Fun and Games Dept

According to the telephone sitting next to me here at the hotel desk, we’re in Largo, Maryland tonight. We left WDW this morning around 9:30 a.m. We drove and drove and drove and drove up Interstate 95, seeing signs like this one:

By the way, there’s something with this sign that the Transportation Engineer in me appreciates very much. Anyone want to venture a guess why this sign is more legible than most?

Anyway, I had hoped to drive all the way home tonight, taking all 21 1/2 hours in one big gulp. It obviously didn’t happen for a couple of reasons: 1. I would have been driving the familiar part of the ride in the middle of the night, increasing my chance of falling asleep at the wheel and 2. Earl and I don’t want to repeat the “driveway full of snow” episode after enjoying such a lovely vacation.

Tomorrow we’ll tackle the potential snowbank in the driveway in the daylight.

Today Earl and I spent our final day here at WDW at Disney-MGM Studios. Mother Nature decided that we needed a little bit of a shower to start the day off, but that didn’t slow us down at all, once Earl bought a snappy new raincoat.

We continued the laid back pace while touring the Studios today. One new attraction includes the Lights, Motors, Action! Stunt Show which was quite enjoyable. We also made a stop at the 50s Retro Cafe for lunch and ate way too much food, but the other patrons were encouraged to applaud for me when “Aunt Susan”, our server, announced that I had cleaned my plate.

Tonight we are going to relax a bit and get ready for the ride home this weekend. We might make a stop at Downtown Disney tonight if we’re in the mood.

I feel the best I have felt in years.

Back in February ’02, Earl and I had the delightful experience of seeing Bea Arthur do her one-woman show on Broadway. It was a last minute decision to see Ms. Arthur, as we had picked up half priced tickets at the TKTS stand at Times Square that day. The seats were wonderful and we had the opportunity to see her up close at the backstage door after the show.

At the beginning of the show, Bea starts by giving a recipe to one of her favorite dishes. The culinary delight escapes me right now, but one of the things that she talks about throughout her show is that instead of going for something sweet for dessert, she prefers something else. She prefers to have a selection of cheeses with a dessert wine.

This intrigued me.

Tonight Earl and I went to Disney’s Boardwalk for dinner at the “Flying Fish Café”, on the recommendation of a bear in Buffalo we call Spanglemaker. (That’s his online name. I don’t think his parents named him that though if they did it would be quite the conversation piece).

There were the usual assortment of tourists at the Flying Fish Café, where they do their best to give you an upscale dining experience. Earl and I had a bottle of wine; he had crab cakes and I had “two onion soup” for an appetizer, he had Tilefish and I had Red Snapper for the main course. We agreed that both of our meals were absolutely delightful and we finished off the bottle of wine before we were to the end of entreés. Thank the universe for tap water on the side.

Since this was a somewhat fancy dining experience, it stayed true to the old dining rule, “The more you pay, the smaller the entreé.” I like rhyming my old dining rules.*

The server (he had a fancy name that escapes me right now, but I recall that he was from Bethlehem, Pa.) then brought us the dessert menu, where I noticed that among the wonderful selection of confectionary delights they also had a five cheese platter, complimented by raisins on the vine and a few dollops of other fruit. Intrigued, and remembering Bea, I decided that I would try the cheese platter and compliment it with the recommended Inniskillin 2003 Riesling Icewine from the Niagara Penisula. I’ve never had cheese at the end of the meal before, nor have I ever had a dessert wine. The cheese platter came with toast points and the aforementioned fruit garnishes.

I love having cheese at the end of the meal. I don’t miss the heavy feeling one gets after eating a slice of cheesecake and I don’t miss the sugar buzz from eating some confectionary concoction (though the buzz I’m feeling from the wine is a perfectly acceptable substitute.)

Many remember Bea Arthur for her portrayals as Maude Findley and Dorothy Zbornack, as well as all the other character roles she has played over the years. I shall remember her first and foremost for her recommendation of cheese as dessert.

*-This blog entry was written after several glasses of wine and two rides on Disney Transport buses. I hope that I remained coherent.

Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

Originally uploaded by macwarriorny.

Earl and I paid a visit to Disney’s Animal Kingdom today. As I mentioned before, Animal Kingdom is one of my favorite places at WDW and today just solidified that fact.

Can I just say that I love the FastPass system that Disney has on their more popular attractions. It’s so easy. You just insert your park ticket or room key and out pops a little ticket that tells you when to come back to the attraction, usually with a window of an hour. Then there’s little to no wait as you jump into the FastPass lane at the attraction. By doing this, you avoid spending time in longer lines when you can be out exploring other parts off the park.

