Disney World

Day 0– Thanksgiving weekend of 2006 took me and Rikti to the other corner of United States i.e. from Seattle WA to Orlando FL. It was a long long hopping flight via Chicago where we had pizza for lunch. Finally our Southwest plane landed into Orlando and we rented a GPS enabled car from Hertz to check into the Legacy Grand hotel. Our holiday had begun and feeling fresh after a hot shower, we went to check out Downtown Disney. The place was full of life with music and lights, with many pubs at the Pleasure Island which was a part of the downtown. We got back to the hotel buying yet another pizza (this time Dominos) on the way and finally retired for the day.

 

Day 1 – The plan was to get up early next morning but the 3 hour jet lag was not in our favor. We got up at 9 which was 6 AM biologically since the body unlike the mind did not probably know we had moved from PST to EST timezone. By 10 AM we had collected our will-call tickets and were in the long queue of vacationers who were trying to enter Animal Kingdom. We started off our day by entering the roots of majestic Tree of Life to watch a 3D movie titled Its Tough to be a Bug. Then we left Discovery Island, walked about and spotted an Indian Chai Shop which I thought was really impressive in the way that the designers of this park had recreated a Chai stall from India. I was most excited to see that the red brick floor was made wet by pouring water over it, which gave it a typical Indian dhaba look. There was also a Sunil Shetty poster on the wall. After clicking a few pictures we walked towards the Mount Everest ride, a roller coaster encounter with the Yeti that we did not get on due to lack of motiviation caused by the 120 minute estimated wait in the queue. This was Asian part of the park. The African side had a few more adventures in the form of Kilimanjaro Safari and Kali River Rapids, the latter especially being very adventurous and thrilling. It was a recreation of a river rafting journey where you would definitely get wet, and you might get soaked! Kali River was actually a part of Asia and not Africa, just for the record before anyone sues me for this misinformation.

 

It was afternoon already and our next destination would be the MGM Studios to where we took a Disney bus, and I think it would have been a better idea to have driven as it was again a long wait. Anyways, this next Disney park was symbloized by a giant blue colored wizard hat. After grabbing a quick Chinese bite and checking out the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playset for kids, we headed for the Backlot Tour where they showed us round Pearl Harbor shooting sets and also a Grand Canyon set among other interesting movie things. The next show on the cards was The Extreme Stunt Show, which enthralled a 25000+ audience with well nothing but exterme car and bike stunts. The cars and bikes were flying all around and sharp-shooters falling from 4 floor high buildings. A very well coordinated and practised show on that large a scale I must say. The next ride was going to be the dreaded Tower of Terror, a scary random free fall ride owing to the horror story they weaved around it. We were ushered into a library room at the 100 year old Hollywood Hotel, followed by a vertical and horizontal elevator ride that was made to fall from the 13th floor not once or twice but several times in a random fashion. Quite thrilling and we were alive after the ride was over. Fantasmic, a light and sound show featuring Mickey and friends was the next stop. This show had again drawn a 25000+ (my estimate) audience into the open air amphitheater. It was a spectaular show with water fountains, fireworks, lasers, choregraphy and special effects amidst all of which Mickey Mouse heroically defeated the dragon who was trying to control his imagination. We then briefly checked out the avoidable Sylvania light show and took another bus to Epcot just in time to witness a spectacular display of fireworks and lasers in a show called IllumiNations: Reflections of the World.

 

Day 2: Another lousy morning when we left the hotel at 10 AM and still not having slept to our heart’s content. The day had to start with Epcot which later decisively figured out as our favorite amongst the 4 theme parks at Disney. Marked by a huge globe that symbolized it, Epcot was about science, technology and future. We started the exploration by getting on the Spaceship Earth ride, a slow moving ride that would take us into a journey of communications over time in a train vehicle that maneuvered its way around the internal sphere of the globe. The next ride was Mission Mars, a ride which for some reason Rikti dreaded the most and all my attemtpts to convince her otherwise were futile. You could be part of the green team or orange team on this ride. The orange ride would be more intense and give you a feel of up to 3G during the lift off – many people are not able to take it well and I did not want to take a chance either so I went with the green team, even the wait was much shorter and that acted as an incentive. When I returned from Mars, we took a fast pass for the Test Track ride which we did not later return to. Instead we went to Soarin, another one of the most popular rides at Epcot that had us in the queue for 80 minutes, but worth every minute of the wait. This ride was a flight simulation over California and was indeed quite exhilarating though it must have lasted a little over 5 minutes. We then got into a show called Honey I Shrunk the Audience, which was preceded by a long, cheap, forced advertising movie by Kodak. This was a 3D show where a snake was about to swallow us and it was quite an avoidable expereince to my unpleasant surprise. It had a gross ending where they made a dog sneeze onto the audience and sprinkled water from somewhere to make it appear lifelike. All these shows and rides were part of the Future World at Epcot, the other division being World Showcase, a reincarnation of 11 countries of the world. We went to Mexico, Norway, China to start with. Norway even had a ride called the Maelstrom, a doable ride that took you on a Viking voyage. Other countries around the lake were Germany, France, USA, Japan, Canada, Russia and a couple more. I wish they had India too as it would definitely have been a more exciting experience for the visitors where they could have been given an old Delhi rickshaw ride or a Mumbai local train ride!

 

The sun was about to set and we decided to have late lunch or early dinner at an Indian restaurant a few miles away that the GPS helped us to find. The food was okay but we did not want to waste a lot of time eating and headed straight off to the majestic Magic Kingdom. Marked by a huge color changing castle, this place was really a dream come true for every child. We hopped on to the Disney Train for a 270 degree round of the park. We checked out the town where Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy and all these funny folks lived, though we only spotted Donald Duck being celebrated by a long queue of young kids for an autograph and a picture taken along with them. Splash Mountain at Frontier Land was a ride we did not get on but derived almost equal amount of fun watching. Then there was the coveted Disney Parade all with lights and sound that commenced at Main Street USA and went through all the streets of the entire Magic Kingdom. We then admirably watched the dazzling Wishes fireworks show over the Cindrella Castle. The best part was a fairy that they made to jump out from a window on the top floor of the castle and she flied all the way across to the other end of the park. Following this we went to TomorrowLand and boarded their Transit Authority tram for a tour of the whole mini-town. We also went car racing on the Indy Speedway and it was really not easy to steer that car. Finally after strolling around a bit and having a Rainbow Magic flavor ice cream, we left Magic Kingdom on a boat that took us to the bus station from where we caught a bus to the Epcot parking lot where our car was parked. The magical trip had come to an end and next afternoon we would head back into our normal world.

 

Day 3: It was an uneventful day. We checked out from the hotel at 11 AM and went to have an early lunch at the same India Palace restaurant where we had been to the previous evening. Most of the day was spent traveling and Seattle welcomed us late night with 2-3 inches of snow on our car that was parked at Seatac Parking. Finally we reached home safely and dreamt of nothing that night but all the spectacular fun rides, so much of them had got into our minds!

 

Some nice pictures from our Disney World trip are in the Disney World album here.