Disney Day 1: Arriving

First of all, we love Jet Blue. Direct flight, leg room, TV in every seat. Wuggie Norple watched the map channel the whole way.

Our experience of the famed Disney lines began at the airport waiting for our hotel shuttle, but we also find that the lines move pretty quickly, and everyone is very nice. We realize that there are staff whose only job is to be friendly and answer quetions.

We arrive at our hotel (named "Carribbean Beach Resort" which feels like I'm telling a fib every time I say it, cause of how it's inland and not in the Carribbean, and resort makes me think of rich people). The lines are mercifully short, we are given magic cards which are room key, park ad mission, and credit card. We discover we are "Family of the Day" which means we get a maracca, and our photo is taken in the middle of the hotel entrance with colorful straw hats, and later the photo is delivered to our room with an autographed photo of Micky and Minnie congratulating us.

Our hotel is very spread out, and carefully landscaped with palm trees and hibiscus flowers. There are many separete buildings in the complex, and each “island” has its own pool, playground and sand beach. We realized later on that this hotel is in the suburbs of Disney World. Hotels closer to the action are huge high rise buildings. All these buildings are two stories, with lots of rolling lawns, ponds and gardens (it reminds me a little of the corporate campuses in Mt. View CA) and there is more of commute in to the parks than from other Disney World resorts.

We take the shuttle bus to the building that has the restuarant, food court, gift shop and bar to eat a very late lunch at the only place still open. We resolve not to eat there again.

One of the main selling points of this hotel had been the possibility of boat rental at the dock. Hoping I had not seriously misunderstood, we headed to the dock to investigate. We ended up taking a paddleboat around the whole lagoon, under 2 bridges, while Exploding Poptart obsessively snapped pictures of alll the wetland birds. It was lovely, and a nice way to get to know this place where we would be staying.

Soon it was time to take the bus to Magic Kingdom for the “Spectra Magic” parade. We were impatient with the long wait at the bus stop, and the long bus ride to the Magic Kingdom, but when we arrived, we walked right up Main Street to the castle where a live performance was just beginning, and felt finally we had arrived.

Next we headed right to Tomorrowland to ride Wuggie Norple's top 2 rides: Buzz Lightyear and “The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.” We were disppointed to discover that the Pooh ride was not as good as at Disneyland, but more, Wuggie Norple had heard about hidden Mickey's on the Travel channel, and had heard there was one on the Pooh ride, but no luck finding it.

Buzz Lightyear, on the other hand, is GREAT! It's a brand new ride where riders can shoot their laser guns at targets, and the red light coming from the gun really is read by the computer which tallys your score. The middle-seat rider rotates the car too and fro. Also, there were cool graphics and stuff that lights up. We checked out the Monsters Inc show that integrates live audience response with unseen actors voicing computer animations.

We also learned that we love Fast Pass. It lets you choose between "planning ahead" and "waiting in line." If you "plan ahead" you can pick up your magic ticket, and when you come back later, you can go right to the front of the line. That was cool.

As the sunset, people started claiming their spots for the Spectra Magic parade. By the time the parade began, there were huge crowds. Papercup Mixmaster forged out a spot by a fence, Wuggie Norple rode on dads shoulders as much as he can, conducting furiously as the music rose and fell. Exploding Poptart has her usual short-lady partial view, but the huge illuminated floats in the parade are still wonderful to behold.