After downloading yesterday's pics, putting a fresh set of batteries in my camera, and taking a quick shower, I got on a bus to Epcot and arrived at Mission: Space just as the meet was ending. I met up with the group who was playing the ground controller game just as they finished a round. SuzyQ and Del called for volunteers to ride Ellen's Energy Adventure, and somehow I wound up being the only one who went. I love Ellen's Energy Adventure; it's educational but funny and entertaining, and fits the spirit of Epcot far better than some of the newer attractions.
After Ellen, we went straight to the Electric Umbrella, where quite a crowd was already gathered for my second meet of the day, Brunch at the Ball.
There was already a crowd gathered by the time we arrived at the Electric Umbrella. I could tell that this was going to be a very well-attended meet, but first things first: I had not eaten yet that morning, and I was starving, so I went inside to get some breakfast. I found out the hard way, however, that Electric Umbrella stops serving breakfast at 10:30 on the tick, so I wound up with an oven baked ham and cheese sandwich, served on a pretzel roll. I had never tried this particular offering from EE before and found it very tasty.
Mostly this meet was just a chance to hang out with online friends and gab; many of those in attendance were meeting some of the others for the first time, some had met before and were catching up, and everybody was enjoying themselves immensely. Moley even passed out a few door prizes. We pretty much took over the outdoor seating area on the fountain side.
I took temporary possession of the journal from Kathi and Brian's Clubhouse, a roaming-gnome style notebook into which each Clubhouse member writes a little note when they get it, perhaps pastes a picture or two, then passes it on to the next person. The journal had been at WDW continuously for several weeks leading up to MouseFest, thanks to the large number of Clubhouse members with vacations scheduled at the end of November and beginning of December. Dawick had taken obsession a week or so ago, since he and his family would be in Orlando for about 3 weeks, and had been passing it around as more people arrived.
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As the time for the MegaMeet drew nearer, the entire group gathered on the walkway just outside the seating area for several pictures, including a few from a Disney photographer who happened by at just the right moment, allowing us to have shots with everybody in them. The poor photographer must have swiped 10 PhotoPass cards on his machine!
PhotoPass is a new idea at WDW to which I took an instant liking. It's a simple electronic system now carried by the roaming photographers in the parks; when they take pics of you, they give you a PhotoPass card, which they swipe through their reader. The card is then electronically coded to your pics, and when you get home you can go to the PhotoPass web site to order prints. What I had not realized until now was that you can keep your PhotoPass card on you and have each photographer swipe the same card over and over, instead of getting a new card for each photo. Then, when you enter the card number on the PhotoPass web site, all your photos come up at once. You must log in to look at your photos within 30 days, and they will be available for 60 days after you check them.
After the photo, everybody broke up and went their separate ways; we still had some time before the MegaMouseMeet, however, so I stayed behind for a while to read through all the entries in the journal. It had only been circulating for a few months, but already had an impressive number of entries, including a few pictures. I thought for a while and wrote a little note myself, then got myself into gear and headed for International Gateway. A boat docked after only a few minutes, and I said hello to OhMickeyYou'reSoFine (Mike) and his parents, who got off the boat and headed into Epcot for some lunch.
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Because of the size of last year's MegaMeet, this year's was being held in a much larger room, one of the conference rooms in the Swan's extensive convention facility. We had a lot more space, and yet the room was still packed. The MegaMeet is something of a blur; I met and talked to so many people I lost track. I do remember meeting Mary Waring of MouseSavers, who was unable to attend MouseFest last year, Gregory Nicholas of Quicksilver towncar, and Shontell of DVC by Resale. I also re-met Bob Sehlinger of the Unofficial Guide, Dave Marx of the Passporter guide books, and Nanci Rosetti of Magical Journeys.
I also ran into Rosalyn Furakawa, who posts on some message boards as Diskid; Rosalyn had attended a few of the same meets as I had over the last two years.
During the MegaMeet, Deb Wills handed out a bunch of prize packages donated by the various MouseFest sponsors. At least four Taginators won prizes.
