Yoo Hoo, Disney EchoEars!
Continuing a series of WDW trip reports from my friend Bruce Metcalf...
Metcalfs @ WDW conclusion and comments
At last the dreaded day has come.  Even with an empty suitcase, some
laundry still gets "packed" in giant trash bags for the return trip.  Did
we really buy that much stuff, or is it true what they say about clothes
expanding when dirty?
I wear my new Eeyore shirt, because I'm sad to be leaving.
Breakfast at Spoodles at the Boardwalk.  Why didn't we eat here more often?
Except for the sausage, which was excessively ordinary, the food here is
great and the buffet service means you only have to wait for yourself.
With a ten-hour drive ahead, we wisely refrained from going anywhere else
this morning.
Home late, discovering a mound of mail, three hungry and lonesome cats, no
food, but all else in order.  Back to work (yuck!), where comments included
praise for our tans and unveiled envy at our long trip.  I guess we had
been gone a long time--the postcard we sent had already been taken down
from the bulletin board.
Some observations:
Crowd levels fluctuate wildly over a week's time, or even one day.  Except
for broad trends like summer/winter and Early Entry days, there's really no
good way to predict it.  I'd advise anyone with a park-hopper or annual
pass to react to crowding by going to another park--chances are you can
find another place more pleasant.
The more you put into the experience, the more you get out.  This is most
obvious at places like the Prime Time Cafe or the breakfasts at the
Whispering Canyon Cafe, but we found that anywhere we got into the schtick
and joked around with the CMs, they responded in kind.  It certainly works
that way in my classroom--the more questions I get the more interesting I
am able (challenged?) to be.  At risk of sounding trite, try to believe in
the magic, take it all at face value, and you'll have more fun!
This "Hidden Mickey" thing has gotten completely out of hand.  We tried to
complete the Hidden Mickey Search at Wilderness Lodge.  After an hour of
fruitless searching, we gave up.  Even with the help of the Hidden Mickey
site, , we *still* couldn't identify most of
them.  Our server at the Maya Grill made a point of showing us how two
round tables and a fountain combined to make an HM, and was astonished when
we pointed out one in the artwork far more obvious.  IMHO, the original HMs
were little jokes put into attractions *deliberately* and *without
authorization* by fun-loving Imagineers--inside jokes, as it were.
It seems that today, people inside and outside the company are looking for
HMs everywhere, and finding even the most obscure and distored excuses to
claim discovery.  Come on, people, get a life.  Yeah, I know I exhorted
y'all to believe in the magic just two paragraphs ago, but really!
>>  Not every attraction, scene, restaurant, postcard,
bottle cap, and wad of chewing gum *has* a Hidden Mickey!  Sorry, but I
just had to say that.
Visiting WDW on a relaxed schedule is a very different experience from the
four-day Disney-or-Drop blitzkriegs the guidebooks plot out for us.  While
I'm not saying it takes two weeks to see the place, having the flexibility
to just bypass anything with too long a line, knowing the lines may be
shorter the next time, gives you a sense of freedom not possible with a
vacation-by-the-numbers.  I have to punch a time clock, give lectures on
schedule, and otherwise enslave myself to the clock and the whims of others
at work all year long.  Shouldn't my vacation include at least the
opportunity for spontenaity, including the decision to just blow off the
alarm clock and sleep in?
I remember when I became aware of the passing of time.  It was my
first/second grade classroom where the teacher was striving to show us how
to tell time by turning the hands of a cardboard clock.  Suddenly, I
realized that clocks turn continuously and that time was something that
flowed on its own account, and not the random positioning my teacher was
demonstrating.  I'm still not sure I'm the better for that discovery.
Disney helps me remember that timelessness of childhood I so enjoyed before
that rude epiphany, and that is probably what I cherish most about my time
there.
That said, I still maintain that the three most important pieces of touring
advice are "early, early, and early" as Bob Schlesinger so carefully put
it.  You really can do more by 10:30 a.m. than you can the whole rest of
the day.  We proved that to ourselves on our previous trip, and observed it
(mostly in the breach) this time.  Do ye likewise.
Some day, we're gonna get our bathing suits wet at WDW.  I promise!
Somehow, we never do though.  I don't know how to explain it--we just
always seem to decide that another day at MK has got to be more fun than
the unknown pleasures of Typhoon Lagoon or Blizzard Beach.  I know we'll
regret this recalcitrance once we finally go, but we're notoriously bad at
listening to our own advice.
I'm glad I decided to bring my computer along.  The nightly chat sessions
on EMuck, the neverending debates on r.a.d.p, and the access to the WWW for
detailed data all helped us enjoy ourselves without worrying about what fun
we might be missing.  My home ISP wanted only $6/hour to use their 800
number, but we found a local ISP (MagicNet) who were everything we needed,
and the $40 they charged for two months' service would not have bought us a
fraction of the time we used from our home ISP.  It isn't for everyone to
schlepp their Pentium along on vacation with them, but you might want to
consider it.
For those of you who missed some of the installments of this report, I
fully intend to convert them all to HTML and post them to my web site.  I
promise I'll post a notice here when I do.
For those of you who have been waiting for the end to post remarks, to ask
questions, or to heap praise or abuse upon my head, I'm done now.  Go right
ahead.
Me, I've got some planning to do.  We leave for WDW in just 55 more days!!!
Bruce Metcalf,
EMuck Rufus,
mailto:bmetcalf@cdc3.cdc.net
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