Sheep Guarding Llama

Scott Adams informs us today that the actor who played Scotty on Star Trek who had his ashes sent into space didn’t make it into space but ended up in a forest somewhere. This is what you get for being weird and extravagant even after you have died.

I slept in until seven thirty this morning. I just couldn’t get out of bed while Oreo was being all snuggly. It is so good to have our dog back! I also just needed to catch up on some sleep. This was the first full night of sleep that I have had in almost a week.

Last night we did pretty much nothing. We just relaxed and watched the sixth season of That ’70s Show. I was right that we have not seen any of these episodes yet at all. We are really enjoying that.

Today marks the fortieth anniversary of the video game console. Pong was released on the Ides of May, 1977.

Some students have released an eBay Toolbar for Firefox. eBay is probably not very happy since they have been working on a toolbar of their own. But, rumor has it, that the student made toolbar is nicer than the one that eBay is planning on releasing. Talking about taking the wind out of your sails.

If you ever needed proof that people just aren’t smart enough to use computers (or anything else apparently) you need to check out Drive By Download.

I got home at a reasonable time tonight and actually beat Dominica home since she went out shopping before coming home. She got home and we watched some more of That 70s Show while I cooked dinner. Yes I made dinner tonight. I did a crushed (not ground) peppercorn, mustard and chipotle broiled salmon which was delicious. It was my first real food of the day. Yesterday I only had Kashi cereal and green beans. I also had green beans tonight.

At eleven I went down to the gym and worked out for thirty five minutes. Now the exercising begins. It is all downhill from here. After my workout on the eliptical machine I hit the steam room and then it was off to bed. My first full day of dieting has been successful.

Weight Lost So Far: 3lbs

We got into 1180 Raymond around two in the morning. Boy were we ever tired. This entire weekend has been exhausting. Tonight it has really caught up with us. When we got in we found out that we are finally getting our mail room keys so that we no longer have to be handed our mail but can get it any time by going to our own mail box. That is really nice. We have been wondering what had happened to that since we were told that we were “getting the keys any day” in like November or December of last year.

We got up to the apartment and were asleep as fast as we could get into bed. It is another short night for us.

Getting up this morning was pretty painful. Dominica slept in until seven and I didn’t get up until after seven thirty. We were both in quite the rush this morning. But we needed all of the sleep that we could get.

My commute into work took a really long time today. Normally my drive is just twenty-five to thirty minutes but today there were two accident on Interstate 78 West and it took me over an hour and twenty minutes to get to the office.  That was a big pain.

Today begins the office “weight loss pool”.  There are nine people at the office who are all competing over a period of ninety-one days to see who can lose the most weight.  It is not by total weight but by percentage of weight lost.  We are each putting in $100 and the winner gets the pot minus a few “alternative” prizes.  So the total to be won is $900 but the grand prize is only $700 I think.  So as of today there is no more good food for me.  Nothing but exercise and carb free protein meals.  Ugh.  It is going to be a long summer.

I am very anxious to get home and see Oreo.  Having been away from him for four days is way too long.  Our plan is to go home tonight and just relax and let our feet heal from all of the blisters that we got while we were in Florida and hang out with Oreo.  We are sure that he will be glad to see us but probably totally exhausted after spending so many days at day care without any break.  We have the sixth season of That ’70s Show to watch which is really cool because I am pretty sure that neither Dominica nor I have seen any of these episodes yet.

I will be starting to put together some of our Disney videos soon.  It will take a while to go through all of the material.  I have about four hours of MiniDV tapes to wade through!

This morning we slept in a little more than we did yesterday and were able to get a move on the day quite a bit easier. We had some food in the fridge that we have collected over the past few days including part of an almond covered sweet pretzel and some schoolbread from Norway. I had some leftovers from Jiko as well but no fork to eat them with so they got left behind.

