Hakuna Matata.
What a wonderful phrase.
Hakuna Matata
Ain't no passing craze.
It means no worries for the rest of your days.
It's our problem free, philosophy.
Hakuna Matata.
This song came to mind after having survived the morning without a plan. I may have been knocked down, but I wasn't out for the count. Though we touched and went our separate ways, Lady H and I can go back to touring the way we know best. We don't stop believing this day will get better. When the lights go down in the city, and sun shines on the bay; well we wanna be there, at Disney. We take our time strolling through the park, holding hands and taking in the magic that DL has to offer. I got 6 hours to come up with a plan for tonight. Coming up with a plan for tonight will be a little easier. It will be dark, which means the dark rides will be easier to access. Haunted Mansion, Splash Mountain, Indiana Jones will be on the list. Right now though, Lady H and I still have some time to kill before we can go check in to our resort.
As I mentioned in the last chapter, we want to see the Iron Man exhibit at Innoventions. From here, we’ll hop on the monorail to Downtown Disney and ESPN Zone. It will help if the monorail stops, opens the doors, we can walk in and take a seat; but if we must hop, we’ll hop.
Lady H and I get to Innoventions. Not much has changed here. The only difference is the Iron Man exhibit. Here’s a few pics we took of the exhibit.
Lady H took a picture of each Iron Man suit. Once I change a few settings, I'll post the link.
One other cool thing about this exhibit they had going on was anybody could try on an Iron Man suit if they really wanted to. I thought about doing it, but I wasn’t willing to wait 40-45 minutes. Yes, I know I said we had some time to kill. But I also said we want to go to ESPN Zone. We’re starting to get a little hungry. Eating at 7 in the morning is bad for your health. It makes you hungry by noon, especially if you’ve been walking all morning. Plus we’re also past due for an adult beverage. By the time we hop on the monorail, get to DTD, walk to ESPN Zone, eat and make our way back to the shuttle area, it should be close to time for us to check in to our resort.
Once we’re done inside the Innoventions building, Lady H and I make our way to the monorail. One just pulled out, so I guess we’ll have to wait for the next one. I sense a pattern emerging here. Good thing is, there are 3 monorails and one come by about every 5 minutes or so. Pop quiz for those of you that read our previous TR. Without using Google, or Bing or any other search engine; what are the names of the 3 monorails?
Last time we rode the red monorail and we rode the same one again this trip.
It was nice that it stopped to pick us up and transport us to DTD; rather than having to try to hop on.
Here's a few pics I took from the monorail.
Shuttle Area
Entrance to DCA. You can see DL just across the way.
Lego Store at DTD
Now I will explain why the new ticket system is one of my new pet peeve’s. You would think since they take your picture and associate it with your ticket, that they would have eliminated the branding iron. Ok maybe you wouldn’t think that, but I sure did.
Well I was wrong, Wrong, WRONG.
Having your hand branded is still a requirement for re-entry into the parks. Heck I think my hand is still branded enough from the last trip. Lady H put it best. They can’t get rid of grandma, so they give her a job stamping people’s hands. Anyone see the problem yet. No. You will in time.
Having gone through the branding ritual, Lady H and I head over to ESPN Zone. On our way over, we notice several people doing chalk paintings on the sidewalk. Some of these people were really good. Let me show you some of their work.
Now for this next statement, I may have to give Ponzi his man card back. I pulled it over on his TR. Maybe by giving him back his, it will save mine. We get to ESPN Zone. There is a 45 minute. Today is Sunday. More importantly, it’s a Sunday during NFL season. I totally spaced out that today was Sunday.
Now before you decide to pull my man card Ponzi, let me finish my story and maybe you’ll show me some mercy.
We enter the line to put our name on the list and while we were standing in that line, we notice a sign. I don’t remember the exact wording of this sign, but it states:
In order for us to have a table while the football games were showing, each person is required to spend $10 per hour. Now the plate we are going for is $40. Does that cover Lady H and I for 2 hours? Or does that only cover us the first hour? Either way, we decided we didn’t want to wait and head over to Rainforest Café to try our luck. There is only a 25 minute wait here, but no wait if you can find a seat in the bar. Lady H and I decide to see if we can find some seats in the bar. SCORE. A table for 2, in front of a tv, that is showing the games and we are not required to spend a minimum dollar amount per hour.
Does anybody recall the drink we had at Dave & Buster’s? Correct. A Coronarita. To me, it was good, but not the best. I told Lady H that night that RFC has the best. Now that we’re here, I already know what I want.
Lady H takes a little convincing, but eventually gives in and orders one.
I think she really enjoyed it along with our pepperoni pizza. What do you think?
After Corornitas, pizza and watching some of the football games; Lady H pulls the old dine and dash while I was in the restroom. The problem is, she forgot to tell me about the plan. It wasn’t until she was outside that she texted me and told me where she was waiting for me. I guess I’m stuck with the paying the bill.
An hour after washing dishes to compensate for the amount of cash I was short, I finally catch up with Lady H. Since she bailed on me, she offers to buy me a beer at DCA. I take her up on her offer. After washing all those dishes, I was pretty thirsty. Plus we still have about an hour before we can go check in at our resort.
