Category: Travel – WDW 07

Just a few more things that didn’t fit into the narrative.

1. Katherine is clearly headed toward a career in parkour.  Everywhere we went, every queue we were in, every walkway we walked, she was climbing up on rails and and walls, reaching as high as she could go, bouncing off of objects, and generally being a climbing/running monkey.  It was very cute, in-between the times we were shouting, “Katherine, no, get down from there!”
2. If the visitors to WDW are to be believed, I am about in the 10th percentile in weight amongst adult men.
3. Related to the above, Margie has dubbed hiphuggers the worst fashion idea of the century — and the century is still very young — based on all the women who, disastrously, wear them.
4. I have to wonder how much water WDW would save if they changed over to using the new waterless urinals that are available.
5. Generally speaking, we eschewed purchase of automatic ride photos.  These show up mostly in “E ticket” rides — Splash Mountain, Tower of Terror, Test Track, etc.  They usually suffer from three flaws:  (1) While it’s fine to have the family in a picture as we start to descend down final drop on Splash Mountain, why would we want eternal memories of those three yahoos who were in the front seats of the car? (2) Disney insists on adding in a cretinous “decorative” border to such pictures, which often as not actually obscure parts of the photo that are important.  (3) The photo packages cost an arm and a leg.  It’s still fun to look at after the ride, though.
6. Saw an interesting number of things — ride supports and busses alike — that had nuts on bolts with little strings of paint across them so that if someone had loosened something, it would be obvious.
7. Croc bling — little Disney images that clamp into the holes on Crocs — were available and a very cool concept, until you realized they were $3.50 … each.    Yeesh!  75 cents to a buck, tops.  Of course, Disney was also selling its own line of Crocs, with little Mickey mouse cutouts rather than simple circles, for about three times the price of your average pair, so maybe that’s how they calculated the price.

Overall, a fine time — better, in fact, than I’d expected.  You’d think that going to Disney World so often would, in fact, get kind of old– we were there less than a year ago, fergoshsakes — but, so far, it hasn’t.  Fact is, Kitten enjoys it more and more each time, and it’s sort of become an old and enjoyable friend.  I look forward to the next time — which will not, probably, be in 2008 … though you never can tell …