We packed up the hotel and moved on down to the lobby so that we can put our carry on luggage into storage and get all set with our plane tickets. We discovered a huge, slow moving line in the lobby for the plane check-in. Apparently this is a new thing and they don’t have it working yet. Disney doesn’t operate the service themselves but farm it out (like they do with a lot of things.) But it doesn’t really matter as it is a service inside of the Disney resort and it is not open to competition from other companies so Disney has taken responsibility for it. And it didn’t work at all. The computers were down so it was taking forever and the risk of lost baggage was very high. So I talked to the concierge and explained that we didn’t need to check in this way because we could have done it online but because Disney offers this service we were taking advantage of it but you don’t find out that it isn’t working until after you have left your hotel room with Internet access. It took a little bit but the concierge finally figured out how to get us Internet access just to the AirTran site. We got logged in through there and printed our boarding passes. Everyone else is stuck in a line missing their day at the park and probably losing their luggage. We were not impressed with that system but our concierge is great.

After we put all of our luggage into storage with bell services we got on the bus for the Animal Kingdom and headed over there to spend the morning. We just have two things that we really fel like doing there today: Expedition Everest (for Dominica only – I am too old for these things) and the Kilimanjaro Safari which is the centerpiece of the park.

We arrived at the Animal Kingdom and I went right in but something was wrong with Dominica’s ticket. They wouldn’t let her in. After a little bit they told her that her ticket had expired (it is a non-expiring ten day ticket with only two days used on it!) Then she explained that the hotel had replaced her roomkey when it had become demagnetized. They then told her that she had the wrong key and that she still had her demagnetized one and that she had lost her real one (even though the hotel had taken the other key and the one that she had had been opening the hotel room doors both yesterday afternoon and this morning.) We were not happy. It would appear that the hotel simply confiscated her actual admission ticket without telling her effectively stealing hundreds of dollars that we had invested in what we had planned to have been several WDW trips over the next couple of years.

This situation brought to light a very significant problem with the Disney ticket system: the tickets themselves are just paper or plastic and there is no way for you as a customer to know what is on them. Had we not gone to the park today and discovered what had happened we would have returned to New Jersey with a dead hotel room key (the tickets, door keys and “Disney” credit card are all the exact same plastic and you can’t tell which they are without trying to use them inside WDW.) We might have returned in a year or two and at that point would never have remembered that the hotel changed the door key and that we hadn’t tried to re-enter the park after that point. Disney has effectively created a convenient way for them to claim anything about your tickets and to make sure that you have no means of providing proof as to their usage at all. You don’t even know that they have stolen your tickets until you attempt to use them again. This is a error beyond comprehension. I always thought that their “blind” tickets connected to a centralized ticket processing system that had a master database that kept track of this stuff. But there isn’t. The data is on the card itself and if the card goes bad or the Disney staff pull a switcheroo on you (which you have no control over in many circumstances) then you simply lose the park admission that you paid for and that is that. And they want people to invest in their “Disney Vacation” plans that tie you into their vacations for fifty years? I wouldn’t trust them not to claim to simply not know me and not let me in!

Fortunately we knew exactly what had happened but the staff would not answer why the hotel was allowed to have taken such action or how to avoid the situation in the future. They just blew us off. This wasn’t just rude but is bordering on criminal. They knew that they had passed the “grand theft” limit of $500 and tried to hide it as an accident. They definitely acted very devious like a kid who had gotten caught and then acted like it was an accident. Like they didn’t expect us to realize how it had happened but attempting to blame us for having lost something just half a day after they had taken it away from us was not going to fly.

Since we knew for sure what was supposed to be on the ticket and knew exactly how, when and who had stolen the entrance pass portion of the ticket from us they took Dominica over to guest services outside of the park and told me not to leave the park since I had already gone in (maybe they managed to disable my ticket too – we will find out next year I guess.) Guest services replaced Dominica’s ticket but at first attempted to do so by giving her a one day pass to the Animal Kingdom but fortunately she was on the ball and caught them still taking seven days away from her. So she pressed the point and they finally gave her an eight day pass. Now, of course, there is no way for us to know what the pass really has on it. They say that they gave her back her eight days and made them non-expiring like the ticket that we had first purchased but we have no way to ever verify that! It is all on the honor system and Disney already violated that today. I would never have thought that I would have to worry about something like this from Disney but Disney has changed a lot since I was a kid. Walt’s mark on the company is all but gone at this point.

