Tuesday, April 12, 2016

In which we pass a few 75-degree sunny days in central Florida

I’m back home from Florida. It was swell.

I decided as soon as I heard about it that I would attend the NDCA conference in Orlando. At the time, I expected I would still have a team, and that a few of us would go down and add a day to the tournament for a theme park visit. When I decided to retire from the team, I was still committed to going to the tournament (it’s a requirement for board members), and I decided to treat myself to a few days in the parks. Why not? After all, I’m an admitted fan, and I figured if I traveled alone, I would get to see things and do things I might not do with a group, however pleasant that group might be. I was slightly apprehensive that being alone in a place so designed for groups/families might prove mildly depressing, but that was not the case at all. I enjoyed myself immensely.

On arrival I headed to Disney Springs, which used to be called Downtown Disney. They’ve been spiffing it up quite a bit lately, reimagining it again. Long ago it was Pleasure Island, home of the Adventurers’ Club, and they’ll probably never reach that peak again, but the latest version has plenty of good restaurants and shopping, so that you can browse your way along for an afternoon quite contentedly. My first stop was Jock Lindsey’s Hangar Bar, the eponymous Jock being the pilot who picks up Indiana Jones in the first movie, in a plane carrying Reggie the snake. Reggie now lives in the bar, but unfortunately he had escaped and I didn’t see him, but he was around there somewhere. It was a fun place with lots of interesting drinks and bar food, plus endless things to look at. This was where I got the idea to start posting the odd photo on Facebook. Due to popular demand I kept posting, usually pictures of what I was drinking, since cocktails tend to be very photogenic. Presumably the folks at home were quick to draw the conclusion that I spent my Disney days in an alcoholic fog, but I assure you this was not the case.

Doing the Magic Kingdom on the first day, Epcot on the second day, then zipping over to Universal on the third day, worked out great. I planned things well enough with FastPass to not wait much, plus at Universal almost everything has single-rider lines that get you onto rides pretty quickly. Since I was on my own, I took advantage of a lot of the ambient entertainment that the places have to offer. There always seems to be some sort of music or comedy or performance of some sort, and I visited a lot of them, and enjoyed them all. There’s more to the parks than rides, in other words, if you seek it out. And you should.

I was surprised how crowded things were, especially MK, given that it was predicted to be a low attendance week. And I remain astonished at posted wait times for 7 Dwarfs and Peter Pan as over 90 minutes each. Spend an hour and a half for a three minute experience? I have to believe that the people who go to Disney and don’t enjoy it are the ones on these lines. It’s not as if you have to go on these attractions. They are D tix at best, and instead of standing there forever you could pack in 3 or 4 E tix in the same time, at least if you start early in the morning when most other attractions are walk-ons for the first hour or so. But at rope drop people are racing off to the Dwarfs, and the slower racers are already facing 90 minutes of down time. Ridiculous!

Epcot was holding its annual Garden festival, which meant that, in addition to lots of garden stuff, it had special food at kiosks all around the World. So instead of making a rez at a fancy restaurant, I nibbled my way around the World Showcase starting at around noon, all the way through Illuminations. And as I mentioned above, I watched a lot of performers throughout the day. It made me really want to go down for the Food and Wine Festival in the autumn some year.

I bought a one-day pass for both Universal parks so that I could do both Harry Potters, plus take the Hogwarts Express in both directions. The thing about Universal is that while they lack the cohesive underpinnings of the Disney parks, most of their attractions are better. They’re newer, state-of-the-art, multilayered—some of them are really phenomenal. But in the end, aside from Potter and Diagon Alley, it really is just rides, so you can do the whole park in a day, provided you’re either a single rider or get one of their express passes (which you get automatically if you stay on the property, as we did for the DisAd). Disney remains the place to go for vacation; Universal is the place to hit up one damned ride after the other until your legs give out.


When all of this was over, it was time to head over to the tournament. But that’s another story entirely.

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