DECEMBER 13, 2011
Day 9, Part 4 In Which This Is ALL THAT!
Happy December everybody!!
This trip was officially almost a year ago exactly. I really can't believe it. I feel like it was just a few months ago. Hey life, STOP DISAPPEARING BEFORE MY VERY EYES!!! SHEESH.
Do you think I can finish this TR by Dec 14, 2012? That will be a year to the day that we came home from this amazing trip! I'm gonna try!
After our relaxing time in Hollywood, we high tailed it over to Epcot! Which is the only appropriate way to go there, as per Stacey.
In actuality, we just went to go wait for the Epcot bus, which took really long to arrive. I can't remember why we didn't take the Friendship boats... it may have been because I wanted to walk into the park and see Spaceship Earth in front of me one last time before we went home. At the end of our trips, everything is about dramatically seeing/doing something "one last time". LOL.
Oh, what a beautiful sight.
I really wanted to go on Mission: Sinise, say it with me now....
one last time, so that's where we headed. Mom didn't feel like riding, so she waited on a bench nearby while I went on. Not a lot to report there - usually I get teamed with amazing/crazy/hilarious people, but this time it was just your average Mission to Mars.
After I said goodbye to Sinise, it was time to visit Ellen, who we hadn't seen in YEARS!
I used to love - LOVE this attraction. I was seriously the biggest Ellen fan. I still am. But I remember the whole thing with her coming out on TV and how amazing and brave she was, even though I was only 7 or 8 at the time. My aunt was gay so it was extremely relevant and powerful to me, even at that age. I used to watch her sitcom with my mom every single week, and so when I realized she was in a ride at my favorite place in the world, I was so thrilled.
On one trip, we actually went on this ride twice, and my dad was so mad because he wanted to spend more time in the World Showcase, and here I was forcing my parents to go on the longest ride ever a second time in one trip.
What can I say, I love me some Ellen.
I also just loved how there were so many different elements to this attraction, so many different ways they presented all this information to you, so many different sections of the attraction, making it so much fun to learn all these facts about energy. Yeah, it's a little long but it is well done and Jamie Lee Curtis is there too with Einstein! It's just a quality attraction.
ANYWAY my point is... a lot of people skip it, and we hadn't been on it in awhile, but I love and appreciate EEE very much! I mean, it's no trip to Mars with Sinise, but it's still awesome.
I used to love these dinosaurs when I was a kid. I was seriously fascinated by this.
Also, I don't have a pic, but this attraction is home to the worst audio animatronic ever. It's Ellen, except that it looks nothing like her. It's truly remarkable how lifelike the Hall of Presidents animatronics are, so I really don't know why Ellen's looks so awful!
Here's a (bad) pic I found on Google:
LOL.
Our brains chock full of energy facts (Stupid Judy!!!!), we headed over to the World Showcase.
The main thing I wanted to do was the Kim Possible mission, which I had never done before but REALLY wanted to cause of all the great reviews I heard.
People on the DIS have always put disclaimers when writing about it in their TRs, saying not to read on if you haven't done it because it would spoil the surprises, so that only made me want to do it more. I needed to know what these surprises were!!!
We signed up for a mission and got a pass telling us to go check in at a certain time, so before helping Kim save the world, we killed some time hanging out in the UK.
I did what I always do while at the World Showcase, take pictures of candy that amuses me and flirt with boys. Duh.
I LOVED this Alice in Wonderland tea set:
Especially the rocking horse fly at the top!
I was actually going to buy it, but I was really concerned about getting it home safely so I decided to mull it over for awhile. I still haven't purchased it! I decided moving to Disney is the only option, that way I can just drive it on back to the apartment with no problem.
The flirting went OK, didn't pick up any husbands but I did have a convo with one of those super uppercrust types. I could tell by his accent, because in the UK the sharper and more perfect your accent, the higher status you are considered. Or something. I don't know, I've never been there but I read a lot so I know random things like this. He was VERY PROPER and I just knew he was Prince William's 14th cousin or something. We spoke about tea and I asked if American tea is generally as horrible as English people claim it is. He said he didn't know, he never tried it and probably never would, he brought his own tea over and makes it himself. LOL. OF COURSE. WHY HE EVEN TRY OUR SWILL? Honestly.
I wanted to see British Invasion, but they weren't there that night. Instead, there was a really good band playing songs by the Who, and they definitely had the rock and roll hair down too. Haha.
Loved them!
After the band finished, I went into the shop that has all the insanely amazing rock and roll merchandise... and I proceeded to have some kind of seizure. OMG.
I live for the Beatles, and they had so many fantastic Beatlethings. I was dying! It wasn't just your standard black and white shirts that say "the Beatles" or have the photo of them walking across Abbey Road. There was so much unique and beautiful merchandise, I was honestly in Heaven! Not to mention all the great Rolling Stones, Who, Led Zeppelin, Elton John, etc etc stuff they had. I really freaked out because I wanted to buy EVERYTHING and here it was almost the end of the trip, so I was kind of feeling like I had spent enough money. So I was like WHAT DO I BUY, WHAT DO I NOT BUY, WHAT DO I DO, WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE, WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE, IS THERE A GOD, etc.
