Livewire Summer Camp 7/6-7/12

Just got back yesterday and I had so much to do so I am just now starting this thing. The camp I went to was a video production camp. We stayed at the Caribbean Beach Resort and they got two rooms in which they connected and put about 12 computers in each room. All of our rooms were around these two rooms. So they split us up into 3 groups, each with one counselor as our leader. I was in the blue group and my counselor was Alex. So we basically got to go around the parks all day and take videos then come back and edit it for our final project.

Ok, now that you know what the camp is about, let's get started with travel day. My flight out of Hartford, Connecticut left at 6:15 and I was flying to JFK where I would then catch a flight to Orlando.
I was going to be flying alone but I am 15 so I did not need any assistance. Everything went as planned and I got into Orlando at about 12. All the campers were supposed to meet up with our counselor at the McDonald's and then they would take us down to the Magical Express check in. They were not allowed to take the bus so we were on our own. This was what happened a lot on the trip, we were on our own and could do whatever we wanted the whole time.
So I checked in by myself and jumped right into the Caribbean Beach line and we were on a bus in about 2 minutes.
The Caribbean Beach was going to be the first stop, so I sat back with a smile on my face and just could not wait to get there. I had my camera out just about the whole time so I took a picture of another bus.

We're here!

So I walk in and my counselors are there and I meet the 3 campers that got there before me. So I said hi and I got my park hopper and since we were early the head counselor, Kerry, asked if we wanted to go to a park and we decided to go to Hollywood Studios. This was very surprising because within 10 minutes of being there I was on a bus to DHS with two other campers. I went with Joe (16) and Roxy (18) who were both really cool. Joe ended up being one of the people I hung out with the whole time.
So we arrived at DHS and went straight for Tower Of Terror. This was Roxy's first time but not Joe and I first time. I can't remember but I think it was only a 30 minute wait. Next was RnRC which was a 40 minute wait but it was awesome. Then we passed The Great Movie Ride and decided to ride.

We had to be back to the hotel to meet up before dinner so we headed back. We met a new camper named Charlie and we headed to the lab to hang out in Aruba. There we met Tony and Alan who we would also be hainging out with during the week. So we headed back to the main building and we all got on a bus to DHS. We had the bus to our selves so we played a name game type thing. Then they told us we would be having dinner in a prop room in the back lot area and then have vip seating for Fanstasmic. Here are 2 of the counselors (alex is on the left)

The dinner was great with props from old parades and from the old Lion King show and everything.

From there we got to walk behind the scenes to the fantasmic area. We walked behind Tower of Terror and everything which was very cool but could not take any pictures. We walked up some stairs and were in the back of the Fantasmis stadium. The seats were not vip at all but we all got to sit together. They were in one of the back sections. The show ended and instead of heading out with the crowd we went back stage again. It was extra magic hours for Magic Kingdom and we all planned on going but the buses were so bad we would have only gotten an hour in so we headed back to the resort for a swim and to hang out in the new official hang out room of the trip, Alan's room.
So that was the amazing day one. I don't think I will be able to do a day by day report because I can't remember anything so I will do my best.

 

[LuisT]

Wow, what camp was this? I wish I knew a camp that takes us to disney world. Mind me asking but how much was it and how many days was it. . Thanks so much. Also it seems like you had a lot of fun!

 

[xsupaxmanxsfnex]

It is called Livewire. It is part of Cybercamps which is part of Giant Campus. It was about $2,200 but we only ended up paying $1,700 by making the payment early. It was totally worth it. We all arrived on the 6th and got to go to parks that day and left on the 12th. So we got to go to parks for 6 days and stayed at the Caribbean Beach resort and got free breakfast lunch and dinner and two awesome meals in vip areas (one at the beginning and one at the end). I am thinking about going next year with all the friends I made this year wich is about like 12 out of the 23 people.