Concluding our Walt Disney World travelogue …

1. Our flight was not until 7 that evening.  The day before, we got the Disney Magic Express confirmation of when we should pick up the bus to MCO.  Alas, Southwest is not one of the airlines that lets you check your bags through and get your boarding passes at WDW, but it was still a convenient service.  So we got up around 9, called the bellcap service to pick up our luggage at 10, got packed, and headed off. 
2. Well, Kitten and I headed off — Margie stayed for the bellcap, while Kitten accompanied me to the Business Center at the main complex.  Two of the five computers were down, and the other three were occupado, but we eventually got onto one to print off Margie’s boarding pass for Southwest (thus graduating us from a C queue to a B queue — if we’d done it the previous evening, it would have been the A queue).  While the Business Center computers are $10 for 15 minutes, and the printer is $1/page (yeesh!), it’s all free if it’s having to do with travel arrangements, which is kind of nice.
3. Margie caught up with us at that point, and we headed over for a last breakfast.  Good waffle, but one is advised to stay away from the Pepper Market right before the meals change (Lunch starts at 11, Dinner at … 4?).  The staff is busy trying to prep the next meal and get it set up, and the patrons are busy trying to get last helping of the previous meal.  Since we had already been auto-checked-out, had to pay with a credit card, rather than the insidiously easy cardkey/room charge card.
4. Since we’d not finished Epcot, and since Katherine was jonesing to finish her mask, we headed back there.  We eschewed any rides, and just went straight to World Showcase, heading clockwise to start in Mexico (the ride there is down for refurb and “rebranding” as a Three Caballeros ride), Norway (always a long line for Maelstrom, which we skipped this time), and China (skip the green tea/plum wine slushies),   We managed to slip past the face painting stand, and make it to Germany.  While Kitten queued to see Snow White, I got ice cream cones for the womenfolk, and a citrusy hefeweize for myself.
5. In Italy we saw a fun juggler.  We ran across a lot of street performing types during this trip, and considered it worth our while to stop and watch in each case.  Highly entertaining for kids and adults alike.
6. We made it to the US, then to Japan.  That should have been the final stamp and dongle for Kitten’s mask, but we found out the Mexican lady hadn’t stamped it.  So, after enjoying once again the Tin Toy exhibit there, and while Margie did a bit of shopping, Katherine and I headed back over to Mexico (which was, of course, directly opposite us).  We hoofed it, since we’d proven last time that, unless the boat is at the dock and about to leave, it’s faster to walk around World Showcase than depend on the launch to take you across.
7. Great acrobats (with stacked chairs) in France.
8. Kitten got her mask stamped in Mexico.  She’d already gotten the cool certificate in Japan, so she felt pleased that she’d accomplished her mission.  Somehow we managed to miss Margie (as she walked over going the other direction), but all was well because it allowed her to buy me a frozen margarita  (and a kiwi margarita for herself, which wasn’t nearly as good).
9. And it was time to head back to CS for the bus, so we did so.
10. We sort of hung out at the shop, then Katherine and I stocked up on lemonade in our CS mugs while Margie went to the luggage claim area to get our checked bags so we could shift them over to the bus.  She discovered the “Hershey’s Kissmobile” over there, tied into some convention going on, and holding an odd videotaped/karaoke contest/event for “World’s Best Mom” (with plenty of bags of mini-kisses for the kids).  That chewed up an inordinate amount of time, so we had to quick get our bags before the bus arrived.  There was enough time for me to change to a fresh shirt, then we were on the bus, and heading to the airport.
11. Ignore the signs on Level 1 that imply there are ticket counters down there for a few airlines, including Southwest. There are not.  Go up to 3.
12. The Southwest counter area was a madhouse.  Not sure why.  We electronically checked in (no Dave Hill, International Man of Mystery problems), then checked our bags (like Ontario, we had to lug them over to the X-ray machines ourselves).
13. We had a couple of hours to kill, so we grabbed dinner at Macaroni Grill (Orlando has a wealth of restaurants and shops; it’s more of a mall than an airport, sometimes).  Security on the Southwest side was trivial go through.  We got to the gates, I stood in the B queue, and when we finally boarded we had seats about 2/3 of the way back on the plane.
14. The flight home was uneventful.  Mercifully, I’d been informed (while at WDW) that the business trip that I’d been going to fly directly from Orlando to was canceled, so that made life easier for everyone.  We staggered to the car (which Kitten had memorized the location of), and drove home.  We got Kitten to bed, and then ourselves.  And it was all good.

-fin-

Last day, and some quick EPCOT action.

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Our Walt Disney World travelogue continues (some more) …

