1. EPCOT is kinda lagging. In general the rides don't have the Magic Kingdom nostalgia and have proportionately less of the new hotness, plus it's a feels like more walking with less shade than the other parks. (Disney Hollywood was my favorite of the parks - the Role Play-lite of Star Wars, especially on The Rise of the Resistance ride (which is a mindblower) was great.)
2. Lightning passes are totally worth it. If you're investing the time and biggish bucks to travel far anyway, Lightning isn't that much more on top, and 2-5 minutes instead of like 30-60 is a HUGE quality of life boost.
3. Similarly feel free to ask for the front of a ride if you want. It doesn't take that much chutzpah, no one seems annoyed, and often the view is that much better. (Some rides can't really accommodate, but if they can they just have you stand aside, skip one, and get the front of the next.)
4. If a ride has a glitch of any kind, feel free to complain to the Guest Experience people, they'll usually comp you a make good lightning pass.
5. "DisneyBounding" is that thing where Disney fans (who aren't allowed to really cosplay, I guess to prevent confusion) use colors and stuff to represent their favorite characters as they visit the park. Disney is leaning into this by making a big variety of character-theme Mickey Ear headbands.
6. There's a pretty good but somewhat clunky app for navigating the parks (and juggling lightning passes) - I was annoyed that when it's giving you walking directions, you can't pan or zoom to see the path ahead of your immediate next few turns.
7. There's also a "Play" app that gives you games to do, some location specific. I shied away them because I got confused by their multiplayer aspect; but now I'm guessing it's not people head down on their own phones, it's more like pass a single phone around and be social, which would be a much better vibe.
8. Lynette made sandwiches most days and we brought some other snacks, and it took me a minute to realize that it's not just frugality, it's also just nice to have a little something whenever you want, and things more normally nutritious than the other fair-food stuff we were still enjoying.
So like with the Hegseth being called on his blatant security protocol violations and being worried about "leakers" - this administration wants to do lots of vile stuff, but not let anyone hear about it...
Mech outside Avatar "Flight of Passage" ride.The Safari was really good... ...like you know the animals aren't ranging free but they are so cool to see."Tumbler Monkeys" at the Lion King show... amazing spectacle.The Lion King show was really good, between the acrobats and the giant puppets.Also the Marabou stork was hella huge and amzing at the bird show.But bird puppets are cute too.The puppetry of the Nemo show was also superb - loved how it retold the whole story.We got stuck at the top of the Expedition Everest ride...From the top you could see the Epcot Ball in the distance, and other Disney features.Lynette loves her some Gibbons.All Star Sports Hotel signage is cool (bad photo of it). Funny being in the cheapest option in the most expensive public places on earth...
Disney Hollywood Studios were pretty onpoint, and the "pretend you're there" Star Wars was really cool.
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Stormtroopers didn't like my Kirk shirt.D'awwThe Muppet 3D Movie Feature is going away for some Monsters Inc stuff :-( Bummer. But I love how subversive the film was - there's a hella annoying 3D CGI and the subtext (basically text) prophecy annoying 3D CGI was going to wreck it all was about right.Loved seeing the guts of Robo-Lincoln in the museum,Robo-Lincoln control panel.Tuba Spotting #2, at the muppetsKermie + Lynette!AT-AT!Falcon!Gonk! (Lynette was impressed...well, maybe impressed wasn't the right word... in how in the movies and here I recognized the power droid Gonk)
I enjoyed making "The Most Magical ____ on Earth" jokes.
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Two Disney Cuties on the way to the Magic Kingdom.Good lord. The fascist version of the Stars and Stripes melding with the Mouse is just a bit too. on point.Space Mountain, all time classic. Lynette noticed the stars weren't up for our first ride so we got to take another later.Paying homage to an old photo from a ~1988 trip...Always room for Bacon!Country bear jamoreeTuba spotting #1. Wearing a delayed birthday pin to try and get some freebies."offical" shot from Haunted Mansion.It's a Small World, After All.We did a lot of food tourism. Later Aurora found an ice cream named after her and got a free cone.Not an attraction, but damn, when it comes to birds looking for scraps an ibis is so much cooler than say pigeons.The castle!The castle at night!
Lynette and I had a cool opportunity for a semi-subsidized trip to Disney in Florida... maybe Disney wouldn't be our first choice of cool destination, but hell, it's Disney!
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Lynette has an affiliation with Thumper, so this cupcake topper became a holy wafer.Sunday was a pre-park day but we checked out Disney Springs - "Gideons" is kind of a chibi (cute) goth cookie place...We had a nice dinner at the Boathouse (Lynette loves her some local grouper) - we didn't try the amphicars they had there. (But we got a free t-shirt from the easter egg thing they were doing when we went to buy some of their grouper spice.)Dinner at the Edison.Aurora (Lynette's foreign exchange student from Italy) used the excuse to dress up a bit.
Two years ago I used the prompt with diffusionBee, "a cat with black and white features and tentacles from a snake's body rising out of water in a photorealistic style"
I asked ChatGPT, using whatever DALL-E 3. I guess it's technically a lot better but damn the old one was so cool. I wonder when (or maybe already) we can ask modern image makers to look like the old weirdness.
I don't disagree that I'm often preoccupied with incredibly stupid shit, but frankly, cultivating the capacity to find joy in incredibly stupid shit has much to recommend it.
