Transported, A Fatal Mistake

On Friday evening I hit the track once again to get a run in.  Most of 2019 has seen my running program derailed so it has been nice to be able to get back into the swing of things as the year is closing out.  As I have mentioned previously, the energy ailment that has been affecting me off and on for well over a year definitely seems to be subsiding recently.  Friday’s run was further proof with me maintaining what may have been my fastest pace of the year.   It was nearly a minute per mile faster than my pace on Thanksgiving.

Saturday I had a lot on the plate both because we were leaving Sunday and, it was Saturday, which normally means get shit done.  The biggest task was ripping out and rebuilding the second set of pool deck landing steps.    I definitely benefited from doing a similar task a week prior.  Hopefully these new landings outlast me.

I dropped off Elsa Saturday evening at Ali’s place.  She was insanely excited when we went inside seeing Sadie and Shug’s two dogs.  Within a minute she had made herself at home snuggled up on the furniture.  It felt weird leaving her there but I knew she was in good hands.

Sunday morning we were able to not rush out the door.  We got our normal AM stuff done, ate breakfast and pulled out in the Tesla Msomewhere around 9:30AM  As in my past Orlando road trips we stopped to recharge in Sarasota.  It is the fastest and most convenient supercharger I have found so far.  In the span of around 30 minutes we went from a charge level in the 30’s to the high 80’s, enough to get us to Orlando.  We spent that time grabbing lunch at the Whole Foods right across the street.

When we arrived at our hotel about 2:15 we were told the king size bed room we reserved was not available yet.  They said it would be ready by the official check in time of 3PM.  No big deal, it gave us time to go hook up to the supercharger which was only a couple miles away.  As we charged I listened to the Eagles game.  We got up to 80% charge before returning to the hotel.

I wanted to do two things, ride our PEVs and listen to the Eagles/Redskins game.  We were able to combine the two.  By connecting my phone to the bluetooth speakers in my 16X I was able to hear Merle’s play by play call of the game as we rode a few miles.  For the third week in a row the Eagles struggled against a team with a dismal win/loss record.  Luckily, for the second week in a row they were able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat with a late touchdown.  The season will basically be decided with this week’s game against the Cowboys.

Our hotel room was fine, nothing fancy but clean enough.  It was located ideally, only a few miles from the Disney parks.  We decided to go to what I knew as Downtown Disney 10 years ago.  It has since been renamed to Disney Springs and has expanded greatly since I remembered it.  There were at least four or five massive parking garages and these structures were extremely high tech.  As you entered the garage there was a digital sign board that told you how many empty parking spots were available on each level.  Then as you pass each row there was another sign board that told you how many spaces were open in that row. And THEN there were little LEDs above every parking spot, if you saw a green LED that meant the spot was open.  It was an amazing example of how technology can expedite anything, even parking garages.

I hardly recognized the Downtown Disney I experienced, it has been expanded drastically in the last decade.  Our hopes of the area being less crowded on a Sunday night were immediately smashed.  In some spots it looked like rivers of people.  You had to jump into the current and jump out when you could, which sometimes was not where you actually wanted to be.  It was nuts.  I did my best to keep patient and go with the flow, literally.  Cindy and I enjoyed the Christmas decorations throughout the park and got to check out a number of interesting stores.  Our dinner of brauts (vegetarian for me) was not glamorous but got the job done.

We were both glad we decided to bundle up.  If I didn’t have my hooded sweatshirt on I would have been shivering. We spent 2-3 hours in Disney Springs, most of it was enjoyable.  If I allowed myself to get sidetracked by the reality of being in closed areas with thousands of other human beings I shouldn’t come to Disney in the first place, that’s just what it is.

We heard that Hollywood Studios was opening early, as early as 6AM.  I told Cindy I didn’t need to get there that stupid early but we still arrived before sunrise, getting to the front gate around 7AM.  Despite the early arrival time the area was already flooded with people.  Once again our idea that a Monday would be less busy seemed to be fake news.

We wasted little time signing into the app to join a “boarding group” for the Rise of Resistance attraction that just opened last week.  Despite doing this within the first 15 minutes of being in the park we were assigned to group 117.  For reference sake on a normal day they will assign 121 boarding groups, total, for the entire day.  That means that if we waited another 5-10 minutes we would have totally missed even getting into a group for the ride.  There will be much more said about our RotR experience as the blog continues.

We had not had breakfast yet so we stopped at a stand and ordered a healthy combo of coffee and a chocolate muffin.  This established the baseline for what was a full day of very unhealthy eating. After downing our breakfast we headed straight into the Galaxy’s Edge area.  It was in a word, amazing.

