)
After breakfast, I packed up my car with the MouseFest posters and drove the 20 minutes or so to the Magic Kingdom. Not having arrived before park opening, I was relegated to a parking space far enough away that I needed to take the tram to get to the Transportation and Ticket Center. Instead of taking the monorail, however, I decided to take the ferryboat. The Admiral Joe Fowler was just pulling into the dock when I arrived, and soon I was at the MK gates.
The turnstiles were pretty crowded this morning, partly due to the elevated weekend crowds, but mostly due to the 75 statues of Mickey Mouse that were placed in roped-off areas all over the entry plaza, taking up a huge amount of space. These statues, each one painted and decorated by a different artist, were created as part of a celebration of Mickey Mouse's 75th birthday. Originally, they were slated to be distributed throughout the WDW property, but some minor problem with the paint had forced Disney to keep them together in one location, with ropes to keep Guests' hands off them, until the paint could properly cure. I took pictures of 10 or 15 of them before moving on to my next destination, the Guest Services window. I had an old park-hopper pass, left over from a trip 3 years ago, and I wanted to verify how many days were left on it. The CM at the window swiped it and confirmed my recollection that it had one day left.
)
Then I was inside Magic Kingdom.
It's not typical for me to go to MK first, On most of my previous trips, I wound up in Epcot or the Disney MGM Studios on my first day, but since my meet this afternoon was at the Fort Wilderness Campground, in the MK area, I figured it would be a good day to visit MK.
)
Since this was my first trip to WDW with a digital camera, I was in full shutterbug mode this morning, snapping away at anything that caught my eye. I took a bunch of shots in the castle area before moving into Tomorrowland. My first attraction on this trip wound up being Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, since my favorite Tomorrowland attraction, the ExTERRORestrial Alien Encounter, had been shut down to be re-themed into a Stitch attraction. I scored 97,600. Not exactly a stellar score, but I wasn't competing with anybody. After the ride, I took a picture of my ride photo on the screen rather than paying the exhorbitant fee to buy one.
Next up was an attraction I couldn't ever remember seeing before: Walt Disney's Carrosel of Progress. For as long as I can rememeber, COP has been a seasonal attraction, opening only during the busiest times of the year such as Christmas week and the week of July 4th. But with Alien Encounter closed for months worth of rehab, COP was now open. I went in and chose an excellent seat for myself, taking a picture or two of each diorama in this anamatronic theater showcasing technological advances through the Twentieth century. I loved the attraction and still can't understand why it's closed so often.
Next on my list for the morning was to visit Adventureland. After a short bathroom break in Fantasyland, I rode the Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean, both still great attractions in my book. I still had plenty of time before i had to leave the park, but I couldn't make up my mind what I wanted to do. I found myself back on Main Street, trying to decide, when it suddenly hit me that I was missing a brand-new attraction at MK!
A quick check of my park map led me back to Fantasyland, where I queued up for Mickey's Philharmagic, or Phil as I like to call it. Phil is a 3D show, similar to Honey, I Shrunk the Audience or It's Tough to Be A Bug. The story behind this one is that Mickey is gearing up to conduct an orchestra of musical instruments with his magical sorcerer's hat. But Donald Duck get's his wings on the hat and proceeds to lose it through a magical vortex, chasing it through 3D CGI scenes of such classic Disney animated features as Fantasia, Little Mermaid, Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, all to musical numbers from these films. The show had me grinning from ear to ear and laughing out loud at Donald's antics, and I decided that Phil is the best new attraction to hit the Magic Kingdom in years.
By this time, it was late enough for me to head out for my rendezvous at Fort Wilderness, so I left the park and hopped into my car. I could have taken a boat from Magic Kingdom to FW, but I would have had to get all the stuff out of my car, take the monorail back to the park, then catch the boat accross the Seven Seas Lagoon and Bay Lake, which would have taken far longer than driving it myself.
By following the clearly marked signs from the MK parking lot to Ft. Wilderness, I naturally became hopelessly lost. Well, not really; I knew where I was, I just didn't know how to get where I wanted to go. I wound up turning in at the wrong place, the FW check-in line, and having the Disney security guard turn me around and give me directions to the Outpost. Once I parked, and dug out my three bags and big poster tube from the back of the car, I followed more signs to the bus stops, with the smell of nature in my nostrils the whole way (read: horses). When I got to the bus stops and began to look at the signs to find the proper bus, I heard someone call my name and turned to meet MissBianca and her husband Bernard. I had never seen pics of them, but even if I had, I wouldn't have noticed them. I just never notice people I know when I meet them unexpectedly; I have been know to walk past my brother in the shopping mall.
