Tag Archives: drool

Disney: Transportation

Travel

img_0446I can confidently say the only way I have not arrived at a Disney theme park is by jet pack. Every other imaginable way has been done.

On foot? Walk it out! Bus? Yup. Rental car? Yup. Train? Woo woo! Monorail from the future? Por favor mantengase alejado de las puertas! On the back of a white tiger?

Don’t let’s be silly, now.

This is my second time renting a car for the week at Disney and I thought this time we could save some money by just using the bus system but I was quickly reminded that the car offers a freedom from bus-exhaustion, or, if you will, not having embarrassing pictures of yourself put up to Flickr of you asleep rubber necked, slack jawed and drooling. Plus it was a perk since the resort price included free parking at all Disney properties, meaning we could hop from park to park for free.

While driving isn’t as enviromentally sound as Uncle Walt would like, it beats having to experience “the Crush” – the scrum that happens every night when each park closes. Even though the busses run every two minutes, two minutes with a grumpy sleepy child, arm loads of souvenirs and an empty stomach stretches out to eternity. Still, it’s fun to see a child’s face after a day of experiencing a park: worn out, over stimulated and content.

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I’ve always loved the Monorail system at WDW and this time we tried every ride to sit in the front. All the drivers were gracious, chatty and friendly but one stood out. Missed his name but he had such a memorable southern drawl that we couldn’t hear 99% of what he said:

Me: “Did it take long for you to train to be a Monorail pilot?”

Pilot: “Habamemnrm… wermmsh ahslib. Ha! Ha hahaha! Mummminy mouse!”

All of us: Blank Stares.

He let us sit in the command chair  for photos before leaving the cockpit as long as “we didnmrnt touchmna stick, k?” Sharkboy is NOT touchmna stick, k? But his face says otherwise.

img_0916Like this picture? It’s basically what Luke saw when he climbed up the underside of an AT-AT walker. We were asked if there were any “rides” at Disney Hollywood Studio, but that’s going to be a SharkBoy post. Keep your eyes peeled.

The largest ride at Magic Kingdom in terms of showy-ness and “fake” transportation would have to be the paddle boat. I say “fake” because it only goes forward, constrained to a submerged track in the “lake”. Discovering this after riding it for the first time was a bit disappointing because I always fantasized about the River Boat Captain going mental after a day of looping the Lands and ramming the boat into Tom Sawyer’s Island for kicks.

Ironically for this post, the WDW Tomorrowland Transit Authority People Mover was closed during our stay. It’s one of my favorite decompression rides:  it doesn’t offer any thrill other than a calming view, much like Carosel of Progress is my favorite “nap ride”.

Stone Me!

Celebs and Media, Hobbies, Personal Bits

Stone Angel movie I recently saw the trailer for the movie Stone Angel (with my new honest to blog, supa-fave actress, Ellen Page) and it borked up a solid, hard memory nut with two levels:

One of the more clearer memories I have of my alcohol and pot-fogged time in high school was studying this book by Margret Lawrence. You may have noticed that my spelling and grammar is a bit poor, I blame anything other than not applying myself. I would fight with my English teacher because my brother was his golden student and English class was an annoying block of time before art class. I digress.

Stone Angel is a story of Hagar Shipley who recounts her life in shards of flashbacks and fragments of memories as she comes to the end of her proud life. Okay that’s the book in a nutshell (eat that, Mr Darling!). I remember the book not because of it’s structure (actually I did love the Tarantino-like recount of vignettes from her life) but because while we peeled back the themes and metaphors of a life fully lived, it dredged up a horror from my childhood (the second layer of that nut) that I had to deal with, and in some ways, I still haven’t come to grips with when I was a child. When I was even younger, I think in grade 4, I freaked out at a short film where a family visits their aging (grand)mother in a home. She’s so far gone into herself that all that we see on the outside is drool, yet inside, through movie magic, we see she’s lived a full and amazing life and she still has her memory. At the end of the short film, ran from the class and hid under my bed. Mom found me in tears and made me explain what had upset me so.

Dear readers, I am about to share with you something highly personal:

I am deathly afraid of getting old.

If I were ever to get trapped within my body and could not communicate my needs, I’d like notice that I have four days to live and left alone in that time so I could recount my life, a la Stone Angel. Day four would come and some pre-paid orderly would quietly enter my room and make me eat my pillow. The end.

Will I see this movie? I don’t know. Maybe. Should I stop being such a 13 year old in a 42 year old body? Maybe.