Epcot Food & Wine Festival 11/8 and 11/9

We spent the first day exclusively at Epcot. We saw Captain EO, which was hilariously cheesy. The first time the screen showed Michael Jackson's face, a little girl behind us whispered loudly, "Mommy, is that a girl?" We couldn't help but burst out laughing at that. Completely priceless. We also rode Test Track, some kind of boat ride featuring Donald Duck in Mexico, another boat ride through Norway, and I put on my big girl pants and opted for the more intense version of Mission Space, which turned out to be much more intense than I remember it being when I was 16. Soarin' was probably my favorite, though.

Since the Food & Wine festival was going on and I managed to not spend any money on tickets, I decided to let myself try out a few things. The prices were actually pretty decent, but the portions were small. This actually works well for someone who has spent the day riding rollercoasters and intends to jump and dance wildly for an hour or so. My first choice was a potato pierogi with sour cream, caramelized onions, and sausage from Poland. Yum!


Next was chocolate mousse from France, which was so delicious that I made an involuntary sound at the first bite. It was so good that we went back to France on the 2nd day and I tried a Napoleon, something I had been eying the first day when I got the mousse. It was good, but not nearly as good as the mousse.






We chose to wear Hanson t-shirts that day, which sparked a lot of random conversations with the Disney staff. The girl at the Kim Possible station talked to us for a few minutes about how she didn't know they were still making music, and she had just seen them in the break room and was excited about it. Apparently "the young one" was buying a Snickers from a vending machine. The guy taking our picture with Duffy (apparently Mickey's new teddy bear? Ploy for money if I ever saw one) asked if we were going to see Hanson. I told him no, so he got defensive and said "Oh, I just thought you girls look a little young to like Hanson." I asked how old he thought we looked. He said 20, which led us to question how old he thought Hanson was. Normally people think we're too old to like Hanson, so it was just weird that he thought Hanson was older. I think he had Hanson pegged about right, he just thought we were all younger than we are.

I was happily surprised at how many people turned up to watch the show, and I think Hanson felt the same way. Taylor made several comments on stage that led me to believe that he didn't expect a lot of regular Hanson fans to show; he seemed impressed to see familiar faces and a sea of Hanson t-shirts in addition to plenty of curious vacationers. We ran into some other friends that didn't care about where they were going to be and also like to dance, so we had a blast rocking out by the wall for every show. We had our own little flash mob every time they played TBS (which was every single show, so 6 times total). Because of where we we re st anding, we were mostly surrounded by the random vacationers, and there were a few times where we were getting more attention than Hanson during TBS. The 2nd day, the awesome girls we met up with brought glow sticks and we had a blast dancing around like fools once again. I've come to the realization lately that people probably peg me and my friends as the drunks at any given show, but we're just naturally awesome.

I also couldn't resist splurging on some sequined Minnie ears.

Orlando 10/24/09

The drive to this show was a bit crazy not only because it was our 3rd show in 3 days, but we had to do an 8 hr drive on no sleep. I'm completely aware of how crazy this sounds, but I won't deny that it happened. Fortunately it helps to have 4 people who can switch off. We left Myrtle Beach around 1 AM, drove the 2 hrs to Charleston, showered at my dorm (and I packed), and hit the road again around 5 AM. We made it to Orlando with only minutes to spare, but we managed to make it to the walk. It was in the upper 80s and everyone was ridiculously hot and sweaty. The walk was on a college campus, so afterwards the guys did a TTW book signing and sang Great Divide and (I think?)Been there Before acoustically.

We were tired and not interested in wasting more money on PTL, so we went back to the hotel to relax for a while. We freshened up and lazed around, and I personally passed out for a good 20 min. nap unintentionally. We finally left to get in line about an hour before doors, and I stopped and got a peperoni pizza pretzel in downtown disney beforehand. Let me just say--YUCK! The HOB ended up letting people with walk stamps get in the PTL line, just like what happened in Chicago. I think it's a really nice way of rewarding the people who took the effort to go out of the way to get to the walk, and to discourage those who choose to stay behind at the venue out of fear of losing their spots.

We opted to stand on some stairs rather than go for 4th-5th row so we could see over heads (I'm 5'2"--it's either the front or the back for me). I kept migrating within our little 5 ft radius trying to find the best view, and I ended up losing it to a really tall girl, but that was my own fault for being so decisive, and my view was good for the most part. It was a little annoying having so many people wanting in and out of the crowd constantly, so I had to keep moving and pressing myself up against the people around me to let them out. Some drunk guy came back at one point and started to fall next to me, so I had to grab his arm and yank him back up so he wouldn't just camp out on my feet, and in his condition, I think that would have been his final destination if we hadn't intervened.

The show was good; Hellogoodbye got more energy out of the crowd than at any other show I saw. Once again the only song I had never heard live was the Isaac solo. He played Everyday and dedicated it to Nikki, who was apparently watching from the window upstairs. He said something along the lines of "this one is for a very special lady; she knows who she is" and then pointed at his wedding band and looked up at the window with this huge grin. So cute! Like I said, Isaac is holding strong this tour. I had actually never heard this song period, and I thought it was really beautiful. You could tell he really had his heart in it since Nikki was there.

We really wanted to get a good spot by the bus, so we decided to see what the encore was and then leave if it was something we had already heard. It turned out to be If Only, so we stayed long enough to get one good set of jumps in, and then ran back to the car to get cameras and stuff to get autographed (If You Give a Mouse a Cookie for me). NEVER again will I do this. I wouldn't say we missed something completely epic, but apparently during the break in the middle of If Only, they threw in the entire song Something Going Round! I would have loved to have witnessed that, and it kills me that I was sitting outside doing nothing while this happened like 10 feet away. Oh well, this is how you learn lessons I guess. They ended up not coming out at all, which is what further teaches me not to skip out early--it might not be worth it. We did end up meeting a really nice girl who had just rediscovered Hanson and was really excited about the show, so I had fun talking to her and remembering all those same feelings just two years ago.

The day ended with us falling into bed, which was an AWESOME feeling after the lack of sleep from the last few days. Just to put things into perspective...After Charlotte, I drove back to school and slept for about 5 hrs, and after Myrtle Beach, we had no sleep at all, so this was my first significant amount of sleep in about 3 days, and it was glorious.