A Forced March Through Disney World

Hi players.

This weekend saw my parents come down for a visit. Good times as usual. As it was the weekend before Halloween and everything, we decided that at some point in time we'd go and pick up some pumpkins to mutilate, but there was also a strong desire to hit up the Food and Wine Festival at Epcot as well.

Let me talk about the latter first.

You readers know, by now, that the Houghs are seasoned veterans when it comes to the Parks. We know the tricks, we know the traps, and we know how to kick out our Ya-Yas when in Disney country. A day strolling around the fabricated international community that is Epcot's World Showcase - sampling various boozes and delectables from around the globe - sounded down-right awesome. Righteous, even.

Well, this time was different.

I don't know if the Gods were against us, or some other sort of otherworldly ne'er-do-well decided to kick sand in our face, or what, but our attempt at enjoying the 2010 Food and Wine Festival was sabotaged from the get-go.

Our first mistake? Thinking we could 'swing by' the Magic Kingdom, do a few rides, have a meal, and make it back to Epcot for a few hours of beer-drinking and cheese-devouring, if you will.

Not happenin' this year, folks. Not by a long shot.

Apparently, the It's a Small World After All ride (I hope that song gets stuck in your head reading this, too) is the single coolest ride at the Magic Kindgom. Seriously. My parents wanted to take the Cannonball on this, because she likes it and, hell, the line is usually really, really short. You can imagine, then, our dismay when the trio reemerged from the ride after an hour-long wait.

Were we pissed yet? Almost, but not quite.

...we hadn't had dinner yet.

We opted for yet another hypothesized 'quick stop' at the Pecos Bill restaurant. Here, the vicinity was shoulder-to-shoulder with touristy idiots from around the world, and it took a solid 45 minutes to place our order. During this grueling period of time, both Abby and Alayna were miserable and making all kinds of racket, and we were quickly losing all patience with the entire concept of theme parks in general. When we did finally get our food, Alayna spilled her chocolate milk all over the table, consequently soaking Kris' meal and ruining dinner for all persons present

Now we were pissed… but we weren't over being screwed with. The Gods still had it out for us.

We made it back to Epcot around 8:45pm-ish, assuming the park closed at 11pm... thereby giving us a sound two hours, at least, to stroll around the World Showcase and enjoy ourselves.

You can imagine our agitation when we were told that we had 15 minutes before we had to leave.

Evidently, at 9pm the park was shutting down for the evening firework spectacle, Illuminations. While it's an okay firework show and all, I wasn't feeling Fourth of July-ish, having worn my sandals paper-thin fighting crowds of idiots all day long and feeling the clock work against me throughout the entire course of the afternoon and evening. We walked to the back of the park long enough to obtain a half-ass view of the twenty-minute firework show before having to turn about-face and walk all the way back to the front of the park.

Now I was pissed.

I'm sure someday I'll be able to laugh this whole affair off, but, without a doubt, the day's chain of events went down as the absolute crappiest time I've ever had in an amusement park. Bar. None.

...the silver lining to this tale, folks, is that such a weekend cannot possibly get worse. On the contrary, our failed attempt at the amusement parks was the only low note in an otherwise awesome weekend with my folks. As mentioned before, with Halloween fastly approaching, and preparations reaching a fever-pitch, we decided to drive out to Celebration (where all the yuppy, Disney executives live) and pick out some pumpkins to carve.

They had a really, really cool set-up at the ol' Celebration Pumpkin Patch. Tons of photo opportunities to be had, and we definitely took advantage of them. If I were to upload them here this would be indeed one hell of a long entry. Instead, seeing how my Dad's already done all the leg work for this one, I'm redirecting you all to an already up-and-running website.

Check it out.

After the pumpkin patch, we brought our haul back to the house where we watched way more Yo Gabba Gabba than was probably necessary, ate some flatbread pizza, and mutilated the hell out of those pumpkins. We even got some swim time in at Dad and Cindy's hotel pool.

Enjoy.

- Brian