - yes, you can have the same ride twice, and even in the same day and same hour.

During my time there I saw some things I took some quick photos. Here's one of some pins that would interest Mousekedude and NaCler:

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And as much as Disney hates it when people steal from them, here's a fine example of their commercial hypocrisy:

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I wonder if the BBC knows they're stealing from Doctor Who merchandising with this?

It was now 3:30 PM and no sign of the Mousekecouple. Additionally, the trip had begun to take its toll. I unfortunately had just gotten over a long battle with the flu just before the trip and I was feeling a bit exhausted. There was still a 2+ hour car ride back home today as I had already checked out of the Yacht Club. I had planned to stay till around 5 PM but I changed my mind to leave early instead. I headed back on the boat to the Yacht Club and while on the boat, coincidentally enough, I saw the Mousekecouple and Boilers walking on the pavement to DHS. Bad timing. It turned out to be a good thing I was driving back before it turned dark: the valet who got my car informed that I had a tail light out in the back of the car. There's nothing FHP love to write tickets more than speeding is burned out tail lights.

And that's the end of my trip report...

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Re: Mayhem Marauders Meet-up Part Deux!

Post by Amy » Feb Sat 04, 2012 7:48 am

Wow ~ you packed a lot into your last day with all the crowds. That is pretty neat that you got to experience EE that many times in a row. Did you have to get off and queue up each time or did you get to stay on the train?
Nice photos of the kitties. Did you get to pet them?! ;)
For those who don't know much about Star Tours, like me, I would have to have a dramatically different sequence to know that I wasn't seeing the same thing over and over. I have heard from others that the randomness isn't as good as promised though :roll:

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