Thursday: Animal Kingdom

Here we go again, park detritus and Google Maps:

This park seemed huge, and it was quite nice, like a zoo and a safari and a roller coaster park and Pandora from the movie Avatar all rolled into one place.

And it was mostly all of those things. And while Epcot had countries you could visit around that lake (about which I'll say more later, because I forgot to say it when I wrote the last post), this park had entire continents: Africa and Asia.

Those turned out to be a fictional east African port town called Harambe and a mock up of rural Nepal. We'll get there...

This was the RAIN day. It rained a little the day before, at Epcot, but pretty much in one quick and heavy downpour and a light and sustained drizzle a little later.

At this park it rained pretty well for most of the time.

The boys enjoyed the relative dryness of the bus there, Cass eating his usual croissant for breakfast:

We got the ponchos out pretty much as we entered, because that was when the rain started falling. Here's Cass with the Tree of Life in the background: (Norm and I refrained from wearing ponchos, the only members of our party to do so.)

The Tree of Life is an enormous fake baobab tree. When you get close, and underneath, and self-guiding yourself on the walking tour before the main park opens, you can see how much work went into the stamped and stained concrete. It looks so much like bark and wood, driftwood in some places, ponderosa pine bark in other places, and nearly the entire trunk and lower branches are carved animals, hidden upon first glancing:

Once the gates to Africa were opened, we headed over to explore Harambe as we waited for the safari ride. Some of the pictures got out of whack from the day, but I'll do my best (this is what I get for putting the pictures up last week and not writing anything until now...).

Harambe messed me up. The attention to detail in this tiny recreation of what normal Americans think an African town looks like blew me away. Is this all just a safe facsimile for American tourists so they never actually have to go to Africa?

It could have been any developing nation, really, depending on the script and language:

I felt like I took too many pictures:

It was the place for our dinner later on that day.

The first ride we took was the jungle safari. This was not effing around. It was a full on canvas covered open sided truck, driving around in the downpour, with repeated warnings that "THE CHILDREN MUST BE SEATED. IF ANYONE FALLS OUT, WE WILL NOT BE STOPPING FOR YOU. WE CANNOT STOP FOR YOU."

Yeah...working on it...

We got to see the ghosts of the forest:

Bongos, I think they're called otherwise.

We saw some napping lions, some sleepy wild dogs, and the baby elephant:

The giraffes were fully out, while both the hippos and the crocs were chilling in their watering holes. This was different than an amusement park ride, per se, as it was essentially open Savannah and some mildly dense forrest sections, mimicking normal African habitats, and we were driving through in a huge jeep.

We rode it again after dinner, just to see the evening animals stirring...

I think we went to Pandora next, but the pictures get all wonky here.

All the boys loved Dinoland, as we had tickets to cut the line at the dino ride. It was a very popular ride, and in the vein of Indiana Jones at Disneyland: not a roller coaster, but a jerky-moving-about controlled jeep ride. Here we are with one of the skeletons:

At lunch Cass found (and soon menaced) a heron or egret, looking to scavenge some hot dog bun or French fry:

Later, at dinner back in Africa, they brought out the big guns, the costumed characters we'd all wanted to see during the trip. Earlier, maybe at breakfast on Monday, there were three characters I'd never heard of and Goofy. At this dinner it was Mickey, Donald, Daisy and Goofy. Look how excited my son is to see Donald. Who knew he'd be this over-the-moon?

Here's a picture from the central piece from the Pandora area. It looked cool, for sure...

We had the fast pass for a ride that had normal folks waiting 105 minutes, the sign said. Over an hour and a half...

The ride was...like Pirates of the Caribbean, but in Pandora, and mostly, meh... Norm and I looked at each other afterwards and said, "Hour and a half?"

At some point we took the kids to an extended playground, with multiple levels of slides and rope bridges and the like, and, following one specific path, you could cross over a major walkway in the park and arrive at a gravelly "dig site:"

I found Cass and Norman over there after losing eyes on them. The site was only accessible from the tiny elevated path over the park's thoroughfare.

After dinner Norm and I sprinted out to the roller coaster in the Himalayas, the tiny Nepali village remake as Asia, as everyone else went on the gorilla walk. Cass slept.

