Category Archives: Travel

Disney, Day Two

Travel Leave a reply

We wake, well rested and ready for Hollywood Studios!

I’ve always loved the faux studio theme because it works so well in an amusement park dedicated to movie studios, where creating fake scenes is their job. It’s rather meta.

We arrive for rope drop and shuffle our way over to Toy Story (No running!) for FastPasses and our first ride. Since the line was only 10 minutes we took advantage of that and rode it right away. As we left, the wait time had risen to 40 minutes. By 1pm, I am sure they had run out of FastPass tickets. It’s that popular.

After that we rode Star Tours 3 times. Yes. 3 Times. SharkBoy was getting a bit woozy after 2. I could have stayed all day. With all the combinations (54 to be precise) we managed to get two the same. Garrrh! But still, we RODE IT 3 TIMES!!

After we watched the Little Mermaid stage show which has the most creepiest stage puppet I’ve ever seen. Ursula is “full size” and basically is horrific to behold in terms of it’s movements and it’s manic eyes. It always freaks me out a little when I see it.

Quickly we rock on over to Rockin’ Roller Coaster for some Aerosmith fun. My man boobs flew around much like Steve Tyler’s! Then, zip right over to Tower of Terror where a bunch of Brazilian students in a tour decided that yelling and chatting all the way through the line, the pre-show and the basement queue was ok with them. Sigh. But the ride was amazing – at one point my camera, firmly strapped around my neck, hovered over my left shoulder in weightlessness. Weee!

After that the day blurs. We’re still a bit tired and yet we manage to wander around the park taking pictures for another couple hours. We do the Great Movie Ride (This… Is… ALIEN!) and somewhere in our confusion we forgot to go see the Indiana Jones Stunt show. Woops. It was my choice not to go see the always crowded Lights! Motors! Action! because I was sure I’d manage to fall asleep on a bleacher. Not an easy feat, I tell you.

We leave the park and walk over to Disney’s Boardwalk Villas for a quick looky see and we muse about becoming Disney Vacation Club members yet again. Sigh… some day…

Back at the resort, we could see EPCOT’s fireworks from our balcony, and along with a couple other people, watched at the night sky lit up like some idyllic war-torn country. We hit the hay early!

Flowerful
Baloo!
Arf!
Disney Hollywood Studios Main Gate, Rope Drop
Aren’t you a little short for a Stormtrooper?
Zworp
Hidden Mickey Here
Warning, Pork
Gaah!
The Tower!
Vinyls!
Stink Eye
Street performance.
ToT Detail
Tower of Terror lobby
Tower of Terror Detail
Tower of Terror detail
Hoopdie!
hoody
Ruffage – sitting inside a faux theater box office
Pew pew! Run, run!
Easiest Animatronic Ever.
Boat And Terror
Florida squirrels are so thin!
Ghosts by the path
Ghosts by the pool

Accidental Tourist

Travel, You Magnificent Bastard, You Stupid Dick Leave a reply

Orlando International Airport, 7am. I’m foraging for food for my husband near gate 25 at an “upscale” cafe that serves cinnamon rolls. I’m 3 away from being served.

At the head of the line is a well groomed gentleman, plain clothes, nothing to write home about, who had just ordered a coffee and a danish. He’s told the amount for his purchase and quickly digs into his nicely weathered satchel and produces a can of mixed nuts.

He hands the can to the woman. “You will find the money in here,” he says. Straight faced.

She hesitates. She looks at him. He looks at her. The can in his hand doesn’t waiver. She takes the can. She opens the can.

It’s filled with dimes.

As she dumps and counts, the man places his fingertips on his eyebrows and looks downcast.

In my post-Disney, post-vacation depression, I don’t know if this is annoying or awesome.

Disney Day One

Travel 2 Replies

On this day, just after the announcement that Ontario Place will be closing (90% of it anyway), I give to you our first day of travel into the World!

We arrived Orlando at around 11pm, a bit rough around the edges. The flight was ok but going from work to the airport is really an act left for travelling salesmen and the like.

Our car was a Mitsubishi Lancer, which turned out to be a surprisingly fun car to drive. Well, actually I just did the riding in the passenger seat, fiddling with AC and the radio. And what is up with Riannah’s “We Found a Love In a Hopeless Place”? We heard it at least twice every day.

Our check in was marred by some poor unfortunate soul that wasn’t completely “with us” as it were. She had some issues and needed to tell the front desk cast member (who she stole from us as we were waiting in line) all about them. Like how she didn’t like milk and couldn’t contact the airlines and how her room was 3″ smaller than her last stay and how aliens probed her nightly. Okay not as dramatic, but you get the gist. The poor cast member was gracious and after 15 minutes of this, was reduced to “Uh hums” and “Yep!”

