Day 7 Fri. Oct. 30

53 F, Cold and raining, then cloudy with one last downpour in the afternoon

(Len)

Coulda slept 6 more hours but we had a free (haha) Character breakfast at 7am. Shucks, we were so early we missed the characters. Good breakfast: Buffet. Eggs were fab as were the shrooms. French Toast so-so, bacon American style, tho less fat. OJ from a can.

Got into Main Street at 08:30. Got a bit more cafe and sat til rope drop. Good thing we brought the ponchos! It rained all morning! After rope drop everyone ran for Space Mountain (SM).

We walked with dignity to Peter Pan. With a few tiny exceptions it was an exact clone of DL's. Boats are double seaters (front and back rows) and some better lighting effects.

Next we rode Pirates which in DP is right nextdoorish. Very nice. More sophisticated animatronics, including two sword fighting gents and a pirate swinging from a rope above you. The "magic" waterfall is in the beginning with 2 drops later on. Hasn't been PC'd.

We then cruised over to their Indy ride which is basically just a roller coaster. Kel hit her head at a few points and ended up with a sizable goosegg. Not much theming.

Big Thunder was next. A little different but not much. A little more exciting, (and you go under the river). The earthquake is replaced by blasting.

Went over to Phantom Manor next. Very different... like the Bates House. The stretching room had different (inferior) paintings but did go down. The changing paintings on the way to the doom buggies were the same. Story os a bit different. Subtle changes til right after the ballroom, then it got wacky. Lotsa gruesome skeletons (very few ghosts, a lot of rotting flesh). You go down, not into the backyard, but into a cave which becomes a weird western town. No hitchhiking ghosts, just one that appears on top of yer doom buggy. No narration (either time), but it may have been broken cuz the ghost host is mentioned.

We then ate at the Blue Lagoon, no Brooke Shields :( It's like the Blue Bayou in location and atmosphere but the theme and food was "Polynesian". Kel had lamb curry and I had Andouillet sausage. Was good. Pirates broke big time while we were eating, but it figures our table was the one with the obstructed view! ;)

Apres lunch, over to Discoveryland. Hit Star Tours after taking the overflow passage between Fantasyland and Discoveryland. No backstage views though :( Star Tours is very surreal in French. Rex speaks French as does CP30, everyone else pretty much English. Otherwise the same as DL and WDW.

SpaceMountain - WOW! I was VERY impressed. The queue is very Jules Verne. Headrest speakers much better padded than DL. Had shoulder restraints and needed 'em! They shoot you at high speed up the outside of the mountain , then you plunge into a much faster and darker ride than DL. 1 loop-the-loop and 1 full corkscrew! The music was good, but no Dick Dale. Gonna ride it again for sure tomorrow.

Popped over to Le Visionarium which is the TimeKeeper show in the CircleVision Theater. It was put together here first and then modified for WDW. We wore headsets for the English translation. Not quite as fun without Robin Williams and Rhea Perlman. He adlibbed more (duh!).

By then it was mid afternoon so we did some shopping. A Parade was mucking up traffic so we stopped in Discoveryland and Fantasyland. Found Poster Maps! Bought 5. The were marked 25FF, but rang up at 10FF (about $2). Decided we should buy more but would try at a different store as we'd already made her ring up 2 separate transactions already.

Main St. finally cleared up so we shopped there for a bit. They have cool little malls behind, and connecting, all the shops: perfect for getting out of downpours or avoiding parades! Spent waaay too much money. Went back to Fantasyland and did Alices Labyrinth. Kind of a yawner. Got coffee and chips at the Toad Hall restaurant then went on Pirates again. Ad-land and Fro-land were going to close 45 mins early to prepare for the big Halloween Party (we weren't invited, shucks), so we cruised around there until they booted us out.

Discovered an entire area we'd missed in Ad-land. Really nice shopping bazaar, middle eastern in theming. Will take pix tomorrow in daylight. At 7:20ish we decided to call it a night. We wanted to see the Disney Village for dinner so we headed over there. Very crowded and not really our kind of place. (They had a Planet Hollywood and it only charged twice what it would in California!)

Did some more shopping and went back to the hotel. Went down to the restaurant for dinner but it was 250FF EACH. Yeah, sure. We skipped dinner. Packed our bags up and then wrote our travelogues. Off to bed.

P.S. Big special party in the park. Had fireworks at midnight... didn't wake kel but it did me.

Side note: DP prices (5.8 ff -> $1)
33cl(12oz) Can of Coke from mini bar 22ff (~$3.75)
standard KitKat candybar 12-15 ff
33cl Heiniken Beer 50ff
yikes!