Disney Bar-B-Que

Tuesday 6 July 1993. We had had a relaxing day, visiting Disney's Island of Discovery and spent the afternoon in the hotel, playing cards and watching the day's thunderstorm send lightning down to hit the lamp post opposite our room...

Outside the hotel around 5:30, waiting to be picked up by a bus. We had booked to go to a bar-b-que for a meal that night and I'm not sure why we were amazed at being taken back to the same spot and the marquee that we had seen earlier - but we were... We were told that there would be a competition between all the buses going and that they were all named after a Disney character. To our amusement, we found ourselves on a Minnie Bus!

The barbie was served along the front of the marquee with all manner of meats, beans and afforded us probably our first taste of B-B-Q sauce (we were very conservative in our eating habits back then!) Seated at long trestle tables we got into conversations with people seated near to us and it was a good meal.

Then a cabaret - a comedian whose jokes were more to the American type of humour than to our own and then an excellent group. Whilst the group were playing, the room filled with Disney characters.

Once Mickey and Minnie had done the length of all the tables, signing autographs and posing for photos, they went to the space before the stage and danced together, leading to several thousands of feet of video tape whirring through cameras! Out of all of the couriers from the many buses, we saw Jonathan on the way in (remember him from the Silver Springs day?) and were amused that old Charlie who was on the Tigger bus asked his passengers to cheer for "Tiger!" Not a big Disney fan then Charlie...?

The food disappeared, but the drinks were free and plentiful. The band was good and the atmosphere was that of a party. At 11:00pm we were ushered onto the white beach and watched from a distance of a mile and a half, the firework display at the Magic Kingdom. On the horizon lightning was playing, adding to the display.

Then it was back to the buses, where my badge fell off. It was stuck back on unceremoniously... We had bought some sweets which looked exactly like Polo Mints right down to the hole and colouring of the wrapper. They tasted like dentists' mouthwash though and I gave an "Ugh!" of surprise and to my horror it shot out of my mouth and went rolling down the bus aisle!

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EPCOT And The World Showcase Part Two

Sunday 24 April 2016. We met up with the family for breakfast at the resort and then caught a bus to EPCOT. There's a few Disney characters to meet along the way but we'll have another look at the World Showcase during our visit.

Grace wanted to meet Joy and Sadness from the recent Disney/Pixar film Inside Out. Eddie was fancying a ride that had a very long waiting time and we said we'd take Grace whilst he and Gill went on that. We took her off in the right direction, saw a sign saying "Character Meeting" or something similar and joined a half-hour queue. With ten minutes or so to go we realised we were in the wrong queue and that we should have gone into the opposite building. We were now queueing to meet Mickey, Minnie and Goofy...

We could hardly jump out of the queue at that stage so we met up with the aged trio (Goofy is 84 and Mickey and Minnie are both 88) and figured we would just have to queue for the other characters later. Grace was quite happy to meet them anyway - she loves Minnie Mouse especially and had not so far had the chance to meet her.

The queue for the Inside Out characters was 45 minutes so I said I'd go to our rendezvous point and meet Gill and Eddie whilst Miss Franny took Grace and joined the queue. It took me half an hour to find Gill and she said there were two lines for the ride they had gone for. The one for two riders was 90 minutes and the one for a single rider was an hour. Eddie had gone for that and was still in there.

I explained what had happened and left her to wait for him and then follow. I went back thinking that I wouldn't have long to wait. After sitting outside the entrance for a further half hour I was wondering whether they had come out a different door and I'd missed them. After an hour I was pacing up and down, but then they came out with Gill and Eddie who had gone in a different way and had been told they could wait near the exit and sneak in when they saw Grace and Fran have their turn.

In the film these characters occupy the brain of a little girl. Joy and Sadness control those emotions and two more characters, Fear and Anger make up the full team. Sadness had seen Grace's long hair and used it to dry her (Sadness's) tears! Whatever had caused the hold-up in the queue, Grace had weathered it without her own brain coming under the control of Anger, causing tantrums!

We split up for a bit after this and Fran and I went to resume our look around the World Showcase that we had started but had to rush the other day. This is the interior of the Aztec pyramid of Mexico where it is always twilight. We looked through the market stalls and watched a craftsman carving wooden animals.

Then, heading for the rear of the room, we took an eight-minute boat ride through the Gran Fiesta Tour starring The Three Caballeros. This is a slightly different theme and content from our previous visit in 1993.

Outside, the sound of mariachi music drew us over to watch and listen to this group of dancer and musicians. We hadn't too long to stay and listen as we were meeting up again for a pre-booked meal at the Norway Pavilion.

We visited the real Norway in 2013 (and will again in 2017) and we appreciated a chance to recall slowly sailing up the fjords and walking around wooden buildings and shops in both Stavanger and Bergen.

