Mess of Music

just got back from walt disney world. that place is awesome.

No matter what time of year, they block your way to space mountain with silly parads that you only cross under pain of death.

Been to WDW Orlando twice.

Once as a 15 year old punk rocker in the early eighties with mom/stepdad. Was too old and jaded for the cutesy Mickey Mouse stuff, but loved the Runaway train coaster, and Space Mountain, of course. But olddly got all sentimental when I went on Mr Toad's Wild Ride. I really felt like I was flying on that one, and on the Peter Pan ride. Also rememember wanting to strangle my mom for making me go on the "It's a small world after all" boat ride.
(been decades, so I might be getting the ride names wrong).

Went to visit my Dad in my early 20's a decade later. It was all about Space Mountain and avoiding the aforementioned parades. But being a little older I did kinda like seeing the childhood Disney stuff again. And I was also into the whole lucas/speilberg special effects, "I wanna be a director" mode, so the haunted house effects really intrigued me.

Honestly, I always preffered the less "kid" themed parks. Six Flags, Busch Gardens, etc. I just want rides, beer, and music, now that they know music brings the kids. Saw Beck and Tool (who I suprisingly didn't hate) and Orbital, bunch of bands at the closest major amusement park. Great rides, too. Don't gotta fall for the Disney Hype to have a good time. Especially if there are no kids in the picture.

i've only been there once before, one year ago during the same time period, so i couldn't say if there are more or less kids as usual, but we did notice that there were more people there in general than we were expecting, what with the state of the economy and all.

one of the things that made the trip awesome was the food. we were doing the Disney Dining Plan, which gives you each day one sit-down table service meal, one counter service meal and one snack. the table and counter service meals each include a non-alcoholic beverage, a main course, and a dessert, which normally isn't something you'd eat regularly at home. the value of the meals FAR exceeds the cost of the plan, so it's a great value for your buck. we ate so much great food. thankfully, samantha made all the table service reservations well in advance, since some of the places we ate are notoriously impossible to get into. for example, i can genuinely say that i ate the best cut of meat in my life at Le Cellier, the steakhouse in canada in Epcot where dinner is booked months in advance. I had the Filet Mignon, and it was easily the most tender piece of meat ever. we also had a romantic dinner in cinderella's castle in the magic kingdom as the "wishes" fireworks show was going on right outside the window. (while we were waiting to be seated, we were joking that the castle was under seige.) cinderella's castle, incidentally, costs two table service credits, so we decided to pay out of pocket for lunch at the Biergarten in Germany, a german-style all-you-can-eat buffet, which happens to be relatively inexpensive at lunchtime. another deal we found last year and did again this year was to use one of our counter service meals at the Flametree Barbecue in animal kingdom. for the same "price" as a burger and fries at cosmic ray's, we each got a half-rack of st. louis-style ribs, a side of baked beans and a personal chocolate cake. great bang for your buck.

another great thing that happened food-wise while we were there was that on friday, epcot was kicking off their annual International Food & Wine Festival, with booths set up representing twenty-six cities from around the world. they offered appetizer-sized portions of food and paired wines and beers to represemt each city. the beauty of this was that you could use your snack credits to purchase the food items. so, on our last day, samantha and i went around the world showcase with 7 snack credits and shared a bunch of great plates of food, including seared sea scallops from wellington, NZ, beef tenderloin on a sweet potato puree from capetown, south africa, kielbasa and a pierogie from krakow, poland, fisherman's pie from ireland and lobster rolls from boston, just to name a delicious few. we also purchased some great alcoholic beverages in sample-size servings, like ice wine, a pomegranate something-or-other and a tangerine mimosa. the only downside of the whole thing was that on saturday, the hard opening, there were groups of people in their late 20s/early 30s who were pretty drunk and rowdy in places like germany, which was really annoying.

favorite rides: mission space, tower of terror, rock 'n' rollercoaster, expedition everest. unfortunately, space mountain was closed for renovation until november, which bummed me out because we went to "mickey's not-so-scary halloween party", and my costume was "neil armstrong". bummed. also, our favorite part of the aerosmith ride is the video beforehand where ken marino (from "the state") is the non-speaking-role engineer and he makes a great, cheesy "oh, you guys!" face at the end which always cracks us up.

possibly the most awesome thing ever: at the aforementioned halloween party, there was a dance party going on near toontown with donald, daisy and minnie dancing with costumed little kids. then, from the speakers comes beyonce's "single ladies" and immediately minnie starts doing the dance with the hand motions and everything. and daisy's all up in donald's face, acting out the song. it was fantastic.

i'll see if i can remember anything else. oh, on the "backlot tour" in Hollywood Studios (formerly MGM), there's two props from "the life aquatic with steve zissou", the helicopter and "deep search", the underwater exploring vessel. made my nerdy heart warm.