Tag Archives: experiences

Disney: Excitement

Dead Robot June 12, 2009 Travel

Things blind you in the World. You lose site of your behaviour at 100%, 60%, 40% levels of excitement relavite to the heart-racing thing you’re exposed to, while discovering things in the Parks. You come around the corner and there’s Goofy in a cowboy hat! Goofy! OMFG! HI! Then you notice he’s not noticing you. Then you notice the line for photographs. 100, 60, 40. Just like the forced perspective of all the buildings along Main Street.

In this fete of excitement you discover things about people you love. Things that may make you either love them more or question the whole foundation of your relationship.

Case in point: Lunch at T-Rex Restaurant. We’re stuffed to the gills on massive burgers and nachos and we’re walking it off in the gift shop. A section in the back is a Build-a-Bear outlet that had been modified into “build a Dino” in keeping with the whole restaurant theme. Nice. I’ve never been in one and wandered in for a browse. I’m looking at the different “breeds” of dinos you can get when I hear a manly girl scream.

“Look at these cute shorts!!”

Yes. It’s SharkBoy and he’s holding up a pair of cargo pants, sized for a baby or a baby dino or someone with serious medical problems. He’s gushing like a prom queen stuck in the football team’s locker room. The only other time I’ve seen him excited like this was when we bought lightsabers at our first trip to Disney. He immediately picks out an orange Raptor and thrusts it into my hand to get the attendant to stuff it while he wanders the isles looking for cuter outfits.

Not sure if you’ve ever done the “Build A Bear/Dino” experience. The stuffing machine attendant gives you a cloth heart that you have to rub, blow on, give a kiss, make a wish and CRAM into the centre of your creation. Yeah, I had to do that part. I wished nobody was watching.

At the end of the whole process (including making a birth certificate – say hello to Kiki2, newly adopted by yours truly, Libido Suiddlygoot), SharkBoy discovers a tiny pair of cammo tighty whiteys that illicit a final peal of delight and an extra reach for his wallet. Now, those were cute. I admit it.

Did this experience soil our relationship? Hardly. It made me love him more. It’s a rare moment to see this kind of behaviour from him and it also makes me love Disney even more.

Disney: Transportation

Dead Robot June 10, 2009 Travel

I 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.

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.

Like 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”.

England Memory #8 – Romance, or Wise Up Sucka!

Dead Robot May 14, 2008 England

Brighton holds the honour of being the location of the first romantic moment I’ve ever had in my life (Note: this story is completely trumped by many many many experiences given to me by SharkBoy. The ultimate being the day I got asked to be betrothed, of course).

I’m sitting in that crappy flat in Earls Court, expecting another penniless Saturday night, listening to the blubbering homesick basset hound when there’s a knock on the front door. It’s Nigel. By this time we have had two drunken nights out together and he had failed to mention that he’s got a boyfriend. I’m utterly clueless and only slightly wonder why he’s never given me his home number. Love and being in a new country blinded me, made me rather unsuspecting.

“Pack for one night,” he says. I’m out of that shitty flat like it was overrun with flaming cockroaches, and sitting in his Mini (a real one!) within seconds. We head south.

A little over an hour, we’re in Brighton. We stop at his brother’s flat, who is conveniently out of the country at the moment, and grab a post-road trip G and T. Then off to dinner.

It was my first French restaurant. Nigel bravely took up my dare of eating Steak Tartar while he ordered the Crab Salad for myself. He knew that it came in the hollowed out carapice of a King Crab, legs draped over the plate, face turned towards me as if to say “I ‘ope yew findz me, ‘ow do you zey… delishious? Mai oui!” When the salad arrived we both discovered that I had a fear of King Crab – insectoid and ugly and expecting me to touch it.

“Calmly lift the top,” Nigel instructs, and walked me through dinner.

Two bottles of wine later, Nigel pays the bill and we walk out into the night (£120 for two! To this date, that was the most expensive meal I’ve ever had. Later in our relationship he would regularly take me out to lunches in Covent Garden before my afternoon shift at the RAC and I would stagger into work, borderline drunk). He takes me down to the pier. To the ocean. I’ve never seen the ocean before. It’s bastard cold but the wine has made me giddy and I start running along the pebbled beach. I scoop rocks up as I run, laughing. I start tossing them into the sea, shouting, laughing. I’m really in that moment: the shitty flat, the homesickness, the crappy computerless job, all wash away and I feel Nigel’s hand, arm, encircle my neck and I lean back onto his chest.

Cue waves crashing on the beach.

To this day, when I hear waves, it always “centres” me, relaxes me. I don’t remember Nigel, but I do remember the happiness.

The next day he drops me off at the flat. As he drives away, it’s like being a puppy being brought back at the pound. Then it hits me: we haven’t made plans for another date, despite this one being so fantastic, nor has he given me his home number, just his office one. It was then that I smartened up and started to suspect Nigel wasn’t being honest with me.

Okay so I lied that there wouldn’t be any more adulterous posts, but this memory ties pretty much all my memories of England into one. I was happy, adventurous, independent and in love. I was also naive and innocent which was burst by my decision that it was ok to “be that other woman”. England taught me a lot about who I was becoming.