Originally Posted By FerretAfros I just got back from my trip to WDW a few days ago. We were down there from the 12th-16th, but the 16th was at IOA. I'll be back soon with details on each day, and pictures, if I can figure out how to do it right. The scroll button on the computer isn't working, and I'm moving between about five photo sites, trying to find the easiest. Of course I already have them on Yahoo Photos, but they are all out of order, and don't have captions. As soon as I can get the picutres all in the right order, I'll be able to figure out exactly what we did each day.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros OK, I just got them all up on Ofoto, but I realized that it requires me to send an email to whoever wants to see it. I'll try to send it to myself, and see if I can link that.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros I got it to work! When you click on the link, it looks like you have to sign in, but just click on the album on the left, and it will work. I'll get the actual story of the trip started tomorrow. <a href="http://www.ofoto.com/I.jsp?c=16b4x21i.vrwaz06&x=0&y=5uhc2d" target="_blank">http://www.ofoto.com/I.jsp?c=1 6b4x21i.vrwaz06&x=0&y=5uhc2d</a>
Originally Posted By CinderellaShanny Wonderful pictures! I am so sad I didn't bump into you while we were there! I was watching for you. I saw a LOT of kids with the t-shirts though. Shanny
Originally Posted By FerretAfros DAY ONE: I got up at about 4:30 to finish a take-home test, and then turned it in around 7:00. I then drove over to the church where we were leaving from, and we all stood around for about an hour. We got on the busses and were off. We stopped somewhere in SC for lunch, and I had a terrible "Salsbury steak" that was basically a burger sitting in its own grease for a hour, without a bun. We got back on the busses, and kept going. We stopped for dinner in a mall in Jacksonville. I got pizza, and there wasn't anything exciting about that. We got down to Orlando around 10:00, and we spent about 45 min driving around, trying to find our hotel. We went back and forth across WDW about 4 times before they finally found it. We unloaded all the instruments and suitcases, and got in our rooms and went to sleep. DAY TWO: We had breakfast at Fort Wilderness, in the shelter where Mickey's Backyard BBQ usually is. It was our best breakfast by far. While we were throwing our trash away, I found a River Country barrel, and just had to laugh at it. We walked around the petting zoo area for a little while before we had to go over to the Saratoga Springs for the contest. The concert band performed at 10:00, and then we headed back out to the parking lot by the busses to wait untill the orchestra and symphonic band performed. This is where we became cheerleaders and ROTC people. : ) The other groups performed at 2:00ish, so we were out there for a long time. They made us all change on the busses, which had been sitting in the sun longer than we had, so it was about 85 degrees in there, and tons of partially dress people. Not fun at all. Some guys tried to change in the parking lot, so they would actually ahve some room to move, and not pass out from the head, but a CM came and yelled at them, since they were in an area where geusts could see them. I thought that was kind of funny, because that CM clearly hadn't been on the bus. I also liked how the girls, who only had to put on a dress, got 3 busses. There was an equal number of guys, who had to make sure they all had their parts for the tuxes, and we only had 1 bus. Seems fair. We performed, changed back into normal clothes, and went over to DAK. On the way in, I noticed a strangely tall tree, and was wondering if anybody knew what it was for. It reminded me of Tinkerbelle's tree at DL. The first thing we did was head over to Dinosaur. I was suprised at how scary it was. I had been on Indy, so I knew what to expect. It was fun to try and see where the track was in comparison to that. I was sitting in the seat in the back, left corner. It seemed that all of the dinos, except for the picture one were on the left side, which really bugged me. I kept expecting them to switch sides, so I would look to the right, and it would be on the left. The running dino was very convinding, especially in that seat. Overall, a suprisingly good ride. We then grabbed FP's for Primeval Whirl, and headed over to ITTBAB. It looked like the parade was about to start, so we