1. Again, with the sleeping in (and my waking early).  Annoying.  Combo of humidity plus a smallish bed.
2. Headed by bus, after breakfast, to Epcot.  With the entire entrance plaza wide open and welcoming, it was again annoying to be shunted into a narrow chokepoint for the bag check.  Bad show.
3. Went and found our Legacy plaque inside the entrance (West-4-C-1-1-2, for the record) … and then decide, what the heck, and had Katherine down for a sitting for one.  We’ll find out in several weeks what the coordinates are for her, and then she’ll have something she can show her kids and grandkids someday.  Neat.
4. Two big rides at Epcot we wanted to be sure to hit — Test Track and Soarin’.  Made the executive call to hit the latter for the FastPass, and bet it correctly — there was already a 90 minute wait for Soarin’ on stand-by, and at 10:40a, the FP was for 2-3p.  Meanwhile, when we went over to Test Track, it only showed a 50 minute wait (and was more like 30).  Test Track was, as always, fun, for both Kitten and us.
5. We decided to focus more on Epcot’s Future World than we have in the past.  We hit up the Energy ride with Ellen DeGeneris and Bill Nye (moderately educational, equal parts annoying and dated), then went into Innoventions and spent a good chunk of time there.  Afterward, I ran over and FPed Test Track (for 7p), then we hopped to the Communicore (the big golf ball), which Katherine had a yen for.  It was the same boring Communicore that AT&T had run before Siemens, but it was a chance to sit down (I was finding myself getting progressively creakier over the course of the weekend as I carried Katherine on my shoulders at night … I know I used to carry around an extra 50 lbs. of my own at one point, but having it concentrated on my shoulders was either excellent exercise or a great way to get back, hip, and knee problems).
6. Back over to Innoventions West — Katherine was busy doing all the KidCot coloring bits at each station — then an amusing Fire Hazards game/exhibit. 
7. That made it time for Soarin’.  The stand-by queue was showing 120 minutes, but it didn’t seem the FP line (which took us about 20 minutes all told) was that much shorter — though it was a bit narrower, and the line monitor presumably favored the FP half of the line.  The ride was, as usual, really cool.  The screen and camera could do with a little cleaning, but it is still a marvelously immersive ride.
8. It was early afternoon by this point, and we were seriously starving.  Since we were in The Land, we went to the Sunshine Seasons food court.  Rather than the traditional “five lines, all of them selling hamburgers and fries,” there were multiple stations around the court to get entrees and sides from of different sorts (sandwiches, soups, Asian, etc.), with impulse items between them, and then a single checkout area to exit.  It makes it less convenient in that you many need to go to multiple stations if you (or your family) want different things, but it also means that the variety is greater and that not everyone is funneled into a single line.  The food quality was pretty darned good, too.  Recommended. 
9. I daresay Epcot, in general, has some of the best food at WDW, if you include the World Showcase area.
10. From the Land to The Sea, and a queue for the Finding Nemo ride/attraction.  A large, minimalistic, but effectively immersive (literally) queue, simulating a beach resort and then being underwater by the pier (Disney has the “rusting metal rails” technology down pat).  The ride itself is in the standard little pods, taking you past various video tableaux with real set pieces to give a combination of animation of 3-D texture.  It’s pretty effective, better than audioanimatronics that would have been used instead a decade ago, but the ride itself (a sort of generic search for Nemo, the story stripped down to the barest essential of the search) is a huge waste of time and space and tech.  Even the last bit — where the animations are marvelously against the backdrop of real fish in one of the large tanks — only serves to point the great materials that were (literally) watered down to no great end.
11. We wandered around The Sea a bit after that, looking in the tanks, pondering the manatee, posing with sharks, and seeing fun dolphin “demo” in the big tank.  (Margie and I had an interesting discussion on the issue of dolphin training and tricks which I’ll blog about sometime.)
12. Then we scooted back over to ride on the Imagination ride with Figment.  I wish someone would come up with something a heck of a lot better for this space and this character, because the ride itself is pretty disappointing (unless you’re 6).  The technology section at the end, including the host of digital camera stations, is also getting pretty long in the tooth (though always popular).
13. We’d been promising Katherine ice cream all day, but between meals, rides, and long lines at the ice cream stands, it hadn’t happened.  Since we were an hour and a half from dinner at this point, we had to disappoint her again.  My being grumpy didn’t help things, alas.  Instead, we wandered over to Mouse Gear to do some shopping.  Not particular fond of much in the way of this year’s line of t-shirts or coffee mugs, and I refused to spend $50 for a WDW Hawaiian shirt.  Kitten did get a Mr Potato Head out of the deal, and I did find a shirt I was willing to buy (“You say GRUMPY like it’s a BAD thing!”).  Yes, I can poke fun at myself.
14. We’d spent basically the full day (daylight hours) at the Future World side of the park, something we’d never really done before, and it’s worth doing.  There were still plenty of other rides and exhibits that we didn’t get to.  If you wanted to be thorough, you could do an entire day at Future World and devote at least a half-day to World Showcase.  We came close to that, and we might do so again next time around.
15. We headed counter-clockwise (opposite our usual direction), since we had 6:30 reservations at the Rose & Crown in England.  Not our top pick of Places to Go, but we didn’t order 180 days in advance for the Spring Break season.  We checked in at the counter, got pagers, and wandered around the England shops (well, partway, since the pager was unhappy if I went all the way back).  Katherine, who had (nearly?) finished her Future World KidCot passport/dongle-thingy, started up a KidCot mask, which was what they use over on the World Showcase side.
16. Dinner was okay — the Rose & Crown does your basic for-American-tastes (i.e., no Blood Pudding) Best of British food, which is, of course, not the world’s most exciting.  I ended up with, as usual, the Fish & Chips, and it was, in fact, very good, while still being, well, “just” fish and chips.  I solaced myself with a couple of pints of Boddington.  And a hot apple crumb crisp with ice cream for dessert. Katherine, after convincing us that she should have mac and cheese, had a chocola
    te sundae, too.  Yum.
17. After dinner, I took Margie over to France and treated her to a couple of kir royals for … um … more dessert (more Kir recipes here).  Kitten did her mask stuff there, and over in Morocco.
18. That having been done, we started heading out, for two reasons.  First, we had FPs for Test Track at 8-9.  Second, we weren’t planning on watching the Epcot fireworks, and, honestly, we’ve done the Forging Our Way Through Assembled Humanity Back To The Bus Stop After Fireworks thing.  So we rode on Test Track again (alas, the car-based sound and visual display was on the fritz, which Margie dutifully informed one of the cast members of afterward).
19. And we were back to the bus before the fireworks completed, and on our way back to the resort. 

