Ok, kids I've done a lot recently, so I'm going to apologize now if I've missed anything.
Alrightio let's go all the way back to last Saturday (10/16/10). I only recall this is the day because it was my day from the underworld. The day I decided to work 52 hours in a week, 15 of those hours were worked on that very Saturday. I got up at 5am to get to the bus by 6am, to be at work by 7am. I worked Park Greeter for 6 hours, welcoming folks to the park. Then I worked PAC for 3 hours, then had a four hour break my next shift. During the break, I went to the Magic Kingdom with some PAC kids who also had a break. We started off by eating some lunch at the Mouseketteria, then went to Frontierland in hopes of going on Splash Mountain, but sadly there was a 50 minute wait, and we simply didn't have the time to wait. Instead, we went to Fantasyland and watched Mickey's PhilarMagic. That's a pretty cool show. Its like "Its Tough to Be a Bug!" over at the Animal Kingdom, except kid friendly and in no way disgusting. After the show, we played around Fantasyland for a while, then the Move It, Shake It, Celebrate Party was happening so Tamiyah and Amanda went off to join in the dance party there, while Dakotah and I got coffee so I could keep going on with my day. The nice thing about this day was I worked Park Greeter, which yes is boring, but its not that hard of work. Then for the 3 o'clock Celebrate a Dream Come True Parade I was parade escort, and later that night I was parade escort again for the 9 and 11 o'clock showings of the Main Street Electrical parade. That, in a wrap, was my Saturday.
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| Amanda, Tamiyah, and I trying to pull the sword from the stone. |
Now then, we're off and running to Sunday (10/17/10). Pretty sure all I did was get up, laze about, go to work for Mickey's Not-So-Scary. After work, I went out to Ale House (its kind of like a Perkins or a TGI Fridays) and we PACattacked. PACattack is when people from PAC go out to eat in our costumes. Its always a lot of fun and we always get stares. One of the people who stared ended up being Todd, who is a performer in the Halloween parade. He's the keytar player for the villain band. It was pretty cool getting to meet him, and after we were done at the restaurant, I went to sleep. My 15 hour day from Saturday was bringing me down.
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| Me, Brittany, Gracie, Todd, Johannes, and Tamiyah at Ale House. |
Next came Monday (10/18/10) and unlike Sunday where I went out after work, I literally just went to work that day. Not that exciting, but it pays the bills for me to do all these exciting things!
After Monday, came....that's right! Tuesday (10/19/10) now this was my first day off since last Wednesday, and boy, oh boy, was I ready for it! I got up late, then I got all pretty looking and went to my Entertainment Show Production seminar. Class was awesome. We got to meet one of the people who designed the meet and greet areas for characters like Lotso now, or before him the Up! characters. Similarly, he worked on many Disney films like Pocahontas, Princess and the Frog, and Lion King. In addition to meeting him, we learned about all the work that goes into making a show possible. All the long hours in production, and how the idea of one Disney helps accelerate the process. Upon arriving home from class, I got my princess dress on for I was off to Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party!
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| Starting off my Mickey's Not-So-Scary experience by playing red light-green light with Nick! |
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| My First Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party! |
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| I got to jam it out with Bullseye from Toy Story 3 for quite a while over at the Diamond Horse Shoe. |
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| That's right! I got to meet all seven of the Seven Dwarfs from Snow White |
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Happy Halloween. Me in front of Cinderella's Castle.
Seriously, it was a great Halloween party. Plus, it was fun just to go as a guest and not just have to work it all the time! After I got home from the Halloween party another adventure began. Wednesday (10/20/10) Dakotah, Lexie, and I were going to go snorkeling with manatees. Now our original plan was to make manatee hoodies, similar to that dinosaur hoodie that Alissa made for me last year for Christmas. I called Dakotah thinking we were going to go to Walmart at 12:30am and go get supplies to make the hoodies and then make them. When on the phone I stopped and inquired if we had printed off our tickets yet. Unfortunately, we had not. And so the night became one of where can we find a printer! Since the clubhouse printer closed a midnight and doesn't open until 9am, we were out of luck there. That's when Dakotah came up with a brilliant idea; let's go use the business center at a hotel. Needless to say, we went from hotel to hotel asking to use a printer and telling the businesses that the hotel that we had stopped at before had told us to come to use theirs. We even made a stop at Walmart and asked to use one there, but alas no luck. Finally, around 2:30am we went to what I think was a Sheraton and used their printer and peaced out. The best part about this story is that the next day when we went snorkeling, they didn't even ask to see our tickets!