couldn't run across, but I was expecting some break in the parade, where we could cross. It quickly became apparent that this wouldn't happen, so we took the path by Tarzan Rocks, over to Kali. When we got in line for Kali, we were given the thing that sets the wait time. I had never seen one of these before, but when we were at MK, I saw around 30 of them hanging on a post at Buzz. I still felt special. Luckily I didn't get too wet, since I wasn't facing backwards at the bottom of the drop. From Kali, we headed over to ITTBAB. There was no wait, but there has to be some way to make that line shorter. We walked and walked, went in a cave, came out on the other side of the tree, walked some more, and finally got in the waiting area. I have no idea why that queue is that long, since there was nobody headed over there, and our show was about a third full. I thought it had very convincing effects, especially the spiders, one of which was right above my head. I knew the stinger was coming, and I have heard bad things about it, so I scooted foreward a little, and it still hurt. When the termites leave at then end, one of the pokey things difinately went up my butt. Not plesant, to say the least. On the way out I spotted some construction work on what looked like a waterfall. We headed over to Pizzafari, since I know someone who usecd to work there, and it was on our meal cupons. We were all standing there, staring at the menu, only to find that they had closed, but left the front door wide open. We headed over to Resturantasarus, since it was the only free place that was still open. The ordering went by quickly, but we waited forever to actually get our food. Once we got it, half of us inhaled it so we could head over to Primeval Whirl before we needed to meet for the awards ceremony. After running over there and shoving dinner in our faces, we learned that the line was short enough that we didn't even need our FP's. It was really well done, for a mouse coaster, but could have been longer. We had seen the other side from the top, and thought that we were only half-way done when we actually at the end. A major let down. The other side was hidden behind trees from the path, so we thought that it was all one. I really see no reason that they would need two seperat, but identical tracks, but whatever. It's their loss. We weren't expecting to have the wait with a FP to be that long, so we had to run over to the Theater in the Wild, so we wouldn't be counted late. We made it over in plenty of time, as most of the chaperones weren't even there yet. Billy (Bobby?) Flanigan was the host of the ceremony. Aparently he's been doing things all over the world for about 20 years, including being Ken in the World of Barbie show at Epcot in the early 90's. He was really funny, and the music was OK too, but they had the speakers so loud that it lost all actual tone, or comprehedibility. (Yes, I made that up) All three groups got "Excellent" ratings, which is the second best one. The Symponic Band beat Concert Band (since it is the school's better band an all) and won the Mickey statue. Orchestra didn't win the division. More singing and overly-loud speakers followed the awards. Since the special awards ceremony was after closing time, we were able to get the all too rare shots of the Tree of Life at night. I really think that the park could do fairly well at night, but the never leave it open that late. I'm glad that we were able to get special pictures, since they moved the ceremony time back, so we had to miss Fantasmic!. I was looking foreward to comparing it to the one at DL, since I just saw that at Christmas. We went back to the hotel, and just hung out for a while, before we were locked in our rooms. We went to sleep, since we knew there was a full day ahead of us. And that full day will be coming to a discussion board near you, right after a word from our sponsors.....
Originally Posted By Labuda "On the way in, I noticed a strangely tall tree, and was wondering if anybody knew what it was for. It reminded me of Tinkerbelle's tree at DL." Hmmm, where exactly was it? Mayhaps it's one of the cell towers disguised to look like trees? *shrug*
Originally Posted By Labuda "And that full day will be coming to a discussion board near you, right after a word from our sponsors....." I think you need to get new sponsors, as they're slacking and haven't yet run their commercial, thereby holding back the rest of your report!