The Walt Disney Travelogue continues …

1. Slept in again.  Kitten did well with late nights, and did pretty well at sleeping in.  In fact, I was the first one up.
2. Breakfast at the Pepper Market, then off to the parks — this time, looking to finish up the Magic Kingdom.
3. Since it was tops on her list, we headed to Splash Mountain first.  Yikes — it wasn’t running!  Some sort of problem, unscheduled, so we grabbed FastPasses for it, and went over to Big Thunder Mountain (which, despite catching all of the Splash Mountain non-riding overflow, had a shorter line than the night before).
4. We backtracked a bit, to not get too far from Splash (our FPs weren’t that far in the future), so we rode on Pirates again, then looked at Jungle Cruise — which had a line stretching across the plaza, so no thank you very much.
5. Heading back toward Splash, we ran across the Cap’n Jack street performance show, which turned out to be a hoot (we ended up seeing a lot of street shows, and all of them were good — they are worth the time to watch, even if you don’t feel like seeking them out).  Katherine ended up getting called up to help Cap’n Jack Sparrow teach everyone how to be a pirate, and was the only one of the four kids so chosen who actually followed instructions (which I chalk up to her karate training, to be perfectly honest, plus being a remarkably clever girl).  Fun stuff, and the guy who played Jack, as well as his mate, were quite good.
6. Splash was still down.  The cast member at the FP line told us that the original problem was with the animation, but now one of the monitors was down.  He told us the FPs would be good all day, though.
7. So we hightailed it over to Fantasy Land, grabbing more FPs for Peter Pan (the most popular ride there).  In the interim, we hopped on Small World (corny and hokey and annoying but a good way to sit down in the cool for a few minutes), the Carousel, then Snow White (meh), then grabbed some lunch at Geppetto’s place.  By which time it was time for Peter Pan.  Which was standard Peter Pan entertainment.
8. We headed to the ride status board in the main square and saw that Splash Mountain seemed to be open again, huzzah — with a 70 minute wait time.  We headed that way, and found that wasn’t true — it was an 80 minute wait time for stand-by, filling up pretty much the whole switchback area by the ride, but the FP took us nearly to the place where the lines join, so we only took about 10 minutes to get on, tops.  Huzzah for FastPass!
9. Katherine, by the way, decided this was The Year of Riding By Herself.  In this case, she soloed the front seat of Splash Mountain, and had a blast.  This was echoed on many other rides, where she went on her own and Margie and I were on the car/boat/pod/row behind her.  Not a bad arrangement.
10. We definitely were ready for naps all around at this point, so we took the train from Splash Mountain around to the front and headed back to the resort to snooze a bit.
11. Dinner at the Pepper Market (decent Kung Pao Chicken), then off to Magic Kingdom again.  We’d FPed Splash before we left, and it was time for the tickets — the FP line was a bit longer, and the stand-by line was “only” 50 minutes, but it still worked out to our advantage.  On our way out, we FPed Thunder Mountain, then caught the train to Toon Town.
12. Margie worked on dinner reservations for the next night while Katherine and I got in the longest line I’ve ever been in for Goofy’s Barnstormer.  Saturday was by far the most crowded day at  the parks during our stay.  After that, we all headed over to Autopia, which Katherine could officially steer on, though she was barely tall enough to steer and work the gas pedal (we took turns).
13. Space Mountain had a 60 minute wait line (and would for the rest of the evening), so we headed to ur next choice — the new Monster Laugh Floor.  Picture a Monsters Inc.-themed comedy club, using both canned routines and some of the cool interactive animation techniques first used on Turtle Time with Crush a few years back (i.e., animations that work with live folks behind the scenes to be interactive with the audience).  We got in the “fast” line as passholders, which was nice.  In the queue, you’re encouraged to text in message with jokes the comedians might use.  Kitten gave me a couple, and the number gives a very amusing reply (who knew Mike Wazowski has an 818 area code?).  The show is what I’d expected from the preview material I’d read online — funny, engaging, and rather abrupt in its ending.  I do think it will hold up to multiple viewings … if they cycle the canned material every year or two.  I do recommend it.
14. Fireworks time again, though this time we hoofed over to just outside Tomorrow Land so we had a view of the castle and got the music and narration to go with the (Tink flew almost due over our heads on her zip line).  Nice fireworks display.
15. Katherine had a yen to see the Stitch escape show, so we went there next.  Katherine was asked to be the Line Leader, complete with a Galactic Prison Service flag to carry, and got a certificate out of it.  Good stuff.
16. Over to Buzz Lightyear, which we’d FPed on the way to the Monster Laugh Floor.  Kitten’s score was an order of magnitude higher than either of ours, which made me think it was a bit on the blink, or due to illegal behavior.  When we walked around and did the ride again, and a left-hand gun came up with a similarly outrageous score, that was confirmed.  Still, a very fun (and unusually interactive) ride for Disney.
17. Everyone was fading at that point, so we exited the park as the parade trailed out of Main Street, riding the swell of the exiting crowds.  We were back at the ranch and in bed by 11:15.

