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January 5, 2006

Day Three: Mine Trains, Parasailing & Hathaway Browne

Today was a long day.

We were up and out the door fairly early to head over to the Magic Kingdom. While we'd hit some rides on our first night here, there were a handful of other attractions, like Splash Mountain and Pirates of the Caribbean that needed our attention. So off we went, doing Pirates, Big Thunder, Splash Mountain and the Carousel of Progress. Sadly, "it's a small world" was too painful a ride for Richard to bear, so we skipped it. (sigh)

I get asked a lot by people who have never been to Disney World if it's "like Disneyland." The answer is a qualified yes - many of the same attractions exist in both places, along with other theme park-y things like $5 bottled water and tacky t-shirts. But the thing about Florida is that it has space. Disney took 28,000 acres of swampland and terraformed it, engineering lakes and beaches along with the hotels, parks, rides, roads, and the rest.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that, after lunch, we strolled over to the watersports section of the Contemporary Resort to go parasailing.

No, really. The Magic Kingdom is on the north shore of a large body of water called the Seven Seas Lagoon. The lagoon feeds in to another, larger body of water - Bay Lake - just to the east of it. The Contemporary resort straddles the two bodies of water; they have boat rental services, among other things. And if you're so inclined, you can go parasailing over Bay Lake for 10 minutes or so.

It was fabulous. Florida's pretty damn flat, so when you're 450 feet in the air you can see - well, not forever, exactly, but you can certainly survey the park. It's easy to pick out landmarks (Epcot! Tower of Terror!), and you also get a sense of just how huge Disney World really is.

Both Richard and I went up in the air - and I have to say, I think he enjoyed it more than he expected to. If you're so inclined, you can see a video of Richard's return to the boat (115 MB, AVI format); notice the huge smile on his face.

Freshly pumped up on adrenaline, we caught the monorail to Epcot (hmmm, a monorail as a way of getting around ... I wonder if something like that would work for Seattle...), and promptly shot over to get FastPasses for Soarin'. It was only 3 PM, but the ride was dispensing passes for 8 PM. With 5 hours to kill, we elected to go wait in line for Mission: SPACE. And, hoo, boy - does that ride blast your hair back.

"SPACE" is an astronaut flight simulator. You're on a manned mission to Mars, going through the process of Earth liftoff, negotiating a lunar slingshot, and finally finagling a Martian landing. The ride is incredible - it uses a centrifuge to provide some extraordinary G-forces. (The liftoff, in particular, has to be experienced to be believed.) And yes, barf bags are included. This is easily Richard's favorite ride on the property, and with good reason. I've never done anything quite like it.

The next few hours were spent walking around World Showcase, checking out the CircleVision movies in the China and Canada pavilions, shopping, eating, and mostly hanging out. We rode Soarin' at 8 (it's a direct clone of the ride from California Adventure), and then caught the bus over to Downtown Disney and Pleasure Island.

Pleasure Island is a "grownup" section of Disney World, composed of dance and comedy clubs. The audience is decidedly younger, sort of a Spring Break crowd on the make. Depending on your tastes, you can dance to 70s and 80s, listen to jazz, or watch improv comedy. But we both came for the Adventurer's Club.

The Adventurer's Club is an improv comedy club done in the style of a 30s country club. The host, Hathaway Browne, is a blowhard who has traveled the world and brought back all manner of artifacts to decorate the place. He is accompanied by other members of the club, each of whom walks around and interacts with each of the (increasingly) drunk members of the audience. The jokes are pretty ribald, with more double entendres than a Bond film. The last performance of the evening pulls everyone into the library for a hysterical song-and-dance number. We got to the club too late to hang out as long as we'd like, so we'll be going back later this week.

(The Flickr photostream is now up to 182 images.)

Posted by Gavin Shearer at January 5, 2006 11:55 PM. Posted to Disney | Travel.

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