Disney part 2

This is where the intrepid heroes start to realize that they made some bad choices.

We finished our dinner with plenty of time to make it to the Magic Kingdom extra magic hours so we decide to hop in the car and head on over to the Ticket & Transportation Center so that we didn't have to come back to the hotel. We hop on the monorail (por favor, mantangense alejado de las puertas) and are at Magic Kingdom just as the sun was going down and the lights were coming up.

Magic Kingdom was lovely and we got some wonderful pictures of the park at night. I was profoundly stupid getting on the Journey of the Little Mermaid. I decided that the lens I had attached wasn't the best choice and was making a quick swap as we entered our clam and I lost my grip on my camera bag. It landed with a loud *THUNK* and in my mind a lot of valuable glass had just been turned into valueless powdered shards. It's also worth noting that this loud impact caused me to utter words that one should not utter in the Magic Kingdom...and I didn't use my "inside voice" to do so. At the end of the ride, the cast members were kind enough to quickly retrieve my bag with a fully operational lens still inside. We shot some more pictures and went to go back to our hotel.

We made for the exit in high spirits and saw most of the monorail entrances were roped off. We went to the one open entrance and a cast member shouted "The monorail isn't running!"
Whaaaaaaaaa?
So we wait at the boat dock and let me tell you how Disney lies without lying. If you are part of a huge summer crowd, the cast members (trying to steer suckers to the ferry) will tell you that the monorail and the ferry take the same time to cross the lagoon and that is true. What they don't tell you is that you will stand there for 10 minutes waiting for the ferry, spend another 15 minutes boarding the ferry and another 5 securing the boat and exiting. As we sit on the uncomfortable bench we feel more than a bit scammed.

We finally make it back to our car and are on our way back to our room. Sorta. You see there is little consistency to the directional signs on Disney property. Think fast! Is Pop Century a "Magic Kingdom Area Resort," "Disney Hollywood Studios Area Resort," "Animal Kingdom Area Resort," or an "ESPN Area Resort?" Well, we guessed wrong. Since Disney roads handle a LOT of traffic, many of the directional changes are on and off ramps instead of intersections. So, you get turned around and find the signs now are for specific resorts...but not ours. So two turn abouts later, we find ourselves back at the room at around midnight as we are exhausted and decide to sleep in a bit.

One of the many unsupervised children decides to overrule this, banging on the metal railing that runs the length of the resort. This produces a noise not unlike a gong right outside your door, a door that is made of aluminum foil and some sort of sound amplifying membrane. So with 6 hours of sleep we put on our happy face and go to breakfast.

Now let me preface this with Doreen and I have been in military chow halls. Quite a few of them in fact and NOTHING prepared us for this. We are immediately greeted with a floor and most surfaces covered in... lightly used food. Crumbs, spills, sloshes and good ole fashioned thrown food are every where. We also quickly notice that there are about half as many tables as there are diners. Well, this will be fun. We decide on the omelet station. We quickly realize that the omelets are made somewhere "backstage" and held in huge steam trays. The "hash browns" are similarly industrial potatoes. I get a side of sausage that looks a lot like McSausage and we move on to pastries. This is a full-contact sport. Kids and teens facing the morning without their sugar will push, shove and bite. We got our bounty and went to pay and pay we did. So we finally found a table that was only slightly sticky to eat our apparently gold plated Mcfood. It was horrible. The eggs were dry, the sausage tasteless and the danish, well the danish didn't suck but Disney is pretty good with bakery items.

We head back over to Disney Hollywood Studios. There is still stuff to be seen and our dining reservations are there. We spend the morning touring and are in a fairly good mood when we head over to the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater. This was hugely fun! The "tables" are all made to look like cars. The bad news is that there are three double seats, so unless you come with a big family, your dining experience is very much at the mercy of other people. The food was good but the atmosphere was stellar. We both ordered the "All American Picnic Burger" and that was a mistake that would haunt us. It's a burger topped with a hot dog. I was imagining a non-full sized burger and non-full sized dog. There is one drawback to this place: The seating is close and table is narrow. If you are "Pooh sized" or have a lot of tackle, you are not going to enjoy this. A small camera bag and an SLR were problematic.

We enjoyed more park and all too soon our dinner reservations were up. This was our first time at the Hollywood Brown Derby and we enjoyed it. Our waitress was a bit confused and we had to specifically ask for silverware, straws and (not making this up) plates. We both agreed that the food was quite good. Not the best we'd had on site nor the best value but it was a very good evening. Cue Yakety Sax for figuring out which way back to the resort. We then find out how lucky we are with our stained room with grimy grout. We hear our next door neighbor out on the walkway alternating between tears and rage. She's spent the last three days with a malfunctioning door lock that she can't get anyone to fix. The problem today is that she can't even really leave the general area since her phone is behind the locked and now unopenable door so they have no way to reach her if they deign to dispatch a maintenance man and she missed most of a park day so far waiting. Walt Disney World has recently gone to a RFID device for room keys and tickets and apparently it's not fully baked yet.

So ends day 2. We had fun, though not as much as we had liked. Typically you go to Disney because they pay attention to the little things. When they stop that level of attention, you realize you are paying a lot of money for a really pretty amusement park.