It was quite the existential crisis.
I took like 30 pictures of various things I loved and wanted to buy, but I have some sad news. Most of my pictures from this part of the trip on are GONE.
My old laptop just decided to totally die one day and the place I backed up my files on only uploaded a random selection of photos instead of all the ones I added. So I lost a lot of stuff. When I get my old laptop fixed, whenever that is, hopefully I will be able to recover and share them in a future TR! Until then, you will just have to rely on my fabulous descriptions, because I have only a handful of pictures left to show you for our last two days. BOO.
I bought an I heart UK shirt... I liked it cause it was in a different style than most shirts like this that you see. Like I said, everything was pretty unique! I also bought a a Beatles change purse and a John Lennon shirt. I seriously could not wait to get back to this shop, but on my most recent trip I noticed that the merchandise is not as great as it was last year! Still awesome, just not as varied.
I posted on Twitter:
Just lost my mind in the UK shop that sells all the Beatles, Who, and Stones merch. Want to spend every dime I have.
I'm not a very materialistic person, but when you connect rock and roll with shopping... I go a little mad. AHH.
So it was at this point that we got to the time we were supposed to check in for our Kim Possible mission, and my mom was really not feeling it. She thought it was going to be super kiddie and didn't want to do it.
I got a little annoyed b/c I wanted to do it so bad and I was so excited and she was kind of putting a damper on that. She was all for me doing it and was like "Go ahead, have fun!" But I wanted to do it together.
And she was just against it. I tried to explain how awesome I had heard it was, but she had made up her mind, apparently? I hate when people don't trust me about how amazing something Disney-related is going to be. It's like, IF I KNOW ABOUT ANYTHING IN THE WHOLE WORLD, it's Disney. Just trust me!!
I was just going to drop it but I really thought it would be fun to do together and NOT just for kids (I mean hello, there is a lot of stuff we do in Disney that could be considered more for children and we enjoy it just as much as a kid would). So after arguing for a bit, I just convinced her to at least follow along with me.
We got our Kimmunicator and found out our mission was in Germany. Now, you all know how I feel about Germany
so I was very excited about that! So off to the land o'beer and pretzels we went!!
Ok so, even though the mission is no longer Kim Possible themed, I'm pretty sure it's the same concept so I don't want to give anything away. BUT GOOD LORD, this is pure Disney magic!
I'm so happy I didn't read any spoilers, because I was seriously shocked by what happened. I thought it was so cool, and I can not even imagine how blown away kids must be by this. If the Kim Possible mission had been around when I was a child, I would have FREAKED. It's just that next level kind of magic that only Disney can provide.
Even my mom was amazed by it. The first time something happened (again don't wanna give too much away) she froze and said, "You didn't just...
make that happen, right?" And I was like YEAH I PRETTY MUCH DID AND YOU DIDN'T EVEN WANT TO DO THIS. So after that point, she was into it, which made me very happy! She said that she thought we were going to have to be on some kind of timed schedule and rushing around the entire World Showcase, and that's why she didn't want to do it originally. I was like GIRL, no. You need to make a Disboards username so you can be up on all the information! Sheesh, Mom. Sheesh.
I couldn't wait to get to the next part of the mission each time. It was so fun running around Germany, solving mysteries, crushing evil villains, and saving the world! The new theme is Phineas and Ferb, which I've never even seen, but I will still definitely be participating. It was so fun!
Our mission complete, I got one of my favorite Disney snacks: a Bavarian pretzel. You can actually get these exact same ones at Whole Foods, but it's way better when you're around the German CMs. Trust me.
While ordering, I almost knocked over one of the drinks they had on display during my attempt to to flirt with the German CM. I apologized and he said it was fine but was laughing at me. Another flirting mishap courtesy of Lia. You're welcome. (Don't worry, in my next TR, you'll learn that the whole flirting w/Germans thing went a lot smoother.
)
Also... I noticed his name was STEFAN. I looked around for Damon, but he was nowhere to be found. Le sigh. Speaking of which, GO DELENA! Who saw the latest TVD episode in all its shirt-ripping glory? I did. Hales yes!
OK so, I then heard something amazing, and cracked up laughing.
I posted on Twitter:
A GROUP OF GIRLS ARE SINGING THE ALL THAT THEME SONG IN GERMANY RIGHT NOW.
OH it was so awesome.
Sit still cause we're comin' right atcha!!! OHHHHHHH UHHH OHHHHHHHHH THIS IS ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLL THAT! THIS IS ALLLLLLLL THAAAAAT!!! YEAH YEAH!!
Ahhh, I was so happy. That was just the perfect thing to happen in that moment. And it wasn't even the last time I would hear a song from my childhood be randomly sung aloud in Disney... stay tuned during STUCK IN DISNEY for that one!
Up next: Loving Japan & our last TS meal of the trip!
BOO!!!! (to. you. AHHHH!!!)