After a good night's sleep (being exhausted will do that to you), I got up this morning at about 8am, showered, downloaded my pics from yesterday and put fresh batteries in my camera and flash, and left my room at about 9 in search of breakfast.
After a good night's sleep (being exhausted will do that to you), I got up this morning at about 8am, showered, downloaded my pics from yesterday and put fresh batteries in my camera and flash, and left my room at about 9 in search of breakfast.
I first tried the food court at Pop Century, but that place was wall-to-wall people, so I cut out quickly and got on the road. After a wrong turn, I wound up near the McDonalds in the All-Star resort area, and ducked in there for a quick breakfast.
When breakfast was finished, I made the drive to Magic Kingdom, took the ferryboat into the park, and spent a few minutes taking castle pictures before moving on to some attractions. Today was the first official day of MouseFest, but the meets wouldn't start until the cruisers got in, which would be around noon. I had time for my favorite MK attractions.
My first stop was Mickey's Philharmagic, or Phil, as I like to call it; then it was onto the Haunted Mansion and the Hall of Presidents, by which time I was hungry. Since Pecos Bills was not far away, I grabbed a cheeseburger and fries there, although it was a bit crowded and I had to hunt for a table.
After lunch I went around the bend to Pirates and found the ride was down temporarily for repair. But in the plaza outside the ride I found a little face character show going on that I hadn't heard about - Cap'n Jack Sparrow was making a presentation to the crowd. I wasn't even paying attention to what he said (I think he was telling people what it was like to be a pirate), but I was paying attention to how he said it, and this guy was a perfect ringer for Johnny Depp. He had the look, but more importantly, he had nailed the distinctive mannerisms of the character. His voice was even very close to Johnny Depp's, but his fake British accent did slip here and there, where Johnny's had not during the two films. But what the heck, Depp gets multiple takes to get his lines perfect; this guy was performing in front of a live crowd.
When his presentation was over, he ran back stage screaming in a hilarious imitation of Jack Sparrow's panicked run from the cannibals in Dead Man's Chest; I was laughing at this so hard I didn't even get a chance to snap a picture of it.
Since I still had plenty of time until my first meet of the day, I decided to cut across the hub to Fantasyland and see if I could get a few pics of the castle from the back without that damned crane in the shot. But when I got there, I found that the crane was positioned so close to the castle that it would be in any shot, from any angle, taken from anywhere in the park, no matter how close.
Being a pragmatist, I decided to make lemonade, as it were, and took pics of the crane itself, making it a subject rather than a distraction. I actually got a few good shots of a pair of painters lifting themselves up to the castle in the crane's basket.
Not having anything specific to do, I went through the castle to the hub and turned into Tomorrowland, where I took a bathroom break at the Tomorrowland Terrace Noodle Station, which was closed but still had open bathrooms, then found a drinking fountain and filled my water bottle. It was hot today - my bottle was nearly empty already and it was only about 2pm.
My next stop was the Main Street USA shops, where I spent some time looking for something with the WDW 2006 logo on it for my trip report. I had no luck, so I went back to Pirates and found the attraction open, with a 30-minute wait, so I got into the stand-by line. I found it well worth the wait (especially since Pirates' queue is dark, cool, and air-conditioned), and tried taking some pics of the much-heralded new additions to the ride: several new Audio-anamatronic Cap'n Jack Sparrows, an AA Cap'n Hector Barbossa, and an eerie image of Davy Jones projected onto a curtain of water vapor mist at the very beginning of the ride. Most of the pics didn't come out well at all because of the dark and the motion of the ride vehicle.
After Pirates, I made my way to the Swiss Family Treehouse, where I ran into Byron; we both walked through the Treehouse and took a few pics, and yes, even from there, the crane ruined our pics of the castle.
When we came back down from the Treehouse, we went to the nearby Aloha Isle, where a group was already gathering for the 3pm Dole Whip Meet that marked the official beginning of the land portion of MouseFest. I grabbed myself a pineapple soft-serve Dole Whip and mixed with the group for a while, meeting up with friends from various online Disney fan communities, many of whom I have met at previous MouseFests. As we were talking, though, I noticed that the sky was clouding up a bit, the wind was picking up, and the temperature was dropping a little.
Although I could have stayed at Aloha Isle talking to people for hours, I and several others had another meet to attend, so at about 3:30 a bunch of us went to Pirates for a Common Ground Pirates meet. By the time this meet officially moved into the ride queue, we had a group of at least 30, maybe as many as 50. The hosts of the meet had passed out care packages to each attendee with pirate eye patches and printed lyrics for the song - Yo Ho, a pirates life for me - so we sang the song about 4 times as we waited to get on the ride.
Our wait was about 30 minutes, and I got a much better pic of the new Cap'n Jack AA at the end of the ride. After we exited, we gathered around the corner for a group photo, which turned into a 15-minute process because so many people wanted to take pics with their cameras. A PhotoPass photographer was supposed to have been scheduled to put in an appearance, but none ever did.
I stood around for a while after that talking to various online friends, including DrDolphin (Teri) from the Passporter boards. But the weather was turning cold much faster, and a lot of people were either off to Main Street to buy sweatshirts, or headed back to their resorts to change into warmer clothing. I opted for the latter, since I was on a tight budget and only planned to buy clothing at the Disney outlets.
I gave Teri a ride back to her resort, the nearby Wilderness Lodge, so she could pick up her own sweatshirt, then drove to Pop Century to change into my own warmer clothes, before returning to MK just in time fir Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party to begin. Teri and I got our wristbands as we entered the park, then we both grabbed dinner at Pecos Bills (the quickest and easiest counter-service option) before going to our next meet.
We were a bit late; the meet, a night-time photo tour of Magic Kingdom, had met up at the Noodle Station, but had already moved into Tomorrowland. I found myself at something of a disadvantage here, since I hadn't brought a full-size tripod with me, and most of the shots that the host (Tim Devine of the Magic In Pixels) was showing us how to get require a tripod. Still, I helped a few other people try some of my trick techniques for getting low-light shots, and for a couple of shots my pocket-size tripod worked just fine.
The meet ended when the group returned to the Noodle Station and Tim conducted a very informative Q&A session.
Once the photo meet was done, many of the attendees headed off to the Rose Garden for the Wishes meet, hosted by Dave Card of Tagrel.com and Deb Wills of AllEarsNet.com. The Wishes meet has become a MouseFest tradition and is always packed; this year was no exception, and when I arrived I found the Rose Garden already brimming full of people.
During the three previous years, I spent the entire fireworks display taking pictures of the fireworks themselves, but this year I swung my camera around the other way and took some wonderful pictures of my friends' reactions to the fireworks, instead.
The Wishes meet lasted until the fireworks were over, after which the group broke up into smaller groups; I went to the Haunted Mansion with a group from Tagrel.com, then stopped for the free cookies and hot cocoa before attending one final meet of the day, to watch the Christmas Parade from a location in front of the Tomorrowland Shooting Arcade. I watched the parade with Dave Marx and Mark Goldhaber, and took a couple of group pics at Dave's request for the MouseFest scrapbook.
After the parade I was getting a little tired, not to mention cold, so I decided to call it a night. I walked out of the park with Teri, parting company with her at the gates, since she was heading for Wilderness Lodge and I was heading for the parking lot.
I made it back to my room at Pop around midnight, downloaded the days pics, and put my camera batteries in their chargers before hitting the sack at about 1:30am.