Wednesday, March 2, 2016

World Rides Update

Where am I at?  I've taken everything I've done so far crossed off this list, so both you and I can see what I still have left to do.  After all, I've only got just over another month left here before I have to attempt the most dangerous part of my journey: the return to civilization!  Sorry, that was a poor attempt at a Jungle Cruise joke.

Don't worry, it was kinda fishy anyway.

You know why? Because it stunk!

Okay, I'll stop now.

MAGIC KINGDOM 

  1. Main Street Vehicles
  2. Walt Disney World Railroad
  3. Jungle Cruise
  4. Pirates of the Caribbean
  5. Magic Carpets of Aladdin
  6. Splash Mountain
  7. Big Thunder Mountain
  8. Rafts to Tom Sawyer Island
  9. Liberty Belle Riverboat
  10. Haunted Mansion
  11. It’s a Small World
  12. Peter Pan’s Flight
  13. Prince Charming Regal Carousel
  14. Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
  15. Under the Sea — Journey of the Little Mermaid
  16. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
  17. Mad Tea Party
  18. Dumbo the Flying Elephant
  19. Barnstormer
  20. Tomorrowland Speedway
  21. Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover
  22. Space Mountain
  23. Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin
  24. AstroOrbiter
  25. Carousel of Progress
Score: 18/25
I feel like I've done good here getting the obvious ones out of the way here, now just to get on the more obscure ones.

EPCOT

  1. Spaceship Earth
  2. Ellen’s Energy Adventure
  3. Sum of All Thrills
  4. Mission: SPACE
  5. Test Track
  6. Gran Fiesta Tour
  7. Journey Into Imagination
  8. Living with the Land
  9. The Seas with Nemo and Friends
Score: 7/9
Woohoo! Score one for the home park!  Now just to find time to do the 45 minute Universe of Energy "ride".  Added to this list is Sum of All Thrills, which I think is overlooked, but I feel it meets the qualifications to be included in this list.


DISNEY’S HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS

  1. Great Movie Ride
  2. Toy Story Midway Mania
  3. Star Tours
  4. Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster
  5. Twilight Zone Tower of Terror
Score: 5/5
It's not hard to knock all of these out, since this is the shortest list.  A good part of Hollywood Studios attractions come down to shows, which aren't included here.  But I've done good getting all of those done as well.  Hopefully it won't be too long until the list of strictly rides at this park increases significantly.  


DISNEY’S ANIMAL KINGDOM

  1. Kilimanjaro Safari
  2. Wildlife Express
  3. Kali River Rapids
  4. Expedition Everest
  5. Dinosaur
  6. Primeval Whirl
  7. TriceraTop Spin
Score: 6/8
Still got a bit to do left at Animal Kingdom.  I was going to try and get this all done in one visit, but I was defeated before I even started by Kali River Rapids being down for refurbishment.  Time soon to go back and finish this park!

Overall number left to ride: 11

I'm satisfied with my progress.  I'm getting to the point of going out of my way to finish this list and almost planning my trips to cross things off at this point.  I do have some things to say about some of these rides and the parks that contain them, and should (eventually) get around to getting my thoughts put down at some point.  

When?  Haha, good question.  

I have no idea.  

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Valentine's Day

(Author's Note: I started this post a day or two after Valentine's Day, when my internet did go down.  Instead of finishing it or posting it when my internet access was restored, I let it sit on my desktop, collecting dust bunnies (I'll think I'll name him Fluffy.  Or Jeff.)  So since I don't really remember what else I was going to report on from this day, I've wrapped it up a bit and posted it about two weeks late.  Happy late Valentine's Day to my readers!)

This isn’t any sort of excuse for not posting here recently, but I was planning on spending some time today on writing a few posts on this blog.  That was the plan until my internet cut out.  It’s given me the same problem three times so far, with various things fixing it before.  I finally found out today that it is most likely not my computer like everyone has been suggesting because my phone also won’t connect to the Wi-Fi.  Ethernet isn’t working for me either, but my roommate seems to be doing okay, though I’m not sure how much he’s actually using the internet on his computer or if he’s just able to connect.  All he does on there is run Microsoft Flight Simulator X (this blog post today is brought to you by *insert product placement here….*) to keep his actual real-life flying skills fresh. 

Anyway, I got to work my first holiday weekend with Valentine’s Day happening just recently, which also happened to fall on the same three-day weekend provided by President’s Day.  Thus, it was the busiest days that I’ve worked so far at Disney.  I often say that I’m really glad that I work at Epcot for several reasons, but especially because the park doesn’t get super busy or crowded like the Magic Kingdom does.  Even during times of the year that many consider are “slower” there can be a lot of people in the parks.  I got just a little taste of that this weekend with the number of people we had throughout the day.  Mostly it kept us consistently busy throughout the day. 

There were more people that were irritable today though.  Now hold on a moment; I thought Valentine’s Day was about love.  Wouldn’t that mean that people were happy and getting along with one another?  Well, apparently not. One lady told me that she had ridden in a shell that had water on the seat, which upset her.  When I offered a quick “I’m sorry” to her, she replied “No you’re not!” and walked off.  Oh, I didn’t know you knew what I was feeling instead of me, my bad. 

But we actually got up to a decent wait time.  We most often post a 10 minute wait, which really is just about a 5 minute walk through our long queue.  Oh yeah, that’s another thing that people love to joke about; trust me, we’ve heard it before.  On Valentine’s Day we got up to a 25 or 30 minute wait for a part of the day, which filled our standby queue up to the door outside. We do have these butterfly gates that we can open to make the queue longer, but we keep them in the shortest configuration all of the time.  For a brief part of Sunday we opened one of the gates, until someone thought our line was short again and closed it.  It was only later that we reached our highest wait times of the day.  Oops.  Oh well, no one complained about that at least. 


Overall, just another great day at the Seas!