I had left Buffalo around 12:30pm on Thursday (11/30) so I could pick Brandon (Dr. Ravenscroft) up at his house in Philadelphia, and we would drive through the night to get to the Ft Wilderness campgrounds by 12/1. I arrived at his house about 7:30 - 8:00 and we proceded to load up the car with his stuff, and then stand aroung for a while just talking. we then left Philadelphia around 8:30 - 9:00. we literary drove through the night, only rest we really got was about 20 minutes each while the other was driving. I know I, for one, was just excited to finally be going down at last.
we got down to Ft Wilderness at around 3:30 pm on Friday. we got the camp set up (a dining tent/screen house to go over the picnic table, the sleping tent and airmattresses) around 5:00, and Epcot had EMH that night. so, in true Disney fashion, we decided to go to MK (just kidding, we did go to Epcot). I finally got to see Soarin', which I say is really good. the one problem I have with it is kinda like the Soarin' over Florida video that someone did - it changes the scenes very quickly. I understand that California has alot of diverse landscape and scenery, but with the sudden changes, I was getting a little disorientated (not really the sick kind, but mostly confused). we did alot of the heavily advertised things - M:S, TT, SSE, Soarin. really, with the amount of people, it was really all we could to in the night.
on Saturday, we had reservations to do the Segway tour at Epcot, and we had to be at guest relations at 8:45 for the 9:00 tour. we hopped one of the Ft. Wilderess transports to the Outpost depot to catch the Epcot bus by about 8:15. by about 8:40, it never showed. so, we went back to the site and got the car and rushed over to get to guest relations. we showed up about 9:00 but missed the group. so, we got put into the 9:30 slot. the segway experience was REALLY cool, and I DEFINATELY endorse it for anyone to try (you have to be within like 140 - 250 lbs and over 18 (or over 16, either way, valid license is required). It's $80 for the 2 hour tour, but if you say you have the AAA Diamond card, you get 15% off, making it $68. that price includes the tax. the guides will do some trivia in a few of the countires, and they ask questions about things in the countires and if you answer right, they give you a button (Honorary citizen of the world). nice little thing. at the end of it, they also give you an exclusive pin with a little man on a segway who roves back and forth. we did the rest of the day at Epcot, doing just about everything (including Body Wars and Cranium Command). we left before Illuminations because we saw it the night before, all the best spots were taken, and we had been in Epcot now for a total of aboout 20 full hours. we had skipped over the circlevision movies and Maelstrom due to either long lines, or no more showings. We'll be doing more Epcot later.
on Sunday, we found ourselves in the MK, taking advantage of the evening EMH. we didn;t get to really see wishes, as we thought it started at 9:30 and had time to do the TTA and COP. we were mistaken. it started at like 8:30 and we saw bits of it from TTA. I did all the roller coasters, including the barn stormer. Brandon has a tough time with those, so he opted out and stuck to taking pictures. I ended up loosing my hat on Splash mountain, as I forgot to take it off cause I was placed in a boat with 5 very unrully, unsupervised kids who kept standing up, screaming at the top of their lungs when we weren't dropping, or splashing each other with the water and hitting me too. I yelled at them at the end cause they were doing that. The still had not found it and turned it into the lost and found yesterday when I checked, so I'm going to check again in a little bit and see if it turned up last night.
Yesterday, we did AK in the AM. I must say that I like EE. I think it was really well done. I'm sure we could not be going that fast naturally, so I think there are the linear induction motors in the track like in TTA. after spending just a couple of hours (doing the safari, EE, Dino, the Primeaval whirl, we called it a day at AK and headed over to MGM. we did most everything we could with EMH - Indiana, Sounds Dangerous, Star Tours, Muppets, RNR, GMR. I can at this point, pretty much recite word for word the script at GMR.
Today's plan, after a late start, it to do MGM for the rest of the day, as we missed Fantasmic, the backlot tour, OMD, and narnia. tomorrows plan includes Epcot in the AM and AK PM as AK has the evening hours tomorrow. Then, we meet Kelly (knedeau) for breakfast in Thursday before check out, and a trip to the MK before the MVMCP. the, it's back home
hopefully, we can get more people to do this next time, and get group rates on the the segway tour (definately doing it again) and rooms and such. Well, Brandon's almost done with his shower, so time to get ready to go.
BTW.. Where are the Pics? Too bad we couldn't get a pic of the 3 of us stuffed into a doom buggy!
