TSAOSHIN

Walt Disney World 2010

I realized that I STILL haven’t posted about our trip to Walt Disney World.  So instead of sitting down and trying to write one now, I’m hijacking 27’s post on his blog about it:

My sister was scheduled to visit me and Tsao between her school semesters with her girlfriend, so in a last minute decision, Tsao and I decided to surprise them with a trip to Walt Disney World!

There were a ton of choices to make. First of all, whether to drive or fly. If we drove, we’d have to set aside two extra days (one for each way) for the drives up and down. If we flew, we’d have to stay for more days in order to maximize our value. After much debating and asking friends, we chose to fly.

Our next big choice was where to stay. Since we were booking at the last minute, the resort rates within the park were pretty steep, but we were determined to spend our nights on the park property.

There are multiple benefits for this. We wouldn’t need to rent a car to travel from the airport to the resort since there is a bus that travels between them for free for resort guests. There are buses inside the resort that will take you from the resort to any of the parks. The parks are open longer on select days only for resort guests!

We decided to go with one of their middle tier resorts, the Caribbean Beach, to avoid most of the families full of kids at the most reasonable price.

We chose to stay for four full days with the additional Park Hopper option. We also opted for a fifth day, the day we flew in. The price for the additional day was so low, that even if we didn’t utilize it, it wouldn’t matter.

We made sure to schedule our days to maximize our resort guest extra hours.

Last time we went to Disney World, I wanted to write a detailed review of everything we did. That ended up never being finished, so this time I’m being less ambitious. Here is a log I kept of all the rides we rode on each day, in order:

Friday

Magic Kingdom

Saturday

Hollywood Studios

Sunday

Animal Kingdom

EPCOT

  • Some of the World Showcase, from Mexico through China

Magic Kingdom

Monday

EPCOT

Downtown Disney

Tuesday

Magic Kingdom

There are a lot of great rides here. Aside from all the classics that I love in the Magic Kingdom, my favorite new Disney attractions are: Expedition Everest, Kilimanjaro Safaris, DINOSAUR, It’s Tough to Be a Bug!, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, Star Tours, and Toy Story Midway Mania!

On Tuesday, when we entered the Magic Kingdom, our tickets were processed manually instead of through the machines. This created a problem when we used the Fastpass ticket machines in Frontierland and Adventureland. They recognized that our tickets hadn’t been processed and refused to give us a ticket. We exploited the situation by giving confused looks to the machine attendant, who would have Fastpasses printed for us. We would then run over to other Fastpass enabled rides and collect more tickets, so we could skip the lines to a few rides in a row. Awesome!

Make sure you figure out in advance which restaurants have air conditioning that you would care to eat in. For the most part, the lowest tier restaurants will be outdoor numbers, but there are a few cheap places with A/C. In EPCOT, you can go to the Electric Umbrella in Future World. In the Magic Kingdom, you can try Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Café, but expect the line to be out the door if you want go during standard eating hours.

We nicknamed EPCOT to ‘CRAPCOT’. There’s very little actual fun to be had here because it’s primarily stores and shops. We even heard one of the Disney employees remark, “Do you know what EPCOT stands for? ‘Empty Pockets? Come Other Time’”. There are a couple really nice spots in the World Showcase, like Mexico and the buildings in China and Japan, but they are pretty limited. They really need to step up their efforts in edutainment in this whole zone. Future World has incredible lines, especially for Soarin’ (which is really cool) and Fast Track (which is ho hum).

It was worth upgrading to the middle tier hotel resort. When we got on the bus at the airport, it was packed with loud, obnoxious children. When we arrived at our hotel, only our group and another got off the bus; the noisy families were hauled off to the bottom tier hotels that were on our bus’s route. Our suspicions were correct!

We had a blast. I’m already looking forward to the next time we visit.

Tsao took a bunch of photos that you can check out here.

And so it begins…

Little Link could never understand why this kid seemed to be addicted to giving him crap. He’d build a beautiful sand castle on the shores of Lake Hylia and BOOM - it gets knocked over. He had his ocarina smashed more than once coming home from band and his lunch rupees stolen almost every day since they met. He hated this little punk more than anything in Hyrule, but he knew one day…ONE DAY he’d have his revenge…

Something for fun as a follow up to my last drawing ^^

Created with Adobe Photoshop CS4. Link and Dark Link are © Nintendo.

For larger size and commenting, check it out on deviantART.

Conquer Yourself

Fanart of Link and Dark Link from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. This was one of my favorite parts of the game and I’ve really loved the Dark Link/Shadow Link character since his inception in Link’s Adventure.

Here’s my take on the epic battle against yourself. Oh how frustrating this fight was until I busted out my Megaton Hammer. ;)

Created in Adobe Photoshop CS4. Inspirations for the poses from selficide-stock and Photoshop brushes from obsidiandawn.com

Link, Dark Link and Legend of Zelda are © Nintendo.

For larger size and commenting, check it out on deviantART.