"October Surprise" Trip Report - Day 3
“October Surprise” (or ICOT25 Celebration) Trip Report – Day 3
Trip Dates: October 11 – October 18
Resort: All Star Music
Transportation: Southwest Airlines, then Mears Connect to resort.
The Plan:
Thursday, October 13th: EPCOT for the ‘early entry’ and morning hours, followed by a ‘rest’ break before going to Disney Springs for the “Hang out at the Hangar Bar” mixer.
Okay, maybe I am finally getting into ‘Disney Vacation’ mode. Feeling rested and ready to go this morning, start my report of yesterdays fun while sipping my morning coffee…”Mr. Bluebird’s on my shoulder...” Save the file out and go to the INTERCOT site to ‘copy-paste’ it into a new post and the fight begins…The formatting from my Word doc just doesn’t want to come along. No problem, it has done this before. I just need to edit and fix the spacing and such. Save the edit and got a big “Nope” in response. After fighting this for close to half an hour (Yes, I can be persistent) I give up and decide to try again later. [I know most of you already know this if you read yesterdays report, but it was part of todays experience.]
It is an EPCOT morning with plans to get some rides in and ‘eat, drink, and feel merry’ before taking a break to refresh before the evening ‘meet and greet’ at Jock Lindsay’s Hangar Bar in Disney Springs. The ‘fight’ with the daily post put me a little behind schedule…
Upon arrival at the gates, I can see that I am not going to get as much in as I had hoped…Wall-to-wall people trying to get into the park. It goes relatively quickly, but there is just a mass of humanity taking up the entrance plaza and even now Spaceship Earth has a 45+ minute queue! I don’t typically do SSE until I am ready to leave the park, but it does give me an idea of what to expect deeper inside.
Went to the left toward Guardians to see what Mission Space and Test Track had in store for me. MS was already at 45 minutes for Green and 60 minutes for Orange. Green it is, then. Neither side bothers me, so timing is more my control. If Orange is 45 minutes or less I’ll give it a go. Test Track has a Single Rider queue, so is always a little quicker for me. CM at the entrance said 25 – 30 minutes (The sign was out or not being updated at the time.) so I jumped in for my time as a Crash Test Dummy. (Okay, that really doesn’t fit the ride anymore, but old habits die hard.)
Continuing on my journey “around the world, to the left,” next stop is Mexico to see if I can find Donald. Nope! Queue for the boat ride was already 45 minutes and looking longer. Starting to see a pattern here…Is everything going to be 45 minutes? I could only hope so…
Next, it was on to Norway to see if 45 minutes would hold up for Frozen Ever After…Not even close! 95 minutes for StandBy and the CM said it was probably longer. I guess all those people that were in front of me to enter the park had made it back this far. It didn’t seem all that crowded along the promenade, but the rides and shops were all very busy.
I am probably going to disappoint some people, but with all the wonderful Food and Wine kiosks around World Showcase, I just wasn’t hungry! Everything on the menus looked good, but all I wanted was (non-alcoholic) drinks.
Just in case anyone is getting the wrong impression, as my posts haven’t been all ‘Happy Go Lucky’ to this point, I AM still really enjoying my trip so far. The heat and humidity are a bit more than I was expecting, but I am dealing with it.
Around 2pm I decide to take my midday break, refresh and get ready for Disney Springs…
Back in the room I give my trip report posting another try and lo and behold it works! I am now happy that I haven’t let “my fans” down! LOL
Having had a chance to cool down, clean up, and get ready, I made my way to Disney Springs around 5pm. Giving me plenty of time to get my bearings and walk around the area. I am not a shopper, so this is more of a ‘people watching’ area for me. It is a lovely area, well themed, but most of the shops are ‘high end’ and do not interest me in the least, except for the ‘oldies’ like World of Disney, Ghirardelli, and the like in the area that was originally The Marketplace.
Made it to the Hangar Bar shortly before it was time for the meetup and saw John and Ian arrive. No, I didn’t immediately accost them as a ‘fanboy’ of the site and podcast! There were others around before I walked up to introduce myself. I am not going to list out names of all the people I met this evening, as I am not the best at keeping names straight! LOL Suffice it to say that there were a number of people I recognized from the podcasts and more that set off the ‘Ding!’ in my mind – putting faces to names/handles. I truly enjoyed the evening and hope that I didn’t annoy everyone with my nervous rambling in conversations.
Looking forward to the next few days!!
Tomorrow: MK for ‘official’ Day 1 of the INTERCOT 25th Anniversary Celebration!!
Stay tuned for more daily reports…
