Happy Birthday to Me!

Last Wed., March 25, was my birthday, and being in the Orlando area how else we would we spend it other than at Disney World! This year’s theme at WDW is “Celebrate Today!”, and you may have seen the promotion being advertised on TV this year whereby if you go to one of the parks on your birthday, you get in free! What the commercial doesn’t tell you is that if you have an annual pass like we do and won’t need the free entry, you have your choice between two other options: a Fast Pass to a few of the more popular rides at that park (good only for one trip each), or a Fun Card (gift card) equal to the price of one day’s admission good for merchandise at any of the parks. Well, that’s pretty much of a no brainer…give me the card! Admission price right now is $75 so that’s the amount put on the Fun Card, and it can be used anytime until it’s spent. Again, this must be picked up on your birthday but doesn’t have to be spent that day.

Russ asked me which park I wanted to visit Wed. (always a tough choice because all 4 have so much to offer), but after doing some research, I decided on Epcot. There’s an online “crowd calendar” that gives you an idea of how bad the crowds are anticipated to be and which parks are best or worst to visit on that particular day. It’s all a guesstimate on the webmaster’s part but is usually somewhat reliable. It indicated that on a scale of 1-10 the crowds should be at a 6 that day with Epcot being the best to visit and Magic Kingdom the worst. So I partially chose Epcot for those reasons plus as I mentioned in our last blog the Flower Festival had started and I’d get to ride Soarin’. We decided to avoid some of the crowds that amass at park opening and arrived at the Will Call window at 10am (an hour after opening) to pick up my Fun Card and my Happy Birthday button to wear (this is always fun because as you walk around the park wearing your button all the cast members (employees) and even other guests wish you Happy Birthday!)

After picking up our goodies, we entered the park and headed straight for Soarin’ to get a Fast Pass. From past experience we figured there would already be a long line and the Fast Pass would be for a couple hours later but as it turned out ours were for roughly 4-1/2 hours later…2:54pm! This meant we could come back at that time (or before 3:54pm) and bypassing the line of people waiting without a FP (called a Standby line), go up towards the front. Keep in mind, anyone can get a FP simply by scanning their entry ticket into the machine. Problem is that if you’ve already gotten a FP for another ride, you have to wait till the next window of opportunity to get another one from any ride and in the case of Soarin’ FP’s run out very quickly. Usually by noon there are no FP’s available for this ride, and those who were lucky enough to get one before noon, might not be able to use it till 6pm! You still might have a slight wait before actually getting on the ride with the FP, but it’s generally a matter of a few minutes not an hour or more.

It seems the crowd calendar must have been a little off for this particular day because the park was packed. We weren’t sure we were going to stay at the park that long, but we’d have our FP to ride Soarin’ if we did. We rode Living with the Land, a boat ride through some amazing greenhouses, and then walked over to The Seas Pavilion to ride Finding Nemo, a nice little ride geared more towards kids but cute and the line was not long. Afterwards we walked around the pavilion checking out the huge aquarium, the feeding of the manatees, and experienced the “Turtle Talk with Crush” attraction. We’ve attended this “show” before but it’s a little different each time and always entertaining, dude. “Turtle Talk” is an interactive show inspired by the movie “Finding Nemo” that runs continuously every 15 minutes, and it is so righteous! Little kids are encouraged to sit on the floor in front of the “window to the ocean” while the rest of us sit on benches. (No flash photography is allowed and it's too dark to take regular pictures.) Soon Crush appears on the other side of the window in an animated ocean environment to talk with us humans in the human tank and even answers questions from the audience. He can actually “see” us and will indicate to the cast member in the room whose question he wants to answer from the upraised hands. For instance, he might say “how about the little dudette with the striped shell and brown noggin in the 2nd row”. He holds actual conversations with the kids and their “parental units”, and duuuude, it’s sooo entertaining. You’ve heard the phrase “out of the mouths of babes”, well, some of the things these kids say and ask are hysterical! In fact, dude, we went back later in the day for another performance. (In case you haven’t guessed or haven’t seen Finding Nemo, dude is Crush’s favorite word. In fact, at the end of every show he encourages kids to say it to their parents all day cause they’ll really love it! :-)

From here we walked over to the World Showcase and grabbed a seat for the performance of Off Kilter (http://offkilter.net/) at the Canada pavilion. They are a high energy Celtic rock band playing a unique blend of traditional and modern music and are so entertaining. In fact, they’re one of my favorite things to see at Epcot. Since we arrived 45 min. before show time (seating is very limited at this outdoor theater), I walked over to the United Kingdom and got us some fish & chips to eat while we waited. Finally at 1:30 the band came onstage but didn’t seem as good as usual. There are several guys who play with the band and from what I’ve heard, they rotate who plays when. However every time we’ve ever seen them, it was always the same front man who also plays the bagpipes on their songs and is extremely entertaining. Well, it must have been his off day (hopefully he’s still with them!), and they weren’t quite as entertaining though still enjoyable.

