Rosebud
03-27-2003, 02:56 PM
Day 17, December 31, New Year’s Eve
I had decided that we would spend New Year’s Eve at EPCOT and somehow even after being sick we were going to do it. This was one of the few days we were up and out early. The weather reports were predicting rain for the evening – bummer, all that planning and all the good weather we had, it would have to rain for New Year’s Eve. I was determined though to have a good time.
We knew that in some previous years on New Year’s Eve that the park had been closed to off-site visitors extremely early and then even to on-site visitors pretty early. Our plan was to get there before park opening so we would be guaranteed to get in. We planned to get to the gate about 8:30, and we made it by 8:55 – not bad for the late risers. We had brought supplies with us for the whole day thinking we might not get to go back to the car, so our first stop was the lockers. We got one of the last big lockers available. I think they should have been asking people whether they needed a big locker or not because some people might have been able to use a small locker and then others that wanted a big locker that came after might have gotten one. I think probably by 9:30 all the lockers were gone. We knew it was going to be a long, long day so we had come prepared with beach towels and beach pillows to take a nap in the afternoon – we wanted to make sure we were in the park for midnight and there was no guarantee that would happen if we left. However, with what happened later that night, there would have been no problem.
After stuffing our locker, we headed off in search of breakfast. We settled on the place in Innoventions – Electric Umbrella I think. The park was absolutely crazy packed. I can’t remember the last time I saw EPCOT so busy and I have been there during some of the busiest times of the year. We knew we wouldn’t be able to do a lot today, but that was okay – we would take advantage of the extra magic around. After I finished eating I hurried over to Test Track to get a couple of FPs. Upon arriving there I couldn’t believe the people – the FPs return time were for around 5 or 6. I almost said forget it because the lines were about 25 deep, but then I realized they were moving really quick so I got in line. When I got to the front of the line I saw why they were moving quickly – the CMs were pre-printing the tickets and handing them out, no using the machines. I actually got through that line quicker than times I have been behind one or two people that had multiple tickets. I don’t remember the time for the stand-by line at that time, but it was quite long and just got longer during the day – at one point it was actually listed at 4 hours. Not sure what the single rider line was, but it must have been crazy too.
I then went back to the restaurant and picked up Valerie and we headed over to Honey I Shrunk the Audience to get FPs for that – since the CMs handed out the tickets at Test Track we could still use the FP line here. We never did use these tickets, because we were in The Land until well after they expired. At this point the weather was absolutely gorgeous. It was warm, but not too warm and sunny. I was hoping the weatherman would be wrong for tonight. I’m not sure if we rode Journey into your Imagination then or not, but I know we did sometime during that trip (see why you should take notes or do the reports as soon as you get home, because you forget things).
It was still pretty early but extremely crowded so I decided we would go to The Land and see if there was any room on the Behind the Seeds Tour. There were still openings for all the tours, but we decided to go on the very next one, which was about ½ hour later. We decided to take a bathroom break and just sit and relax and do some people watching before the tour.
They first take you backstage and everyone tells who they are and why they are taking the tour. Before entering the greenhouse, you stop and look inside a window at one of the labs and then go into one of the labs where they work with pest control, which they of course explain. Then it’s into the greenhouse. They happened to have a lot of gourds in the greenhouse because they were left over from the Food and Wine Festival and the theme had something to do with gourds. There was one kind that was really squishy and we got to feel it – can’t do that on the boat ride. The plant I loved the most though was the “Sensitive Plant”. If you touched it, the leaves curled up – it didn’t hurt it, it was a temporary thing and they would reopen, but it was very cool. I am not a master gardener by any means and know very little, but I do love to grow plants and look at plants. I have always loved going on the boat ride and looking at the cool ways they have for growing their plants, but it was much cooler to be able to get up close and actually stop and look. There was also plenty of time for questions too. We did get to take a piece of the raw cotton that they had harvested as a souvenir. I have wanted to do this tour for so long and one thing or another always seemed to come up and we never did it – I won’t make that mistake again. I was so happy I took the time to do this and on such a busy day it was a great way to get away from the crowds for a while. It is very cheap too .
After the tour, we headed over to the other end of the food court to watch the Toll House Cookie demonstration. It was cute watching the little kids make the cookies, but I really wish the viewers got a free sample too. It was suppose to be 12 and under and the old guy working there was a really bad judge of age because he asked a couple of girls if they wanted to participate and it was so obvious they were way older than 12 – she was very short, but other things gave her away. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but it was very crowded and some kids missed out because of those older kids. As a matter of fact for the next scheduled time an older girl asked if she could participate and he said they sometimes made exception to the 12 or under rule but it was too crowded to let the older ones in. That girl was tall so I guess he judged her as older, but she definitely wasn’t – I felt bad for her.
For those that haven’t seen this – it is located at the end of the food court in The Land building. They have two tables set up and all the kids get a little chef hat. The first thing they do is give them each a wet wipe to clean their hands – of course two seconds later more than one of the kids are right back getting them “dirty”. Then each participant is given one ingredient to put into the bowl and one of the kids is selected to mix the stuff. Then each kid puts one spoonful of dough on the cookie sheet and the last one puts the rest of the dough on the sheet. It doesn’t matter how big each spoonful is because the magic oven cooks all the cookies the same size. They are each given a little container of chocolate chips and told to sit and wait for a minute while the CM brings the cookies to the magic oven for baking and a minute or two later out come the finished cookies that they baked. Not only does the magic oven cook the cookies in a few short minutes, it also puts them in individual envelope wrappers.
