2013-12-16:

Darkness but motion.

Tiny Lights.

Dawn.

Forests of bare trees. 

A lone house with a tiny power lone poles.

An odd bird call from nowhere. (I later learned this was the "text message received" tone, as my mother had the same tone. Who knew!)

Slowing and speeding. 

Train car half full. 

Old and Young, some smiling, some resolved. 

A woman playing candy crush, a man with a smart watch.

A woman on a cell phone behind me, never dreaming of miracles or the wizardry that allows her to do this.

Billboards by train tracks?

8:30, time to get up.

No sun just more clouds. 

Tiny bit of sun at 9:30, but then gone again.

Water locks, streams.

Stop in Albany at 10:00. 

Windows laptop before me. In the split second I saw the screen she was using Avast. Should I be pleased she has an anti-virus of some kind of disgusted because it's slowing her performance. That and the fact I even noticed. Old habits die hard even on vacation?

Two strangers talking about babies. Are baby clothes like crack?

Tug boat "oyster creek" pushing something.

Water on one side, buildings on the other.

What holds the track up?

Unhappy baby.

The wall to my left rushes past, the openness to my right hardly moves. What trickery is this? At what speed do we move?

Almost had a companion but 3 seats were founds together further up. 

Many, many tracks here. Must have a lot of switchers. 

Only 1 hour to go!

So quiet here, hardly any talking.

Croton-Harmon. (This is a town)

A long dark tunnel but where the light is, I see graffiti. Even far inside.

Seatmate for final stretch. 

Fog everywhere over water and we pull into Penn station.

Lots of people. 

Enclosed, a wold of its own.

All the restaurants you could want but no places to sit? 

Found 5 places jammed into one space that had seats. 

Eaten, now I'm in the waiting area. 2 hours to go.

Sign said 2 hour maximum waiting/show ticket/rules-rules-rules but no one seemed to care when I walked in. Odd.

Cops wander about.

First train was lax, no one measured bags, weighed anything, asked anything. We just went out the back of the building, the train pulled up, and we got on. Will the second one be the same? 

And it pretty much was.

Devin is my personal attendant. How classy. 

Apparently, going through Washington I'll see some monuments. (I didn't. Was I asleep? I kept looking up from my book… :-( )

Dinner at 6:15.

Oddly we only traveled a few minutes and now we're stopping again. Not for long. 

3:40. Parallel tracks that divide and join again. Over and over.

Solar panels all over the place. What use can they by in NY, land of clouds.

Still cloudy here, no snow though.

Heard people talking about ice. Wonder how home is.

Broken windows, empty warehouses. They really couldn't be more useful?

Whole field of solar panels- want!

4:15 and darkness already. How thick are those clouds?

Nearly 5:00 now. Darker and darker. I've been up 15 hours but it doesn't seem like that. I suspect the rest of the trip will pass as swiftly.

Odd, we are parallel to a road and a truck is passing us. In fact all traffic is. Slow trains?

Snow in Delaware but not snowing. 

5:30. Rain when we stopped for dinner. Lights went out about 6:35 while we were eating. Waited there in the dark until 7:35 while they changed engines I guess. Electrical issues. Finally moving again, will we be an hour late to the station?

Dinner was good. Basically a small restaurant inside a train car.

Virginia!

Some neat buildings here, some with lights. 

A double decker train?

Bedtime. Only 16 more hours of train time.

And woke up the next morning. Still clouds!?

Breakfast was french toast with sugar and sausage. Very yummy. 

Finally broke through the clouds! 4 more hours.

Palm trees at least.

11:00 getting close now

11:45- lunch. Sausage inna bun.

And then suddenly I was there! Got off the train, which mom said was somehow still running on time, and there were my mother and father. We went immediately to Epcot as our original destination, the Animal Kingdom, they said was primarily for little kids. 

I guess I'll just summarize the park experiences with a few specifics for each park. 

The parks were crowded but strangely there were hardly any lines for rides. We got to do I would say everything in each park we wanted to, often simply walking into whatever we wanted. This, despite the fact there were people all over. I don't want to see this place "busy" if this is the "light" season. Why are all these kids missing school? Why are there cheerleader groups all over?

The house we stayed at was very nice. Despite one night of the fire alarm beeping every 30 seconds which kept mom up, and the pool pump broke. Not that I would have had all that much time to swim, I needed the sleep! 

Epcot: 

Captain EO is back, that was just as fun as it was many, many years ago. Can't keep a classic down. We skipped a bunch of the "world showcase" lands because there wasn't much in each to do, quite honestly. Most had a movie of some sort with "this is how our land is great" but of course we already knew that. Japan had a store full of Anime stuff, even some Sailor Moon, which was very odd. Other import stuff, very neat. Saw a nighttime candle chorus. A good warm up, and we got it all done in one afternoon, which is actually rather troubling… Though of course we didn't go through the little kid stuff.

Day 2: Disney's Hollywood Studios:

Best: Voyage of the Little Mermaid. Imagine a condensed retelling of the story but with a live Ariel. I admit it, I'm a sucker for a mermaid. Was she really singing? It looked like she was. 

Star tours was quite different, a pleasant surprise. They are now using the more recent places so we got to see *shudder* Gungans but also C3PO as an animatronic figure so that made it better. Also saw muppets, the ship from Flight of The Navigator, stunt shows, disney history, and more. Lots of little girls dressed as princess but no boys dressed as princes. No girls dressed as princes. No boys dressed as princesses. *shakes head* Two boys dressed as pirates. 

