Coast-to-Coast Disney 2011 Trip Report: Mme. & M. Bricker's Zany Holiday

lebeau · Aug 24, 2011

Sounds like a cool concert. I'm older than you and don't have the emotional attachment to Dreamfinder that you do. I rode the original version of the ride once when I was 17. I enjoyed it. I think it's a shame what has happened to it. But I can't see getting all that worked up over seeing the character again. Still, it sounds like it was neat. Especially for someone like yourself who is clearly a fan.

I can see where at the end of the day you would be too tired to drive. That's not typically the case for me. Since I have young kids, we are rarely in the parks very late at all. In fact, I have only seen one fireworks show at WDW in all of my trips.

Typically, we get to the parks early, leave around noon for a nap and the come back for a few hours around dinner. All the back and forth on the busses is exhausting. Especially when the busses are jam-packed and you've got two tired kids, diaper bags and a double stroller.

I'm usually exhausted. But I'm never tired in the sense that it would be hard to drive. Compared to most of our experiences from the last trip, a drive would have been a welcome relief. I still wake up in cold sweats remembering some of those bus experiences.

Anyway, glad you had such a wonderful day. I'd make sure that when you do rank it, you rank it #2 even if we all suspect otherwise.

TinkerChelli · Aug 24, 2011

If I were Tom Curise right now I'd be jumping on a couch for Happiness. I love love love your trip reports....!!!! Thanks a ton for sharing!!!! I want to do DisneyLand so bad but I worry I'd be missing the World the whole time:wave::wave::sohappy::sohappy:

TinkerChelli · Aug 24, 2011

I truly love your pictures!!!

WDWFigment said:
Five hours later, my body was so gracious to wake me up. It was only 6:30 on the west coast. My internal clock, however, probably thought it had hit the snooze a button a few too many times, and was over 3 hours late in waking me up. I laid there, trying to outwit my body and force myself back to sleep, but it was too cunning. Regardless of its inability to discern time zones, it did know we were minutes away from Disneyland, and it would not stand for me sleeping when there were parks to explore.

I took way too much time getting ready, finally making it to Main Street shortly before rope drop. This is one thing I regret. I planned on taking photos of the Disney hotels during this trip, but upon waking up early that morning, I told myself I’d do it later in the trip. For whatever reason, this always happens. I am up early or late one of the first days of the trip (and not tired), and in contemplation of whether I should photograph something (usually the resort at which we’re staying), I elect not to because I can do it later. I never do it later. As the trip wears on, I become progressively more tired, until I’m running on fumes by the time we get back to our resort (and not waking up early at all, let alone early enough to go out and take photos).

Not having experienced rope drop before, I didn’t realize I’d be so far back in the crowd by only arriving 10 minutes early to the park, another mistake. I thought Disneyland was the antithesis of Walt Disney World in that regard: a “locals only” park where the lax attitude of the SoCal crowd means no one shows up until 11 a.m. Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I certainly didn’t think the crowds would be that heavy (the ‘locals only’ part is the exaggeration--obviously I know tourists visit DLR, too--if it really were locals only, it would be dead until after 11 am. Lazy Californians!).

We knew by the time we arrived in Fantasyland, Peter Pan’s Flight would already have a long line, so Sarah headed over to Space Mountain to get FastPasses while I took some photos around the hub with my new toy: my infrared camera.

Before each trip, I invariably make one photo purchase. This time, it was a Nikon D70 that had been converted to an infrared camera. I was really excited to use it at Disneyland, especially after seeing all of the great greenery and flowers in Disneyland Spring photos. As you can see in the shots here, infrared photos give plant life a very unique white look.

I'm not much on the science behind this, but essentially, the camera I used to take this sees only the near infrared spectrum of light (light beyond that which humans see). Some cameras can see this light by either having their IR blocking filter removed or by adding a filter to the lens.

Besides the conversion to black and white and some added contrast, these photos are basically straight out of camera. (Near infrared photos--at least the good ones--are achieved as a result of the camera, not because of wacky Photoshop filters.)

