Wake-up time this am was for 6:30 as Karen had a pre-conference meeting to attend. After finally finding the correct door to drop her off at (the convention center must be at least a half of a mile long), I didn’t waste any time and headed right for MGM. This was an opportunity to ride all of the rides that Karen was too chicken to ride. First stop--- Rock'n' Roller Coaster. With a 10 minute wait, it was definitely worth it! This has to be one of the most incredible roller coasters I have ever ridden. The premise is that you are in a limousine on the way to meet Aerosmith at their concert "all the way across town". It starts you off with an acceleration that must be 0 to 60 miles per hour in about 6 seconds. From here it goes directly into an inverted loop. It doesn’t stop there and just keeps turning you around and around all the while with Aerosmith music in the background and completely in the dark. The only downside I would have to say with this ride is its length. It seems to be over way too soon!
After stumbling off the Coaster, I made my way over to the Tower of Terror. The wait was only 15 minutes and worth every minute of it. This time again, I lost count of how many times we fell down and got pulled up and fell again. Each time is different and very cool!
As I am a big Star Wars fan from the time of the original movie, I was excited that it was "Star Wars Weekend". Next stop was to Mickey Avenue to see the "Making of the Phantom Menace". Unfortunately the first showing wasn’t until 12:00pm (it was only 9:20am). So onward to New York Street and then to the Star Tours (had to do something Star Wars this weekend). Scattered around this area were several Star Wars characters posing for autographs and photos (pics). Darth Vader, Chewbacca, Princess Leia were all there. Onward to Star Tours, a cool ride each time.
After leaving Star Tours I walked over to the Great Movie Ride for some photos and then back down Sunset Boulevard for ANOTHER ride on the Rock'n' Roller Coaster! I figured I would take advantage of the smaller crowds to do this one again. Second time around was as incredible as the first.
By this time it was approaching later morning and the crowds had continued to build (Sunday is early day for MGM). With this I decided to vamanos out of there! As it was still rather early in the day, the tram ride out to the parking lot was deserted. Only myself and another person were on the way out. Even more weird was the fact that I was the only one getting off at `Stage’. This had never happened to me and it felt really odd!
The next stop was to Publix for some food. We had a small refrigerator and microwave in the room so we thought it would be nice to keep some food handy. After the supermarket trip, I sat out at the pool for a short time until Karen returned from her conference.
With Premium Annual Passes in hand, we headed over the Typhoon Lagoon (something we hadn’t been able to do with the DVC passes). Here too there were tremendous crowds both in and out of the water. We took a leisurely float around Castaway Creek and swam in the wave pool.
Leaving Typhoon Lagoon we made our way to River Country. This was something new for each of us as this water park had always been closed during previous (even as children) visits to WDW. Surprisingly, the crowds at RC were very light. Not many folks in the lake or in the pool. Swimming in Bay Lake was a very cool thing! They had quite a few fun and different water activities- the catapult, water slides and even a 15 foot drop off a huge rock slide into the pool After getting ourselves water logged we returned to the hotel room for showers and to await the arrival of my dad. If you have read previous trip reports, you will know that my dad lives in South Florida so we will try to see him while at Disney. He arrived shortly before dinner and, all cleaned up, we walked over to the Ponderosa for dinner with the all-you-care-to-eat salad buffet. There was a really nice spread of food and a reasonable price.
After dinner we made our way to Epcot. We walked into Epcot just as they were roping the people off for the Tapestry of Nations parade. There was not any place to walk!!!!! We fought our way to the Millennium Village. At first glance it seemed like a nice addition to the World Showcase with information on some of the Nations that weren’t already included but true to Epcot form seemed like another excuse to sell items. The first half of the village was all Nation display but the second half was almost completely a display of wares for sale. Oh well, a nice demonstration of other nations not currently at World Showcase.
While we were in the Millennium Village, Tapestry of Nations finished and we were greeted with a throng of people coming in as we excited! Having only a very short amount of time left, we made our way to Ice Station Cool and to Spaceship Earth, one of my favorite Epcot attractions. I tried to take some night photos of the 2000 with Mickey hand but couldn’t get a clear one. As Illuminations finished a humongous crowd worked its way out the door. We waited for the bulk of folks to leave and then leisurely made our way to the car.