As we walked around the park, we enjoyed the beautiful topiaries (the most they’ve ever had in the Festival’s 16 years and I know we didn’t see them all), some of which you see here throughout this blog entry. The Festival lasts 75 days and not only showcases all the beautiful flowers and plants but also includes special guest artists and gardeners giving demonstrations and tips, special events for the kids, special vendor booths, and of course the concert series. Many of the topiaries are of Disney characters but others are to be found as well. (In fact there’s one I’ve read about at the China pavilion of a “fire” breathing dragon but haven’t seen yet.)

Outside Minnie’s Magnificent Butterfly Garden is this huge butterfly topiary, and of course, one of Minnie as well. The garden is a small enclosed area with plants and hundreds of free-flying butterflies…another one of my favorites since I love butterflies. Besides the topiaries, flowers and plants abound including some beautiful floating floral islands.












Finally it was time to head back to The Land Pavilion to ride Soarin’! When we arrived, there were no more FP’s being distributed and the standby line said 35 min., but after we began bypassing all those people standing in line, we knew that timeframe was not correct! We’ve seen enough of those lines to know that it was at least an hour’s wait. In fact when we exited the ride we noticed the wait time had been changed to 70 min., probably still a conservative guess. As we got off the ride, a lady in the seat next to me said “I hope you won’t be offended but I think you look like Sarah Palin and she’s very pretty.” I thanked her, told her I was definitely not offended, and have been told that before when I’ve had my hair up. How nice to have a complete stranger compliment me like that…I think she’s very pretty, too.

Before leaving the park we rode Spaceship Earth, and one of the new things they’ve added to the ride is the ability to “project your future”. As the ride begins, a photo is taken of you, and then towards the end of the ride a program comes up on the little screen in front of you on which you select various likes and dislikes from multiple choices, i.e. type of leisure you like, mode of travel, etc. It then puts together a little animated video of your ideal vacation way in the future and incorporates the real life facial images of you as the participants….very clever. When you exit the ride, there’s an Earth globe and on either side are huge picture screens on which are projected one of the scenes from your video. They also have computer screens where can even send a video postcard of the picture to your e-mail. I snapped this picture that was on the big screen showing us scuba diving! On our way home we stopped at TGI Friday’s for my birthday dinner.

This weekend’s concert series featured Paul Revere & the Raiders, and though we had seen him at the Festival 3 years ago, he’s always entertaining. We arrived about 45 min. before the 6:30 show on Sun. (the last night of their run) and were able to get seats in the 2nd row. Paul is 71 and seems to have endless energy. Of course he had the old folks jokes, too, and one of my favorites was that at 71 he’s not really old in Florida…in fact Florida is where old people bring their parents! He crammed as many of his hits (ka-ching!) into his 30 min. set. Every time he’d announce a song, he’d say “I think that was a solid gold hit, let me check”, then hit a button on his keyboard, and a cash register ka-ching! would sound, and he’d say “yeah, it was!” If you’ve never seen him, he is a riot! His guitarist and bass player have been with him 36 years and are accompanied by a drummer and keyboard player. Rounding out the group is a “baby Raider” (meaning younger guy) who handles the lead vocals. Since we had decided to hang around for the fireworks, we decided to also attend the 7:45 show and this time sat on the other side of the stage in the front row! Both shows are pretty much the same but with some slight variations and still entertaining. During this last show, Paul came out front pretending to play a small red, white, & blue blowup guitar then threw it to a kid in the first row. Towards the end of one of the songs, Paul said “hey, these stage lights look so pretty, let’s go see what they look like from the audience”, and sure enough all but the drummer and keyboardist came out to admire the lights while still playing and singing! Some guy from one of the rows near where they were standing jumped up and joined in, throwing his arm around the “baby Raider”! LOL (That picture’s a little blurred but you get the idea.) The lights are pretty cool as evidenced by this photo taken as we exited the pavilion.

The Illuminations fireworks were great as usual (though we miss the special ending added during the Christmas holidays), and thus ended a wonderful birthday week.