Going around in circles at the Magic Kingdom.

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Our Walt Disney World travelogue continues …

1. Kitten and Margie got up early in the morning, so they headed down to the food court and let me sleep.  They did come back just as I was getting up, and had brought me a cinnamon roll, which was very nice of them.
2. And … off to Animal Kingdom!  Why AK?  Because Kitten was sure that Expedition Everest would going to be the bee’s knees.
3. So, as soon as we got there, we bee-lined to the ride.  The line was already timing at 50 minutes, so we grabbed FastPasses, and headed back to … DinoLand, USA.
4. Now, there are many Disney Purists who simply hate DinoLand with a passion undying — the carnival atmosphere jarring with their idea of the sedate educational mission of Animal Kingdom, not to mention the Decorum of Disney.  Well, fiddlesticks — DinoLand has plenty of educational bits, but the traveling carnival bits are just plain fun, especially for the kids.
5. We started off with a hitherto un-ridden ride:  Primeval Whirl, a Old School roller coaster.  We’d never ridden it before because Katherine was too short — but having hit the magical 48-inches, there was very little in the parks she couldn’t go on.  Primeval Whirl, aside from its delightful name, is a fun Coney Island style roller coaster, with the twist of the car pivoting independently as of about half-way through the ride (hence the “whirl” part).  Good stuff.
6. We headed from there over to Dinosaur, which sends the rider in a jeep back through time to save a sample dinosaur before the Nemesis Asteroid hits (ironically, the same event that Primeval Whirl uses as its centerpiece).  Fun bits, sort with similar tech to the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland.  Kitten, though, found it a scosh too scary (dark and deadlines and carnitaurs and all that).  Which didn’t stop her from buying an ID badge in the let-you-out-into gift shop.
7. We ate at our favorite eaterie at AK, the Flametree BBQ, located in the center island.  Good food, and a nice, shady area to eat it in.  The weather we had wasn’t bad — the upper edge of “comfortable” — 80s in temp and humidity — especially compared to last May.
8. After lunch, we went to Kitten’s favorite spot in the park, the Boneyard, a big jungle-gym slides exploring climbing sandbox running-around place.  She got asked at the gate to help find some answers for a test that one of the staff was going to have to take (count the number of slides, count the number of dinosaur teeth, ID what’s being dug up in the sandbox, find the Hidden Mickey, etc.), which she had a lot of fun doing.  And then had a lot of fun doing the normal activities, before we …
9. Headed over to Primeval Whirl again.  Fun again.  Then we played one of the fair games — which, since the place was packed, meant that a win wasn’t automatic.  Kitten had fun, though.  And then it was time for …
10. Everest!  Woot!  Another amazing “show” waiting line (heck, even in the Fast Pass lane, which took us two minutes to stroll through), and a nicely done (if short) roller coaster.  Katherine’s hypothesis of “bee’s knees” was confirmed.  (Quote, mid-ride: “This is COOOL!”
11. A word here on FastPass.  Use it.  Go places early, grab your reservations, go do something else. We probably saved ourselves several hours of line-standing by effective (non-obsessive, but strategic) use of FastPass.
12. It was hot, and we wanted to head back for a nap and rest and swim and all, so we headed out of the park.  On the way, we passed by the under-construction (and sizeable, by the looks of it) Yak & Yeti Restaurant, and did a bit of shopping. 
13. Unusually, we did nothing in Africa, and only Everest in  Asia this visit to AK.  Part of that was because of the direction we took — back to Everest, then around to DinoLand — rather than going counter-clockwise.  Still, fun.
