As I alluded to earlier, Mickey's hospitality apparently included some stomach pathogens in one of my meal servings yesterday. I spent most of the night visiting the bathroom and saw most of yesterday's meals again in a variety of forms. I feel much better nowespecially after a 30-minute power nap while Jeana and the boys swam. However, this now makes it 3 of my last 5 visits to sunny Florida in which I have spent some of the time with GI disease; this confirms to me that Florida is a cesspool of gastroenteritis waiting to happen. Let's just say I'm not making a return trip a high priority.
Epcot was all day yesterday, and appears to be centered around rides in small, enclosed hydraulic chambers designed to exacerbate people with motion sickness. Like me. Frankly, I was amazed that it took until the evening for me to start throwing up, and then not until I got back to the hotel room.
We got there at park opening, and to control the crowd rush to the popular rides, the ride workers actually greet the customers behind a roped line and walk arm-in-arm to keep people from trampling one another. The characters came out and gave high fives, which excited the kids (who were headed to the Test Track):
I got to shake Mickey's hand, which is probably where I got salmonella from. I don't think those white gloves are as clean as they make them to be.
So sad that people think they have to rush for these stupid rides. I was swept along in a wave of humanity to Soarin' where I needed to get FASTPASSes for later, with people pushing and scrambling to get past me so they could be the 6th person at that ticket dispenser to get tickets instead of the 10th, giving them FASTPASSes that would get them on the ride at 9:35 AM instead of 9:45 AM. Yes, amusement park patrons are morons. Which probably includes me, for even choosing to participate in this madness, though at least I believe I see the stupidity in it all.
We started with the Test Track, which is an unashamed PR sales pitch for GM. Maybe they wouldn't have gone bankrupt if they weren't spending so much money developing a monstrous building and ride for Epcot and promoting their 20 mpg cars. The ride was not that long, though getting catapulted around the outdoor track was pretty cool, even if it was for no more than 30 seconds. I guess it was probably my favorite ride of the day because it didn't make me sick, but I wouldn't call that an endearing endorsement.
We had some time to kill before Soarin' (which is the most popular ride in all 4 parks, more on that in a minute), so we next went to Mission Space. HUGE mistake. This is a space simulator in which they strap you into an enclosed hydraulic chamber and spin you through a room while you stare at a TV screen that appears to show you going to Mars and expose you to violent g-forces designed to turn your inside out and show you what rugal folds look like while you are still alive.
Now, knowing my increasing propensity for motion sickness, I should have known better and just insisted on the "green" option with no spinning, just shaking. But even those things can make me sick, so I figured this was the kids' trip and I would take one for the team, and we chose the spinning option. Even Zach and Jeana felt bad afterward. It took us a good 30 minutes to recover, and it ruined the Soarin' experience from Jeana because she still felt awful. Two of her cousins told her that Misson Space was their favorite ride... and I'm sure it can be a fun ride if you don't get motion sick. If you have even the slightest propensity, however, AVOID THIS RIDE AT ALL COSTS. Even if you think it's cool, spending the rest of the day feeling like you want to throw up is not worth it. Just trust me.
Like I said, our next stop was Soarin' which I got the FASTPASSes to in the mad rush at the start of the day. By noon this ride usually has a 2-hour wait without passes, and passes taken at noon are typically for 6:30 rides. It's insane.
What's more insane is how utterly unexciting the ride is. Essentially, you are in a giant chamber where they raise your seats on a hydraulic arm, then play an IMAX movie of California taken from helicopters and airplanes and swing you with the turns of the camera. It's beautiful scenery, of course... but it's a 5-minute IMAX movie. If I had stood in line for 2 hours for this, I would have killed myself afterward. Adding to the problem was our pre-existing leftover motion sickness from Mission Space... at a few points I had to focus on the edge of the screen to avoid further nausea, and Jeana just finally gave up and quit watching. Of course, the kids liked it, but it was not the highlight of this trip even then, not by a long shot.
The rest of our day at Epcot was doing a few shows and touring the different country displays. It's kind of like a World's Fair, with each country featuring shops and restaurants with items specific to their culture. Most kids probably find it boring, but Disney does spice it up a bit. Zach made a Mardi Gras mask and went to each country to get that country's stamp on it, and he was very intent on collecting all of the possible stamps. They also have these stations for the cartoon Kim Possible, in which you become an "agent" and hunt down a bad guy using a cell phone with clues. For Peyton's we had to go to France, and find a door, then a gargoyle, and so forth, pressing a button that would activate some sort of clue to follow until you finally "caught" the bad guy. The kids really thought it was cool.
Without a doubt, the highlight of the day came the short time we were in the Italy exhibit. There is a mime who uses a whistle to "talk" named Sergio, and he performs once an hour. Well, while Zach was getting his stamp, Peyton and I went over to watch. Sergio picks Peyton out of the crowd and uses him as his assistant for 5 minutes in a juggling act. It's rather amusing, and, of course, I got the whole thing on video:
We've found the parks tend to use the same formulas for similar rides and events. After two days, we've found a couple of pretty amusing and clever "rides."