My one picture from this part sucks, but the flags signify the entrance of the area up ahead:

Norm and I had a fast pass for the ride, and went through literally minutes after the time was good. It took about six minutes to get to, and ride, the yeti ride. Which was great!

It starts off kinda fast, not so bad, but comes up to a halt as it looks like the track has been destroyed by a yeti, iron all mangled and bent.

Then you start to roll backward over a different set of tracks all the way to another stopping point, and then back down the mountain on a third set of tracks, in which you pull the most g's of the ride. It's a very solid roller coaster.

But we were done so fast, and had plenty of time before the evening safari ride, that we entertained the idea of riding it again.

The sign said 50 minutes, but what it really said was "from this point" 50 minutes, and there was nobody in sight. We looked at each other for a half second, blinked once, and sashayed right through the opening and got into line again. 

It snaked around for a while before we saw anybody. When it was all done, we maybe waited thirteen minutes the second time to ride. That was awesome.

On the safari the second time we saw some longhorn cattle that have the biggest horns of any bovine (and this picture does no justice...these were as big around as my thigh):

We caught a glimpse of the male lion:

And the other rhinos were out. In the morning it was the black rhinos, but in the evening it was the red rhinos, who were closer to the path:

This park was last, and I feel like it was where we did the most stuff, but I don't remember what happened after the second safari and Cass's meltdown as my mother was returning her scooter.

At some point during the day we saw the Lion King show, which was a mix of Cirque du Soleil and a singalong. We sat in Simba's section, and roared when it was our turn to make noise.

My mom had the boys all get their hands painted and pressed onto a paper, which were then turned into animals:

I wasn't sure I had this picture...

That was early in Harambe, and we picked it up when we left to go back to Pop Century...

The day remains a rainy blur of so much activity and dreamy memories.

Quite a full day for the last day...

Wednesday: Epcot Center

Once again, the map with the Map(s):

All along I thought that Epcot Center was the golf-ball building and, eh, nothing else. Parking, probably? My entire life was spent where, in my imagination, "Epcot Center" was the golf ball shaped building in Orlando. "No, it's...a park," both Corrie and my mom would say. An amusement park. A huge one, at that.

Discussion came up at some point during the day that Epcot was the biggest park in the Disney conglomeration. Norm and I even spoke to, eh, no way is this bigger than even Disneyland in Anaheim.

That's about when we noticed the swollen-tic part of the map. A huge lake is bound in by countries. More than half of the Epcot  had yet to be explored by us.

The ball after a very thorough search:

The ball itself is a ride, the Spaceship Earth ride. With such a cool name, and the fact that mom hadn't ever ridden it, on account of the line, meant that riding it should be a priority.

Cass was very cute with his cousins on this trip. Following and copying as much as would be expected.

One ride went through greenhouses and growing zones, both aero- and hydroponic. At the end, Holly and my mom took a backstage tour, while Norm and I had the boys for a while. One of the main areas at Epcot is basically a huge mall, with a ride at the bottom:

Imagine Sunrise Mall, or Arden Fair, with a main hallway where one end had an anchor like Sears or Nordstrom, only here there'd be a ride, like Pirates of the Caribbean. People would get onto a boat and putter away from view, into a warehouse-sized area for the content of the ride.

We had to get the hell out of there.

We left and headed in a straight line to the Nemo ride. I'm not sure what that looks like on the map, but that's how it went for us.

The Finding Nemo ride was like Peter Pan at Anaheim, maybe, with a clam-shell that slowed as got inside. The ride went around underwater curves, with screens hidden seamlessly with rocks that made it look like Nemo and Dory and Marlin and Bruce and the rest were part of the fun.

The coolest part was that it let you out in an aquarium.

The boys were having a great time. And then we made it to the manatee enclosure. We'd scoped them earlier, from beneath. But up an escalator (big jump!) had us at the top, with one of the manatee caretakers.

Norman and Simon talked to this young lady for quite a while, and it was awesome to be a part of, to be a witness and observer.

When we met up with the ladies again we'd all pretty much had enough. Dinner was in Japan in a few hours, and we felt like heading back to the hotel. The return trip, if we were committed to dinner, proved too daunting, so we stayed, but broke up for a time. Norman and my mom and me went walkabout, meandering our way around the lake until we hit Japan, nearly at the far end.