 

[xsupaxmanxsfnex]

Wow. As a teenager my memory is bad. I can't really remember what we did day 2. All I have is pictures so here is my guess on what went on that day.
We woke up that morning and had to be in the lab at 8 to get our group assignments and plan out our video. I believe after we figured out everything a couple of us headed for Blizzard Beach.
We got there and we all chipped in to get a locker. We headed straight for the lazy river (I don't know what it is called). It was very long which was cool but it was also very crowded. After we got off that, we went to meet one person from our group that sat out but we couldn't find her. So we looked for about 30 seconds and were distracted by some slides.:lol: We headed up the line for the Toboggan Racers, Snow Stormers, and the Downhill Double Dipper. The DDD line was 45 min. so we skipped that and continued up. We got in a random line and ended up at Toboggan Racers. I won! :sohappy: Sweet. We saw what we had missed which looked fun and it was Snow Stormers. We said we were going to go back to that but never did.
After that we went to the wave pool for about 5 minutes when we remembered we had to go look for our lost member. We sent a group out looking while the rest of us sat by the locker hoping to find her if she came back. The group didn't find her so me and another girl went out to look. Of course we found her in about 5 minutes right next to the spot we left her. We headed off to lunch with our food coupons and ate at Lottawatta Lodge. A storm was coming in so we hurried over to the Ski Patrol Training Camp and were there for 5 minutes where the evacuated everyone out of the pool. We ran to the bus in the rain and returned to our hotel.
We stayed there for a while and then were off to the Magic Kingdom.

Once we got there we went straight for Space Mountain. There was a 50 minute wait but we decided to do it anyways. We rode side A.

Next we went to the Haunted Mansion. We got there to see a huge line winding out past the gates but the sign said 25 minutes and we did it and found out the line moves fast. That's a lot of people.

I can't really remember what the ride was like before the refurb so I can't compare. We then went to Splash Mountain that had a 40 minute wait. The line moved very slow because the amount of fast passers. We had to meet the rest of everybody at Cosmic Rays for dinner si we ran over there and were 10 minutes late. Ooops. So by the time we finished it was about 7:30. We walked right onto the TTA.

This is when we split up. The guys went to Thunder Mountain and the girls went to Small World.

The wait for Thunder wasn't bad and we headed over to Pirates. You know how there are 2 lines at Pirates. Well I noticed everyone going to the right and I remembered reading something that said to always go to the left. Well sure enough there was no one and the 4 of us got our one boat. After that we decided to head back to the hotel. SpectroMagic was going on but of course being with a group of boys they didn't want to watch it.

So that was day 2 (I hope).

 

[MattyFresh]

sounds like a fun trip...and some really great pics. I remember when I was 12, there is no way I would have felt comfortable going to MCO by myself looking for some people I had never met.

Can't wait to read about the rest of your trip!!

 

[xsupaxmanxsfnex]

^Don't lie the pictures are horrible! Well I just got a new sony cybershot so once August comes my pictures will be a little better.
Well today was my 16th birthday so I didn't have time to past more so I will try now. Again, my memory is so mad because the trip was just so much and it was incredible. That is a horrible reason to say why I can't remember but let's just leave it at that. Why didn't I take notes! :shrug:

Ok, today was one of our early morning tours. It was the YES tour Disney Hollywood Studios. We all woke up on time and were all on the bus by I believe 7:30.(Not sure but it was early) We all got onto the bus tored and half asleep and were on our way to the Studios. We were supposed ti be let in the back gates but the tour people didn't call security so we were not let in. SO after sitting there for about 20 minutes we went around to the front gates and met the tour people there. We walked by the mass of people waiting for the park to open and saw a completely empty park. We walked behind the scenes, split up into groups, and then came back into the park and walked over to the Backlot Express area to start our "shoot". This tour was all about video production. We were all given jobs and rolls. I got to be an actor but instead of filming the scenes we were just going to be taking pictures. After taking our series of pictures we walked over to Sunset Boulevard. We went behind a little building in some shade and the guide pulled out some story board pictures for Tower of Terror and we got to learn about that. She pulled out some fast passes and we all had a great ride on ToT. After that she gave us some RnRC fast passes for latter and talked some more and then went over to the Backlot Tour. We were infront of the next group and a cm came and asked if we were with YES, and asked for 4 voulenteers over 16 years old. I knew that we would be in the Pearl Harbor seen. My 16th birthday was 5 days away but they said I couldn't do it. Why didn't I just keep my mouth shut! I regreted that so much! So we finished up the tour with the backlot and all went over to RnRC to use our fastpasses. Always a great ride.
Nest was lunch all the way back over at the Backlot Express. Only half of us ate there. So after this we headed back to our resort to chill for a little bit and then were headed off to Animal Kingdom.
Uh oh, storm clouds ahead. There is always that 3:00 storm though so we thought we would be fine. We arrive and it is pouring so we have to wait under the bus stop roof for about 10 minutes.