A row of shops in particular reminded us of the old town areas of those two cities.

We didn't find any buildings with grass on the roof though. The Norwegians use goats to keep the grass from growing too long on the roofs!

Also authentic were the many trolls in the shops. I wasn't taking any chances this huge one might pass on a cold...

We were booked at the Princess Storybook Dining at the Akershus Royal Banquet Hall. Belle from Beauty and The Beast is the first to welcome us and then Grace tries out her throne as we wait to be seated.

First around the tables is Grace's absolute favourite Princess - Princess Aurora from Sleeping Beauty. She was awake, but she certainly was a beauty. After this, she could easily be my favourite as well...

Cinderella too is no slouch when it comes to beauty - Norway must have first pick of the actresses playing these princesses!

Snow White and Arial, the Little Mermaid (the version with legs) make up the full compliment of princesses for the day. Grace wants to see Aurora again (good girl!) and after enquiring, she comes back for a return visit to talk to Grace and give her a hug. Then she goes back to whichever table should have been next on her tour, much to the surprise and disappointment of everyone else on the other tables in our alcove...

The meal over, we split up again and we continue our stroll through the pavilions of the World Showcase. Looking through the Chinese Gateway into the Chinese Pavilion. The circular blue-roofed building contains a 360 degrees screen and shows a 14-minute film Reflections of China.

The Morocco Pavilion where we had a wander through the shops, a much more relaxed experience than it would have been in Agadir, where we were bombarded with people trying to drag us into their shops.

At Morocco there is a viewpoint over the lagoon. One of the ferry boats from the Showcase Plaza, the edge of the lagoon closest to the park entrance and Future Worlds, is coming in to the landing at Morocco.

Approaching the France Pavilion. The bridge takes you over a waterway. I'm not sure if it's a river or a canal (which is more likely) but you can get a boat from here to Disney's Hollywood Studios and some EPCOT resorts.

The Canada Pavilion. We went in to see another of those 14-minute Circle-Vision 360 degree films about Canada, narrated by Canadian actor and comedian, Martin Short.

Some of the topiary sculptures for the Flower and Garden Festival. Bambi and friends.

We went back towards the main park and waited to catch a photograph of the Monorail on this part of the track that circles the Future Worlds between dropping passengers off and taking on new passengers to and from the park.

Snack time before leaving the park. Apple pieces and a coffee.

Disney World Holiday Index

Half a Day in Disney's EPCOT

Thursday 21 April. We had spent the morning at our resort, Caribbean Beach Resort. We had a meal pre-booked at The Garden Grill in EPCOT for 5:30pm and once again we would be meeting Disney characters during the meal, notably Chip 'n' Dale.

Sometime after dinner we are on the bus and heading for EPCOT, Disney's Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. The huge 18-storey high sphere is the stand-out sight for EPCOT as much as Cinderella's Castle is for the Magic Kingdom.

We have an official photo taken by the "professional" photographers - a shame Disney don't train them to compensate exposures for light backgrounds. Or bother about exposure settings at all, I suspect from some of the photos... When we downloaded these photos on our return, Disney had turned this one into a video with Tinkerbell showering pixie dust over us!

Just before the Golf Ball as the sphere is commonly called, is one of several water features in the park. There's a huge set of fountains in one that rise and fall in time to a music soundtrack - very impressive. We'll see that on a later visit however.

The sphere is surprisingly large once you get right up to it. Inside is a ride, Spaceship Earth, detailing innovations from the Stone Age through to the present day. The rate of change and innovation has never been faster than in the last few decades and many innovations of the past have had to be left out in order to bring those of visitors' lifetimes to life. At the end the scenes take on a futuristic aspect. Whether or not they will come true is anyone's guess. I once remember someone saying how hard it was to predict the future. He said: "One thing no-one would ever have believed in the 1950s is that shaving razors would have five blades..."

We have arrived during a Flower and Garden Festival. There are some wonderful sculptures made with live plants around the park. Donald and his nephews are in the midst of a vegetable garden, with groups of plants neatly labelled.

The Festival lasts from March to the end of May. The map of EPCOT shows the two main halves of the park: the sciences-based area near the entrance and the World Showcase set around the perimeter of the lagoon with recreations of famous buildings from the countries represented.

We went into the first area to our right (or to the left if you are referring to the map) which was The Seas with Nemo and Friends. Outside the buildings were this group of seagulls from Finding Nemo all looking round and calling out. We went on a grotto ride based on the film which was great fun and then in a show where a cartoon film of Crush the Turtle actually interacts with the audience who can ask him questions. Obviously there was a human somewhere doing the voice but the expressions and movements of the cartoon turtle and the matching of its mouth with the speech was awesome. And it was a very funny show too!

