STOP: Bullet Time!
Aug. 9th, 2007 06:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ruOr just simply list time, as the case may be, because I don't feel like fussing with bullets right now. Either way. Last few days report!
--Something I forgot to mention--on the first night, the hotel/restaurant area where we were staying was officially dubbed "Clusterfuckville", due to various issues, such as a main road that's always clogged with traffic and a little express food court that was anything but express, as indicated by the fact that it took half an hour to get a couple of sandwiches and personal pan pizzas.
--I had a birthday on Monday. <3 I am now 23, which for some reason feels a heck of a lot stranger than 22. Maybe it's just because I feel more comfortable in the even rather than the odd numbers. Go figure.
--Birthday at Disney, BTW? AWESOME. About a bajillion times nicer than spending most of the day in the Comfy Chair with an ice pack on your head watching Sushi TV whilst battling a screaming headache. I did that last year. ^_^; Anyway, Mom insisted on me getting one of the official "It's my birthday!" buttons so everyone knew.
--Things that can happen if you spend your birthday at Disney: You get a lot of "Happy Birthday!"s from cast members, which made me smile. You may get spiffy pins, which prompted Mom to make sure I was at the counter with her when purchasing something, just in case. She likes pins. You may get "Happy Birthday" sung to you in Arabic. With drum accompaniment. Having "Happy Birthday" sung to you in a restaurant is embarassing, but having it sung in Arabic made it nifty. The fact that we got a really tasty baklava-like dessert with cream and ice cream made it nice too. <3
--Animal Kingdom? ALSO AWESOME. A criticism I've heard is that AK is basically one big zoo. And it's true, but it's also a really spiffy zoo. For my Disneyfied birthday, I really wanted to spend time exploring it, so we did. I was having a grand old time running down the meandering paths and identifying plants and going "OOH LOOK ORCHIDS IN TREES LIKE THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO BE". And of course we saw animals of various sorts, which was fun.
--For added awesomesauce: One of the things I wanted to do was get a closer look at the Tree of Life. One of the cast members saw me gazing at it, and offered to show us a lesser-traveled path that went right up to the base of it, since he was going that way anyway. It was indeed a lesser-traveled path--enough that a large heron-like bird was strolling along the path without a care in the world. And seeing it up close was really neat. The longer you look at it, the more animals you see in the trunk. Just when you think you've seen them all, look, a squid! Neat!
--At one point, we were walking along a path and came across a grapevine spirit lady, who was quite pretty and was walking around and commanding the attention of the entire crowd. Spiffy.
--YETI! <3 Yeah, I know it's called "Expedition: Everest", but I just call it YETI!. It was way fun, even if I was kinda listing to one side afterwards. As a rule, I'm not fond of roller coasters, but I make an exception for Disney coasters, since they're less about scaring the pants off of you and more about being fun. This one, while still giving me an 'eep' moment when I looked down and realized how high we were, was fun.
--SAFARI! <3 <3 I was tickled that we managed to do both YETI! and the Safari. I think the Safari is what really made it, as I was tickled pink to see ostriches and gazelles and giraffes that walked across the road in front of us and BABY GIRAFFE and BABY ELEPHANT and OMG so cool. The areas seemed kinda small though. I hope they have sufficient room and whatnot. Maybe they have a larger area where we don't go, or something. Anyway. A large part of the time, this was going through my head. It was very much a "Holy Crap. Lions!" tour. Though I didn't get a free snorkel at the end.
--Clusterfuckville appears to have some Mongol-like tendencies, as indicated by its attempts to conquer Disney. The last day the monorail system was having serious jam-up issues, and they had to shut down Space Mountain briefly, due to something about vibrations and too many trains on the track. This ended up with them turning on the lights in Space Mountain briefly, which was interesting.
--I'd forgotten how much I adore Donald Duck. His angry spaz attacks are the best. <3
--I was accosted by Gepetto. We went into a photo/animation exhibit thing, where they were showing old Disney cartoons. I was busy being enthralled by "Flowers and Trees" when I felt someone holding my braid. I turned, expecting to find Mom being silly, but instead found that Gepetto was on the other end, on his way out to meet and greet everyone. Dirty old man. XD
--We went on the New!Improved! Pirates of the Caribbean ride. I have nothing against needed rennovations, and Pirates was certainly beginning to show its age, but I really don't know that I approve of what they did with it. Basically, they altered it such that the movie permeated it, with Barbosa on the ship and Jack Sparrow lurking about and whatnot. A lot of the original scenes were kept, but the dialogue was changed, again, to fit with the movie. This bothers me. Yes, I know the Pirates movie has become Disney's new cash cow, but I don't think they should alter the ride just because of that. To me, the movie seemed to be a tribute to the ride, and so a person should go to see where all the references/jokes came from. Instead, they've altered it such that it's basically an appendage of the movies. Ru does not approve.
--Ru does approve, though, of frozen lime margaritas. I discovered on the trip that I like them. ^_^;
--And finally, the plants had a few surprises for me when we got home. Hal is going through a huge growth spurt, which means I'll need to perform my haircut experiment soon. Avobaby has righted itself, which is good, the singular pumpkin is about the size of a small soccer ball and is starting to turn orange, and best of all, TOMATO. We have a singular tomato on the tomato plants. This makes me excited, even if it is just one tomato. I wasn't expecting a bumper crop, or anything. If nothing else, it makes me go, "Hey! I can grow fruits! Huzzah!" I am worried that it's starting to get blossom crown rot, though, due to a brown spot on the bottom of the tomato. I need to procure some calcium this weekend to hopefully rectify that. I wonder if I could use ground Tums, which we have lying around the house. Hm...
