Not Necessarily Interesting News

This is the first installment in the story of our 4 day trip to the Land of the Giant Rat. My iBook died on the trip so I’m having to transcribe from my notepad into the blog since I don’t have access to the entries on the laptop. I’ll add them with the correct dates as I go.

Oh, Dear Lord. I didn’t realize that there was such a thing as 4 o’clock in the morning. I figured night ended around 2-3AM and days started around 8-9AM. When that alarm went off it scared the hell out of me. Luckily we were all packed and ready to go. Note to self: No more 6AM flights.

We got to the airport about 45-50 minutes before our flight. Usually this is more than enough time at the Austin airport. Not so this time. We figured we’d save space and take just one bag for my wife, son, and me. That was all well and good until Mr. ESL weighed our bag. Oops. We were at 62.5lbs, the limit is 50lbs per bag. My sister had to pull out the extra bag she had packed to bring souveniers back in. We offloaded our battery chargers, batteries, and otehr heavy items. We could have all brought 2 bags each, each one weighing 50lbs for a total of 300lbs. The logic that we had saved 240lbs+the space baffled our little rocket surgeon counter worker. Whatever.

When I sprung it on him that I’d be checking my sidearm he went nearly white. I guess Ahkmed was from a country where self-defense isn’t allowed. Normally it’s an easy process to check in a firearm. They check that it’s empty and stored properly, put a tag in it, and send it on its way. This guy had no clue. He asked for help from a security guard who just looked at him. Our brain scientist finally found the right tag and filled it out. He then wanted to attach it to the handle of my bag. I had to explain to him how it’s suppoed to work. The form/tag goes _in_ the bag. I didn’t want a bright orange “steal me” tag hanging off my bag.

I had my GPS with us on the flight out so my son and I could see where we were, our speed, and altitude. I was amazed to see our top speed was around 675MPH. We got into a nice little tailwind there I guess.

When we arrived we picked up our rental car, went by the hotel to get our room, drop off luggage, and pick up our Ultimate Park Hopper passes. They let you into _all_ the Disney parks as often as you want. You can spend a morning at MGM and afternoon at Animal Kingdom then go eat dinner at Epcot. The only way to go.

After that we hit Epcot. Our first stop was the new Mission: Space ride. Oh. My. God. It was freaking cool. You pull I’d say around 4 Gs during “lift-off” and the feeling of weightlessness was pretty convincing. I know how they do it but still marvel at it. They use a giant centrifuge to spin you to get the Gs but you get no feeling of spinning, only of pressure on your back like a rocket. Not to be missed. We of course hit Test Track, one of Dakota’s favorites. We bummed around the park for a while seeing the sights and stopped in Morocco for dinner. They had a decent lamb sandwich.

Once we had our fill of Epcot we caught the ferry from our hotel to Downtown Disney for some fun and games. We stopped by DisneyQuest for a bit and rode the Build Your Own Coaster ride. That was cool. You get to design your own coaster on a computer then ride it in a motion simulator. In loops you really go upside down. Another don’t miss ride. We built a rating 3 out of 5 scary coaster. I thought it was kind of bland but we didn’t have time to do a 5-of-5. I’ll have to come back and do that.

Back to the room around midnight to collapse and finish my trip notes. We’ve been on the go for almost 20 hours. I’m beat.