Now that's I've told you the precursor to the story, I suppose I can tell you about my snorkeling experience with the manatees, rather manatee. Wednesday morning (10/20/10) I awoke around 7am to get myself ready to be picked up at 7:30am for an exciting day of snorkeling with manatees. We made a few stops along the way. The first was to get some coffee, so we went to Starbucks where we had the rudest customer service ever. From the rudeness of the employees, Lexie talked to the manager and got us all a free drink at Starbucks. Note to self, never make Lexie angry. Additionally, we also stopped for gas. The drive was about 2 hours long, but went pretty speedily.
We got to Pete's Pier Marina around 9:50am for our 10:30 launch off; we wandered around the Marina and gift shop preparing ourselves for our manatee adventure! When it was time to go, we got into a pontoon boat with another couple in their late 40s, who were from Arizona and quite nice. When we got to the manatee they weren't pushy about having us touch the manatee, they kind of stood back and let us enjoy the experience. But, I am getting ahead of myself. We got on the pontoon and got into our wetsuits saying "MANATEE" about every 30 seconds. We were so stoked. Well we went looking and couldn't find any for about the first hour and a half, but then we found one. We were told not to wear flippers cause it would spook the manatee, so we had noodles that we floated on and used our hands to breast stroke us over to it. Manatees are huge, that is why they are called sea cows. They can live up to 62 years, and they have no natural predators. They are like the Canada of mammals, they just are, and for that they are awesome.
I was the first in the water and yes; I did get to touch the manatee. It was kind of soft, it reminded me of a smooth rock underwater that had moss all over it, kind of slippery as well. It truly was one of the most majestic experiences I have ever had. We were out there for an hour and a half just watching the manatee eat. Somehow I always ended up trying to get right next to him, and would end up being on top of him. So, I guess one would say I rode a manatee, like a true ride warrior! A funny incident that ended up happening was I was floating on top of the manatee, when suddenly I saw he was about to come up for air when bam, he was hitting me with his back and tail and I was still on top. I squealed and everyone got a good chuckle out of it. We kept right on snorkeling until another group came with flippers, making a lot of noise, and splashing in the water muddling it up, and scaring the manatee away. Apparently, swimming with manatees has become a very political thing since groups like the one that spooked our manatee are not really there to be at one with the manatee, they will even chase down one just to say they saw one. Since our group was through National Geographic we did not have a guide that was telling us the wrong things to do like chase it, make noises, etc.
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| Being a Hipster Manatee while waiting for our pontoon to come get us at Pete's Pier Marina. |
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Now then I am almost all caught up and I am sure many of you have stopped reading this post as it is incredibly long, but this last part is just as exciting as the first adventures. Yesterday (10/21/10) I went to Harry Potter Land, or known to many by its real name as the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Islands of Adventures.
I was pumped to go. Yes, I was whipped out by all the adventures I've been having, but still I was excited! I got up around 7am and got all my shenanigans in order for a day at the park. We (Nicole, Hilary, and I) left the house around 8am, getting to the park by 8:30am. The Harry Potter part of the park didn't open until 9am, but the Marvel Superhero Island part did, so we commenced our day by riding on the Amazing Adventures of Spider Man ride. This ride was fun, and it was in 3D! Fancy, right! After the ride, we cut back to the front of the line just minutes before the clock struck 9, and we literally ran across the entire park to get to the Harry Pottery park. I utterly loathe running, so was hesitant as to how the rest of my day was going to go when it started out so well with running. Seriously, though it was a SUPER FUN day!
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| I see Universal's been reading my blog: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS! |
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| The Amazing Adventures of Spider Man Ride |
First thing we did at Harry Potter Land was ride the ride inside Hogwarts: Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. This ride is sooooo cool. The experience includes flying around Hogwarts castle, encountering the Whomping Willow and a horde of Dementors, and being caught in a Quidditch match. Plus since we were some of the first there the wait was like nothing. I will note though if any of you have motion sickness problems don't ride it, but otherwise do this first! After we were done the wait time began 70 minutes. Gross...
