Florida Travels: Disney

Okay, here's the Florida travelogue part 2.
Disney World!
(Once again, all my own photos)

Day 1
Okay, this place is over 40 square miles. It's as large as several cities. And much of it is still undeveloped.
Every corner I saw was jammed with detail. It really is like visiting different lands: An African village, a shop on Nepal, or even the lands of Star Wars and Avatar.
The employee only signs, water fountains, and everything are designed to fit in the area's theme. They have fake advertisements posted on the walls and poles. Even the people working there fit in.
If it wasn't packed with tourists, you might forget you were in Florida.
These are the water fountains in the Snow White mine car ride.


Oddly enough, I was relieved to find the old classic rides with their old-fashioned animatronics. Splash Mountain, Haunted Mansion, Pirated of the Caribbean, ex. I was afraid they'd be dumping the old rides and replacing them with crazy fancy stuff. But they haven't! There's awesome new rides, and nostalgic, fun old rides.

The first day we went to the Magic Kingdom - basically a smaller version of Disney World. I haven't been to a Disney Park in over 10 years, so that was fun.

I was excited to see wild ibis. We have some of these at the zoo, and I'd never seen wild ones.


Then I headed to Epcot.

It was close to closing, so I had to dash around like a mad person. And Epcot is huge, so I ended up wrecking my legs for the rest of the trip since I speed-walked all of Epcot @_@
Smart.
Dude, I want to spend more time in Epcot, visiting all of the little country areas. I got to see almost none of it. I did manage to jump in the Japan shop a couple minutes before the park closed. They had Pokemon, Zelda, and Ghibli stuff. I was far too excited to find those things in Disney World XD
I got out of the shop just in time to see the last few seconds of the fireworks show.
Each park has a big fancy show when they close. It basically funnels everyone out of the park, after dazzling them with lights and fire.


On the way out, I passed the Mexico area. And I saw a sign for a Coco show.

And of course it was closed. I thought it was just a little stage show. But I looked it up after I got home. It looks like they had a little shop in there. And I missed it.




Day 2
All of day 2 was spent in Animal Kingdom, and I could easily have spent another day or two there. It was massive.
And amazing.
In the heart of the park is a massive tree, carved all over with dozens, or hundreds, of different animals. I'll just share the giraffe with you for now.


Since I do behind-the-scenes tours at the zoo, I decided to try one at Disney. I took the elephant tour. They had someone from Africa talking about ways they keep elephants out of farms. If elephants eat the crops, people will kill them (because the people don't want their families to starve. You can't blame them).
Elephants don't like bees. Bees know to go into their trunks and sting where it really hurts. The people hang bee hives on fences around their fields. When the elephants try to get through the fences, the bees come out and scare them away. Brilliant!

Also, they have a place that takes care of injured wildlife found in the parks.
They grow a lot of their own food for the animals. And that farm is almost as large as the entire zoo where I work! @_@ Almost 100 acres.
Elephants eat a lot, after all. And they're only one of the species in Animal Kingdom.

More exploring after the tour.
They have two beautiful villages - the African one and the Asian one.
The African village, Harambe, has a store with lots of beautiful African artwork made by artists that came over from Africa. A man was there carving beautiful wooden animals.

And a woman was making amazing beaded jewelry. I got something from each of them. A carved elephant and a pair of beaded earrings.

You can go on an African safari. In Florida. It was very cool. They had elephants, painted dogs, white rhinos, cheetahs, ankole cattle, and everything else you'd expect to see on a safari trip.
There were masai giraffe, which I'd never seen before.

There were three young ones, all following an adult in single file, like little ducklings.
There was a baby gorilla too!

In the Asia region, there was a beautiful shop with traditional masks and carvings all over the walls. Remember I mentioned how much detail there is all over the place?
Well, this is the wall behind the shop's cash register.

If you go to a shop in Nepal, the wiring looks just like this.
DETAILS!
People who do amazing research. It's beautiful. TT^TT

I hardly saw any costumed characters. I think most of them had indoor areas so they didn't melt inside their costumes.
But look how lovely Kevin looks!


After visiting Africa and Asia, I went somewhere even farther away. Pandora.
This was one of the places I was most excited about. I love the movie Avatar. But I never could have expected how awesome Disney's version of Pandora would be.
You walk into Pandora, and suddenly there are the floating mountains towering above you, draped in vines and spouting waterfalls.