I had heard others describe the experience but to step into the park was like stepping onto the movie itself.  The scale, scope and detail of everything was beyond what even what my high expectations were.  Everywhere my eyes landed there was another example of amazing craftsmanship and artwork.  I just could not fathom how they were able to bring the Star Wars universe together in such a perfect manner.

One of the reasons we wanted to arrive early was to get in the Galaxy Edge ride lines before they got out of hand.  Well that plan fell through as well.  The line for the Millennium Falcon snaked way back out of the immediate ride area and into the park.  Despite the length the sign said the estimated wait was something like 75 or 85 minutes which honestly seemed optimistic based on the amount of people we saw. The picture below is us shortly after entering the line, the actual attraction entrance was located by the far mountains. It was pretty crazy.

I have to admit, despite the incredible length of the line, I was surprised at how consistently it kept moving.  Within the first 5 minutes or so we had traversed at least 150 feet.  The decent pace of movement couple with the incredible sights and sounds around us made the wait less grueling.  The life size Millennium Falcon they have in front of the attraction provides endless visual interest, every pipe, dial and valve seems like it came straight from the movies.

It’s incredible how much line length they can jam into a relatively small space once you are inside the building.  The line constantly doubles back on itself.  I wish I knew the actual length of distance we traveled before getting to ride but I would estimate it was at least a half mile.

So the Millennium Falcon is a simulator.  Each flight consists of six people, two pilots, two gunners, and two engineers.  Cindy and I were both assigned the pilot role. One of us controlled up down movement and the other controlled left right.  The experience is totally immersive with wrap around video screens and movement that really felt realistic.  Both Cindy and I struggled at getting a feel for piloting the ship as it was difficult to figure out how much stick movement you needed to apply to get the direction change you needed.

Luckily even if you crash through or into objects the ride continues on.  Each role has their own objective to complete as the 5 minute experience unfolds.  It was fun and the sort of thing you wish you could do more than once to get better at it however neither of us was interested in investing another 60-90 minutes in line to do so.

After the ride we spent time just exploring the park, the shops and food experiences were amazingly authentic.  We poked into the droid building experience, saw storm troopers wandering around, and even briefly saw Chewbacca interacting with some kids.  I was quite content to just exist in this section of the park to take it all in.  Just looking around brought me a weird sense of contentment and enjoyment.

So when I imagined this trip I thought that we would be basically staying in Galaxy’s Edge all day long.  The reality was the area overall is not huge with only two actual rides and awesome but limited real estate.  We had a very long wait until our boarding party was going to be called, sometime that evening so we moved into other areas of the park.

The first ride outside we did was the Tower of Terror, something Cindy did before but I had never experienced.  The line for this was another 90 minute drag and a far less entertaining one than the Star Wars wait.  As we stood there I felt envy as I saw the Fast Pass people blowing by us, waiting a fraction of the time.  I had not even considered buying a Fast Pass since Galaxy’s Edge didn’t allow them yet.  As you will hear later, my understanding of the Fast Pass system was based on what I experienced over a decade ago.  It turns out that too has changed, which I will talk about in depth later.

So anyway this ride is a drop style where it bounces you up and down so you experience brief periods of weightlessness.  It was ok but unlike Millennium Falcon, I did not leave the ride feeling like it was almost worth the amount of time standing in line.  We still had a lot of time to kill so Cindy suggested we do some Aerosmith roller coaster ride.  I was feeling a bit motion sick but she said the coaster, which she evidently did before was “not bad” in terms of how much it throws you around.  The wait for this attraction once again was very long and had absolutely nothing of interest to look at except other park patrons that looked equally tired of waiting.

So after at least 75 minutes we finally get inside where you load up.  I saw other people taking off and I’m immediately shocked by the just how hard the initial acceleration looks.  I mean seriously, it looked like they were shot off by a huge rubber band.  As soon as I saw this I started to question the validity of the “not bad” description Cindy gave to this coaster which turned out to be entirely indoors, like Space Mountain.

So we load up and I brace for launch.  They remind you to keep your head against the pad for launch.  Failure to do so could be very dangerous from the G forces I felt.  The launch was violent and things only got more so as you were thrown into multiple upside down loops, corkscrews, and all sorts of crazy maneuvers.  It was the most motion sickness inducing ride of the day for me.  Obviously I questioned Cindy’s use of “not bad” when describing the ride afterwards.