With this visit was our first experience with Expedition Everest. It was best roller-coaster type ride we’ve been on in a long while.

I also enjoy going over to Conservation Station. Here you can learn about what you can do to keep the Earth “eco-friendly”, plus there’s a petting zoo where I enjoy chatting with the animals.

We also went on the safari ride and enjoyed the “Flights of Wonder” show (featuring various birds doing natural bird-like things, including a parrot that sang “Yankee Doodle Dandy”.) After the 4:00 p.m. parade, Earl and I headed back to our home at Saratoga Springs, where we are now relaxing a bit before heading over to the Boardwalk for dinner at the Flying Fish.

Today Earl and I ventured over to Blizzard Beach. The newest and one of two water parks here at WDW, one of the star attractions is Summit Plummet, the world’s tallest and fastest free-fall body slide.

I took the plunge on Summit Plummet (after a 60 minute wait in line), whereas I yelled all the way down and reached 52 MPH. The youngster that went before me was dead silent on the way down and reached 61 MPH. He and I chatted while we were waiting. He was visiting from Perry, Ontario.

Earl and I also horsed around in the pool a little bit and conquered several of the other water slides together.

Tonight we are going to a luau.

Today Earl and I spent a second day at Epcot here at Walt Disney World. We spent the entire day in the World Showcase. I believe this is my favorite part of the entire Disney experience.

The World Showcase features 11 different countries, all populated with natives of each country, basically showcasing their national pride through interactive exhibits, food, gift shops and displays of entertainment and art. We visited all of them.

I’m always inspired by the national pride the citizens show for their homeland. The Canadian, Chinese and Norwegian displays have “Circlevision” films which showcase each of the countries with a glorious 360 degree film. I think the Chinese film was recently redone because it didn’t seem familiar to me at all. For some reason I always get a little misty during the Canadian film; I think it’s because it’s such a beautiful country, the backing music is beautiful and they’re always such a friendly bunch.

The American exhibit is wonderful as well, with a colonial-era theme. Today there was a fife and drum corps, a spectacular a cappella group (that I’ve forgotten the name of) singing traditional American songs and then a audio-animatronic presentation entitled “The American Adventure”. I always tear up during this presentation as well because while I may not always agree with our government, I am always proud to be an American and our spirit shines brightly through this presentation. It’s interesting to see the reactions of some of the audience to this presentation, as it runs pretty safely moderate as far as a “slant” goes (there really isn’t any sort of political slant to the presentation at all) and you can tell by the reactions of some that they find it too liberal.

Earl and I continued our trek through the World Showcase by using our PhotoPass as much as possible. The photographer in Morocco decided we were fun looking and thought we should mix it up a bit. Here’s our tough guy pose.

Tomorrow we hit do something new for us: we hit the water parks.

This is our fourth trip together to Walt Disney World. In the past we’ve devoted one day to each of the theme parks. This year we’ve extended our trip by a day and a half, allowing us to approach the activities at a more relaxed pace. So we decided to devote two days to Epcot this time.

For those unfamiliar with Epcot, it is one Disney World theme park divided into two main parts. The front part is geared more toward “innovation” and environmental kind of stuff (called “Future World”), while the back part is the “World Showcase”, eleven different pavilions representing eleven different countries.

A full explanation of Epcot can be found here.

Since I wasn’t really raised as a Disney kid, it isn’t blasphemy for me to say that it’s a toss-up between Epcot or Animal Kingdom as my favorite park here at Disney World. (Adults raised as “Disney kids” will tell you that Magic Kingdom is their favorite and that’s the way it must be because it’s the original.)

I love Epcot. I feel Epcot embodies the dream that Walt Disney had of actually educating families in a non-institutional way. If you pay attention to all that’s going on through the park, there’s a lot to be learned at the various displays, exhibits and rides. From “Ellen’s Energy Adventure” to the boat ride on “The Land” to the GM Test Track, there’s a lot of interesting things going on at Epcot.

I must say that I’m quite proud of my partner as he has used the “Earl Glare” on several occasions to people using their cell phones on a ride or during a presentation. It must be icy cold, because the couple of times that he’s fired off that glare the cell phone conversation has come to an abrupt end. I love it.

After Epcot, Earl and I returned to Saratoga Springs to freshen up and then jumped on a boat to Downtown Disney and Pleasure Island. We decided to have dinner at the Raglan Road Irish Pub, where the food was excellent, the authentic Irish music was lively and the Irish jib dancer was talented and loud.

All in all a great day in the sunshine.

Saratoga Springs Resort.

Originally uploaded by macwarriorny.