The downpour calms and we got into the park and went to eat at Pizzafari. We went through this quick because we all wanted to go and give Everest a try. Don't hide, we see you!

What is that we walk up to? An 80 minute line! No thanks, we'll take a fastpass for 6:00. Why didn't we just wait!

So we head off for Dinosaur but half our group doesn't like it and decides to go on Primeval Whirl (sp?). Well I don't know why they didn't like it because our group loved it and went on twice.
Next was Kali River Rapids. I regret it.. The ride is very short and the only good part was the hill and we got Soaked! Oh well, it had already started rainging anyway. So we walk back over to Everst to see a 10 minute wait and figure we will use our fast passes after so we can ride twice. Of course the ride shuts down because of a thunder storm while we are in line.

I was very upset because I was so pumped to ride this all day because it would have been my first time. The group decides to head back to the resort for the rest of the night so I have no choice and go with them.
We what a depressing end to the night. Well I guess the rest of the day we hung out in the lab and swam because I have no more pictures from that day. I know I am horrible at trip reports but I just have to share with you guys how amazing this camp was.

Tomorrow is I.D.E.A.S.

 

[xsupaxmanxsfnex]

OK I for sure know what we did today so there should be no confusion. Today was our tour at I.D.E.A.S. at Disney's Hollywood Studios. Since we had not done that much filming for our group's video, we went to the park a few hours before our tour. So we walked right in and started filming. Our group was doing a type of corny "instructional video" for a LiveWire camper. So we did a bunch of etiquette stuff like not walking infront of people taking pictures and that kind of stuff. So we walked around a bit, got fast passes for TSM and did some more filming. It was now time for our tour.
Some of you may have heard of the I.D.E.A.S. studio. Well if you havn't it is mostly a Foley studio that is located right behind the One Man's Dream/TSM area in the backstage area. Well as part of our camp we were able to visit it. We walked into the awesome air conditioned building and were greated by a very nice lady who took us back to the studio. We met a man who told us all about the studio, what movies they did and other things. He told us we would be doing sound for the dinner scene in Monster's Inc. where Boo is first discovered and scares the whole restaurant. So we did a bunch of sounds with that scene such as Sully's hands on the window, the snakes in Mike's girlfriend's hair, the tabe moving, foot steps and a LOT more. Those are not really her shoes. They picked her to do Sully's foot step of course.:lol: The smallest girl in the group.

We now saw how much work went into these animated movies.
After the tour we jumped on RnRC for a quick ride and grabbed some fast passes for ToT for that night. Then headed back to the resort to capture our film onto the computers. Maybe a quick nap :snore:

Ok all rested up and are headed off to the Magic Kingdom. Well at least the campers are rested. Counselors are old therefore need more rest.

So half of our group went to go eat while the rest of us went to ride Splash Mountain. This time the line was running Much better than last time.
WEEEEE

We had a great ride and went over to check on the rest of the group at Pecos Bill's. For some reason they had just got there too and we all ended up eating together. Afterwards we had to film more for our video. This time was about fast pass etiquette. I had made up a fake fast pass that morning that we were going to "use" at Pirates. So we went over there and found a really nice CM to help us out. We walked up to her and she was going to have to not let us in line because we had a fake pass.

That was fun. We decided to ride too because there was only a 5 minute posted line but there was actually none. Next we were off to the TTC for a bus over to DHS which had EMH that night.