I headed into the riverboat ride, where you cruise through the glowing night forests, with the little spirit seeds floating around. It ended in a beautiful animatronic ot Mo-at, Neytiri's mom.
But the next ride blew me away. It was one of those virtual reality kind of things, where you put on 3D glasses. You sit on a chair like you're riding a motorcycle. And you ride a banshee through Pandora. You soar over the ocean and through the floating mountains. As my banshee turned and banked, I found myself leaning along with him, like I was on horseback, but in the sky. The giant red Toruk comes after you, and when you dive into a cave to escape, your banshee is panting and his sides are heaving under you.
I walked out of that ride in a daze, feeling like I'd really just gotten back from a flight on Pandora.
When I was leaving the ride, it was starting to get dark. It seemed that the things around me were starting to glow. Filled with anticipation, I hung around for another two hours watching the forest slowly light up around me. The whole of Pandora world glowed in the dark! I took photos, but they don't do it justice at all.

Absolutely stunning.
I bought one of the little jellyfish-like tree seeds, and it glowed in the dark with me as I walked around Pandora.

Finally I managed to drag myself away from Pandora.
I decided it was time to find food. Most of the food you find around Disney World is soda, ice cream, burgers. Fancy fair food, more or less. But they do have some nice restaurants too. Some of them looked really expensive. But the Asian restaurant - the Yak and Yeti - looked good without being... extremely expensive (though it still costs $40 for dinner, a drink, and a tip).
It was packed, but they gave me a seat at the bar. Which I found funny since I don't drink. But the food was good. And the bartender was very entertaining.
I didn't even consider this at the time, because I was still in a daze (and continued to be until a couple days after I got home). But this was the first great bar tender I'd gotten to interact with since I read that manga XD

Pro tip. If you're ever at Disney World and want a drink that's more refreshing than soda, go into one of the nicer restaurants, or a bar (I never thought I'd advise someone to go into a bar XD But they can have non-alcoholic stuff too). And hey, all the drinks there are expensive so you may as well pay a couple extra bucks to get something more interesting than coke. I got pear lemonade. It was delicious.

Remember I mentioned that the Disney Parks put on big light shows to mark the closing of the park? This one was out on the lake in the Asia area.

They must use so much energy and money to run these things. All the flashing lights and fireworks and fountains and bursts of fire. But at the same time, they're always well attended, so it's not like it's a real waste of resources. It's frivolous, but entertaining. I watched three of these light shows, so it's not like I have any right to complain about them.

Day 3
Our last full day at Disney.
We went through most of the rest of the Magic Kingdom.

I rode Space Mountain twice in a row because there was no line in the morning. I feel like the Disney Land one is better (I haven't been in that one in ten years, so my memory may not be fully accurate).

Then we headed over to Hollywood Studios, where they have the Star Wars land: Galaxy's Edge.
It wasn't as cool as Pandora. But it was a close second. There were all these little nooks filled with machinery, droids, speeders, or even small space ships.


And there was the Falcon.


Once again it felt like stepping into another world.
There was one ride (a second ride opened a couple months after our trip). I assumed it would be another virtual reality thing. It kind of was. But it was mostly a simulation. Everyone got on a team, and we became a crew for the Millennium Falcon. And I was the pilot! I got to fly the Falcon!
Well, half of it. You have two pilots, two mechanics, and two gunners. I piloted the Falcon from side to side, and the kid next to me did up and down. I didn't crash us at all (though the kid did XD )
To my excitement there were some animals around as well! Including a pet shop.


We got the blue milk (that Luke's family drinks in episode 4) and the green milk too. I think that's what Luke drinks when he's on exile on that island.
It was actually a slushie. But it was fun. I used to make my own blue milk. I'd heat up milk and honey and add a tad of food coloring. So I had to try the official stuff. It's bantha milk! I never knew that until I went to Galaxy's Edge.
Also, the shop keepers are all in character. They'll ask you to pay in credits. I you mention another place, like California or Hawaii or something, they'll say, "I've never heard of that. Is it on another planet?" (The person I was with got confused and tried to explain where this other place was, and I had to whisper that they were in character).
Even better. There were storm troopers wandering around, asking for your permits. And they would insult people. The last Star Wars movie at the time was "The Last Jedi." The storm troopers went up to a lady who'd just bought a light saber and said, "if there is a lost Jedi, it's not you." The whole crowd went, "Oooooooohhhhh."
I was laughing so hard.