Dominica said that the guest relations person that she dealt with was really nice and helpful and was really horrified about the situation. But it seems more and more that we are needing to turn to guest relations or concierges to deal with situations that shouldn’t have been able to have happened. This morning’s situation could have been fixed had they simply notified us that the hotel’s check in system was broken and that we should go back to the traditional “Internet” method that we have used for years. But instead they wait until after we check out of our room, pack the laptop and give up our Internet access that they charged us $10 a day for and then tell us that their system doesn’t work. I feel that Disney

The silver lining in this situation is that the guest services representative gave Dominica two “ultimate” fast-passes that allowed both of us to just walk right up and get on any two rides that we wanted. That, in the end, more than made up for any lost time from this morning’s debacle but doesn’t make me feel any more confident in the integrity of the tickets that we have purchased. It is scary to spend about $1,500 on tickets planning on them as an investment and then discovering that they had just canceled them without warning and then finding out when you think that you are all set to just walk into the park! Not a good way to make for happy visitors.

Since we had the fast-passes we went first to Asia and Dominica went right on to Expedition Everest. I waited for her at the base of the ride as I am smart enough not to ride rollercoasters at this age. When Dominica got done she was sorry that she had ridden it although she said that it was a pretty good ride. She liked the yeti at the end.

Then we went on to Africa and rode on the Kilimanjaro Safari ride. It was an hour wait but we were able to walk right on with the fast-pass. (The ultimate fast-pass as I call it is a “whole group” fast-pass that can be used on any ride at any time.) It was great. We did both things that we wanted to do in the Animal Kingdom in about an hour and we were able to head over to EPCOT before leaving for the day.

In EPCOT there wasn’t too much left that we wanted to do that we didn’t get to do yet. We might not have even come over if we hadn’t been wanting lunch. The Animal Kingdom just doesn’t have its food situation figured out yet. There is barely anywhere to eat there and very little that is interesting. It is strange considering how well the food is doing at the Animal Kingdom Lodge.

Before doing anything else we rode Living with the Land again and again the sound didn’t work. This time it kicked on just for a minute right at the end. It is very sad. Then it was off to get something to eat. We decided to go up to the UK Pavilion and to try out the Rose and Crown which is the full service sit down restaurant there. Neither or us had ever had a chance to eat there before so that worked out really well.

We had to wait a little while to be able to get seated so we wandered around the UK Pavilion for a little while and did some shopping. We happened by a store that happened to be selling authentic, made in Scotland tartan scarves and they had a Johnstone scarf so we bought that.

The Rose and Crown was awesome. We really loved the food. We sat outside with a nice view of the World Showcase Lagoon. We had smoked salmon and a fruit and cheese plate to start. Then we both got the vegetable pot pie which was absolutely amazing. Instead of meat the pot pie was based on rutabagas. It was SO good. We will definitely be finding a way to get that again as well.

After eating we tried to ride the Universe of Energy which, surprisingly, never has a line even though it is one of the best things in Walt Disney World. But the ride is long, forty-five minutes, from the time that you get started so we quickly realized that we didn’t have enough time to do the ride even if there was no line at all. So we started back towards the Animal Kingdom Lodge. Our Disney vacation is now over 🙁

We got back to the Animal Kingdom Lodge and had about an hour to relax before we needed to board Mickey’s Magical Express to get back to the airport. So Dominica took a nap in the lobby and I went outside and enjoyed the outpost in the savanna. By this point the hottest day (because of the humidity) of our trip had turned pretty nice as a thunderstorm approached but it didn’t rain the entire time that we were in Florida this year.

At half past five we got onto the bus to go back to the airport. This direction worked very well and everything went quite smoothly. We had plenty of time to relax at the Orlando Airport before having to get onto the plane. It was all very casual. While we were there we ran into Karen who had been sitting next to me on the flight down on Thursday. Dominica and I hadn’t been able to sit together on the way from Atlanta to Orlando and I had hung out with Karen who had the seat next to me. She and her husband were traveling down to visit their kids in Orlando and go to WDW. We had had a really good time talking on the way south and then we passed them in the airport tonight and said hello. It is just weird running into people you know when you are so far from home. They were in from Lansing, Michigan.