We get to our room around 1am – a lovely shoebox at the Pop Century, much like every other shoe boxes in this resort, overlooking the the lake, nearly facing the new construction of the Art of Animation resort. A sneak peek (pic below!) – our first Disney Miracle! We crash for the night but not before having a giggling fit over SharkBoy mentioning that we need to leave a tip for the “mermaid”. I started to laugh hysterically at the thought of a mermaid pushing a blue hotel cart around and taking all day just to clean one room. Funnier at 1am, really.

Our first park was Animal Kingdom. A place where if I were not ride any rides but wander it’s paths with camera in hand, I would still have a 100% satisfying day. We did the Kilimanjaro Safari first which turned out to be a PRO TIP – the animals were much more active in the morning than any other times we’ve experienced it. But of course we did ride nearly all the rides. But by noon we were beat. The late night, early start kicked us in the gut and we left before the park was closed. We could have stayed and re-rode some things but we couldn’t keep our eyes open.

That night, we drove over to Celebration to sap some WiFi from a Starbucks. If you’ve got the chance, go visit this town that Disney Inc. built. I think the board members felt some guilt that EPCOT didn’t turn out like the city that Walt wanted so they built their own community and called it Celebration. It’s like Stepford Wives meets Steven Spielberg meets any subversive alien invasion movie from the 50s. Everyone has gingerbread houses, rocking chairs on the front porch and kids getting A+ in school. Its a bylaw I think.

We checked out The Bohemian Hotel for our next trip back in December. Let me tell you, the website makes it look like a bed and breakfast run by crazy homosexuals when in fact it’s a pretty beautiful hotel. Will definitely look into staying!

Early Morning Sharkboy with Art of Animation in the background
Sneak Peek of the Art of Animation Resort
Ready for our Safari
Da Rhino
Beest!
Elephant in charge
Cheeky Cheetahs
Early Morning Ostrich
House that Meerkats Built
Six Legged Thingamajigger
Sensibly Censored Gorilla Butt
Repose by the falls
Hairy Arms
Work it!
Gruh
Snotty Lizard
Good Morning!
Everest, not really.
Am I not Turtel Enough For you?

In the World

Travel 3 Replies

We’ve been hitting the parks hard.

Last night, after being at EPCOT for 14.5 hours, SharkBoy fell asleep on Spaceship Earth. Thank the Venitians! Or Helen Mirren’s ducet narration.

Awesome trip so far. Only downfall is the lack of wifi at Pop Century. Update needed. Right now I’m sapping signal in the lobby of the Polynesian Resort.

More later!

Anatomy of a Vacation

Personal Bits, Travel, You Stupid Dick 6 Replies

Or… Refusing to Give The Fat Man Any More Attention

Okay so in the last week I’ve written nothing. I’m no going to force anything or apologize so you’ll just get this:

That’s right. We’re headed back next week to enter the bubble. We’ve been scrambling here at Dead Robot Heavy Industries to get ourselves prepared.

Last week the final cheque from Da’s estate came in and with it sitting in my hands I made a vow that I would not spend it on rent or food or any other items that we may use ordinarily – ESPECIALLY with a strike looming. Even more so, in fact. I truly don’t want any of Rob Fucking Ford’s machinations to affect or effect me. He’ll not get this money. No, a semi-evil corporation in Florida will.

So off to the internet! I spent days scouring for the best/cheapest time to travel and finally found that the last two weeks in January are extremely cheap for rooms/flights. After Feb 7th, prices jump up into that somewhat uncomfortable area. Finding a deal on WestJet Vacations (no this isn’t a paid post… I wish it was though! Hi WestJet Vacations SEO bot! Hi!) I had very little time to convince SharkBoy that we wanted …no… NEEDED to go back to Walt Disney World before this deal disappeared into the ether.

I knew that getting him into Vacation Mode would be difficult, simply because he was in Stress Mode due to Rob Fucking Ford. I had to move delicately. I start by small short emails to his work – three lines of text, like a carefully crafted Haiku:

Pop Century: Jan 24 to 31
Room, flight and park tickets: $1705
Car Rental: $80

Understandably he responds with strike news. But he asks about prices for Gay Days in May. The price I find for that weekend are painful. He tells me not to torture myself and stop looking.