So, oddly enough, Star Tours is just outside of Galaxy's Edge. They have a lot of scenarios you can go through. I think it's about 50. So I went on it a couple times. And I go the SAME ONE TWICE IN A ROW. What are the odds, huh?
Sigh.

I looked around most of the rest of Hollywood Studios too. The Rock 'n' Roller Coaster was one of the best coasters I've been one.
There's some evidence of Jakjak.


And I saw Fantasmic. It was different from the Disney Land version. Another big fancy light show. Not something to think about, but just something to be awed by XD

An awesome trip. We had such a good time all around. From the lovely country to Africa and Asia, Pandora and Star Wars. I got to ride a banshee and pilot the Millennium Falcon.

The worst way to get to sleep:
You have about twenty minutes before you need to go to sleep, so you decide to play Breath of the Wild (even though it's impossible not to get sucked into it for less than an hour).
And you end up getting stalked by a guardian, crouching behind a tiny corner to hide, and the guardian's feet appear around the corner. You can hear it's head swiveling back and forth as it looks for you.

Yeah, adrenaline rush.

Strange Magic is exactly the sappy kind of romance I never like.
Except that I like it.


Sorry. I couldn't resist.



(the rare gopher giraffe in its burrow)

Moving an Entire School

Ever since I started writing my Magic-Earth stories in high school, the Mage Temple has been located in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
There are many mage temples. They're the headquarters for all of the mages in a region. It's also where they teach magic to anyone with a decent amount of magic.

The Temple was in the Sierra Nevada mountains for a couple reasons. First of all, it's a beautiful mountain range that feels sort of magical. And second because it's out of the way, and wouldn't cause any trouble to towns nearby.
It was only a few weeks ago that I realized it was too out of the way.
Sure, they have magic. But it would still be a major pain to get supplies there. And especially to transport students and student families. It's not very difficult to transport a person. But if they had to transport all of their students home and back for holidays, that would be unnecessarily complicated.
And some of those students are pretty young. Wouldn't it be so nice for them to visit their homes on weekends?


And unlike Hogwarts, even a train wouldn't be practical to this magic school,since it's in a very mountainous area.
Sure trains go through the Sierras, but they need a perfect route to keep the right grade for the tracks.

So this all made me think that I had to move the Mage Temple, after many years and several stories.
I think I'll now have it at the base of Mount Diablo, in the California Bay Area. It's got some important cities nearby, and it still has an impressive mountain to guard over it.

The mountain will not have the same name. It will probably have one of the original American Indian names (I have to do more research about this - I've started gathering sources). I don't want that beautiful sentinel mountain named "Devil Mountain," which was apparently mistakenly named anyway. It deserves a far more respectful name. I'll also have to find a new name for the "Sierra Mage Temple" since it's no longer in the Sierras.
On Magic-Earth, the Bay Area (and the rest of the planet) is far less developed than our world is. Even if they're at the base of Mount Diablo, they'd have plenty of wild space around them so they wouldn't disturb nearby towns with their magic experiments. And this would make them more accessible for the public in case of emergency.

I may still have some sort of mage center up in the Sierras. But it would have to be something different. I don't know if it would work or not.

Well, better to figure this out now than later.

It sucks when you're writing an exciting scene, and you keep having to stop. It totally throws you out of the pacing --_--


Two-toed sloth

Frozen 2

So I saw Frozen 2 a couple weeks ago.
And as usual, I like to write about something new and interesting. And complain some too XD Because complaining is fun.

I enjoyed it. I laughed a lot, which is always a good sign.
There were some great songs. Elsa's voice is amazing as always.
Anna and Elsa's relationship is adorable. Both as kids and adults. Who would have guessed that Disney princesses come with an off switch? And it still works even when they grow up XD

Heh. Anna has wanted a prince ever since she was a little thing. And Elsa's always been, "nah, no prince for me" (God, I was so afraid she'd get a love interest that ended up being really lame @_@ Thank you for not doing that, Disney).
The salamander and horse were really cute/cool designs. I wish there had been more of them in the movie.
(Also, the mom was Marianne from Strange Magic XD )

So I had fun while I was watching it.

But when you think about it, there were a lot of unanswered questions.

And now we're getting into spoilers.


