Hitting the Wall

You may have noticed that I missed a day of blogging.   I know there must be at least a half of a half a dozen people out there waiting with great anticipation to read what we've been up to, but try as I might, there was no way I was getting a blog done yesterday.   And today's will probably be shorter than normal too.

It's official, we've hit the wall.  5 solid days of Disney World is a lot of work and we're all pretty tired.  Throw in the sweltering heat and there's even less energy to go around.  Don't get me wrong, we're having a blast, it's just we need to conserve energy whenever we can.

Here's a quick recap of the last couple of days.

Day 4:  Blizzard Beach.   We headed to the Blizzard Beach Waterpark in the morning and it was quite a park.   It had something for everyone, including a chairlift that took you up the mountain to the "expert" rides.   There was the Summit Plummet (a 120ft drop straight down), the Slush Gusher which has a couple of bumps, (the second gives you a couple of seconds of air before you finally come back down onto the slide again) and Teamboat Springs (a 6 person tube ride which gets going fairly fast).   There are also "intermediate" rides which still go quite fast, but maybe aren't as death-defying as the first three.   The best of these slides was the Snow Stormers which was like a slalom course for water slides, winding its way down the hillside.  And there was the bunny slopes, aka Tike's Peak for the under 4' crowd.    

It was a wee bit crowded though, as some of the rides had lineups in the 45min to an hour range.   Standing that long in the blistering heat for a ride that took less than 30 seconds was too much.   But everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, especially the kids.  There were all these daring slides to go on and yet the most enjoyable part of the day was the Cross Country Creek.   There was a creek that wound its way throughout the park that you could take a tube on and you would be propelled by the "current".   There were jets every so often that kept your speed up.   It was relaxing to be in the water and to not have to work very hard to go anywhere and also nice to get some shade in places.   Everyone agreed that time in the creek was well spent.

After getting crispy in the sun and waterlogged from the slides, we headed over to Disney's Hollywood Studios for the evening.  One of the issues here is that Abby isn't tall enough for the Aerosmith Roller Coaster and some of us have differing viewpoints on the Hollywood Tower of Terror.   So to keep the peace, we went to The Voyage of the Little Mermaid which was a play that told the story of the Little Mermaid in about 15 minutes.   This was a huge hit with Abby.   Ariel has long been her favourite Disney Character (although she now seems to have been replaced by Pluto, although I think Ariel is still her fave human) and Abby couldn't take her eyes off the stage.  We also did the new and improved Star Tours 3D.   The upgrades were terrific and the 3D effects quite good.   They even have more than 1 scenario (apparently it's 54 scenarios) so when you go to see it again, it's not the same show.

Josh and I got to go on the Aerosmith Rollercoaster while Tawny was off hunting Fast Passes with Caleb & Abby.    We took Steve's advice again and went single riders.   The <15min wait is the way to go.   The ride was spectacular.  The scenery and build up gave you a bit of an idea what Aerosmith is all about.   Our only complaint is that it's too short.   A couple more loopydeloops would have made it better.   For those of you who've been to Disneyland, it's a combination of Thunder Mountain and California Screamin' which is a terrific combo.

We then went to Fantasmic which at DisneyWorld has an entire stadium area dedicated just for it.   In all our years at Disneyland we had never actually watched it.   We saw bits and pieces as we'd walk through Fronteirland, but never the whole show.  Even Josh, who wanted no part in watching the show, enjoyed himself.  After that we had time left for 1 last ride.  Tawny, Caleb & Abby headed over to Toy Story Mania while Josh and I went to Tower of Terror.   It has a few different twists and turns to its California counterpart, which made it only better.  It's one of, if not my favourite ride.   I love the build up before hand, and then the adrenaline rush during the ride of getting tossed up and down while getting to see Disney lit up at night at the pinnacle of the ride.   We hurried over to meet Tawny and the kids and on the way Josh mentioned to me that he had a headache.   This wasn't surprising because we spent a lot of time in the sun without much cover and because he never drinks enough water.   I gave him some water to drink and we continued on to meet the others.  

