Welcome back!  So this is the point in the process where I start preaching about external backups for server data (and how this falls under the do-as-i-say-not-as-i-do category)…  So the server is back up and running, fresh.  The old hard drive is near death but the data is recoverable.  Unfortunately the file system is hosed, which means all the files are being recovered as Recovered01.jpg, Recovered02.jpg (etc).  I have no idea which folder anything was in or what the file names were.  It will most likely take the rest of my life to sort through the pieces, but the good news is it appears nothing was totally lost forever.  YAY!

Life updates:  The “Scott needs a place to live” situation has been resolved and work at the Magic Kingdom is pretty much the same… except I’m 30 now… half-way to old!  :p

Off to enjoy the last of 4 days off before going back to work.  Ciao!

I’ve been knocked out sick since Christmas Day of all days… so sorry for taking forever to finishing the story    HERE IT IS!

Day 4 - Animal Kingdom

So in 2003 on our honeymoon we didn’t even make it to the Animal Kingdom.  In fact, we skipped a LOT of things (Tomorrowland in MK and EPCOT completely for example) that we should have taken the time to do.  I’ll also take this moment to meander into the Smoking Area side-story.  If you’re a nonsmoker and don’t travel with a smoker, you’ve completely missed out on some of the most beautiful places in the WDW parks.  Most smoking areas, other than ones in the MK, were keenly placed in the most out of the way, hard to find places - for obvious reasons.  What this also means is that they’re normally a nice quiet place to go get away from the crazies.  They’re also some of the most visually appealing places you can find.  There’s a sunken area at EPCOT near The Land that’s really secluded, and at the Animal Kingdom between Afria and Asia there’s a little path that leads up into the “rainforest” to a VERY secluded quiet spot that’s worth taking a break at.  Another great view at AK is in Africa, just past Dawa Bar (look for the canon).  It’s a little balcony that looks out over Discovery River and a little camp set scenery.  So Amanda’s watching this African tribal street act out by the Dawa Bar while I take a quick smoke break.  I drag her back there to check out the scenic view.  Then we turned around to wander north towards Kilimanjaro Safaris (where the parade stage entrance/exit is) when again we’re approached by a cast member.  “Are you guys going to stick around and watch the parade at 3:45?”  Of course… “Would you like to be IN the parade?”  ARE YOU KIDDING!!!???  Uh YEAH!!!  “Great!  You’ll be on the MICKEY FLOAT!” she says.  Oh HOW COOL IS THIS!?  So this is the FULL parade, the normal daily Mickey’s Jingle Jungle Parade, unlike the mini-parade we were in at MK.  We’re instructed to go to that backstage door at 3:15 and wait.  At the gate, other chosen families were led back in one group at a time (we were last).  Inside the door to the right there is a wall of lockers for us to put our stuff in if we want and we get our “costumes”, basically a festive vest and Christmas Tree hat and are led to our float.
Too exciting.  I only wish I had brought our video camera to film FROM the parade, because as we came out onstage a cast member snapped our picture with a disposable camera and then handed it to us to take pictures from the float, but video would have been so much better…  Anyway… I think we had the song memorized before we ever got onstage and sang and waved the whole parade away.  A couple of stilt performers in front of us had some good fun with us - after noticing we’d been singing for a while, they’d turn around to us frequently to make sure we were still singing along lol.  Here they are, they let us take a picture of them together after the parade 

What a great time, and for someone seriously considering a job at WDW and wanting to get back into performing they sure picked the right guy to give a taste of the Disney Show Life to.

Honestly, after this day, the rest of the trip was pretty much down hill.  We hopped from park to park the last few days and begrudgingly came back home.     I’m ready to go back already!

OK we’re home now.  I’ll whine about that later… I added some pictures to the first post, and got the first batch of photos in the Media/Photo album.  You’ll just have to buy the DVD to see the video   ONLY $99.95!  (Of course that’s Orlando/Disney pricing…)

Day 2 - Magic Kingdom (Ctd)

