Marathon Weekend Day 2

Day 2 – Friday January 7, 2011  (loooong post, ye be warned!)

After my fun Thursday evening and Disney transportation adventure…..As Justin put it so well, “when Disney transportation works, it works very well. When it doesn’t work, it fails miserably..” or something like that. Friday morning it worked in the “well” department. I was up by 7:00am to get ready for the Studios. I wanted to be there at rope drop for a secret reason….okay, I’ll you guys in on it…just you guys though….if you get there at rope drop, you can get over to Toy Story Mania to get a fast pass in order to avoid the lines. Okay, don’t tell anyone else though as we don’t want it to get all crowded and stuff.  So, I made my room coffee and headed to the bus stop near Acadian House of Port Orleans Riverside. Side note on the resort. I asked for a room close to transportation and that’s exactly what I got. The building I was in was about as close to the bus stop as you could get. Also, as anyone who’s stayed at PO would know, there are like 5 stops between the two section of the resort, and it just so happened that mine was second to last, so I didn’t really spend much time on the bus, thankfully! This particular morning the bus to DHS showed up just as I finished my coffee, perfect timing, with little to no one on it. Only took a few more minutes and I was standing in line waiting for them to let us past the ticket entrance. I was second in line actually, and ended up on the front line for rope drop (first time for this).

The studios is my favorite park (although Epcot is starting to creep up there) and rope drop is one of the reasons. See, I love movies, so the park open is right up my alley. The two guys who do the whole “you’re big opening scene to Hollywood” thing is hilarious and really gets me excited to be in the park (Magic Kingdom obviously has a great open as well). Rope dropped and the usual running madness began. Of course, Disney does the crowd control thing and has the Toy Story team meet you in front of Brown Derby and walks the horde down to the ride/Fast Pass dispensers. I wasn’t going to run….39.3 miles in the coming days would be enough for me, so I walked and ended up #2 at one of the Fast Pass dispensers anyhow. As I walked back toward ToT I noticed the Fast Pass line was all the way to Voyage of the Little Mermaid, man that was quick. I hadn’t really eaten so I stopped by Starring Rolls Café for some coffee/water and a couple of bananas. Found a bench in front of the candy shop there and allowed a Cast Member to stare at me while relaxing with a banana. Not sure why that was so amusing to her, but it was…maybe it was the chaos going on around me and my ability to sit there and relax while it unfolded around me?

I ended up riding Rock n’ Roller Coaster as the line was only about 10min long. We had a Cast Member who was playing along with the pre-show script, something I don’t recall ever happening before… He did the “how about some backstage passes for these folks…” prior to Steven Tyler’s “yeah, backstage passes, that’s a great idea” or something like that. Got a chuckle out of the crowd prior to the doors opening and all of us going through what I call “the sausage maker”. I know I’m the master of the obvious, but my favorite part of RnR is the first 10 or so seconds. The rest of the ride is cool and all, and I love the blaring Aerosmith music, but something about being shot down the hallway into a loop that fast is exhilarating and I pretty much always scream like a girl. LOL After all that, and seeing how many spots were on my clothes from the lovely black lights….I ended up fast passing Tower of Terror and heading back to Toy Story for my FP there. I still haven’t figured out how to score over 300k at TSM and almost always end up in the 210-260k range. Still, it’s usually good for best in car, which makes me happy ;-). Was able to hit a few more attractions to round out a pretty productive day at the park and was also able to catch a seating of American Idol for my first time. I really like what they have done there, very
professional stage and theatre, must feel like an outstanding opportunity to budding singers who’ve never been in the spotlight (literally). Although, I’ll tell ya, I’m not sure if the rumors are true, but there were too girls who were obviously amateurs and one guy that smelled like a ringer. I had heard they do this when they don’t get a good enough talent pool, but whatever…I enjoyed the show regardless.

4:50 ADR at Mama Melrose with Jeff and his group, Amanda, and myself was enjoyable. Sure, it was a far cry from the 13 we had expected, but hey, sometimes stuff happens and you just have to make the best of it. Poor Rae and Eric got on the road late, and Justin and group enjoyed a late lunch at 50’s. I tell ya, it was probably the best time I’ve had at Mama’s though as the place does suit itself better to smaller groups. Also, our server was quick and accommodating (not something I’m used to there…).

Man this post is getting long…. Okay, wrapping it up, promise!

So I headed back to Port Orleans after dinner to lay out my stuff in prep for the Half Marathon in the morning. I got off the bus at the main entrance to pick up some fruit or something for the morning. Apparently, Fulton’s shop doesn’t sell fruit…disappointing since they do have fridges (needed to go to the cafeteria, but didn’t know this). I picked up a box of mini-muffins and tried to find my building in the dark. Of course, I took the multi-mile journey through alligator bayou instead, growing more and more frustrated with the layout…Finally got back to my room though, quickly put my stuff out, D-tagged my shoe, drank some water and tried to get some sleep. Now, I thought it might be cold in the morning so I put out my winter running tights a long and short sleeve tech shirt along with my skull cap and throw away sweatshirt. I’ll get into why this is important to know tomorrow…..and how it led to me freezing my rear-endus off for the Full Marathon…
See you real soon!