I've only seen the movie once, but I don't think I missed the answers to some pretty glaring questions. When you first see a movie, it's natural that a few minor things will only become clear when you've seen it again. But these were not little things. Some of them were big and important.
I'll start with the little ones.
When Elsa stopped the flood, she pushed all the water back upstream instead of out to sea. And the water level didn't rise at all.
At the beginning, Elsa was making ice toys for the kids. Most of them wanted ice animals (did the little ice animals come to life? @_@ ). But one kid wanted a measuring compass (I think). Elsa made it, looking really bewildered. That surprised me. She of all people should be excited to see kids with different interests. Some kids love that kind of stuff from an early age. Encourage it! XD
(Random comment - I liked Kristoff's song a lot. But it felt like the singing reindeer made fun of the emotions he was dealing with).

Why did no one know their mom's origin? I don't see any reason for it to be a secret. There's not evidence that her race is hated or anything.
Why does building a dam weaken the spirits? (And why would that stupid king build it in a place that could flood his own kingdom?)
Why did Elsa turn to ice? (Though it was fascinating that Elsa felt cold for the first time in her life)
Does anyone really believe that Disney is going to kill off Olaf? (Though it still got the audience crying)
Disney just spent a whole movie getting Elsa back to Arendelle. And now she's going off to live in the woods? That rubs me wrong. It also means that Anna and Kristoff are going to be king and Queen. Anna has always been backup to Elsa. She's going to have a tough time being queen. She's hasn't been the best at taking charge, even since the first movie. And Kristoff isn't even a people person. I'm concerned for him, because I don't think he is going to be at all comfortable or happy as a king. It feels like Disney had some reason that they wanted Anna to be queen (since she's the main character? Or more likely because Elsa doesn't have a boyfriend), and they made it happen without regard to the characters.
Why is Elsa the fifth spirit? I thought she was just a person with powerful music. But what, she's not human, or something? I didn't even realize that she was the fifth spirit until she said so at the end of the movie (I also had no idea she was "pacifying the spirits" until she said so. She was just blasting things her ice magic. I didn't even realize the tornado was supposed to be a spirit, even though they named it).

So yeah. Lot's of vague and unclear stuff. If there was a little of that, that would be fine. But there was a lot of it. It felt like it gummed up half of the movie, which I otherwise enjoyed.

I may post again after I've seen the movie a second time. But I'm good at following stuff, and I was still lost on some important points.

Bluebirds Return

The bluebirds are back!

Hanging out with the reindeer XD

Florida Travels: The Country

The long awaited Florida travelogue XD. I'll do it in two parts.
Here's the first half of the trip, in the Florida countryside.
(These are all my photos from the trip)

To start off, here are a couple things about Florida in general.
It's humid.
And it's flat.
I don't think I've ever been anywhere in my life where I couldn't see mountains somewhere on the horizon. Not only is Florida flat, but there are trees all over the place so you can't see any landmarks. There is no way to get your bearings.
There are lots of beautiful lakes and wetlands.
And the trees are hung with streamers of Spanish moss (not actually moss - it's a bromeliad).


The first part of the trip got rather stressful largely because there were some major storm warnings for the place we were headed to.
We also had a three-hour drive out into the country. And Florida has highway tolls. Not only when you enter a freeway, but they'll also stop you in the middle of a freeway to pay more tolls.
During the drive, we passed 5 wrecks. It turns out it was the first rain of the season, so the roads were slick and treacherous.
And further out in the country, we encountered several dogs, in different places, that were walking right down the middle of the road. Whyyyyy @__@