Since infrared photos are very divisive--people either love them or hate them (I happen to love them whereas my wife hates them)--I tried to avoid taking too many photos with the infrared camera. I took a total of around 450, and all of these were bracketed (the exposure is difficult to get right, so I bracket for speed when shooting them, and just use the best of the three files once I get home), which means that I only took around 133 unique shots with the camera. Not much considering the cost of the thing! I told Sarah that I would sell the camera after this coast-to-coast trip, but I think between Disneyland and Walt Disney World, I only took 200 photos with the camera. So I definitely need to take it on at least one more trip to get my money’s worth. Right?!

First stop after all of this was the Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye. The standby queue was really short, although I was disappointed we didn’t get to go through any of the outdoor switchbacks. Although I’m sure I wouldn’t have been too happy if the wait times necessitated this, it would have been fun to at least walk them!

TinkerChelli · Aug 24, 2011

Wouldn't it be wonderful if Walt can speak from his grave as a ghost or something when ppl say that stuff, I bet he would say "How do you know what I would like or not like or build or not build".....ppl really make me nutty sometimes..

WDWFigment said:
^Thanks! Hopefully others perceive it the same way!

...

All in all, it was a very cool experience about the Lilly Belle car. It was something we really savored, as I’m not sure that we’ll ever have the opportunity to ride aboard that car again.

After our loop was complete, we exited the car, and again headed over to the “park Walt would have never built.” We first headed to the Pacific Wharf area and hit up the Karl Strauss Handcrafted Beer Cart. I don’t even remember what I had, but I’m pretty sure it was an IPA. Karl Strauss isn’t really my favorite beer, but I know others like it. I thought it was nothing memorable, but I will give Disney props for including a craft beer here rather than the standard Coors/Miller/Bud.

We sat around here for a decent amount of time just enjoying our beer and chatting before heading over to, what else, but the MONSTERS, INC DARK RIDE!!! I didn’t keep track, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the attraction we experienced the most on this trip. I don’t know what else would be up there. Silly Symphony Swings? Indiana Jones Adventure? Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride? It’s definitely right up there if not number one.

TinkerChelli · Aug 25, 2011

I'm still here and reading on, I love your reports...Thx :wave:

WDWFigment said:
Alright - that concludes this leg of the report!

Question: is anyone still reading the report? I know WDWMagic skews towards WDW (it's in the name, after all!), so I'm not surprised that many people wouldn't care about a Disneyland trip report. I think I'll probably start a new thread for Part II, but just wanted to see if people had already subscribed to this thread.

Anyway, I've already started the WDW leg on my website, and will start posting it on WDWMagic tomorrow. You can read it a day early here: http://www.disneytouristblog.com/disney-trip-report-may-2011-10/

TinkerChelli · Aug 25, 2011

I love the Figment Outfit....Glad you had such fun. :wave::sohappy:

WDWFigment said:
Perhaps it was because I was so hungry from moving around so briskly and not eating until 2:30 pm, perhaps it was because the place is just that good, but I had one of the best meals there. The chicken and mashed potatoes. Wow, words cannot describe the explosion of taste in that dish. It was beyond words. No wonder people call Sunshine Seasons the “Napa Rose of Counter Service.” (No one besides me, as best I know, actually calls it this, but I’m starting the trend!)

The one fatal flaw I made in my excitement to eat was that I neglected to get a dessert. How do you go to Sunshine Seasons and not get a dessert!? Actually, I made two “flaws,” the second being that I accidentally sat at a table apart from the rest of our team. I swear I sat down first and they just decided to ditch me again, but I’m really not sure who sat down first. I was the one who ended up moving, though.

Anyway, this grave error of not having a dessert could not stand uncorrected, so Sarah and I agreed to split a Strawberry Shortcake. When I got up to the dessert case, I knew we couldn’t split a dessert. We were on vacation, eating in one of our favorite restaurants, and relaxing in our favorite pavilion. So, I decided that getting a Tiramisu in addition to the Strawberry Shortcake was the only course of action.