So after we finished that ride we were talking to a park employee.  Somehow the FastPass system came up and we realized that we just spent probably two to three hours in lines unnecessarily.  Disney changed the Fast Pass system since I was last there where you don’t pay anything for a Fast Pass.  Instead through the app you can pick up to three rides that are open for Fast Pass, it will then assign you an available time slot and you simply show up then.  You flash your card or wristband and you get dumped into the Fast Pass line. Son of a bitch…

Both Cindy and I were frustrated that we both somehow were unaware of this very important change which would have made our ride experience infinitely better with short Fast Pass lines.  Unfortunately we had already done all of the rides with long wait times that we wanted to do so this information did us no good by the time we realized it.

So we had been keeping an eye on the boarding group progress throughout the day.  It had been incrementing slowly but steadily until mid-afternoon where the numbers stopped.  We heard that the ride has been plagued with problems since it opened last week and evidently another one popped up.  We were further told that because of the way the ride is designed, “resetting it” takes a ridiculous amount of time.  The delay took over two hours until the numbers started moving again.  We thought that we might not even get on at all because of the hold up.

We kept circling the park taking stuff in to consume time as we waiting for our group to pop.  All of that time resulted in me doing something I initially had no intention of doing, buying an expensive replica light saber.  All day I had seen people walking around wielding them and I found myself wanting to join the Jedi club for some reason, despite no real world need for such an expensive toy.  When I told Cindy about my desire to suddenly get one she encouraged it since it was my birthday.

Getting a custom build your own lightsaber was out of the question as it required reservations weeks in advance.  However there was also a shop that sold the pre-configured sabers that were replicas of the various models used by famous characters in the Star Wars universe.  I of course opted for Luke’s weapon as I always seem to identify myself as being one of the good guys.  We verified we were allowed to take the saber on the Rise of the Resistance ride we were waiting for, just to be sure.

So finally our boarding group was called, almost 13 hours after we signed up.  I had the stupid idea that waiting all day meant you had a relatively short line to wait in once you are called.  Instead we were treated to the longest wait in line of the day, somewhere around two hours.  By this point almost every single person you saw in line looked various shades of miserable, beaten down by a full day of immersion into Disney madness.  My body felt terrible by this point in the day, every step sent waves of discomfort, my back and IT bands were especially painful.  I almost felt like I was at the end of a half marathon, you just want to stop but you have come so far you press on.

Finally we arrived at the launching area for the ride.  The line had been moving at a decent pace but all of a sudden when it was our turn we stood there for at least 15 minutes, waiting to get let inside.  I said to Cindy that maybe they had another issue half joking.  Unfortunately I was right, they announced they had to shut down the ride temporarily.  Neither of us could believe that after 16 hours at that point, we hit another wait.

One of the cool things we heard about this attraction was it was long, somewhere around 20 minutes.  When we finally got into the ride there was an awkward delay when we were inside a huge space with a hundred animatronic storm troopers.  It didn’t seem like we were supposed to be there yet.  The weirdness continued when we were lead through a door labeled NO EXIT, outside the ride and then back in another door.  This was obviously not the way the ride was supposed to go.

We did get put onto a vehicle that rolled through some really cool action packed simulation/animatronics.  However the entire ride lasted maybe 5 minutes, far short of what we were expecting.  What we experienced was great but to wait all day long for the boarding group and then another two hours in line only to get the ride chopped due to trouble was frustrating for sure.  However by this point we were both exhausted and ready to pack it in.

It wasn’t like we had a choice in the matter, the park actually officially closed at 9PM 45 minutes prior to us exiting the ride.  We headed towards the exit, thinking there would only be a few stragglers remaining.  Instead we merged into another river of people exiting another area of the park.  I fully expected getting out of the parking lot to be a nightmare but again thanks to Disney’s logistical mastery we were back out on the highway in 5 minutes or less.

We were both thoroughly exhausted from the long day, the longest day I have ever spent in a theme park in my lifetime.  Despite the drag of standing in those hideous lines, missing out on FastPass benefits, and dealing with the quagmire of people, overall it was still a very special day and helped make my 52nd birthday a memorable one.  Having Cindy along as my partner makes these experiences that are best when shared, possible.

On Monday we didn’t waste much time before heading out.  We ate breakfast at DD while the car took another shot of supercharging juice.  The ride home was uneventful.  I would say in total, I let the car drive itself (with my hand on the wheel) for close to 75% of the drive.  Auto Pilot excels in open highway situations.  We got back to the house around 12:30.  I immediately had stuff to do, including packing a few 3D stand orders that came in while we were away.  I then dropped them off on the way to pick up Elsa who jumped out of her fur when she saw me, it was very cute.

I was busy for the remainder of Tuesday tending to stuff around the house, in the hobby room, and washing the crud off the Tesla after a 400 mile road trip.  I only have four more days of work before Christmas.  It will be here in a blink.    Here are the videos I made connected to the experience.