Earl and I are safe and sound at our second home, Saratoga Springs Resort at Walt Disney World in beautiful Orlando, Florida.

The drive from St. Petersburg was relatively short. Earl and I are Disney Vacation Club members, so we have a time-share type place here at Disney. We stocked up on groceries before getting to the property, at a grocery store called “Sweetbay Supermarket”. I guess living with me for over a decade has rubbed off on Earl in a geek sort of way, because he was to deduce, from the logo of the store only, that it was owned by the same company back at home that we call “Hannafords”. This was confirmed by the store brand of everything on the shelves in the store. I’m so proud of him.

After getting situated in the room, we did some exploring around Saratoga Springs. The weather was is absolutely gorgeous and the folks here are quite friendly. The market/restaurant here is quite nice. We munched down a flatbread pizza type thing before continuing on.

We then hopped a bus to the Magic Kingdom. It just seems like you should go to the Magic Kingdom first when you come to Disney World. I don’t know why it feels that way, but to do otherwise seems just wrong.

Since we arrived earlier than planned, today was a “bonus day” so we just kind of took our time around the Magic Kingdom. We visited some of the recently refurbished exhibits, grabbed some chow and did some generic site seeing.

There are many reasons to find the Magic Kingdom fascinating, and one of them is the blending of all the different cultures of the visitors. I could just sit and people watch at any of the Disney properties all day long. There is such a mingling of various regions of the country with a wide selection of accents and regional phrases, mixes of social class and all that stuff. And that doesn’t even take into account all the people visiting our country from other parts of the world as well. I just find it so interesting.

After spending the afternoon and evening at the Magic Kingdom, we wrapped up the night with the “Wishes” fireworks display over Cinderella’s Castle. Disney certainly knows how put on a fireworks display.

I’ve decided to keep the computer time to a minimum this vacation, limiting my bits and bytes to a once a night blog entry.

I’m feeling re-energized already, and the vacation has just begun.

Pulaski, Va.

Originally uploaded by macwarriorny.

Earl and I hit the road early this morning. Not really an early bird, I realized that we had finished Pennsylvania (almost 100 miles), had passed through Maryland (12 miles) and were almost through West Virginia (about 15 miles) when I woke up.

And I was driving!

First order of business was to send a friendly wave to Thom in Northern Virginia as we passed his off ramp. Remembering our visit with him last year made us both smile. That was quickly followed by a wave to Jimbo in D.C. (via I-66 from where we were). We haven’t met Jimbo yet but he gets major woof points.

And then we made our way down I-81 through Virginia. There’s a lot of Virginia along I-81, but it’s a scenic drive. I had never been south of I-64 before so it was relatively uncharted territory.

Our first stop was for some grub in a delightfully homey-feeling chain of a place called “Country Cookin'”. These appear to be in old Perkins (or something like it) and are a lot like “Eat ‘n Park” that you see in Pennsylvania. The waitress, Gina, was friendly and tolerant when we made the huge southern faux pas of ordering “iced tea” instead of “sweet tea” or “unsweet tea”. We were corrected and learned our lesson for the duration of the trip.

After Country Cookin’ we washed the car (yay! for warm weather!) and then made a trek into Pulaski, Va. Ever since I was a little boy and discovered another town with the same name as my hometown on my grandparents’ map mounted on the dining room wall (very 60s chic), I’ve wanted to see what this other town was like. So Earl and I drove up Main Street of Pulaski (rhymes with “whee!” whereas my hometown of Pulaski, N.Y. rhymes with “why”). It’s a little bigger than it’s northern counterpart, but it has two interchanges with Interstate 81 and Route 11 runs right through the middle of it. It was kind of cool. Earl took the obligatory picture.

Betcha didn’t know that the simple things make me happy.

Earl and I are officially on “Spring Break”. We are en route to the House of the Mouse in Orlando. It’ll be our first time staying at the new Saratoga Springs Resort at Disney. It’s also our first trip to Disney where we haven’t planned our activities in advance. We’re taking it easy this trip.

Tonight we have settled for the night in Grantville, Pennsylvania, about seven miles from Hershey and 20 miles or so north of Harrisburg. This motel is filled to brim with high school wrestling teams.

Let’s hear it for eye candy (though they are a bit young for our tastes). I don’t know how well they are going to do at the tournaments over the weekend, judging by the loud voices proclaiming how drunk they are getting.

Let’s hear it for Pennsylvania boys that drink!

We’re planning on hitting the road nice and early tomorrow. Earl is accommodating my dream of driving the entire length of Interstate 81 on this trip, tomorrow by this time we’ll be quite a way into Tennessee and hopefully within spitting distance of Georgia.