On our way to DCA, we notice the lines at the ticket windows are pretty short. We decide to stop and add the day to our City Pass while we, or rather she, still has money. I really don’t want to wash any more dishes this trip. We stand in line and go to upgrade our tickets. Once it’s our turn, we walk up to the next available CM. She asks how she can help us today and we let her know that we want to add a day to our City Pass. She gladly says I can assist you with that. One thing she wants to know is if we have used our magic morning yet and if we plan to. We told her no, we haven’t used it yet; but yes, we were planning to. She tells us if we don’t want to lose our magic morning, then to wait to upgrade our tickets. Being the City Pass tickets do not come directly from Disney, we would lose our magic morning by adding the day.
I’ll see if I can explain her reasoning. Once we upgrade our tickets, we will be issued a new ticket by Disney. Their system will bridge our City Pass with the new ticket, thus making the remaining days on our City Pass null and void. We would use our new issued ticket for the remainder of the trip instead. They have no way of transferring over our magic morning onto the new ticket. You would think this would transfer over automatically, but no. There system thinks you already used it and will no longer recognize if you did or did not use it.
Getting back to the ticket window, the CM told us that we have until the end of our 3rd day to add another day if we wanted to use our magic morning then upgrade. We agreed we would do that after we used our magic morning. We thanked her for her time and for providing us with that valuable information.
On our way to DCA, Lady H and I start to panic a little. Will they let us in to DCA since we didn’t have our pictures taken this morning? We are about to find out.
We walk up to the lady with the photo scanner and hand her our ticket. She scans it, looks at the screen and then looks at us with a puzzled look on her face.
That's it, we’re doomed. No entry for us. Go to jaiI. Go directly to jail. Do not pass go and do not collect $200.
I get ready to drop down on my hands and knees to beg for mercy when she asks if we had our pictures taken yet. We told her no, that the lady this morning was experiencing problems and just waved us through. She said it wasn’t a problem and would take our pictures now. What a relief. Our trip is saved. After taking our pictures, we proceed to the turnstile, give the CM there our ticket, show her our branding and we’re in.
Now one thing we didn’t forget about was the Gay Days group. They were everywhere, but not at our favorite watering hole. Lady H and I go for our beer. We decide to walk through the park a little so we can come up with a plan for tomorrow. We don’t want to get caught with our hand in the cookie jar again. Plus I read that Radiator Springs Racers FP's were lasting a little longer. I wanted to see if this was true or not. I doubt with the GD's group there would be any left, but you never know. We get to the distribution area and nope, all gone. As we continue our walk, we stop and try to replicate the photo we took last year.
CHEERS!
While walking through the park, we couldn’t help but notice the way some of the Gay Days people were dressed. Some had the typical red shirt that they can purchase. Some of the guys were dressed normally to the point you wouldn’t think they were gay. Some of the guys dressed really flamboyant. They dressed better than some of the women. Some of the women dressed like men. Then you had men and women dressing like Lady H. No, not my beloved Lady H. Lady H from CSI. Being a family site, that is the best way I can describe it. Needless to say, they were having fun, we were having fun and it was a wonderful afternoon.
After we finish our beer, Lady H and I head out to catch a shuttle to the TSM parking lot. Getting close to the time we can check in to the resort. We get to the lot in no time, get in our car and drive the long ¼ mile to the resort. Our plan this year is to avoid the sales desk, but these places have gotten tricky. Once you check in, they send you over to the sales desk to deal with……
Nope tricky Larry wasn’t there this year. We dealt with a different lady. After you’re done with check in, they send you to this desk to get your welcome package and more importantly; parking pass. We told her we really didn’t have much time to do any presentations this week. Their ploy is to try to get us to buy more points. We're almost to the point of paying off the points we have now. We also let her know that right now we had little time to talk as we had to get back to the park to meet up with other guests we were with. She understood and gave us the quick run through.
We unpacked and settled in to what would be home for the week. The décor in this place looked exactly the same as the last unit we had. Since it looked the same, we didn’t bother to take pictures this time. We had a few maintenance issues that needed to be dealt with. The refrigerator wasn't cooling down. This would be a problem as we need to chill down the rest of our beer. Plus we will be buying groceries either tonight or tomorrow. Once we finished settling in, Lady H and I had another beer before we hit the road; and while we were waiting around for maintenance to show up. Eventually they did show up and told us they would just need to replace the refrigerator. It was getting close to time to meet back up with Nebo and Smidgy so we gave them the go ahead to replace it while we were out.
Lady H and I grab our stuff and head out. One thing we didn't have time to stop for was more park bottles. There is a liquor store across the street, but if we try to go, we may not make it back in time to meet up with the rest of the gang. We skip out on the liquor store for now, hop in the car and head back to the TSM parking lot. We land up in a different portion of the parking lot now. A lot closer to the shuttle pick up area. We board the shuttle and make it back with more than 2 seconds to spare this time. I wonder if Nebo and Smidgy are here yet? You'll find out in the next chapter.