On the trip from Orlando to Atlanta we flew with Maddog whom we have had as a pilot many times on AirTran. He got us to Atlanta 21 minutes early!  While we were in Atlanta Dominica wanted some dinner so we grabbed some Moe’s Southwest before catching the next leg of the flight.

We arrived in Newark a little bit early too.  AirTran has done an amazing job of making this a great trip from a flight perspective.  Everything was quick and easy even when Newark was shutting down flights.

It was around two in the morning when we were finally into 1180 and ready to go to bed.  We are totally exhausted.

We wanted to get an early start this morning which was probably pretty foolish after having stayed up doing the podcast last night until around two in the morning. We had ordered breakfast to be delivered at six thirty in the morning. That was a big mistake. My alarm went off at six thirty and at the exact same moment room service was knocking on the door. I was so tired that I could not even figure out what was going on.

The room service breakfast was very good – omelette’s, potatoes, biscuits, juice and coffee. But it was too early in the morning and eating it didn’t make me feel very good and I felt really rushed and couldn’t really enjoy it. Lesson learned.

Because we had been so aggressive at getting up early this morning we ended up being too tired and dragged so much that we didn’t manage to leave the resort until much later than we had intended. Today our plan is to hit the Magic Kingdom since yesterday was EPCOT. Today is really for Dominica as I am only so excited about going to the Magic Kingdom. It is fun but not exactly loaded with stuff that I want to do. But our plan is to take it easy and to be super-selective about what we do.

We got to the Magic Kingdom around ten in the morning and went straight for Adventureland which is the traditional place to start your Magic Kingdom explorations but these days Dominica tells me that the bulk of the people are going in the opposite direction to start in Tomorrowland which I think is really weird. So Adventureland it is for us.

We went straight onto Pirates of the Caribbean which we were sure was going to be totally packed both because of the movies and because it was recently updated but there was no line at all. We just walked straight in. Since there was no line we decided to do it twice in a row. No line the second time either. We were sure that this weekend was going to be completely packed so that we could get in anywhere.

Pirates has been updated recently so that they could add in new audio-animatronics of Johnny Depp and Geoffery Rush’s characters from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. The new characters are amazingly well done but are definitely done in a different style than the original characters and both Dominica and I noticed that they really stood out as being different. So the integration wasn’t all that it could have been. They also added a movie projector showing Davy Jones projected onto some mist at the beginning of the ride but I thought that that was really cheap and didn’t fit with the ride. Dominica liked it though. It wasn’t bad I just didn’t think that it added anything. Towards the end of the ride they have changed the ride to have Tortuga be on fire which happens in the movie but not on the original ride. This is the biggest mistake I think as the fire looks awful and the scene wasn’t designed for it so it is completely out of place and weird. I also don’t like that they added in Captain Jack Sparrow all through the ride because the ride used to be a ride through Tortuga but now it is attempting to tell a story but does it very poorly. The updates are okay but I preferred the original ride as it was better integrated and thought out.

After our double trip to Tortuga we skipped the Jungle Cruise (which is great but doesn’t have a lot of “replay” value even when you have been away for years) and went on to Frontierland. We are avoiding all “thrill” rides so we ended up just walking through Frontierland as there is pretty much nothing there except Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and Splash Mountain – both of which are very good but neither was something that we were interested in trying this year. So we kept right on going to Liberty Square.

Dominica was eager to The Haunted Mansion as it is still the original ride and the whole thing is being closed soon for renovations. I really liked this ride when I was young but it has aged much worse than most of the other rides of its era and it definitely needs to be updated. So I am hoping that they do anything as long as they don’t put in projectors and just show movies as you ride through the new version. But my faith in Disney’s ability to make any ride without showing a movie has dropped to near nill.

We timed the Haunted Mansion just perfect so that we could get right on to the Mississippi Riverboat ride which we did not get to do in 2005 and is one of my favourite things in the Magic Kingdom. That is very pleasant to do on a hot day which is was being above ninety degrees today.