At long last the meet began to wind down, and I had to make a pilgrimage to the bathrooms, which were pretty far down the hallway leading back to the hotel lobby. When I returned, I sat down on a bench to make some trip notes while everybody left. Before I could get more than a sentence or two written, though, I was recognized by a friend from the Passporter boards who posts as Luckypup; she had been off line for a while because she'd moved to a neighborhood without broadband internet. We talked for a while, and then another friend stopped by (that's what I get for picking a bench right on the main walkway); it was WendyBird (and her daughter Morgan), wife of the well-known RhinoDad. Although Wendy had met me last night at the Wilderness Lodge, she hadn't realized that I was WillCAD until she saw me sitting there talking to Luckypup.
I struck up a conversation with Morgan, however, about the graphic I use as a signature on DIsney message boards, which shows me apparently leaning against Spaceship Earth. Wendy had mentioned this when she first walked up, and Morgan wanted to know how it was done, so I gave her a crash-course in forced perspective photography.
It was a good 30 minutes before everybody went off to get some dinner and left me alone on my bench; the only drawback to the whole encounter was that my memory is kinda bad and I had to concentrate real hard to write notes about things that happened 5 minutes ago...
What was I talking about?
Oh, yeah, the MegaMeet. Well, by the time I finished writing my notes, even the webmasters and authors were finished up and leaving, so I figured it was time to go find some fun. I headed for the boat dock and got in the line for the MGM boat. But two boats came by, and each was so full that it couldn't take on any more passengers, so I decided to try walking to MGM.
Along the way I pulled out my cell phone and called my friend Frank back home, just to give him an update on my trip so far. We talked for about 10 minutes as I walked, and when I drew close to MGM I hung up and looked around me. The gates in front of MGM were MOBBED! It looked like rope drop; every turnstile had a line that went all the way back to the ticket booths. I had no idea what the heck was going on in MGM that evening, but I knew I didn't want anything to do with it if the park was a crowded as the gates.
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I took this opportunity to explore the balcony on the 4th floor which was now a viewing area for Guests to watch Wishes. I was not terribly impressed with the view. In fact, it was terrible, compared to the magnificent view from the observation deck on the 15th floor. But I had an idea, one that I had had last year and been wanting to try ever since. I went back inside, went to the elevator, and tried the button for the 14th floor. Wait... there was no button for the 14th floor; the elevator went directly from 11 to 15. Okay, try eleven... nothing. Ten? Ding!
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I got off the elevator on the tenth floor and was treated to a wonderful view of the Grand Canyon Concourse from 6 floors above. I snapped several pics before moving on to the end of the hallway to the emergency stairway and starting on my way up.
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Five flights and a minor myocardial infarction later, I was on the observation deck outside the California Grill. Although it's now prohibited to get onto this deck through the restaurant, my hunch was correct: fire codes prohibit closing off the emergency stairwells, and if one wants to get to the observation deck, one only needs to climb the five flights from the tenth floor to get there.
After resting... a while... I went back down the five flights to the tenth floor and took the elevator the rest of the way down. By this time there was quite a line at the check-in podium for the Steakhouse, so I got in and waited about 10 minutes before getting a pager. The CM said my wait would be about 45 minutes, though it was actually only 30, during which time I just sat on a comfortable seat near the monorail escalators and rested.
And waited.
And then I waited some more.
Twice, the waitress looked at me as she passed and said, "I don't know what's taking so long, I'll check with the kitchen."
While waiting, I struck up a conversation with the family seated at the next table, who had been seated about ten minutes after I had and had already been served their meals. As it turned out, the mom of this family was a member of the DISboards who recognized my MouseFest buttons; she posts under the name of DiSnEyNuT. I was enthralled by the light-up drink her daughter had gotten; it was a blue soda with a lighted blue plastic ice cube inside. It lit up the entire table, and I began wondering if I could score one of these cubes for myself before I left.
Meanwhile, the minutes on my trusty Casio kept on flying by. At 7pm, 40 minutes after I had placed my order, I decided to give it just 5 more minutes before calling for the manager and asking him why it had taken so long to get my steak. But, sure enough, my steak showed up 2 minutes later, at exactly 7:02.