So after Adventureland we cut through Frontierland on the way to Liberty Square, discussing some corporatism - Disney partnering with other businesses like the McDonald’s french fries cart in Frontierland.  The next stop was my favorite attraction, the Haunted Mansion.  We got the briefing outside the gates because it’s 2 to a Doom Buggy and Rae would have to turn her mic off or the ride audio would overlap and drown her out.  We took the VIP attraction entrance.  In the foyer there’s a portrait over the fireplace that has Mickey heads on the frame.  Apparently there’s three types of Hidden Mickeys.  Intentional, Unintentional and Cast Member-placed.  The intentional ones are the ones the Imagineers who developed the ride place as their “signature” on their “artwork”.  Now, the Hidden Mickey I already knew of was the ballroom scene, a place and two saucers placed in Mickey formation.  What we didn’t know was that this is actually a CM-placed Hidden Mickey and the Imagineers don’t look too kindly on others signing their art!  So whenever one of the Haunted Mansion Imagineers rides it and notices the plates, they usually put them back where they belong on the table.  Then day after day you’ll notice the saucers have been moved closer and closer back to the Mickey location by CMs.  Rae tells us the Imagineers got so frustrated they even took pictures of how the table is supposed to be set and put them under the plates.  Both times we rode (Day 1 and Day 2 during the tour) the Hidden Mickey was there.  The actual Imagineer Mickey is in the graveyard in a tomb, you have to kind of lean out of the Doom Buggy on the right-hand side and look backwards - it’s a ghoul that looks like he has his hand in the air but it’s not a hand at all… it’s the Hidden Mickey!  And a clear sign of the time period the attraction was built - look for a peace sign on one of the spiders, too…

We left the Haunted Mansion and headed to Columbia Harbour House for lunch.  Great place to eat.  We were given our “Keys to the Kingdom” pins at this point too.  Very cool and you can’t buy them, the only way to get them is to take the tour.  After lunch we went backstage again, into the utilidor this time - the UTILity-corrIDOR built beneath the Magic Kingdom.  We really didn’t do an awful lot down here.  Talked about some Disney history, the purpose of the Utilidor - which is actually not a “tunnel system” at all - it’s ground level.  The rest of the park is built on the “first floor” so to speak, which is why Main Street is a slight incline coming in towards Cinderella Castle.  When we came back up we were back close by to City Hall where we started, and that was pretty much the tour.  A lot of the stuff we already knew, but there was plenty we learned and wandering around backstage was really cool.

We watched “Wishes”, the MK fireworks show (right), that night and then hopped over to Disney MGM to close it down.  Around here whenever I hear “Fireworks set to music” I know it’s not actually synced, other than the lighting of the fireworks.  Another little nugget I learned somewhere is that Disney’s fireworks system actually has two commands for each unit shot off.  One controls the “launch” of the firework and the other controls the “detonation”.  So Disney fireworks are truly SYNCED to the music.  Now you know why they’re so good.     MGM is doing the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights (left) and if you don’t know what to expect going in, you’ll be amazed… it’s just wild.  At least a whole street was covered - 3 level buildings - every square inch with Christmas lights synced to music.  I can’t keep 16 par cans on all at once without tripping a breaker!  So the lighting guy in me immediately thought:  OMG how much juice is this drawing???, and Can you imagine how long it took those guys to program these sequences!?!  Not only did they turn the lights on and off, oh no!  they dimmed and TWINKLED!!!!  We just caught the tail end of it, but even that little piece was amazing.

Day 3 - EPCOT

Now I have to admit that EPCOT clearly isn’t my favorite park.  In fact, on our honeymoon three years ago we didn’t even GO to EPCOT.  I just remember it as being WAY too educational for a vacation.  For the most part I remembered right, but they have added some new attractions that were fun, like Test Track.  Shortly after we got into the park Amanda noticed the Jammitors starting to play, so we stuck around and caught their show.  We did the quintessential attractions like Journey Into Imagination With Figment, Disney’s “oops” recovery after kicking Figment out of the original Journey into Imagination attraction and getting tons of complaints.

Turtle Talk with Crush (Finding Nemo) was really the only other interesting attraction we did that day, which is a VERY interactive show - if you go make sure you catch it.  It’s another one of those “How on earth do they do THAT!?” attractions.  Basically we cruised the World Showcase catching some of the little mini-shows each country puts on throughout the day and Amanda got her face painted at one of the kiosks between countries.  Unofficially they called themselves The Border Guards.  LOL  Italy did a little play, a big pun on Romeo and Juliet, a drum & fife band was playing at the American Adventure and a Beatles knockoff band played at the UK.

Day 3 - MGM

My favorite live show at WDW is Fantasmic! at Disney MGM Studios park.  So we hopped from EPCOT to MGM just in time to catch it.  This is the show that uses water mists as projector screens for video, which is very cool.  I think this is the third time we’ve seen it (twice on our honeymoon) - it’s that good.  The stage is a large mountain surrounded by water and takes place in Mickey’s dream.  The Disney villains try to take over Mickey’s dream but (ah good ol’ Disney) Mickey wins in the end.  My favorite part is the end when sorcerer Mickey appears on the mountain    Day 4 was our first Animal Kingdom day, and our first ever visit to that park actually.  They welcomed us with style… but I’m waiting for some pictures to be developed so I’ll continue that story later!