Worst: Did not get to see the light shows! Sadly, the park had been bought out so they kicked us out before the Fantasmic (which, to be fair, I have seen once already) and the christmas light show. Apparently some insane people draped lights over every available surface and browned out the rest of the city, so they moved the whole show here. Ah yes, the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights. I got to see some video footage of it, taken by dad, and am told it's probably on youtube… Still. 

Day 3: Disney

Busy! Again, lots of people but we walked onto everything. Favorite ride: I guess it would still have to be Splash Mountain. Took the monorail because they had taken the fairy boat, wait, ferry boat the last time. Finally saw the Enchanted Tiki Room, which I had never been in, despite all the times I've been there. The jokes were still just as coney on the Jungle Cruse, and I missed the "zelda" boat by about three. Got a picture of it though. Pirates had a few updates, still amazing. Country Bear Jamboree hadn't changed. Why should it? I think they got it right the first time. No more TRON in the people mover, I thought they had updated that for the new movie. Guess not. Oh well. Haunted Mansion also didn't get many updates that I saw, but again, they got it right from the start. Best: Parades and light shows. Imagine using the castle as a freaking projection screen for a movie! Yeah, someone implemented that crazy idea. Saw a real life Tinkerbell fly from the upper part of the castle, and there were fireworks, the castle lit up, shows, and a parade all right after each other. We were at ground zero, and I mean sitting close enough to touch the parade, which I'd never had happen before. We'd always been pretty far away from things like that. Quite amazing.

Worst: Stitch's Great Escape. Burn that ride to the ground. Stupid AND pointless. The only disappointing thing in the park. Walt would be ashamed. 

(Note that I did not ride "Small World" but at least that has some value. So perhaps it could have been given the worst distinction, but I stand by my assessment.)

Also curious, and a decision I'm not entirely comfortable with, someone at Disney believed the dominant character trait for Minnie Mouse should be "airhead?" I mean, really? Why does Minnie have to give a little giggle before everything she says? She could be her own mouse, you know, not just something to be seen with Micky.

Day 4: Universal Orlando.

A curious park, split in half. Many things on both sides didn't appeal at all. The Simpson's on the one side, Suess Landing on the other. We went to the side with the Harry Potter stuff (best decision ever, even if I did miss transformers) and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter is Best Thing Ever. To a point. Everything was accurately depicted but that means the shops are all about 10x too small. But we'll get to that. 

The park features a lot of roller coster type rides, which I'm not really into. Also a lot of seeming "fireman's carnival" style games. You know, squirt water to raise something, that sort of thing. Odd. Then there's the little kid rides, again in the Suess part, which didn't appeal. Those rides that were not coasters or kids rides: totally amazing. 

Back to Harry Potter. The "ride" is first a tour of the castle. You see it all: the pensive, the entrance to the Headmaster's office, a classroom with a dragon skeleton, bulletin boards, the Fat Lady portrait (she moves), the sorting hat, a painting gallery (they have a conversation!), the "points" bulbs, the garden… you get the point. Then the actual ride starts! It's part huge video screen where you zoom around the grounds, the forest, etc and part further castle tour. You are moved between the two kinds of things and see the Whomping Willow, a dragon attack, Quiddich, the lake, and maybe even more. Wow. Excellently done. Then of course are the grounds. Like I said, very detailed, and people in costumes put on shows. The shops are real and I bought a few things. Wands were very reasonable, clothes were not. $100 for a robe? This is where you find the majority of people- place was packed from opening to close. We went on the ride first thing, and ended the day with it. It was still mobbed, so I figured we wouldn't get near the ride. Nope, "10 minute" wait time, which is basically the time it takes to walk through the waiting area at a brisk pace. (Yes, it's that long, and part of it was closed off, so it can have a lot of people on the inside waiting) So again we just walked onto it. Huh. The whole area just needs to be bigger. Like, twice the size. I wouldn't say that area, alone, was worth the price of admission, but it came very, very close. Saw some other shows, including a retelling of the Grinch story by real actors putting on a real play on a real stage. Makeup was great, very well done. 

The Spider Man ride was similar to the Harry Potter one, but in 3D. The "Sinbad" stunt show I approve of. The "princess" that Sinbad found to rescue (need to get that trope in there!) actually fought and could take care of herself. She wasn't just some object for him to win. They actually helped each other out, in fact, she was more capable then Sinbad's parter he arrived with, who was the comic relief. Thumbs up.

The rest of the park was rather forgettable. Toon Lagoon was full of really, really old cartoon references. And it had only two rides, both "get wet" sort of rides. Jurassic park… wait, another "get wet" ride? What, did they run out of ideas? 

Ah well, still an excellent end to the whole thing. 

The first day going home was nice, great weather, though mom wasn't feeling too good because of a cough and running nose. 

Getting past the mountains brought the snow back, sadly. Parts of the road were almost at a standstill as we neared NY, so we got back about 2 hours later then we expected. Still, we made it safely and that's what counts. Lots of blowing snow, visibility quite poor, but dad powered through and we all stayed safe.

And there you have it. The entire vacation summarized.

I would like to thank my parents for making it possible, and for my sister for taking care of my cats/house while I was gone. Also I want to apologize that she had to deal with all this snow where I didn't. With my attention elsewhere I couldn't control the weather here, and it went back to its old pattern- sorry! :-) 

Things couldn't have gone better from start to finish, and this year without doubt qualifies for Best Christmas Ever. 

So thanks, it was an amazing trip, and I'm very glad I went.

Same time next year? :-)