The Strawberry Shortcake was delicious, as always. The Tiramisu tasted interesting at first, and I thought it was going to be a dud. It was almost tart in flavor, but ultimately tasted very good. Sarah concurred, and it’s definitely on the “thumbs up” list for further sampling in the future.

We couldn’t stay too long to soak in the Sunshine (Seasons), as the Magic Kingdom was the next park on our agenda for the Hunt! D23 had assigned us to EPCOT to begin, but after that, we were free to choose. We opted to go with what we predicted would be the easiest park for us here, as we already were pretty tired from the extra-long EPCOT day. That left Animal Kingdom and the Studios for Day 2, and clearly AK would be our morning park given how hot it gets there later in the day, and because we didn’t want to be tired for what we knew would be a grueling marathon there.

Before Magic Kingdom, there was one little matter of business we had to address: photos in front of Journey into Imagination. Earlier, I mentioned getting dressed carefully that morning, and now you’re about to see why. Brace yourself, as, quite frankly, this is the epitome of awesome.

This is just WEIRD, right?!

Figment themed clothing. That’s right. Those who read the comments to our December trip report on WDWMagic may recall that I was looking to acquire one of three Figment hats. My good friend and fellow photographer Matt Pasant, of all people, sent me an email shortly after I posted that informing me that he had one of the hats in question. A few days later the hat was in my hands, which meant I had to complete the rest of the outfit. Some, less committed or details oriented Figment fans might stop with the Figment hat, thinking the outfit begins and ends with that. After all, it is the focal point! However, I learned long ago from my exploration of Walt Disney World that it’s the details that make all of the difference.

So I set out with the goal of assembling the finest Figment outfit known to man, that perfectly captured the essence of Figment, without letting the hat make me look like a crazy fanboy (likely the case if I sported my circa 1982 Figment with rainbow point t-shirt) or allowing the hat to look like a tourist gift shop afterthought (likely the case if I wore the hat with any old clothes). It was a tough line to walk, but I knew just what to do. Figment’s main colors are, purple, of course, along with yellow and some orange. If I could incorporate these colors into my outfit, it would be brilliant! When preparing the outfit, I thought it would make the most sense for the polo to be purple and the shorts to be yellow, since those two colors matched. Further, I knew Ralph Lauren made “choose your own horse color” shirts, so I could get a purple polo with an orange logo to complete the outfit. Brilliant! I purchased the yellow shirts first, but unfortunately, I delayed too long before purchasing the shirt, and they were temporarily sold out online in my size when it came time to order the polo in question. Rats! I thus settled for a purple polo with a yellow logo.

I, on the one hand, was incredibly pleased with my ensemble and excited to wear it to the parks. Sarah, on the other hand, thought my outfit looked outlandish, to put it mildly. Ultimately, she conceded that the incredibly number of compliments I received probably proved me right, while I conceded that for every compliment, there were probably 5 people staring at me in disbelief, wondering what that idiot in the dinosaur hat is doing.

My only regret is the day I chose to adorn myself in the wonderful attire. (I’m really going out of my way to make this sound much cooler than it actually is, in case you can’t tell. Sorry that I’m subjecting you to 4 paragraphs of discussion concerning my Figment outfit. Mark this as the moment my trip reports jumped the shark, if you want!) We barely had the chance to take any photos, and I really liked it. I am considering wearing a modified version of the outfit in October, but we’ll see. Oh, and if anyone out there has either of the other two (or are there more?!) Figment hats and is willing to sell them, PLEASE! email me at tom@disneytouristblog.com!

TinkerChelli · Aug 25, 2011

What is this that your ordered with the mini coke bottle thingy??? That is really cute!!

WDWFigment said:
Once again, I won’t go into too much detail here, but if you want to read our Nightlife Reviews, check out an upcoming edition of The Unofficial Guide Walt Disney World

! I will share the photos, and they sort of speak for themselves.

WDWFigment · Aug 28, 2011

I'm not sure what the Coke bottle one was--I didn't do the ordering. It did taste excellent, though!

Coast-to-Coast Disney 2011 Trip Report: Mme. & M. Bricker's Zany Holiday

lebeau

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