I don’t give up easily and I keep it up. A few days later, while watching TV, I hand over my iPad with the booking on WestJet Vacations (Hi! How you like me now, WJV??) in it’s final stages. $1705 all in. Taxes too. He growls. Later, I hear the printer going in the office and he comes into the bedroom and tosses freshly printed booking inquiry sheets. The price at the bottom is $2350.

“See? You’re wrong. Expensive.”

“Oh bitch, it’s on,” I think and take him step by step into my plan:

  • We leave on the night of the 24th, so we’re only spending 4 vacation days and a weekend. Magic!
  • Since we only have 6 full days in the park we can skimp and only do base tickets. As you know, we’re pretty hard core. We know which park is open early/late and know exactly which one to hit for each day, with one extra day for repeats and the last day back at Magic Kingdom (a tradition).
  • Ditto on the food plan – they’d charge us for our “flying days”, one of which gets to WDW at 11pm, so PASS, thank you very much.
  • Rental8 dot com has some pretty cheap cars if you don’t mind slightly less polished service or cars.

I show him my iPad again after all this. I can see in his eyes I almost have him. I hit him with the a fore mentioned reasoning of “This money will not go towards the strike!” And the walls start to crumble. I say that we are exactly right in between our last vacation and our upcoming December vacation (give or take a month) so the timing is utterly right. He sits and starts looking into Extra Magic Hours (resort guests get in early or stay later at the parks) and certain dining reservations. I know we’re truly going when he maps out what day equals what park (Updated from the comments…):

  • Wednesday: Animal Kingdom
  • Thursday: Hollywood Studios
  • Friday: EPCOT
  • Saturday: Magic Kingdom
  • Sunday: Hollywood Studios (This may get replaced with a day by the pool and Magic Kingdom late. It’s on the fly)
  • Monday: Magic Kingdom for our hats

Before he changes his mind I pull down our change boxes and show him that we have already enough coin to be rolled for the cost of the rental car.

In the end, we booked it and are rarin’ to go. “Pull up 2, 5 and 7!” as they say at Test Track!

Admittedly I am feeling a twang of guilt for not saving the money, but I never wanted it in the first place – I’d rather not have it sitting around making me feel bad for not spending/saving it. I think this is right and I’m excited.

And so is SharkBoy – I just got this email:

Me: on our duplicate park days, I’m only bringing my small camera – compact and ready for action, not my Big Betty.

SharkBoy: Well, you be NoCameraBetty if you want, I’m not going to miss an opportunity, I’ll carry my big betté and you’ll be all blee blee blee bloo bloo bloo blee blee blee and I’ll be all click click click ooooo aaaaaaa click click click ooooo aaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaa click ooooo click aaaaaaa

MapleCon

Distractions, Hobbies, Travel Leave a reply

It’s true what they say about kids being coddled these days.

When I was 16 my parents let me and an 18 year old friend of mine, travel to Ottawa on our own to attend MapleCon, my first science fiction/comic book convention. I had saved up my share of the hotel room and somehow convinced my mom to put a deposit down on said hotel room. I guess I was a trustworthy kid back then.

If I were to be 16 today and ask my parents that, I wonder if I would be allowed to go. I doubt it.

Ah MapleCon… You never forget your first ‘Con. Ottawa and surrounding area’s only gathering of nerds. I can still remember the poster of Captain Canuck advancing out of frame in your grey and white tights. Here’s a MapleCon 5  program as example of how cut and paste and typed everything was back then before computers. I can’t tell you how fantastic it was (is!) to discover that there were (are!) thousands of other dorks like you out in the world when you walk through the door of any con. Dorks that will stay up all night just to sit through a VHS showing of Dark Star or A Boy and his Dog with a room full of other dorks.

I didn’t have a ton of spending money so my convention floor purchase had to be just right. I think I scoured the entire room twice for the right thing to bring home when suddenly I found it: a 1979 12″ Alien doll (action figure!) with glow in the dark skull through green plastic cowling. And snapping jaws!

We didn’t act like wild, untamed beasts while away. Somehow I knew that if my parents got wind of bad behaviour I’d not have this opportunity again. Also, I was too stupid to do stupid things. We didn’t drink or trash our hotel room or do anything illegal. Our biggest crime was staying up all night at the Con hotel, playing Dungeons and Dragons. I remember on the way back to the hotel, in front of a huge line of people waiting for a bus, my friend went into a demonic southern preacher style rant and pretended to “heal” my soul by slapping my forehead so hard that I fell to my knees – much to the amusement of the bus crowd.

Don’t worry. I got him back. Years later when I lived in England, he visited me in London. While showing him the town we were waiting on the back platform of a double decker bus and I somehow managed to tell him that we were at the stop and he could just jump off. Even though we were still probably travelling at a rate greater than a brisk walk. The result was his feet flying out from under him and his body doing a perfect roll/crumple in front of a busy shop. Ha!

Anyway, the point of this story is that I was the darling child of my parents because I didn’t trash the hotel room or get drunk or do drugs (the opportunity certainly was presented) and that kids today are trustworthy, you just have to trust that you’ve taught them well and trust them.

Rough Seas

The Bad, Toronto, Travel, You Stupid Dick 1 Reply

On the downside, SharkBoy’s union just mailed out strike pay applications.

It seems it’s inevitable, unavoidable at this point. Unless some Hail Mary play happens between the pig-headed mayor and the unions, we’re going to see a very messy Toronto over winter.

The question is: how long? Tin foil hatted people are saying that Rob Ford has a plan to keep the strike going long enough to save XX amount of dollars. That or he’s going to staff all these services he’d rather cut with scabs for an indefinite amount of time. Or he just doesn’t give a flying fuck what you taxpayers think, he just needs someone to bully to make him feel good.

For whatever reason, it seems like we’re headed for some drama. And a few weeks (months??) of eating nothing but Kraft Dinner and day old buns purchased at the local No Frills. Thanks Rob Ford for moving the city of Toronto forward!

On the upside: despite this gloom and doom, we are putting a modest down payment on another Disney cruise in exactly 11 months, 10 days. Not that I’m counting.

This trip will be a carbon copy of the Disney cruise/parks trip we did in the spring with a possible variation on “parks before or after the cruise”. Even though when I explain to people that we’re going again and doing literally the same thing, it may sound boring and redundant, but it’s far enough away that we will be needing a little Disney right about then after what could be a very stressful winter/spring.

Fingers crossed cooler heads will prevail.

Happy B-Day WDW!

Distractions, Travel, You Magnificent Bastard 3 Replies

Forty years ago today Walt Disney World opened it’s gates to the world, creating, arguably, the last “greatest American establishment”. Steve Jobs and Apple (inexplicably entwined with Disney) comes close as a corporation but it’s not exactly selling “memories”, per se.

I digress.

Covering more land than they know what to do with (27,400 acres of Florida swamp, or 6.5 square miles), Walt Disney was going to create a utopia (or dystopian to some) of modern living, community and recreation, where Disney himself (without any formal urban studies training) would oversee and maintain the city of the future. But after Disney’s death, WDW thankfully became a near-carbon copy of it’s Californian cousin, but with much, much more room. While his vision of a perfect community may never have come to fruition, he did create the means towards a company that brings happiness to millions of people (as well as bitter fodder for millions of others, and in a way, making them happy!).

I’m saying Thank You, Walt Disney World. And I’m sorry it took me so long to get there.

When I was a kid on a Sunday night, I, like SharkBoy, like so many others, would watch the opening of The Wonderful World of Disney on CBC and marvel at the over saturated video of DisneyWorld shown in the titles. Monorail across a beautiful Floridian sunset! Space Mountain! Smiling kids! Cartoons! GARRRAAAHHH!! I had to go!

Later in life, I chose to make animation my career and took to Sheridan College where somehow I shunned all things Disney, thinking it was too structured, schmaltzy and rejected it’s child-like sensibilities, favouring the insane comedy stylings of Warner Brothers (truthfully I still do but in my older age, appreciate the craft of Disney more).

Then I met SharkBoy – and he taught me that loving Disney isn’t a crime, even at 42 years old. He took me to WDW at a point in my life when I needed to believe in dreams and magic and all that shit. I do believe that if I hadn’t experienced Walt Disney World when I did, I might have gone down a really dark path in my life where I think I would have lost my youth. Truth be told, I *am* a 16 year old kid (emotionally) living in a 46 year old crumbling body but I seriously don’t care if people see that part of my personality as a negative.

In the course of writing this little birthday wishes card to WDW I’ve gone back and re-read most of my pre and post Disney blog entries. And I find they make me happy. Go up into the search bar and look for “Disney” and you’ll see it has more written about it here than gay sex, career angst or robots – and I know robots. You’ll see me gush about the anticipation I felt before the trip, the planning of the suitcase, the trolling for facts and for travel tips inside the parks, the scheming of surprising SharkBoy with a trip there without any fore-knowledge, and you’ll see it all made me giddy as a kid in front of a TV on a Sunday night.

I wrote so much about my experiences there that some days when randomly pick up WDW specific travel books, I think to myself, I could do better than that!

