This time I don't mean the Stanley Cup winners, I mean real actual lightning. Our Disney passes were expiring. We decided that we wanted to go one last time. Of course, our car's radiator is still shot so it couldn't make it the hour-and-a-half drive. We ended up renting a car for the day. (We got a 2004 Mustang. Oh, it had working a/c and it didn't overheat and it was all new and drove so well.....*sighs* We need a new car. Poor Angelique is nine years old now and has been falling apart for the last couple of years. She's in bad, bad shape.) Had to pick it up from the airport because I couldn't find anyone not at the airport to rent one. Took forever to pick up our reservation (I made a 9am reservation and we got there late, maybe 10amish and we didn't get out of there until almost 11am) Left our car at the airport parking, drove out to Orlando.
Nice to make the drive in air conditioning. Usually, we're way overheated by the time we get there just from the drive itself. Went to Magic Kingdom. Got some burgers, rode People Mover and saw Philharmagic. It was quite hot out. Went to Pirates to ride because it's always way cold in there so my poor Love could cool down. Went and got our picture taken with Mickey in the Judge's Tent in Toontown.
aw, ain't we cute in our Lightning shirts?
Saw Hall of Presidents and Carousel of Progress. Then the skies opened up. And it started to pour. (and pour and pour and pour....) We made our way over to Liberty Square with our umbrella. And then huddled in Ye Olde Christmas Shoppe because it was sheeting rain with renewed vigor. We thought we'd try to brave it to get to Pirates when the lightning began in full force. It was everywhere and directly overhead. Scared the shit out of me. Then we hear this HUGE CRACK! and knew something right near us got hit. Turns out it was the Hall of Presidents building - right across from us. Let me repeat that for you: The Hall of Presidents was hit by lightning. Eep.
this is how close we were to the building that got hit by lightning!
Of course we didn't find this out until we ran across the street to that building because we were crammed tightly in the Christmas store. We get in there, sit on a bench, and are informed by the cast member that we're welcome to sit in the theater part, but there's no 5:30 show (it was about 5:40pm) because lightning hit the building. They were hoping for a 6pm show. We sat for awhile, reviewed the pics I had taken. The rain sounded like it lightened up a bit. So we went out and made our way over to Pirates.
Pirates of course was still freezing. And I was pretty well rained on and cold already. Brrr! Actually, we ended up riding it two times in a row. (Why not? There was nobody there and there was very little we could do in the downpour anyway!) I never got to ride Big Thunder. I had FastPasses for it from 5:10pm-6:10pm. But it was shut down when the rain started and I don't think ever re-opened that night. I also never got my DoleWhip (pineapple icecream in pineapple juice. it's fucking delicious. but it got too cold for it). We did get to ride Philharmagic, Pirates of the Caribbean (3x), Haunted Mansion, People Mover (3x), Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Hall of Presidents, Carousel of Progress (2x), The Barnstormer, and got our pic taken with Mickey in the Judge's Tent in Mickey's Toontown Fair. All while it poured and we stood around for awhile. Not too bad. It never fully stopped raining. Which is odd. Normally when it rains here in Florida, it's an afternoon shower that's over almost before it starts. Instead, it started to rain and just kept on, over and over in a continuous rain highlighted with massive downpours and wicked lightning.
We didn't know if they were even going to do Wishes (the fireworks show) because it was still raining. So we ended the night taking a ride around on the Walt Disney Railroad and called it a night about 9pm. (The park closed at 10pm and Wishes was set to start at 10pm as well.)
The train station guy was a hoot! He was telling us about how people honest-to-god come to the park (often from like South America), every summer, bring their old grandmothers with them but leave them to ride the monorail or the parking lot trams all day long! They don't buy them a ticket into the park, so they just send them on their merry way for the next 10-12 hours to ride around in a loop on the monorail. We were cracking up. He wasn't kidding. We all agreed our grandmothers would kick our asses if we tried to do that. *laughs*
sorry train dude! didn't mean to cut half of you off in the shot!
We took the monorail back to parking and asked if we could ride up front with the driver (which you can do, you just have to ask. Most of the time, it's kids that get up there, but we were just about the only people riding that train so there was no problem). Sure enough, we got to! It was a GREAT ending to the night. It was so much fun.
our monorail driver
We asked the driver - a nice guy named Ian who told us he thought being a driver at WDW at age 19 as a college student was a pretty good gig - about horror stories of the monorails. He said he didn't really have any for the new ones, but the old ones (Mark IV I believe he called them) didn't have collision dection systems. So someone had to sit in the front and the back driver cars at all time to visually keep an eye out to avoid crashing into other cars. Well, one driver fell asleep. And was awoken by exactly that - smashing into the monorail train infront of him. He said luckily no on was injured but that it was then they decided they needed an anti-collision system. Also he said they didn't have fire systems either. Guess if they burst into flames you were just shit out of luck. We asked him the top speed - which he graciously obliged and took us to, right before he had to start slowing down *lol* - and he said 40mph. But, he confided that on a downhill slope, you can trick the computer and get it up to 47mph. I promised I wouldn't tell Disney that though and that I would vouche for his safe driving. (Though we all agreed that if he collided with the train in front of him that we doubted our word would count for much, seeing as there would be, well, a lot of physical proof. *chuckles*) He also cracked a joke about how the 60-ton train can't fly and got my own joke about how it could mimic Buzz Lightyear - fall with style. It was the coolest thing though. He was funny and it was really neat to peer out the front of the train and see the view from there. It was a great ending to the last day at Disney.
We hope that we can save up and renew our passes in the fall. Maybe like October. It'll be hard to wait all summer before we can go again, but it's so hot and crowded and miserable anyway, that it wouldn't be a lot of fun even if we did get to go. Still though, I'll miss it. And despite the horrid rain, and the really freaky lightning, we did a lot and had a good day. Which is what counts in the end.
~ flowers bloom near Memory and Dream
at 6/11/2004 01:35:43 PM ~
~