Norm and Holly took the sleeping Simon and Cass to a shady corner and then walk, in the stroller, and met us at dinner. It was a sushi joint, because both Norman and Simon, along with Norm and Holly and I, love sushi. Cass, depending on his mood and hunger level, would eat it. My mom---not so much.

After dinner, we even rode Spaceship Earth! Before, dinner, I think...

You get in a car-ish thing it takes you off in an generally upwards spiral. Everyone is in a car that can hole up to three people, like an adult and two kids. Cass and I were in our own car. Each of these cars is equipped with a touchscreen, and this screen allows you to choose the language that will be piped in through the speakers behind your head, explaining what you see on the ride.

Cass spent the entire available time with the screen pressing buttons and tapping ovals, until it ended, and we'd chosen German as the language of the ride.

I remember guffawing and wishing that at least it could be in French, which may make your ears feel massaged and relaxed afterwards.

The car goes up; it passes animatronic cavefolks hunting mammoth; it passes Egyptian pharaohs; it passes Greek antiquity; you see the first printing press. I did what I could with my German knowledge to piece it together

Near what feels like the apex of the world's longest right turn, you come into a computer control room, like from NASA in Houston, only updated to a future based on the reality in Houston. Then the car pivots and sets you down. Your position is reclined, like a fancy living room chair. The screen has activities to do, make postcards and video grams and the like, but outside there's quite a static light show.

This picture explains more than I could with words:

I took one last picture of the golf ball, only now it was night and the colors were pretty neat:

Tuesday: Magical Kingdom

Again, I use the map they give and the map from Google, just to compare...

Is this a "Never ask how the sausage is made..." moment, with the pictures?

Anyway, the Magical Kingdom is basically Disneyland on steroids. Or supersized.

The parks are mostly the same, only the scale is different. The castle in Anaheim is almost the same as Orlando. In Florida its bigger, but you can't walk through it---they have a stage set up to prevent:

In reality, it's the castle at Neuschwanstein looked straight on.

Anyway, check it out, a Shakespeare joke in Tomorrowland:

We rode our send-in-a-row shoot-em-up ride based on Toy Story characters, and then jumped on Small World, where I was hypnotized by the engineering:

We finally got to ride a roller coaster, and I use the qualifier "finally" for Cass and not myself, as it had been one of my missions to get him on a roller coaster. We rode the Snow White coaster, which was really a Seven Dwarves coaster, and he loved the stuffing out of it.

We waited in line for nearly thirty whole minutes for the Haunted Mansion, and afterwards Cass asked repeatedly at the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, "This one not scary?"

"No, boy, this one is very cool," I must have answered a hundred times.

The picture above was from dinner, and a few minutes before those glasses were broken. Forever. We had ourselves a moment.

Afterwards, as the family contemplated the fireworks show after having ridden the People Mover (a ride that no longer exists at the park in Anaheim) Cass and I headed back to the Pop Century.

The Boy got his own seat while I stood. A nice mom next to him eventually let him rest his (sleeping) head on her bag. The rest of the fam got to see a spectacular show.

They made it back to the Pop Century closer to midnight than to nine...

Monday: Hollywood Studios Park

For reference's sake, I've included both the flimsy map they offer and the Google Map overview of roughly the same area:

Above it says "Star Wars Galaxy's Edge Coming in August", and visible below is a fence and a mud patch behind it, but I cut off most of the mud patch:

This was the park where we had breakfast reservations. Before we were let in to our table, Cass and I went to explore. We took a selfie with Gertie in the background:

Since a brachiosaurus (nee brontosaurus) is the only thing in the background of that picture, you must assume that Gertie is a dinosaur. And you'd be correct:

Gertie was an early character from the vaudeville days, an OG animated character, first projected in 1919 (a hundred years ago!) to an amazed and terrified audience. Here's a still from the long video available on Wikipedia:

She's a star. And although neither Ub Iwerks nor Walt Disney had anything to do with her creation, she's still celebrated in this theme park.

And it is a theme park. It's like Universal Studios, only all the movies they highlight are Disney. They have a Toy Story Land, and an Incredibles Alley, and a very cool roller coaster based on Aerosmith. It's like Space Mountain, but it goes upside down, and instead of space, its based on driving around LA. Its dark and blacked out, save for a few colorful 405-to-101 signs lit with blacklight. But it goes upside down, which makes it a top-tier Disney ride, a pantheon ride.