Quite possibly the best vacation ever.  And people wonder why we’d ever want to work at WDW!  Here’s a bit of a recap, since I had planned on doing this daily but didn’t get around to it until now…

Day 1 - Arrival & Magic Kingdom

There’s nothing like stepping out of the airport in sunny Orlando Florida.  NOTHING.  As we headed out the doors towards our bus to Disney, the group of folks we were flying with out of St. Louis all started peeling off layers LOL… and boarded the Magical Express bus.  No chasing down our luggage, no getting lost trying to find the resort and having a huge argument halfway to the most magical place on earth… This is the only way to go.   We checked in at the resort and headed right off to play in the Magic Kingdom.  Some of the park is already decorated for the holiday season, but I think they’ve got quite a ways to go yet even… Anyway, through security, enter the turnstiles and there’s ALREADY a parade going on.  Some flag-wavin’ salute to America.  It looks as if they’ve roped some guests into participating…  A quick detour to the chapeau to buy some goofy touristy hats (I insist, I mean Disney is really the only place in the world you can get away with it).  So my dorky look for the week is a big Sorcerer Mickey hat and Amanda picked a Princess-locked-in-a-tower type pink Minnie hat - covered in sequins of course.  We walk from there up Main Street towards Cinderella Castle after watching the little parade.  We didn’t get any further than that.  A cast member approached us and asked if we wanted to be IN the parade!  Woo hoo!  The Family Fun Parade, which I think they ran every 30 minutes almost all day long.  It takes a little humility to admit, as a woodwind, that I have now had the experience of being a flaggit (color guard or flag corps, for the non-band-geek).  Yep, Amanda and I waved American flags with the rest of our little group after being taught our “routine” — 8 counts wave to the left, 8 counts front, 8 counts right, 8 counts front, repeat.  So yeah, I still have plenty of band geek in me I guess, because the heel-toe roll step came right back.  Lead with the left, stayed in step the whole way.  How’s THAT for pathetic!  This wasn’t a “full” parade, it only went from the Partners Statue area in the Castle Forecourt back to the Esplanade/Entrance area.  Good Times!!!

The rest of Day 1 we spent riding some attractions, starting some of our VMK Quests, watched the 3:00 Parade, ate our $8 cheeseburgers and spent way too much money on Disney stuff.  Back to the Pop Century Resort to crash and get ready to go again 

Day 2 - Magic Kingdom (Again)

Ok, ok.  This is my favorite park.  I’m a big kid.  Day 2 we started at MK, starting with the Keys to the Kingdom tour.  This is well worth the $60 per person or whatever we spent on it.  I’d recommend you take it if you’re interested.  They don’t advertise the behind-the-scenes tours too much, but all you have to do is ask anybody.  Book it with your package though, don’t wait til you get here, they’ll probably be all booked full.  Lunch was included. While waiting to get started we got our picture taken with Santa right outside City Hall (the PhotoPass people).  The start of the tour I’d heard or read about online, a walk up Main Street talking about the use of forced perspective on the buildings, what the names in the windows over Main Street are for (they’re the Opening Credits to “The Show” of course!).  (I may get out of order here…) We strolled to Adventureland for a ride on Walt’s favorite attraction, the Jungle Cruise, where our Tour Guide Rae took over the Skipper duties, told some of the old corny script jokes, made up a few of her own, pointed out a hidden mickey, etc.  We took a quick jog backstage and saw the floats for the afternoon parade and learned about the different levels of float drivers, how they train for that and so on, some Jungle Cruise hippos waiting for a repaint, etc.  Frontierland was next, and I’ll finish the story later.  It’s bedtime here at the Most Magical Place on Earth and we’ve gotta get rested to go see Mickey Mouse again tomorrow!

Well, I’m finally getting around to getting ol’ gob-gook.com set back up.  Since the beginning, this site has morphed and changed into a number of different project “attempts”.  It’s been a Movie/Book Review site, a computer news site, computer parts store, etc.  So you shouldn’t be shocked to find that, once again, I’m changing the site.  What’s the new purpose, you ask?  I have absolutely no idea.  Actually, this really goes back to the roots of gob-gook.com — which was our attempt at shortening “gobbledygook” because nobody could agree exactly how to spell it out!  So this will probably end up being just a collection of unrelated nonsense again!  Well, I’m just filling space so I can get a handle on the new layout.  All for now!