Day One is here
Day Two is here
Day Three is here
Pics of Day Four and Five are here.

The morning of Day Four we scooted over to Blizzard Beach for the advance opening. After a shocking entrance scuffle (apparently you can jump the entire queue by announcing to the staff that you have a stroller and bypass everyone who were waiting before you), we race to Summit Plummet. Via a nerve wracking chair lift.

(The story of the park is that a freak snow storm blanketed Orlando and seeing a cash cow, Disney created a ski resort, replete with chair lift and apres ski lodges. But surprise… everything melted into a water park! Kooky!)

Anyway. The chair lift was the only time I actually got scared on any rides in Florida, for some reason. I was fine with all the other roller coasters and height rides but this simple chair lift had me spooked. Summit Plummet was high up. After the chair lift we still had to climb about 15 storeys to get to the top. The ride was a (near) straight down drop to a gentle curve ’til you were horizontal, skimming along the top of the water at 60 miles per hour (radar guns proved it!). At the top, there was a chubby Scandinavian father and sun duo in front of us and the little kid was chickening out. I wanted to say to him “Kid. Do it. I’m over fourty and I have regrets. You don’t want any. Just go.” But he went with all three of us, plus the life guard, encouraging him. Zippo. Later I saw him going again.

The other speed slide, Slusher Gusher, was frightening because at the second hump, you actually get some air and expect to land hard on your back, but due to the slope and brilliant engineering, you just go bloody faster. SharkBoy went first. As I was getting into position, the Life Guard muttered “Wow. That’s a big wake,” as SharkBoy hit the bottom. Ha!

The rest of the park was fun. Not as beautiful as Typhoon Lagoon, but just as fun. Again we were done by 1pm and we hopped in the car to zip over to Magic Kingdom for lunch at Tony’s Town Square Restaurant (Think Italian stereotypes from Lady and the Tramp). Delish Butternut Squash soup. Yummah!

It wasn’t our official “Magic Kingdom” day but we managed to get 90% of Adventureland done. My childhood dream of going on The Jungle Cruise (funny Japanese tour guide fresh from Tokyo Disney!) and Pirates of the Caribbean were off my list!

That night we went to Full Moon Saloon and met a great couple of guys Bruce and George from NYC. Unfortunately we didn’t get their email – stupid – because we were certain we’d be seeing them the next night at Downtown Disney for the opening party of Gay Days. How naive we were!

Day Five was our first “full” day at a park – Animal Kingdom – and the first official Gay Day. Red shirts started to show up all around. We race like kids over to Dinosaur The Ride and get that out of the way. Then zippo over to Expedition Everest – where after one ride, I got sick. Like “Oh lord. No pukey please! Hold it in… hold it in…” kind of sick. We had fast passes to go back in an hour so we wandered around a bit and I was ok enough to go back on, but make myself just as sick again. Thing is, you go backwards fast for a few hundred feet, stop suddenly and are forced to look up and to your right to watch a video. Which makes your head spin a bit. Anyway. I was ok after I had a nice sit down and spritzing from It’s Tough To Be A Bug show. And we were already wet from Kali River Rapids so I had my daily tourist wetting by then.

Then. We. Saw. STITCH! He shook my hand and I was googley eyed and couldn’t speak. He’s a lot smaller than I remember from his movie. But I noticed that he was able to sign his name while holding kid’s autograph book up to his “eyes”, not his mouth, where the actor inside would look out from. I snuck a peek at one of his signatures and it was amazingly clear and well printed. Wow. They must practice that for hours…

A couple more rides, a refreshing lunch and then suddenly we were caught street-side while a parade went by. Across from us were muscular red-shirted gays in the same unmovable predicament. Oh well. Watch the parade. At one point, right in front of us, a Cast Member dressed up in comical Safari garb and Pluto, in similar garb, were dancing between us and the red shirts across from us. The Cast Member shimmied up to Pluto and with one finger pressed to Pluto’s snout, directed his head over to the attractive gays. Pluto goes mental and dances over to them like a circuit queen who just spied his supplier. The good looking red shirts instantly knew there was a homo in Pluto and responded by dancing with him. Yay Gays!

More rides. More pictures. We waited a long time to get pics with us and the top 4 (Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Donald). The people behind us were jealous of our pose with Minnie. By this time the day had steam rolled over me (hell the week was starting to catch up with me) and we went back to the hotel for a disco nap. We then drove over to Downtown Disney to see if we could find Bruce and George but Mannequins had a line up out the door and around the block. Packed. Instead we made our way into 8Tracks where they played the best of the 80s. After there, we stood outside and watched the straights mingle with the ever increasing crowd of gays. It was like a mini, well controlled Toronto Gay Pride.

See SharkBoy attract rug rats outside Kali River Rapids: