my wedding/honeymoon thread...

[bell]

now for the tram ride.....pretty fun stuff, basically old props and such but cool nontheless......the "real" behind the scene tour is coming on friday......

walt disneys private plane, his pilot still works for disney in the office side somewhere......neat history

who knows what this is?


they also have an action set where the tram gets jostled around and a tank is getting hammered by fire/water.....i have a video but still need to transfer it from my phone....

had dinner at the sci-fi diner, decent steak but was not my favorite one....



wednesday....october 31st....holloween
magic kingdom day......


lots of kid oriented rides....but again we had no lines, and everything was entertaining......i laughed the entire ride on space mountain, scored 113,000 points on the buzz lightyear ride etc etc....
the haunted mansion ride was just reopened a few weeks before after a thorough restoration, michelle was excited....again no line


we had bought special tickets for the "mickeys not so scary holloween party", which was basically a bunch of fireworks and a holloween parade.....
fireworks looked good and expensive and went right with the music, good show....

THEN.....we were sitting on a set of benches with michelles friends, michelle and i took a restroom break and when we came back her friends weren't sitting where we were, they had arranged for us all to sit in vip seating for the parade.....which meant better watch your toes....we ended up with about 30lbs of chocolate from the disney cast handing out candy, normally they drop a few pieces into peoples bags.....when they gave us ours everyone gave 2 handfulls each.....the bags were overflowing


i have more pics but i'm done for the night........thursday gets better....and friday better still......
more to come

[bell]

Part 4......
thursday nov1

epcot....last time michelle was here she was literally rushed through the "worlds of adventure" which is a bunch of different simulated countries, from mexico to germany, with the associated food/shops.....
so we spent a better part of the day there......


me receiving the "phone call" for michelles suprise on friday.......that's me in the yellow shirt


when we were walking through "america" we were grabbed by an old quaker dressed guy....who asked if i received a phone call. just a coincidense though.....he took us to a phone and it was mickey and minnie wishing us a happy honeymoon LOL funny stuff.....then he told us to take the elevator as we were their "honored guests", we watched a small band play from the balcony then were given the front few rows in the big theater to ourselves for the movie/prop show. nicely done and basically went through history using film and animatronics. good stuff.

when we made it back into the main part of epcot we checked out the coke sponsored "drinks from around the world".....which is basically a ton of different types of soda from around the world.....some good.....some absolutely mouth puckering garbage.....i can still taste the horror LOL

then we made our way over to the "living seas" which is their big aquarium, the nemo ride (lame LOL) and the coral reef restaraunt which is where we had dinner reservations.
i like all things fish....so i was looking forward to this.




the coral reef restaraunt is situated where one large wall is the large aquarium....so watch fish and eat dinner.....couldn't get any better right? well they stuck us in possibly the absolutely worse spot in the building, in the back corner in front of an ambiant noise amplifying curved wall and no view of the aquarium......i was pissed as this was the first "bad" experience since we left home the week before.......they're damn lucky the food was good.....

nightime revealed that they had fiberoptic lighting in the concrete, pretty cool, i need to resize the photo......

more to come.......

[NE Ohio 911]

Bell- Congratulations! Once again, time has gotten away from me. I'll give you a call. We need to go out to dinner after the Holiday to celebrate.

[bell]

sounds good doug, i've meaning to shoot you an email, been pretty swamped since we got back

last part........friday nov.2
we had 8:30am reservations for chef mickeys breakfast buffet which is at the contemporary resort, food was good......so was the mountain of bacon
they gave us "special" placemats for the honeymoon...


yes the tophat and ears were worn by me......this helps with getting the "honeymoon perks" which were random

honeymoon perk.....


after breakfast we headed over to the magic kingdom so michelle could "finish up" there, we rode the train, visited mickey and minnies house.....
again no one was there

after that we headed back to our resort so we could meet up with my suprise of a "special tour".

i was really blown away by what happened, michelle was about in tears when we were done so i'd say the suprise was a hit
at 1pm we were picked up by 2 executives in an airconditioned trailblazer, after introductions they gave us 2 neat little gift bags with some goodies, simple stuff but very cool. we were asked to not take any photos and we obliged and understood, they were worried they would "take some of the magic" away from our trip, we assured them that wasn't possible.
first stop was at the magic kingdom where we hopped on a 4 person golf car and headed to the tunnel system which covers the entire magic kingdom, it is also the core of the infrastructure of the magic kingdom, it was like an entire city underground.......they showed how everything is handled from emergencies to trash removal (which was really cool), at other parks you'll always see someone pulling a bin and emptying trash cans, at disney the trash is dropped into a conveyer system in a giant tube in the ceiling and it shoots out of the back of the park to a waste facility.
they also showed us some things which we aren't supposed to talk about.......so i'm not

after we got back in the trailblazer they took use behind the scenes of every park, their private nursery, water treatment plant (ALL water in the park is filtered through it, from the canals to the fountains), restoration facilities, and the coolest i though was the very fist building ever placed on the property which walt himself had lived in and was where it all began, it is currently being used by one of the many disney mantainance groups iirc.
michelle spotted one of the original submarines from "20,000 leages under the sea" which was dismantled long ago.....just sitting there in a lot
so all in all it was very cool and something the public never sees.
the 2 execs gave us 2 hours of their time and a peek into the unseen world at this giant park system, we were highly appreciative and a special thanks to those who were involved

[bell]

that night we had dinner reservations at the grand floridian cafe, i can honestly say that i enjoy ceasar salad to the point where i could be considered an expert, i can also say that the ceasar salad i had AT the grand floridian cafe was the worst ceasar salad i've ever had.......warm uncrispy lettuce, way too much garlic and not enough eggwhite.......horrible horrible......the rest of the meal (steak) was ok, but i've had better.
afterwards we headed over to downtown disney, michelle wanted to shop and i wanted to check out the lego store.
i've got to resize the lego pics as they're too large, but it was cool. they had a 1/8 scale lego ferrari F1 car i want to pick up

saturday morning we were heading out, had approx 1020 miles to cover.....we left at 8:40am sat and pulled into our driveway at 12:40am sun, that works out to about 16 hours avg speed of 68.75mph, including the 5 fuel stops and 1+ hour for food/restroom breaks.
total trip milage was 2,400+ and we averaged about 26 miles to the gallon.
no speeding tickets, no radar detector, i've got good cop eyes

when we got home our 2 cats were fine along with the exception of duane (the big old meany) as he simply hissed at us for about 2 hours, i think he was pissed that we left LOL
my fish were all still alive, our friend who was on cat detail also dropped in food for my oscars.....they were actually happy as hell when they saw me, oscars are the only fish that act like a dog

all in all things couldn't have really been better, the wedding went over without a hitch, no road incidents, disney was fun, and we did it all without going into debt as we paid for everything ahead of time WITHOUT using a single credit card

we will be having our reception this spring, most likely in april.


the happily married couple

[BRPORSCHE]

I love disney. That sounds like so much fun. Congrats!

[Overpaid Slacker]

out freaking standing!

I think "Caesar Salad Connoisseur" is a better tag than "Registered User".

Looking forward to seeing you guys in April (if not sooner).

JP

[mjshira]

looks good Bell, congrats. I remember when you two just got together and your fish tanks still dominated the house ;-)

let me know if I can help at all with the job search and or move.

[bell]

thanks jp and james
when we were in orlando i did some research on how marketable my "skills" are there, turns out it may be the area where i'll make the most money compared with charlotte or charleston, i have every bit of confidence now that i can make about 15% more there with better opportunities for the future....i know i said i wouldn't move to florida, but i think i could deal better with really hot summers than mild winters somewhere farther north......plus p-car weather year round

i'll be starting a new "relocation thread" to investigate that area more soon.....


here's some more random shots from the trip.....

michelle didn't see me in the mirrors when she took these pics
these were from our room at the port orleons riverside resort...




the big ass coffee mug i bought....