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| Nicole and I entering Hogwarts to get to Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride! |
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| Rando Girl, Hilary, Me, and Nicole on the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride! |
After the excitement of that ride, we went to went wait in line for the experience at Ollivander's Wand Shop. This is where about 30 people go into the shop and Ollivander chooses one person to be chosen for their wand. Again what a neat experience. Sadly, none of us were chosen, and we waited about an hour to see it happen, but I'd say its definitely worth it. We jumped in when the line was the longest they claimed that they'd ever seen it. Still, how cool is it that I can say I got to see a wizard get his wand picked out for him.
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| Hogwarts as seen from the line waiting to get to Ollivander's Wand Shop |
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| Inside for the Ollivander's Wand Shop experience. |
After Ollivander's we went to the Dragon's Challenge. The Dragon's Challenge gives you the experience that you are a triwizard contestant preparing for the Dragon part of the competition. This ride goes upside and all over with dueling dragons, because Hilary and Nicole love roller coasters we did both the Hungarian Horn-tail and Chinese Fireball dragon rides.
And when we were done with that, we went to the Flight of the Hippogriff ride. Compared to every other ride we had seen and been on, it was considered the kiddie coaster. I thought it was lots of fun! We ate our sandwiches while we waited in line, and while in line we got to see Buckbeak (Hagrid's pet hippogriff) and Hagrid's house.
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| Buckbeak at the Flight of the Hippogriff |
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| Hilary and I ate Hagrid's House |
From there, we left Harry Potter with the plan to return later. So the next obvious choice was to go to the Jurassic Park part of Islands of Adventure. There we rode on what Hilary claimed to be similar to the Magic Kingdom's Jungle Cruise. In fact, the Jurassic Park River Adventure is more like Splash Mountain. And everyone who told us we wouldn't get that wet lied. We were soaked when we got done. Since we were already wet, we continued on our merry way to the Dudley Doright Ripsaw Falls ride, which as least going into I knew would be a water ride. Again, we got soaked. While over in Toon Lagoon, I met Betty Boop and Olive and Popeye. Then, we went over to Marvel Superhero Island where I met Spiderman. There we rode on Doctor Dooms Fearfall, The Incredible Hulk Coaster, and the Storm Force Acceletron. One thing I will say is Universal has more adult rides than Disney, but the customer service was simply not up to par to what I am told to provide guests with each and every day. Also, I'm pretty sure Universal looks at what Disney is doing and borrows ideas from them. For instance, the Storm Force Acceletron is basically the Mad Hatter's Tea Cup ride but faster and more jerky.
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| The aftermath of the Jurassic Park River Adventure |
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| Spiderman |
We left Marvel's Superhero Island for Seuss Landing. At Seuss Landing, we went on the Cat in the Hat ride, the One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish ride, the Caro-Seuss-el, and the Sky Seuss Trolley Train Ride! Plus, while we were there we got to meet the Cat in the Hat. After these rides, we kind of breezed through the Lost Continent and went back to Harry Potter land.
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| Cat in the Hat |
Back in Hogsmeade we got some frozen butterbeer and drank it over at the Three Broomsticks. Butterbeer tastes kind of like a butterscotch cream soda. It was pretty tasty! After our little break, we looked in Honeydukes candy store and admired the tricks over at Zonkos. Finally, it came time to ride the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey again this time single-rider, and again with all three of us. That ride is probably my new favorite thing, I just wanted to keep getting back in line to ride it again and again. Sadly, the park was getting ready to close so we went to the Owl Post and Filch's Emporium of Confiscated Goods and got some merchandise. Just as we were leaving the park we got to make a wish over in the Lost Continent at the wishing well. Overall, it was a magical day where I know can relate to the people who take so many pictures of Cinderella's castle, cause I am now the proud owner of billions of pictures of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I wish my life were life a fairytale. Sigh, but it sure does seem like I'm living with with all these adventures! Until next time...stay awesome!
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| NOM NOM NOM Butterbeer |
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| Nicole, Janice, and Hilary at Harry Potter Land |
PS: If you made it all the way through this post you are AWESOME! Thanks for reading all about my sweet week of adventures!
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