--Something I forgot to mention--on the first night, the hotel/restaurant area where we were staying was officially dubbed "Clusterfuckville", due to various issues, such as a main road that's always clogged with traffic and a little express food court that was anything but express, as indicated by the fact that it took half an hour to get a couple of sandwiches and personal pan pizzas.
--I had a birthday on Monday. <3 I am now 23, which for some reason feels a heck of a lot stranger than 22. Maybe it's just because I feel more comfortable in the even rather than the odd numbers. Go figure.
--Birthday at Disney, BTW? AWESOME. About a bajillion times nicer than spending most of the day in the Comfy Chair with an ice pack on your head watching Sushi TV whilst battling a screaming headache. I did that last year. ^_^; Anyway, Mom insisted on me getting one of the official "It's my birthday!" buttons so everyone knew.
--Things that can happen if you spend your birthday at Disney: You get a lot of "Happy Birthday!"s from cast members, which made me smile. You may get spiffy pins, which prompted Mom to make sure I was at the counter with her when purchasing something, just in case. She likes pins. You may get "Happy Birthday" sung to you in Arabic. With drum accompaniment. Having "Happy Birthday" sung to you in a restaurant is embarassing, but having it sung in Arabic made it nifty. The fact that we got a really tasty baklava-like dessert with cream and ice cream made it nice too. <3
--Animal Kingdom? ALSO AWESOME. A criticism I've heard is that AK is basically one big zoo. And it's true, but it's also a really spiffy zoo. For my Disneyfied birthday, I really wanted to spend time exploring it, so we did. I was having a grand old time running down the meandering paths and identifying plants and going "OOH LOOK ORCHIDS IN TREES LIKE THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO BE". And of course we saw animals of various sorts, which was fun.
--For added awesomesauce: One of the things I wanted to do was get a closer look at the Tree of Life. One of the cast members saw me gazing at it, and offered to show us a lesser-traveled path that went right up to the base of it, since he was going that way anyway. It was indeed a lesser-traveled path--enough that a large heron-like bird was strolling along the path without a care in the world. And seeing it up close was really neat. The longer you look at it, the more animals you see in the trunk. Just when you think you've seen them all, look, a squid! Neat!
--At one point, we were walking along a path and came across a grapevine spirit lady, who was quite pretty and was walking around and commanding the attention of the entire crowd. Spiffy.
--YETI! <3 Yeah, I know it's called "Expedition: Everest", but I just call it YETI!. It was way fun, even if I was kinda listing to one side afterwards. As a rule, I'm not fond of roller coasters, but I make an exception for Disney coasters, since they're less about scaring the pants off of you and more about being fun. This one, while still giving me an 'eep' moment when I looked down and realized how high we were, was fun.
--SAFARI! <3 <3 I was tickled that we managed to do both YETI! and the Safari. I think the Safari is what really made it, as I was tickled pink to see ostriches and gazelles and giraffes that walked across the road in front of us and BABY GIRAFFE and BABY ELEPHANT and OMG so cool. The areas seemed kinda small though. I hope they have sufficient room and whatnot. Maybe they have a larger area where we don't go, or something. Anyway. A large part of the time, this was going through my head. It was very much a "Holy Crap. Lions!" tour. Though I didn't get a free snorkel at the end.
--Clusterfuckville appears to have some Mongol-like tendencies, as indicated by its attempts to conquer Disney. The last day the monorail system was having serious jam-up issues, and they had to shut down Space Mountain briefly, due to something about vibrations and too many trains on the track. This ended up with them turning on the lights in Space Mountain briefly, which was interesting.
--I'd forgotten how much I adore Donald Duck. His angry spaz attacks are the best. <3
--I was accosted by Gepetto. We went into a photo/animation exhibit thing, where they were showing old Disney cartoons. I was busy being enthralled by "Flowers and Trees" when I felt someone holding my braid. I turned, expecting to find Mom being silly, but instead found that Gepetto was on the other end, on his way out to meet and greet everyone. Dirty old man. XD
--We went on the New!Improved! Pirates of the Caribbean ride. I have nothing against needed rennovations, and Pirates was certainly beginning to show its age, but I really don't know that I approve of what they did with it. Basically, they altered it such that the movie permeated it, with Barbosa on the ship and Jack Sparrow lurking about and whatnot. A lot of the original scenes were kept, but the dialogue was changed, again, to fit with the movie. This bothers me. Yes, I know the Pirates movie has become Disney's new cash cow, but I don't think they should alter the ride just because of that. To me, the movie seemed to be a tribute to the ride, and so a person should go to see where all the references/jokes came from. Instead, they've altered it such that it's basically an appendage of the movies. Ru does not approve.
--Ru does approve, though, of frozen lime margaritas. I discovered on the trip that I like them. ^_^;
--And finally, the plants had a few surprises for me when we got home. Hal is going through a huge growth spurt, which means I'll need to perform my haircut experiment soon. Avobaby has righted itself, which is good, the singular pumpkin is about the size of a small soccer ball and is starting to turn orange, and best of all, TOMATO. We have a singular tomato on the tomato plants. This makes me excited, even if it is just one tomato. I wasn't expecting a bumper crop, or anything. If nothing else, it makes me go, "Hey! I can grow fruits! Huzzah!" I am worried that it's starting to get blossom crown rot, though, due to a brown spot on the bottom of the tomato. I need to procure some calcium this weekend to hopefully rectify that. I wonder if I could use ground Tums, which we have lying around the house. Hm...