14. The bus took us first to Blizzard Beach.  On the way back out, we spotted a (smallish) alligator at the canal by the entrance to the parking lot.  Yikes!  You mean … that swamp land is real?!
15. Back at Coronado Springs, we changed for another swim.  Katherine and I went down first, while Margie worked on dinner reservations.  We weren’t very good this time about a lot of advanced reservations, which, with Spring Break, hurt us a bit.  Still, Margie deserves her standard major kudos for all the work she did do, beforehand and at the park.  This trip wouldn’t have happened without her.
16. Swimming was … well, I ended up not going in, just sitting by the pool and reading.  Kitten was a non-stop water sliding machine.  Margie came over in a bit, and we had a pleasant time, despite some light sprinkles.
17. Dinner turned out to be the Maya Grill, there at the resort — which was nice, but not spectacular by any means.  Service was polite, food was okay (my ribeye was thin, making it tough where it wasn’t fatty), but it was a pleasant meal nonetheless.  I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat there (i.e., I wouldn’t go there if I weren’t staying at Coronado Springs), and, honestly, I’m not sure it had that much more special to it than the Pepper Market food court, but I’m glad we went.
18. And, the evening still being young and everyone rested, we … headed off to the Magic Kingdom.
19. As with all the parks, our bags were checked upon entry.  As with all the parks, the checking was cursory in the extreme, definitely designed not to spot weapons or terroristic bits, but to make sure that folks aren’t bringing booze or foodstuffs into the park.  Which is a real annoyance to get into the place (especially since it turns the broad entries they’re all designed with into narrow, crowded chokepoints).
20. There was a parade a-brewing when we arrived, so, after some kid-limbo-dancing in Main Street and losing Margie briefly in the shops, we hallooed over into Adventureland.
21. Going on the Jungle Cruse captained by a Brit is mildly surreal — sort of Monty Python meets Disney. 
22. Finally went on a redressed (Cap’n. Jack) Pirates of the Caribbean.  To which, let me say … meh, so far as “improvements” go.  The Jack animatronic is very well done (all three of them), the added effects (the mist curtain, for example) are nice, and Jack’s “story” is inserted decently enough into the PotC narrative.  But, honestly, it doesn’t net add all that much, and takes away in equal measure.   The old sound track is relegated to a few faint “Dead Men Tell No Tales” in the background, there’s a lot more Davy Jones (of Locker fame), and the PotC chanty  (“Yo-ho, yo-ho, a pirate’s life for me!”) is nearly gone save for one scene.  Heck, even the parrot in front of the ride is gone, dagnabbit.  I loved that parrot!  And all the PC bits are in there (again? still?) — yes, there’s a “wives market” still, but the next shot has (a) two pirates running around with a treasure chest betwe
    en then, and (b) four other pirates being chased by ladyfolk.  As I said, meh. 
23. For the record, since Margie and Katherine counted, there are five dead/skeletal pirates, and 36 live ones, not counting Jack.
24. We headed on — only to run into the tail end of the parade, which loops around back past Splash Mountain.  Kitten loved it, to be honest, sitting up on my shoulders to watch it — which made Margie and I realize that, while we don’t particularly get our jollies (or consider the time investment worthwhile) watching the parade, Katherine feels differently about it.  A lesson to be learned there.
25. Then off to Big Thunder Mountain.  Woot!  Katherine, ever the thrill-seeker, named it as one of her top five favorite rides (which list is never consistent, but is always weighted toward things that are Fast and/or Wet).
26. At the exit, we watched the evening fireworks show (sans music/narration).    Pretty.
27. And then a quick jaunt over to the Haunted Mansion (the sound in our car was a bit muffled), and then an end to the day and back home we went.