And I may…

So I have to thank Walt Disney World for their little resort they have down in Florida. I can’t wait to see you again, old friend!

My first ride ever, in WDW. And also one of my favorite of SharkBoy.

Finding my first Hidden Mickey! I win!

How long had I waited for this parade??

I didn't know about the Water Parks. Thanks SharkBoy! Beautiful!

I was against it when I first heard of Star Wars and The Mouse merging. Now I love it!

Our First Gay Days

Wearing pictures of each other at 11yrs old. SharkBoy’s Shirt: “I married him!” Mine: A thought bubble of a cheeseburger

Alway perfect...

Added Bonus: CBC’s video effect happy early 80s intro:
Here’s the CBC’s 1984 groovy disco video version:

Day… um… forgot… San Francisco and Home

Queer stuff, Travel Leave a reply

Coit in the distanceWhen we got to San Francisco we discovered that a lot of streets are one ways, no turns and scarily steep. Actually this should came as no surprise because, well, we’re seasoned car rentalists when it comes to vacations and both of us have been to SF before. But not in a driver’s capacity.

Needless to say the first 30 min in SFO was spent swearing at the street known as “Geary”, which would not allow us to turn left to arrive at our hotel. We spent a few minutes with map in hand and watching end-of-day rush hour whizz by our Jeep. We did eventually find a way to the hotel, but the rest of our stay, I would punctuate our map references with “We have to cross over fucking Geary…”

Here are the talking points on our trip:

Big treesWe spend a few glorious hours at Muir Woods. I could have made a whole day there it was so beautiful. I asked a ranger where they filmed “Vertigo” and she responded that there was a place called “film ridge” where “some movies were shot there”. Mere metres away from where she was stationed, I swear to god we found the “Here’s where I was born…” scene with Marnie in front of the bisected tree stump was shot – at least I was convinced. Also, it’s rumoured that parts of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi Endor scenes were filmed there, but I’ve found no concrete evidence on the internet. Still, it was pretty frikkin amazing.

Even though the weather was chilly, which we welcomed after a summer of blistering heat, both SharkBoy and I decided we could live in SFO without hesitation. Every street, every neighbourhood, every nook and cranny was something to behold. Even the uber-scary Tenderlion had some impressive views of architecture, street culture and crazy pooping crack people.

Lombard StWe got a message on Instagram from BigRedDee saying how much he wanted to meet us. When we arrived in front of the bar we arranged to snag a drink at, we were surprised to meet up with Xianjessen and on another night, Ron (of both Flickr and Instagram fame, and boyfriend to Bark). Both were super nice, friendly and we had a great time chatting. I hope we can meet up again soon, they made our visit to Castro so much fun!

There was one “asshole moment” where our hosts, SharkBoy and I were wedged up against a wall in a packed bar just off the Castro. Due to time constraints, I had brought my big DSLR camera with me into the bar, unable to get back to the hotel to change after the day of wandering. As the place filled up, and the drinks flowed, I managed to be right beside an attractive guy who unfortunately kept on bumping into my long lens. My fault, really. Aside from the poking puns I could make, I felt kind of bad we kept on knocking each other and made efforts to try to avoid him. Finally he turned to me after the 4th bump and I smiled, shouting an apology for my camera over the bar’s music and noise. His glazed eyes took notice of the Disney pins stuck to my camera strap. “Oh look. Disney pins. So interesting! All you’re missing is the furry strap for your camera!” he slurred.

“Be nice! I *am* a tourist!” I said with a smile and an edge to my voice.

“I use to be a cast member, an actual character. Suit and all,” he said, with such inference that “cast Member” equaled “SS Stormtrooper just doing his job”. His eye never left my pins.

“Oh? Who did you play?”

“Rafiki,” he said with a weird mix of pride and shame.

“Ah.” I said. In my head I said ‘Rafiki? So boring.” To which I think he sensed my unimpressed internal monologue and we literally turned away from each other simultaneously.

Flickr Meet UpContinuing on… The Disney Family Museum with Bearexposed and his hubby was amazing (yet incredibly sad!) – probably one of the best museums I have ever visited. It was more of a visual biography than museum. Go with adults. Seriously this ain’t a Disney ride.

We walked the hell out of San Francisco, which as you know, is nothing but hills and ankle breaking sidewalks. I. Loved. It. If I lived there I’d have an amazing ass.

I speculated that at one point, some long forgotten mayor had won his position by promising every resident of SFO a bay window in every home. Seriously.

We have no immediate plans to go back, but rest assured we won’t wait another 20 years before we return!

More pics here