We had the best bus driver ever. He did trivia with us asking us to name all the animated full length Disney movies and other stuff. It turned out to be really fun. So once we got there we went straight to ToT to use our fastpasses. The view from the top at night was amazing! The rest of our group left that didn't want to stay for EMH so we went on to get our nice hot pink bracelets.
We went to go use our fast passes for TSM but it was down. We didn't think much of it and decided we would head back after a trip on Star Tours. I actually felt a little sick after this and I never do. I don't know why. So we headed back to TSM and it was still down! Half of our remaing group left so we were left with about 3 people and myself to wait around so we could ride it because we heard it was really good. So we waited around until about 11 and it still had not opened in the whole 2 hours we were at the park. I was very depressed leaving with out riding this. Oh well there is always my trip in 18 days!

Well that's it for that day but now I have go to go figure out what we did the next day.

 

[xsupaxmanxsfnex]

Today (July 10th) was a pretty calm day. Good thing because it was really hot. We all pretty much slept in and went straight to the lab to edit and film some more footage we needed. After a couple hours of boring work we took a trip to Epcot.
After walking through the gates we went straight for Spaceship Earth. I had not been on it yet with the new updates so I was pretty excited. We waited about a half hour but the line moved pretty fast. I sat with my new buddy, Lauren, who was also in the blue group. I enjoyed this ride so much. I don't know if it was because I had not been on for a while, or because I just learned about everything in my Western Civilization class this year. Whatever the reason, I loved it. Here are a couple pics of me and Lauren's future.
Are we at Epcot yet?

SSE rules. That's me. :lol:

Fun Fun Fun, me and Lauren

Next was lunch at the Electric Umbrella. I had a vegetable wrap which was alright. I wasn't that hungry. We then headed over to the Club Cool to try out some of the foreign sodas.
Beverly was my favorite.....ya whatever.

After this our group split up and the people I was with headed over for a ride on Test Track. We all went in the singles line and we were fine with it. It was either a 10 minute wait or a 60 minute wait.
What a fun ride.

Next was Journey into Imagination. Umm ya, it was alright.

One of the girls wanted to do some shopping near WS so we agreed for some AC. And after that torture we headed over to Malestrom before we left.
Well that's all we did today because we had to go edit for the rest of the day. We also swam that night and hung out with each other. All together a nice calm day.

Tomorrow is our last day but it was a lot of fun!

 

[xsupaxmanxsfnex]

So, the last day. How depressing but I do know everything that happened that last day so we don't have a problem there. Ok here it goes.
This morning was the morning I had been looking forward to the last couple of days. We were going to the Magic Kingdom for more of the YES program. (I figured out that YES stands fro Youth Educational Series) Today we were going to be doing a tour dealing with the forces of motion. We had to be at the bus stop super early (7:15) and we were on our way to to Transportation and Ticket Center. There we met our guide and we were off to the monorail. We all packed into one car and the guide tied a Mickey head on a string to a rail on the monorail. She asked us questions on which way it would swing if it accelerated and stuff like that. So we arrived at the park and went through the gates and took some pictures infront of the empty Main Street Station.

We walked down Main Street which was cool with not very many people on it so we went to take some more pictures by the Partners statue.

Now it was off to Tomorrowland where we were completely alone because we got to duck the ropes. We went straight to Space Mountain where we were told we get to ride it with the lights on and with the lights off. I was so excited right now. Me and my friends were in the second train out and it was amazing. We got off and then were told to right down how fast, how tall, and how long the ride was. the we walked up a ramp and go to the station and the loights were back off and we rode again. Much better. Those 3 things all increased and you could really tell how much better it was with the lights off. On our way out we saw the stampeeding crowd coming towards us after the rope drop. it was pretty funny because we had just rode it twice without any lines.
Next we were headed for BuzzLightyear's Space Ranger Spin to learn about AA's. We ride it after she told us a bunch of hints to get some really high scores. I got 723,900 with the help of the volcano and the arms of the robot. We then got off and had to decide from a list of figures which were pnumatic(sp?) and which were hydrolic(sp?). We took some group photos with Stitch and then we went to go learn about gravity. We were supposed to do this next experiment with BTMRR but it was broken down so we went to Goofy's Barnstormer. We all had to fill a cup with water and see how much we could keep in the cup through all of the lateral g forces. This was really fun but would have been more fun on BTMRR. I'm in the second row in the blue.