We had reservations for a car for dinner at the main "cool" eatery in the park. It was like the Blue Bayou at Disneyland in some senses.

Outside we waited for our turn. It was hot and muggy and generally miserable outside and Cass slept. Norm and I talked while we pointed out cool lizards to his boys in the bushes. Then it was our turn. This was between the hours of 4 and 5 in the hot July afternoon in Orlando. Cass awoke and was handed a cup full of popcorn. Inside we walked.

We turned a corner and BOOM.

We were now outside. At night. At a drive-in.

The air lifted a bit...it almost felt like we were outside. Sound didn't carry like normal. A large screen had previews and cartoons projected upon it. What the hell is going on?

We were taken to our car. It had three levels for chillig. The front seat had Norman, Simon, and Holly; the middle spot had my mom and Norm (the backs of heads of whom are visible above); and the back row had Cass and me:

One of my favorite pictures ever

We ate okay after we figured out what he may eat.

What stuck me was the previews that they showed on the forty-three minute loop were all authentic previews from the era, the mid-fifties:

And in each one at some point there would be a woman screaming. Just look above.

Anyway, every time this would happen, Cass would get nervous: "Mommy okay? Monster get Mommy?" He equated the young damsel in distress with his mother.

"Mommy's okay," I would assure him, "Mommy'll mess that monster up, don't you worry," and the like. But I started to understand the toll that American society has on young white women, that screaming into a camera means that ones own mother is in jeopardy.

As the day dwindled we eventually left, traveling back through the entering area, an area that seemed more normal-for-the-central-architectural-piece than the theater from the last post.

Norm and I were given bunk info while exploring...I felt like taking Cass on the Toy Story roller coaster, no matter the wait...all in all, it was a good time.

At our reserved breakfast, the in-costume characters that came over were Vampirina, Doc, someone else, and Goofy (from his Disney Jr show). All of the characters are major on Disney Jr. Goofy is his own superstar, but he was dressed up for a specific show. Vampirina I have heard of, but not Doc (not the same from Snow White), and not the other candy cane character. I only bring it up for the Thursday dinner (stay tuned).

At the breakfast we were given tickets to a night show that started at 9, but we needed to show up at 8:30 to redeem the free upgrade. While I understood the show was going to be awesome, I decided early that Cass and I wouldn't be attending.

A 9 o'clock show was never the problem. It's the 11 o'clock bus ride back to the hotel and subsequent bed-going that concerned me. We, unfortunately missed the show.

The park was definitely enjoyable.

The Parks: Overview By Way of Central Architectural Artifact

This post is my attempt for myself to use the main architectural attraction, the centerpiece if you will, as the visual marker to define the order of our visit.

Our first stop, Disney Hollywood Studios, with Grauman Chinese Theater replica (from a distance):

Our second visit was the Disneyland copy, the Magical Kingdom, with the classic castle:

Epcot with the famous golf-ball building:

The Tree of Life at the Animal Kingdom, a day that saw rain nearly the entire day:

Orlando Base: Pop Century Hotel

In the vicinity of the Disney Parks, and the other amusement parks not owned by Disney, there are thousands of hotel and motel options. Disney specifically owns maybe five or six, and they range from top of the line hotel style (the Coronado) to fake Polynesian island archipelago ( the Polynesian Island Resort) to where we stayed, the Pop Century, an enormous ode to the pop cultural icons and moments from the latter decades from the 20th century, the postwar decades of the '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s and '90s.

The Pop Century has color coded dormitory/motel style buildings, with the doors open to the outdoors, with each color denoting a specific era...green for the '70s, blue for the '80s, etc. They also included the occasional epoch sensitive phrase or font style, as well as larger-than-life sculpture on the grounds. Check out the big-wheel below, and the color coding scheme:

There was also an over-sized fussball table, but it didn't seem as if the players moved:

Around the '70s era buildings were a series of 8-track cassettes, complete with fake album art on one side and jokey song names on the other:

It looks like the '60s buildings had yo-yos.

The 8-tracks and yo-yos were actually to cover up the outside stairwell. In our '80s building we had a giant cockeyed Rubik's Cube, which I never managed to photograph in the daylight.