The first is Turtle Talk/Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor. So at Magic Kingdom they have the Laugh Floor starring Mike Wazowski (that's with one "I"... get it? Oh never mind, I thought it was hilarious). Basically it's a kids comedy show with monsters from Monsters, Inc. What's cool about it is that it's animated, like on a movie screen, but the monster on the screen actually is talking with whatever actor is hidden somewhere hosting, and they razz the audience in realtime. There was some guy from New Orleans in one of those John 3:16 wigs and they kept going back to him and giving him a hard time. Very clever technology, I thought.
At Epcot they had Turtle Talk, with Crush from Finding Nemo. This one is a bit more kid-friendly. However, my favorite moment was when Crush asked for a question from one of the kids, and, being a 1st grader, the young boy picked out proceeded to tell everybody in the room how awesome Thunder Mountain was and how he himself was awesome. As somebody who has spent time in young kids' classrooms asking for questions and getting stories instead, I could relate. So Crush says, "OK, that's a good one. So, does anybody else have any questions... or any unrelated random stories?" I am so using that one in my referee classes this spring.
The other constant through all three parks we have now visited is a 3D interactive movie involving some theme from a Disney movie. At Magic Kingdom, we saw the Philharmagic starring Donald Duck. At Epcot they have Honey I Shrunk the Audience. And at Animal Kingdom, they had It's Tough to be a Bug (starring Flik and Hopper from A Bug's Life). These are 5 minute 3D movies that have other audience interactions which are designed to make you feel like you're in the movie. The best part of these was Zach trying to grab things thrown "off" the screen, or Peyton screaming like a girl at the moments designed to startle us. For example, in the Honey I Shrunk the Audience the kid creates a thousand copies of rats which then run towards the screen... then "scurry into the audience." There are jets under your legs that blow air up your pants and make it feel like a herd of rats running past your legs.
In the bug one, they got to the end and Flik tells everybody to please allow the beetles to leave first. Peyton jumps and pulls his legs off the ground, scared the beetles are going to crawl over his legs like the mice... instead, the seats starting vibrating so it feels like the beetles are crawling under your butt. Peyton about hit the ceiling.
By the way, Zach found it all mild amusing at best, and was not scared.
Overall, though, Epcot is not my favorite park. It's obviously technologically-inclined, so the rides use "simulations" to entertain. Frankly, toss me around in a coaster and I'm fine. Toss me around in a chamber, I get sick. Not my kind of place.
For this morning, I decided I was capable of surviving another day in the parks after the rough night, so we headed to Animal Kingdom. There is less to do there, so we actually made plans to ride the one coaster, Expedition Everest, twice, snagging FASTPASSes when we got there, then riding non-pass, then coming back later for seconds. The kids loved it... Everest is a much bigger coaster than anything else Disney has done. Bigger drops, tighter turns, though one section where you go backwards in the dark which neither Jeana nor I were fond of after yesterday. But Peyton begged us to go back on a third time... sadly, we didn't have 70 minutes to stand around, and both Jeana and I had enough of being tossed around for the day.
From there we did the safari ride, which is a bit hammy but it is nice to see African savanna animals not cooped up in a typical zoo pen. The white rhino was very cool... you don't get many opportunities to see them. We saw a few giraffes, gazelles, elephants, etc. Then off to the Dinosaur! ride where you go back in time to look at dinosaurs... you get tossed around a bit and large angry looking dinosaurs threaten to eat you. Nothing too horrible... the post ride picture was amusing however, with Peyton clinging to Jeana and Zach smirking in relative amusement at the dinosaurs threatening to eat us.
They had a nice play area for the kids to climb around in, with a large slide as well, and a midway-type area with small rides and games. However, we decided to come back to the hotel so the kids could swim for a while before dinner.
In the evening, we returned to Epcot for dinner at a Mexican restaurant in the Mexico exhibit. The kids thought it was cool... inside a large Mayan pyramid, the restaurant overlooks a fake volcano and a smaller pyramid over a stream that is part of a ride inside the building (obviously, a big building). I even braved some crab tostadas, which were pretty tasty.
Tomorrow we head to Hollywood Studios, which Zach has been looking forward to all week because they have Jedi Training which supposedly ends with a big lightsaber fight on stage with Darth Vader. We are conniving to get selected for the training, as you supposedly get to keep the robe and the lightsaber. Plus, we're sure the Indiana Jones ride should be big-time, plus Toy Story 4D.
After 3 days here, I've come to more conclusions about this place...
- This place causes some sort of weird marketing trance over people. I see people walking around with Mickey ears, Goofy hats, etc... I mean, do you ever see people wearing this crap at home? Why do you have to have a sweatshirt that says "Mickey" on it just to wear on your 1-week vacation at Disney World? Everything is overpriced... good lord, this place is making a bloody killing.
- If you're not wearing something that says Disney, then you apparently should wear a college sweatshirt or pro sports team piece of clothing telling everybody where you are from. I find it much more interesting to get into conversations with people in line and ask them where they are from (like the guy today from Milwaukee who told us he was born in Duluth but his parents moved to Milwaukee for the climate). When somebody is sitting in front of me with a BoSox hat and Varitek jersey, talking to his kids with a New England accent... I mean, I don't have to figure that one out.
- People have no realistic idea of how to dress. We see people who have clearly decided that just because they are in Florida, they will wear short sleeves and shorts, and you can see them walking around with their arms crossed and goosebumps in 55-degree weather we are having. On the flip side, some people are wearing scarves, gloves, and down parkas. And then you have Japanese tourists wearing heels. All of them... idiots.
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