Well that ended our tour and we had to leave the empty park to go edit our video. This was really stupid but I had to go along with it. Luckily we got to ride Snow White before we went to the busses. We saw a sign saying until 11:30 the right bus station was not used because it was so early so we went to the left one. The rest of the groups (red and green) went to that side and didn't believe us when we told them. So we all got on a bus and then they believed us. Blue group Rules!
So we all went to the lab to start editing and took some lunch breaks and stuff but were so busy. Finally that main counselor saw that we were all still in there and let us go to a park because it was our ast day. I had still not been on Everest so we decided to go to Animal Kingdom. Thsi was about at 2:00. We go there and went straight to Everest and encountered an obstical on the way there. We joked about these guys the whole time.

There was a 25 minute wait fro Exp. Everest so we waited Stand By. Wow! This ride was so great!

We went around again but this time with a 5 minute wait in the singles line. We decided to take a break and went to Kilimanjaro Safari. Someone from our group didn't want to do Everest so they ran and got fast passes for it while we rode. It was perect timing because by the time we got down there the passes were good. It had started to rain a little but we went back to Everest anyway. Our friends from the red group had arrived whil we were in the station. This is when it all went down hill. We waited single rider so we were not all in the same train. Me and Lauren were but wher our trian pulled up they said the ride was closed due to lightning. So we waited for about 5 minutes and left because we didn't want our red team friends just standing there so we went to ride Dinosaur. It started pouring on our way there so we were glad we were indoors. We thought the rain might let up but it didn't. Someone briliant in our group (I don't know who) decided we should run. So we set off through what seemed like a hurricane. It was actually really fun and we were the only ones actually out in the rain running. Everyone was staring at us but beeing teenagers we had a blast. Here is the after math. Not to mention all of our wallets and cell phones were soaked but not broken.

We got back to the hotel and had to leave for a group Dinner at Epcot in an hour. We at in a cool area above Malestrom all by our selves. It was awesome. Then we were escorted over to (I think it was the Rose and Crown) to view Illuminations. This is where we took our last group picture.

It was sad but it was a great way to end the trip. We all headed back to the hotel to finish up editing and to swim. We all hung out in our "hang out room" which was Alan's room.
It was an incredible trip and I made the most amazing friends ever, we all want to go back next year with each other and we still all talk. I am not going to post a report about the departure day because that is just way too depressing. Thanks for reading!

 

[SchultzFamily]

Enjoying reading your review. You guys look like you had a great time.

 

[xsupaxmanxsfnex]

I'm not that good at writing these things but I just had to tell you guys how much fun I had. I will be taking notes on my next trip in 13 days so hopefully that will be better. Plus I got a new camera to help with the better pictures.

 

[unkadug]

What a fun trip report, thanks for sharing.

I wish I had of been able to do something like that when I was your age.

Did each of you get a copy of your video? You should post it on YouTube so we can see it!

 

[xsupaxmanxsfnex]

The videos of each group are on facebook in a private group so I can't share them yet. However, after the the three weeks of the camp is over (in a week) they are going to be sending us dvds with our videos. I'm not sure if it will just be our video or the other groups too. So I'll see what I can do. The video is not incredible but I don't think it is horrible. It did not turn out the whole way we planned it but it was somewhat what we though it was going to be. I wish I got to edit more but I did almost all of the filming and capturing it on the computer.

 

[NewfieFan]

Thanks for posting! Looks like a good time - wish I got to do something like that when I was your age! Ah well, now I get to take my family!:animwink:

 

[xsupaxmanxsfnex]

No problem. I enjoyed sharing. Yeah, it was a blast but being able to take your family must be very rewarding.

 

[Burning Metal]

Great trip report...I read every bit of it! Ahhhh to be 16 again!...lol My wife, stepson and I are going to be in Disney World from August 10th - 14th staying at Coranado Springs...I can't wait! I haven't ever been on Everest either and I'm really looking forward to it. Thanks for the report!

 

[xsupaxmanxsfnex]

^Have fun! Everest is a great ride as long as you are not a critic like the people posting on the Everest thread. It is really a great ride. Enjoy your trip!