On the way to our room one could see the Pac-Man motif at work, but now it looks like the '80s buildings were red, and now I'm confused...it seems the time between being there and writing this has blurred the memories:

Our rom had what looked like one bed and a large cabinet connected to a table. It turned out to be a Murphy bed, which became the Boy's bed. It had a cool Pluto picture hidden away, only in view when the bed was down:

We ate breakfast in their cafeteria zone nearly each day; the exception was when we had breakfast reservations at one of the parks.

The hotel was nice, maybe a spruced up Motel 6: AC that freakin' cranked, big televisions that had 20 channels, 14 of which were either owned by Disney or featured "What to do at the Parks" info. There were park specific buses that ran every 8 minutes or so, but don't be mistaken---they may have been the familiar looking coaches you see everywhere in cities, but these were in essence shuttles.

They had all the amenities that you may need desire if you're not interested in the five-star hotelier experience. It was pretty great.

Man Takes Toddler Son to Central Florida by Himself; World Gasps

There were far too many people with Cass and I---my mom, Norm and Holly and their boys---for the title of this post to be really true in the sense of being by myself, but it surely felt like it often, and that's not a knock on anything or anybody. As a trio in a cramped apartment near the edge of the continent, when that becomes a duo of us two boys, it feels like the world is at once tiny while also opened up.

Familiar people become living facsimiles of memories, and interacting with them is both joyous and side-eyed, as I tried to keep my kid from cracking his head too hard.

My mother took herself, my boy, me, and the four of Norm, Holly, and their boys, Norman and Simon, all the way to the collection of Disney Parks in Orlando.

She flew us from Southern California to Phoenix, where we saw my son's great-grandmother, then to Orlando; and afterward from Orlando back to Phoenix, and then onto OKC to surprise other-grandma for her birthday (where we'd meet up with Corrie), and then head back to LA.

LAX to PHX to Orlando to PHX to OKC to LAX...five airplane rides for a three year old who already flew to and from Rome the previous month.This is...our kid?

It was an amazing time, hot, sweaty, muggy, rainy, bizarro-world replicas of places that exist in other parts of the world...AND three kids bonding in ways only one may remember but all will feel later in their lives...AND old friends getting precious hours to reconnect...AND a grandmother getting some time with her babies' babies.

One thing that was the same as the park in Anaheim is the quality of the paper used for the maps.

I made a joke about it, but from the standpoint of the parks, they have to print so many pieces that it makes sense that that's one of the areas where they save money.

Because I liked they way they looked after a while--tattered and weathered by hours spent in my pocket getting wet on one side from rain and the other side from ass sweat---I laid out all four maps from the four parks in the order of our visit and took a picture:

If you zoom in you may be able to see it better. The first is the Disney-equivalent to Universal Studios, called Disney Hollywood Studios; the second was the Disneyland copy, Magical Kingdom; the third was from Epcot; and the fourth is the Animal Kingdom.

One of the things my mother got for the grandkids was a nifty vinyl holding packet for the pressed coins visitors can make using a penny and two quarters. When unfolded all the way, besides showing off the nearly 50 different options of pressed penny, it shows those same four parks, albeit in a different order, with each's signature architectural identifier:

It looks like they're using the Tower of Terror ride as the piece for the Hollywood Studio park, but I felt like it was more the replica of Grauman's Chinese Theater; that building was far more centrally located like the castle or the tree or the giant golf ball...

I tried to take a picture of Long Beach on our way out of town...

And, at the very center of this, the Boy and I got to give Corrie a few days by herself. This was the very first time she was ever away from him for more than thirty hours.

As cute as he is:

Everybody would need a break.

We arrived in Phoenix the day before we were to leave for Florida, and met up with and mobbed deep as a group with Norm and Holly and their boys. And, if Norm and I had final say, this would have happened:

Southwest allows you to choose your own seat: they have priority boarding, and that's so folks can get whatever seats they want.

Above, we see Simon (5 1/2 years old) at the window, Cass (3 yr old) in the middle, and Norman (8 yr old) on the aisle. It would have been a wonderful disaster, and great to start off the week: MADNESS FROM THE GET-GO.

What follows will be a series of posts about the trip with pictures and the like. The usual treatment...