Having made it over halfway through the park (Main Street USA, Adventureland, Frontierland and Liberty Square down with only Fantasyland and Tomorrowland left to go) we decided to stop and eat an early lunch before the lunch crowd really got started. It was still quite early for lunch. But I have always wanted to eat at the Columbia Harbor House in Liberty Square so we decided to go there. The Liberty Tree Tavern is the sit down full service restaurant that services Liberty Square but we are planning on a big dinner and wanted to do something faster. The Columbia Harbor House is a really nice counter service venue that is attractive and has an interesting menu and is right in the middle of the Magic Kingdom action. So we got their hummus and broccoli slaw sandwiches and went to the upper level which goes over the walkway connecting Liberty Square to Fantasyland which allowed us to relax in a very quiet setting next to the windows with a really cool view down onto Liberty Square. That was a lot of fun and we really recommend it to people looking to get away and relax a little in the Magic Kingdom.

After our early lunch we continued on to Fantasyland and did Mickey’s Philharmagic which is by far the best three dimensional movie in Walt Disney World and the only one in the Magic Kingdom. There was a little bit of a line for this ride simply because it is a movie and not a continuously moving line. I forgot how enjoyable the movie was. It really is good. Also in Fantasyland are the Winnie the Pooh and Peter Pan rides which are fun even if targeted towards the younger set but we didn’t want to wade through a sea of children to be able to ride them. So off we went to Tomorrowland.

In Tomorrowland we rode the Wedway People Mover which is just fun and relaxing. I have always enjoyed that even though it is just a slow ride through Tomorrowland. It is very comfortable and good for a hot day to cool you off. After that we went in and rode the highlight of Tomorrowland: The Carousel of Progress. You just can’t do the Magic Kingdom without riding the Carousel. It is just so good. It is so hard to believe that all of the best parts of that ride were built in 1964 and really haven’t changed since then! What an amazing idea that entire ride was. The ride was originally sponsored by General Electric for the 1964 New York’s World Fair where It’s A Small World also made its debut.

After the Carousel the only thing that we really wanted to do was to ride the Magic Kingdom train that circles the park. Just a nice way to relax. So we walked back to the head of Main Street USA and hopped on the train and rode it the entire way around the park. Then it was time to head back to the Animal Kingdom Lodge as I had a bit of work that I needed to catch up on.

It was not even two o’clock in the afternoon when we arrived back at the lodge. Our entire morning of hitting all of the highlights of the Magic Kingdom took just a few hours even on a very hot, bright and crowded morning! We have really gotten good at this. And we took a long, leisurely lunch at the Columbia Harbor House too.

After we got back to the hotel we decided that we were pretty warm so we popped down to The Mara which is the counter service restaurant in the resort and grabbed some ice cream and some drinks. That cooled us down a bit before we settled into the afternoon in our hotel room.

Dominica went out and enjoyed the balcony for a little bit but then took a nap for several hours while I worked on some consulting work that needed to be done today, some miscellaneous paperwork that I needed to do and the homework that I need to do for my class at RIT. It was a busy afternoon for me and took about four hours for me to complete.

While I was working I would occasionally pop outside and check out the savanna which was awesome. I managed to get a lot of video footage of the animals which I hope to be able to share with you very soon.

At ten after six Dominica and I had reservations at Jiko: The Eating Place which is the AAA Four Diamond rated restaurant in the Animal Kingdom Lodge. It is located directly next to Boma but is a rather different dining experience. We had decided that we didn’t want to limit our weekend to only eating at Boma when there is just so much good food to explore while we are here. Jiko was awesome. Everything that we had was really good. Dominica got scallops and I went for the all vegetarian grain dish which was really amazing. We were very glad that we decided to give Jiko a try. We definitely recommend it although if you only get to have one meal at the Animal Kingdom Lodge I would probably lean towards Boma.

It was after eight by the time that we were done with dinner so we decided that there was no need to return to the parks today.  We were both tired and thought that it would be better to spend the evening in the hotel.  Most of the evening was spent either enjoying the balcony or with me editing the podcast so that we could get it published.  At ten thirty we took a break and went down to Zawadi which is the shop in the Animal Kingdom Lodge and did some shopping.  We didn’t get to bed until after midnight.  Tomorrow we are on to the Animal Kingdom.