There is a very large tank filled with fish and real turtles. There was also one with a couple of dolphins which I found disappointing. I thought it was well established now that keeping dolphins in captivity is not good.

The time moved on to 5:30pm and it was time to find our restaurant. I have no photo and this is a very quick (and a bit ropey!) sketch just to give an idea. The entire Garden Grill restaurant rotated, taking an hour to do a full circle and taking us past a variety of backgrounds and views, from the front of the restaurant, to paintings, to an American prairie with buffalo, to overlooking a gentle water ride with lots of vegetation scenery. The tables were, to be honest, a bit small and cramped for five of us, but the food was good.

Dale from Chip 'n' Dale comes round. It was ages before Chip came and we nearly had a mutiny on our hands before he finally arrived!

Then Grace spots something interesting that our table is slowly passing and goes to look at it, so Dale goes for a look too...

Mickey Mouse, about to get a kiss planted on his nose!

Pluto gets the Grace welcome. She was off her seat and bouncing with excitement as soon as they turned away from the previous table!

It's Chip! About time too, where have you been?

All is forgiven!

Disney World Holiday Index

Disney's Festival Of Fantasy Parade

Last time I ended with us hearing the music heralding the 3:00pm Disney Parade: The Festival of Fantasy. Although we were well behind the crowds lining the parade route, most of the main characters are riding on tall float vehicles. We'll see some of the dancers and other floor-level characters in a later entry.

Mickey and Minnie actually bring up the rear of the parade, but I thought I'd add them first as the first pic is the one picked when I post links on FaceBook etc. Anyway, no one epitomises or represents Disney better than Mickey Mouse!

Giving some idea of our restricted view is this shot of the approach of the parade. The first float carries Belle and her Beast.

The The Festival of Fantasy has been running since March 2014. The parades are updated every so often but there is no hard and fast length of time that a certain parade will run and the interval can be as short as one year (where parades are themed around an anniversary event for instance) to five years.

The way that the soundtrack is handled is really rather clever. There is a general soundtrack which forms a basic rhythm and each float has it's own soundtrack that fits over the rhythm. Each float has loudspeakers and there are also speakers along the route on lamp posts etc. A special system picks up the approach of the parade and each individual float so that the music starts to build up as the parade approaches and then the appropriate music for each float "follows" it along the route. It works very seamlessly so that for instance a snippet of Be Our Guest, as Beauty and The Beast pass by, segues effortlessly into a quick blast of every young girl's favourite Let It Go! as Anna and Elsa from Frozen come by.

And so on. Ariel proves that whilst mermaids have tails instead of legs there is still some semblance of knees, and we get to sing a bit of Under The Sea!

Most of the floats have a troupe of dancers preceding them. The costumes for the dancers for The Little Mermaid float represented sea creatures and were fabulous. We'll get to see them on another day. On the ground before Peter Pan and Wendy are a few dastardly pirates with Mr Smee whilst below the ship on the float old Captain Hook himself is swinging on the anchor and keeping a wary eye on Tick-Tock Croc who is following behind the float.

Pinocchio (no thank you, AutoCorrect, I didn't mean "pincushion"...) rides atop Monstro the Whale. There is no room for the full set of Disney cartoon heroes but somehow Pinocchio has survived where Bambi, Mowgli, Duchess and her kittens and many more have fallen by the wayside.

The Sleeping Beauty element of the parade though, is devoted to Maleficent's dragon as a gloriously worked steampunk version. The driver is visible within the creature's neck and every now and then it raises its head to breath fire.

And it does breathe fire! Even several rows behind the crowd we could feel the heat from the jet of fire it breathed out. Ferocious looking attendants with masked faces and long, long legs (saying stilts would spoil it...) add to the fun. Donald and Daisy Duck followed with Mickey and Minnie bringing up the rear, draw the parade to a close. It takes about 12 minutes for the full length of it to pass you.

People start to gather by the edge of the route from about an hour beforehand and some spots, particularly the roundabout before Cinderella's Castle and from there, the full length of Main Street U.S.A. down to Times Square get particularly crowded.

We had been in the park since early morning and we decided to head back to the Caribbean Beach Resort for a cool down and a rest before it was time to eat again. The buses for resorts leave at least every 20 minutes and we found that we seldom had to wait so long. It does feel like it, in the heat, sometimes! Our bus stop (each resort has it's own buses and stopping place) was almost the furthest from the exit from the park, but it was a pleasant walk with a large pond to the side opposite the rows of bus stops.

Something large buzzed past my head and I ducked. "What was that?" Then looking up into the trees between us and the pond we saw what it was! Huge dragonflies clung to the top branches. These were four-inch (10cm) whoppers! Eew!

Disney World Holiday Index