Despite the fact that the steak had come before my 45 minute deadline, I was a little upset that it had taken 42 minutes. I wasn't terribly upset at the waitress, but at the kitchen staff, which is who cooks the steak in the first place. The waitress put my plate on my table with a smile and turned to leave, but I called out her name, Lisa, and said, "I just wanted to let you know, you might want to go yell at the kitchen staff a little, because I timed it, and my steak took 42 minutes to come out." She acted slightly surprised and said she'd talk to the manager to get something knocked off my bill. I told her, "That's great. But if you really want to make it up to me, you'll also see if you can get me one of those cool light-up ice cubes." I pointed to the lit-up drink at the next table.
That's when DiSnEyNuT chimed in and said, "Lisa, I think he needs two or three of them!"
Well, I hadn't wanted to push too hard; after all, getting a discount or a free desert is the usual compensation for bad or slow service at a restaurant, but DiSnEyNuT's admonition worked, because when Lisa returned with my check a few minutes later, not only was it discounted about 30%, but she handed me four light-up ice cubes and said, "Hide these." I guess the management didn't authorize giving them out, and maybe she was trying to salvage a bad situation and still get a reasonably good tip.
The steak was excellent, but as I ate it I realized that it was not piping hot, as it would have been if it had just come off the grill. Neither were my smashed red potatoes piping hot; I realized that the plate had sat for ten to fifteen minutes before coming to my table, meaning that at least part of my delay may have been Lisa's fault.
I'm inclined to give the benefit of the doubt, however, so I gave Lisa a 15% tip. But I made sure it was 15% of the discounted bill, not 15% of the actual bill.
I was tempted to give them some advice, but decided to stay out of it. Certainly, 45 minutes is far too long to wait for a bus at any Disney resort, but after 25 or 30 I would have simply caught the monorail to TTC and then transferred to the Epcot monorail. But since they had been waiting so long, their recourse now was to go back inside, find the Guest Relations desk, and complain there. Guest Relations at a Disney resort, particularly a deluxe resort, can make things happen when a Guest is upset, and these people were very upset.
My bus ride to Downtown Disney was a strange combination of amusement and torture. After I boarded the bus and sat down, the rest of the seats filled quickly, then the aisle filled as well, and among the passengers was a contingent of cheerleaders, part of the national Pop Warner football and cheerleading competitions that invade WDW every December. I had been seeing packs of teenage girls roaming the parks all week, and also at some of the resorts I had visited, though they didn't really have a significant impact on crowd levels or line lengths. All of them that I had encountered had been very well behaved, despite the typical cheerleader peppiness, which I'll admit is somewhat annoying to a grumpy old cynic like myself. This bus ride, however, forced me into close proximity with a group that was bent on singing Christmas carols at top volume all the way to Downtown Disney. It was rather like being caught in the middle of a choir practice; they didn't sound bad, except that the sheer power of the kids' lungs was rocking the bus. And they only seemed to know about 3 songs, so I wound up sitting through Rudolph two or three times.
By the time the bus pulled into the Downtown Disney depot, I was ready to leap off, whether it stopped or not.
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I usually take hours at Downtown Disney and walk through the entire place, but I was tired yet again tonight, and it was cold, so I skipped most of the stores and just browsed through the World of Disney, and the two new stores, DisneyTails the pet store, and Mickey's Mart, the $10 and under store. I was disappointed in both; DisneyTails seemed to be more like a pet-owner store (less stuff for pets than for pet-owners), and Mickey's Mart was not a mark-down store, merely a collection of under-$10 items that could be found elsewhere in Downtown Disney or in other on-site shops. Still, I did buy several things there as Christmas presents for folks at home.
I was getting tired and the cold was really getting to me, so I went to the PI bus stop to catch a ride back to Pop. Some folks with thick Boston accents were at the Pop bus shelter already and had been counting how many busses were going by for other resorts; by the time the Pop bus arrived, they had seen 20 others pass by.
The ride back to Pop was quiet, and I staggered back to my room to drop off my stuff, then staggered out to Everything Pop to pick up the Binford mug I'd had delivered yesterday. I wound up hitting the sack about 11pm, so tired I didn't even bother to brush my teeth.