It didn't get any cooler out, and about 15 minutes after the first time he said he had a headache he informed me that he was needing a bathroom.   As any loving caring dad would do, I quickly asked him "You gonna puke?"  He responded with a nod of his head and I took off like I was shot out of a cannon (we had a buggy from Fantasmic that he could ride in).   We made it to within 10 feet of the bathroom before he tossed his cookies.  (Yes I'm going to have to change the tag line of this blog)

Poor kid.  Puke everywhere and he was concerned that he was making a mess.  He even asked if he should go get an attendant to clean it up.   It had a remarkable affect on him though, as he barely spoke for the next 35 minutes.   I knew he was going to be okay when all of the sudden he was back to his 200 words/minute talking, just before we arrived at home.

Day 5 we went back to Disney's Hollywood Studios.   Caleb & Connor went with the Keatings today, so there was just 4 of  us for most of the day.  There was a lot of unfinished business to take care of.  Hollywood Studios doesn't have a lot of rides, but it has a lot of high quality shows.   Today we saw Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular, Lights Motors Action! Extreme Stunt Show, A Studio Backlot Tour and Beauty & the Beast.   They were all good, with Indiana Jones and the Extreme Stunt show standing out as spectacular.   The Stunt show involves a bunch of cars and they give you an indepth look at how they perform different stunts.   I can't believe how fast they go and how close they come to hitting each other, but never touching.  It's impressive.   The Indy show was a favourite for everyone and the kids really got into it.   David J was especially animated watching the show.  Sometimes he would jump right out of his seat and other times he would hide behind his map ... the suspense was too much to take.

We did some more rides as well, and Abby would like everyone to know that she did The Hollywood Tower of Terror.  I'm pretty sure her eyes were closed the whole way through and that she screamed for the entire ride.   When it was done she turned to me and said, "That's wasn't so bad Dad."   Then shortly after, she wanted to know where Auntie Cara Lee was so that she could tell her Auntie all about how brave she was.   This will be a bragging point for weeks to come, especially seeing as Caleb has balked at going on the ride, for now.   (Good luck trying to get her to go on again though.)

The one ride we wanted to go on, and the one we got fast passes for when we first arrived, was Toy Story Mania.   It had some technical glitches around 2pm, and every time after that when we went to check, it was still not working.   We really wanted to do that before we left, so we hung around a bit waiting to see if they could fix it.  In the meantime, the heavens absolutely opened up and it poured for a good 20 minutes.   Now this was impressive rain.   We sought shelter from it for a brief amount of time, and pretty soon there were a couple of inches on ground.   But we were all getting hungry so we made a run for it to a restaurant.   It took us 4 minutes to get to the restaurant.  It took us 2 minutes to get completely drenched including underwear, as Abby would eventually point out.   It would have been nicer earlier in the day when it was scorching but we'll take the cooling off any time.   We had our dinner, doublechecked Toy Story (still broken) and then decided we'd try to go to Magic Kingdom to get a couple of rides in tonight.

We probably bit more off than we could chew tonight.  It takes a good half hour to get into Magic Kingdom from when you park, but we gave it a go.   Once in the park, we headed straight to get fast passes for Splash Mountain.  Yes we were still soaked, but Abby was totally stoked to go on it again, and she had got the short end of the stick when we were at Hollywood Studios.   After that we headed onto the Thunder Mountain Railroad.   We were in line for 5 minutes when an attendant came over the speaker to inform us that due to the inclement weather they were shutting down the ride for the time being.   That meant no Thunder Mountain, and no Splash Mountain.   We drowned our sorrows with a trip on the Pirates of the Carribean and afterwards Josh ventured into the Pirate store that you have to walk through before leaving.   He was given a bit of spending money by my parents to buy something at Disney World.  He can't decide for the life of him what he wants.   If he could, I'm pretty sure he' d buy the entire store.   We wandered around the store for a while, but still no decision.   Hopefully something happens tomorrow.

We finished the night off, with a ride on Aladdin's Magic Carpets and a spin on Buzz Lightyear.  I'm happy to report that I have reclaimed my crown with the high score on Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin. 

Our ending of that ride coincided with the ending of the fireworks and it was a mad rush for the exits.   It's amazing how people conduct themselves at this time of night.   It's pretty much chaos.   I've often thought to myself, "Thank goodness for traffic lights cause if people drove like they walk we'd all be in trouble."  Tonight was no different.  But we made it back in one piece, no more puking and another great day at the parks.   Just 2 left to go.