MissB and Bernard were waiting for the same bus I was, heading for the Settlement and Pioneer Hall. MissB was using an Electric Convenience Vehicle (ECV), so it took a few minutes for the bus driver to get the rear stairs of the bus turned into a lift, and MissB turned the controls over to Bernard to park it on the ramp, as she was not confident in her precision maneuvering abilities. It really only took about 3 minutes to get the ECV and all three of us aboard using the lift, which then magically transformed back into a set of steps. I have to take my hat off to the person who invented that particular piece of modern technology; it speeds up the loading process for folks in ECVs or wheelchairs immeasurably!
Once at the Settlement, the walk to Pioneer Hall was fairly short, and finding Trail's End was easy. As we approached the outside of the restaurant, we noticed several people inside wearing Tagrel.com t-shirts, as we were, so we knew that at least some of the rest of the group had already arrived. We checked in at the podium and started meeting all the Taginators who had arrived early. Already present were LimeGreenCheri, her husband Ken and thier two kids; BetsyAnn and her mom Elaine, Stinkerbelle, DisneyPam, MargaretJ and her son Matt, and FLSharon and her husband John. As we ate, more and more Taginators showed up, bringing our final tally to about 22 or so.
Dinner was a rather chaotic affair of folks who knew each other well but had never met face to face happily gabbing and sharing stories. We talked our way through a couple of plates each of the excellent food available at Trail's End, while at the same time twisting our server's mind around like a pretzel by playing musical tables to get closer together. Cinderella (Claire) handed out some wonderful goodie bags with stickers and pencils in them, with our photos ironed onto the front of our bag! And when MikeS showed up he had brought some MousePlanet pins, buttons, and keychains to hand out to everyone.
During dinner, Stinkerbelle told me, "I've got something for you," and presented me with a ticket to tonight's Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party. She had won two tickets and wound up with an extra, and out of the kindness of her heart had given the extra to me. It was like Christmas coming a month early, because I had not originally planned on attending any of the 3 or 4 MVMCPs that were taking place during my trip.
)
Around 3:30, most of us had finished eating, except MikeS and his wife Carol, who had been delayed and arrived a bit late, so after we had taken care of our checks (yet another mind-bening experience for our poor server), everybody went out onto the front porch. I stayed back for a few minites talking to Mike, whom I chat with almost every day but had never met in person, but after a minute I heard an unexpected roar from the Taginators outside. Mike and I both looked out the door quizically, and he said, "I think that's Dave." I thought he was right, and leaving him and Carol to finish thier dinner, I went outside to find that, indeed, Dave Card, Tagrel himself, had managed to put in an appearance. Unfortunately, he was able to divert to Trail's End because his wife Kristen had gotten a nasty stomach bug that was going around, and she had gone back to thier hotel room to rest.
The group spent another half hour or more milling around on the porch, taking several group photos (thanks to a very patient lady who was roped into snapping pics with about a half-dozen cameras while passing by). I passed out my posters, including a jumbo-size version I had brought specially for Dave, and at long last the group reluctantly had to break up. Some went back to thier touring, some went directly to Magic Kingdom for Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party, and some of us went to Contemporary to begin another meet.
)
Tag Along With Tagrel was the second Tagrel.com meet scheduled for MouseFest weekend. The plan was to meet at 4pm at the Outter Rim lounge on the 4th floor of the Contemporary resort, ride the monorail around and explore the holiday decorations at each of the three Magic Kingdom resorts. Due to our dallying at Trail's End, however, and transportation time to Contemporary, we didn't actually arrive till about 4:20 or 4:30. We found several other Taginators waiting for us, and were soon off to explore the Christmas decorations at the monorail resorts.
DisneyPam turned into our tour guide, pointing out features and decorations as we went. We stopped for a time at the Polynesian to allow Dave's wife Kristen catch up to us. She was feeling a little better and wanted to take in a few decorations herself, so we waited until she arrived and continued on to the third monorail resort, the Grand Floridian.