WDW 2011 Day 2 - Part Four - DisjointedImages

After leaving the fish we wandered into Germany. The miniature village and railway is great for closeup pictures – and sometimes you get photographed back!

I’ve been spotted:

After a quick break we decided that the rest of the countries (and indeed, Germany proper) would have to wait as I could feel my feet were starting to realize I meant walking ALL DAY for real, and not just an hour at the mall.

So we headed down to the boat launch since it’s right there in front of Germany – and waited for the next one to come by. While waiting – we caught the Illuminations fireworks barges being brought out. The bridge between the Outpost and China raises up and they come from a staging area in the back down that canal. It was really cool to watch.

The boat ride itself is nice and relaxing. The windows are polarized so you won’t bake on a sunny day – but still allowed for some good pictures:

Captain Dan

Captain Bob
“Please refrain from jumping off the boat and swimming in the lake” (kidding)

A really cool shot you can only get from the water:

After landing near Mexico – we headed back to Futureworld and decided our stomachs were empty enough by now to do Mission:Space without causing a “CLEANUP AISLE NINE” for some poor CM…

Yes… we were going to go ORANGE!

It was WALK ON. We could have ridden a dozen times in a row. (Guh, more power to anyone who could though…) The queue line inside was roped off to be as short as possible, and I’m pretty sure I’m one of the few people to see that. Because of that, I was able to hop back into the queueing area and get a completely unobstructed shot of the space station setup inside…

Waiting for our shuttle:

Chris was to my left and we had two guys about our age or so to my right. I hear the one farthest to the right hitting buttons and flipping toggles, and his buddy going “Do you HAVE to hit all the buttons? You’re always messing with stuff!” and then his friend laughs and hits a few more toggles for good measure (or to irritate him, who knows). I wait a beat and say in my best female computer voice “Self destruct initiated – counting down”. Both of them crack up. I’m a laugh riot, I know. :rotfl:

There is a metal bin to put your belongings in and I wasn’t prepared for that – so I was a bit worried that my camera (I didn’t think to put it in its bag) would get knocked around and damaged considering the spinning part involved but luckily it came through unscathed. So a warning for those of you with DSLR’s permanently in your hand.

Let me say though – a few more days on the dining plan and this might have been too cramped to ride. It is a very VERY close quarters type of setup. The screen is 6 inches from your face, you have an over the shoulder locking restraint, and once locked in I had to hit the buttons with my arms crossed over my chest. The joystick was right at my tummy. On the plus side – I now know I’m not claustrophobic!

DANG – intense is right. I could feel my cheeks pushing back from my face and a heavy weight on my chest during the takeoff. The weightless part was equally realistic. I’d definitely do it again – but agree on making sure you’re not on a full stomach!! I was a bit queasy for a while afterwards. Basically I felt like this:

Outside I overheard a family who had just come from the ride, and the grandmother in the group was saying how the ride was really intense and ohmygosh how she didn’t expect it to be like THAT – and the rest laughed while the father admitted they went on the orange side without telling her and the other was the mild version. She put on a good shocked voice (but you could see she wasn’t really upset) and said how bad they all were for tricking her. I giggled and they heard me, and the mother pointed at grandma and said “She’s 76 and just rode orange!” I looked at the grandmother and told her “You need to go home and brag about that to everyone!”