Originally Posted By FerretAfros Just one last comment on DAK. This park is too big for its own good. When the parade cut us off on our way to ITTBAB, even though it was still five minutes away, we had to take the path by Tarzan and Everest over to Kali. That walk is very long, and I'm glad that we weren't there for much longer than we were. I wouldn't be surprised if that back way is 2/3 the size of the World Showcase. The tall tree was pretty far to the left side of the entrance. It was about where the road that goes around the back side of the lot, if extended into the park area quite some distance, would be. If it is a cell tower, they did a good job disguising it. DAY THREE: We started off getting our yellow shirts back from the chaperones, who had wash duty. There weren't enough blue shirts for everybody, so we reused the yellow shirts everyday. We had breakfast at Planet Hollywood in Downtown Disney, which was pretty cool. There was nobody else anywhere around, so it was neat that they opened it up for us. The busses let us off over by the Cirque theater, so we could walk past all the closed shops. They picked us up just outside PH, so go figure. I noticed that the awning was missing from the entry way, and they replaced it with a tacky plastic tarp. We had a great time running all through the building, looking for the answers to the trivia questions. It was a very well run event. After breakfast, we went over to Disney-MGM Studios. There was a huge tent set up in the parking lot, near the Indy stunt show, so it was probably for the cheerleading competition. On the way to the "hub" area, there were some green army men from Toy Story ordering us to have a good time. I thought that was kind of a neat touch. We headed over to Tower of Terror, since the line didn't look too bad, as it was still early in the day. We stood in line for a while, and it didn't move at all, so we decided to grab FP's for it, and get in line for Rockin' Rollercoaster. RNRC was a nice ride. I hadn't noticed the lights like city streets on the floor on previous visits. Overall, the ending still seems very abrupt, and it wasn't that fun to just sit in the black light area while they finished exiting the train in front of us. By this time, our TOT FP's had come up, so we grabbed some FP's to ride RNRC again, and headed over to TOT. For the first time, I saw the Mickey doll that the little girl has, and I really liked that hidden, yet entirely appropriate, Mickey. We got the extra scene in the drop shaft, with the ghosts. It was nice, but the area was lit up the entire time, so every time we got near the bottom of the shaft we saw what looked like a bunch of 2 X 4's. On the way out, I noticed that they were working on re-roofing the upper back portions of the building. We headed over to the Great Movie ride. I hadn't ever seen the Western shoot out, and luckily we got that scene. We were in the very back row of our car, so the driver talked about things long before we saw them, which was sort of annoying. He stopped by the Casablanca scene to talk about it for a while, and we were still in the jungle of Tarzan. Other than that, it was a really fun ride. After we got out, we grabbed some churros from a cart in the area. Those things are so good in DL, but here they are terrible. They were hard, stale, luke-warm, and tasteless. After that, we waited patiently, and met Mickey and Pluto. We did the whole 10 camera thing, so we had to smile for quite a while. (Not nearly as long as the picture in the MK though) We went back to RNRC to use our FP's before we had our meeting time to leave for Epcot. It seemed strangely like the ride on it before. We decided to sleep for the picture, but if you look at the picture carefully, somebody didn't quite register what that meant. We all met up at the hat, and it was ugly. We waited for probably close to an hour, while the dehydrated people were retrieved from First Aid. I have no idea how you can get dehydrated in a park with water fountains every 300 feet, but they were able to do it. After we collected everybody, we headed off to Epcot. On the way over, I noticed that they were halfway through painting the Swan. I thought it was particularly interesting, since it was halfway done, yet there was no scaffolding or anything like that. After getting into Epcot, the first thing we did was Mission: Space, with a posted wait of 5 minutes. We only had to wait for the next simulator to open up. So much for it being the next huge E-Ticket. El Rio Del Tiepmo had about the same wait time, and that is no amazing attraction in the least. From there, we got in the single rider line at Test Track. The TV screen in our car wasn't working, which I thought was very disappointing. The testing area also seemed a lot brighter than I remembered. I don't remember the lights hidden by the black curtains on the ceiling from previous trips. After that, we had a Beverly contest. (Thanks Labuda for the idea!) I won, after drinking 3 shots. I was willing to get up to about 6, but the 3 still made me feel sick for about an hour. After that, we took a leisurely trip on Spaceship Earth. I can't believe that somebody in our group was scared of the AA's. I made fun of him every chance I could. I had trouble hearing, so I slouched a lot to actually hear, but it got really painful. We went back to Test Track, only to have it break down, about 5 minutes after getting in line. And with that cliff hanger, I have to go, but I'll be back with the rest of the story soon!
Originally Posted By Labuda "After that, we had a Beverly contest. (Thanks Labuda for the idea!) I won, after drinking 3 shots. I was willing to get up to about 6, but the 3 still made me feel sick for about an hour." 3? Man, I soooooo would've wont hat sontest! My body gave up around 8 shots. lol Gee, you mean Test Track broke down? I'm shocked! hehe Looking forward to the rest of your report - this is good reading!
Originally Posted By Labuda Hey, ferret, I found a link to ssWEDguy's pictures of the phone towers... take a look at this page and tell me if that's the strange tree you saw... <a href="http://ssdisney.home.att.net/disneynexteltrees.htm" target="_blank">http://ssdisney.home.att.net/d isneynexteltrees.htm</a>
Originally Posted By ilovdisney Great pictures. By the looks of the bus company you used can I guess to say your from Cumberland County. I know SVSH was going there and I wondered if that is your group or did another HS go. Sounds like you all had a great time Miss B mom to a DD Class of 2006