We ended up in Cross City. And we stayed at an old-fashioned place called Putnam Lodge.
But the moment we arrived, I had to turn around and head out for a dinner the night before the wedding.
Now I've never been a fan of cars. Thank god someone came with me because making the drive across Florida by myself would have seen me panicking the whole way. And if I'd gotten lost, I would have freaked out. Driving unfamiliar roads is very stressful for me. I'm always afraid of getting hopelessly lost in unknown territory.
Actually, I never really get lost (even in Japan and Europe). I have a good sense of direction. And I heavily study maps before going anywhere new.
But people in cars scare me. And I just don't like cars. And hey, there are tons of illogical fears out there. I may not be scared of snakes or spiders or heights, but I am sometimes afraid of cars. Cars seem like a perfectly legitimate fear. There are tons of accidents on roads.
So, all of this is to say that I had to drive to the pre-wedding dinner by myself. At night. On roads I'd never seen before. In the rain. With a potential storm warning.
It doesn't help that 95% of the roads I drove past had names that weren't names - they were numbers. So You're driving past at 40 mph or more in the dark, and all you can see are 3-digit numbers flashing past. And unless you have your brights on, you can't even see a sign. There are big straightaways, so if there are any cars coming, you have to turn off your brights and you can't see any of the signs. And because of the length of the straightaways, you'd get cars flashing their brights at you from over a mile away telling me to turn off my brights way early.
And people were definitely going above the speed limit.
My knuckles were white, gripped so hard on the steering wheel. For almost half an hour.
And I did remarkably well. Until the directions from Google ended up being wrong. They gave me the wrong street name for my exit. So I blew past it. And a few miles past, I realized that I had gone too far. Thank god I'd come to the first store I'd passed since I'd left over twenty minutes before. I pull up, panicking because I'm afraid of ever getting to the dinner, or even getting back to the hotel.
I think I sounded pretty calm when I told my predicament to the shopkeeper, and a random guy who happened to be there with his daughter.
At first the shopkeeper said, "of that street is in another county."
PANIC That can't be right! I was close to my destination.
Then the dad spoke up. "Oh, I know that street. Follow me. I'll take you there."

I love people from Florida!
Thank you so much dude! Helping this poor lost Californian sap who's lost in the dark and on the verge of melting down XD
One last moment of panic. The guy and his daughter got in their truck. I'm in the unfamiliar rental car and it decided that it didn't want to start. Finally it did. And I got to the wedding dinner.

And the dinner was lovely. I got to see my friend, and meet her fiance for the first time.
Dude, the guy's family has this huge gorgeous ranch out in the Florida countryside. With horses! And a beautiful pond.
Plus he works in Africa, helping veterans work with wildlife. How freaking awesome is that? I have to go visit them.

I made it back to the hotel with only one minor hitch.

The next day, we had all morning and afternoon to explore.
We went shopping, and noticed a sign for a beach. The person driving said, "oh, the beach is just a couple minutes away! Let's go see the Atlantic Ocean!
Now I'd studied the maps to get us to Cross City. I knew the beach was definitely not two minutes away. But I didn't say anything because I'd never seen the Atlantic Ocean (except through a plane window) and I really wanted to go.
So the beach was more like 20 minutes away.
Remember that storm warning? It turns out part of the storm passed to the north of us and the other part passed to the south. But there was still wind and rain. And I think the town at the coast had been evacuated. There wasn't a soul in sight.
There we are, two crazy tourists at the beach with a tropical storm warning (which had originally been a cyclone warning).
But I got to dip my toes in the Atlantic for the first time!


Then we explored the Lodge. It was awesome.
They had a beautiful garden in the back, which also had a little Japanese garden. They had several cats who would come and hang out with you and sit on your lap.

Why don't all hotels have cats? Seriously, they're perfect.
Not only did they have cats, but they also had free-roaming chickens, an aviary with peacocks, and an aviary with other smaller birds.
(The rooster did wake us up early in the morning, which was even earlier to us on CA time, but I still love that they had chickens there).


Finally we headed to the wedding.
You may recall the potential tropical storm warning. The ceremony was out in a field, under a beautiful old oak draped with Spanish moss. It was a beautiful wedding. The only falling water was tears.
The moment the bride and groom left, the sky opened up and it started to pour.
It was so perfect.

(This is part of the gorgeous ranch with the gorgeous sky)


Then followed a lovely dinner, dancing, and cake.

When it came time for the champagne toast, someone handed me a glass of champagne before I could refuse. When a lady came by who didn't have a glass yet, I asked if she wanted mine because I wasn't going to drink it.
Now, to be fair, it was dark and she may have been drunk. But as she took the glass she said, "Are you older than twelve?"

That's the most extreme one yet.

It was a wonderful day.
And the following day, we had another drive south. But at least at the end of that drive, we had Disney World to look forward to!

For the First Time in Forever

I love fantasy books. And I love to write fantasy, of course.
But despite that, there are very few fantasy books that I really love.
So I'm excited to currently be in the middle of a fantasy book that is really well written. It's a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, called Spindle's End. The time line is all over the place, but the book is really good so far. I'll be heartbroken if the ending isn't good XD