It was around 1:30 at this point and we were getting hungry. We couldn’t decide what to eat because even though no longer sick, some things just were not appealing to us. We finally decided Japan would do. We took the boat over near there and then checked to see if we could get in without a PS. The lady said about 20 – 30 minutes – no problem we took a seat to wait and watched Miyuki through the window. About 10 minutes later we were being shown to our seat. That is one of the great things about traveling with only two people – don’t have to worry so much about PS, even when busy. We were seated at a table with a mother, father and four or five teenage girls – not all theirs. They had all the rooms open and every table full. They also had all the dividers between the rooms open and this made it a rather loud experience. It would have been nicer if they could have shut a couple of the dividers. One lady was attending two rooms with water and such, but they could have divided every two rooms. Of course there was the traditional cooking demonstration they do there – as always fun to watch. The teenage girls were fun to listen to and at one point they were talking so loud and one of the girls said “you know why something or other” and the guy at the next table said “why?” (not those exact words, but you get the picture). The whole place was so loud and they were enjoying themselves, so probably didn’t realize how loud they were. I think the guy at the next table was just trying to be fun and not being rude – at least I hope not. Either way it was quite funny and the girl was so surprised she just shut up for a minute in a stunned silence and then went on a little quieter. I quickly filled up after having been sick and skipping an entire day of eating. I did however eat all my shrimp.
After paying our bill we waddled downstairs to poke around in the store. They were refurbishing it, but still had about half open – including some stuff sitting on tables outside (not in the little booth). We stopped and watched a few people pick the pearls. I don’t know if it was this day or another we were in Japan, but we encountered one little girl that picked out a pearl that apparently had never seen this kind of thing before. Her mother took a picture of every step – she will be able to clearly remember that experience with all the pictures. We thought that was a very good idea to do that.
We then started heading back to Future World and figured we would see some street entertainment type things along the way. The show in France was absolutely mobbed and you could barely see anything so we kept walking. When we got to the UK there was about a 30 minute wait until the next World Showcase Players show. We had seen the Christmas Carol show another day, but they were back to the regular show for New Year’s Eve. We wanted to sit and relax with back support, but all the benches in the area where the show would be were taken. However, we realized one likely family was only there to eat their fish & chips and would probably leave after finishing. So we sat down on the curb and sure enough a little while later they left and we grabbed their seat. We knew people would be coming in crowds, and obstruct our view, but we planned to just stand on the bench during the show. As always a fun show, although with such a big crowd it got quite hard to hear.
We then decided it was time to take a little rest. We headed back to the lockers and picked up our beach towels and pillows and headed over to the area between The Land and The Living Seas. We had originally planned to bring some blankets with us, but the weather was nice and warm so we didn’t need that – the beach towels were good enough to lie down on. No matter where you went that day if there was a space, people were stretched out taking relaxing breaks. We chose this spot because it was a little more out of the way, although still a lot of people there. We walked up to the top of the hill near the tree line – you can actually see backstage there. Most of the people were at the bottom of the hill, but others were spread out all over the hill. It was a nice relaxing spot. You could hear the park noise, but not really loud – kind of like listening to the waves at the beach. We rested there for about 45 minutes or so and then it was getting close to our FP times for Test Track. We brought our stuff back to the locker and headed over to Test Track.
When we got there the stand-by line was ridiculously long – I think this was the 4 hour waiting time. But we had FPs so it would be a short wait for us. The last time we had been there the stand-by time was a lot shorter but they seemed to take longer to let the FP people through. This time the FP line was going remarkably quick. We rode the ride and because someone during the day had given us 4 extra FPs for this ride, we got right back in line. When we hit the outdoor portion of the ride we realized it had started to rain – very lightly. After exiting the ride we went to use our remaining two FPs and at that time they were still running the ride. A short time later however they made an announcement that the ride would be shut down for an undetermined amount of time and if the people in line chose to leave they would not be given any special reentry. We weren’t sure how hard it was raining so we waited for a little and they came through the back of the FP line to tell us we could leave and would receive a FP to return at any time, so we left. When we got out it was pouring. Many people were hanging out under the roof near Test Track, but we realized it was not going to be a quick shower and put on our ponchos and walked over to Innoventions.
We pretty much just sat there and relaxed watching Toon Tag and playing a little bit too. Our plan for dinner was to eat at the Mexican Fast Food place, but it was raining too hard for that. We decided to walk over to Mexico and check out if we could get any seating inside. However, because it was New Year’s Eve and pouring buckets outside everyone came inside and there was no seating at all left that evening. We did see some people eating the take-out along the rail that leads down into the plaza, so we decided to do the same thing too. We found a spot, which was kind of hard to do because everyone was hanging out inside, and while my DD saved the spot I ran over and got us some food. We split a meal because we really weren’t very hungry but needed a little something. This worked out great, I just held my umbrella over it and it didn’t get wet. The only problem was trying to get to the utensils on the cart – they had put the flaps down on the side and you had to duck under to get the stuff. I had a tray and an umbrella so this was kind of tricky – should have gotten that stuff first. After dinner we rode on the boat ride a couple of times – no line even though the place was crowded. We figured most of the people hanging out had probably ridden it earlier and were bored and just waiting for the rain to let up.
Despite the rain, I was determined to see Illuminations at midnight (actually it began at 11:30 I think) but I was not going to walk around in that terrible weather. I think it poured buckets continuously from 7:00 – 1:00. Many of the sidewalks were rivers from so much rain. Mexico was so full of people it wasn’t really a good place to hang out, so back to Illuminations and Toon Tag we went. We sat on the benches, but many people were camped out on the floor – plenty of room in that building. Originally we had planned to go over to Mexico about 2 hours early and get a front row seat to see Illuminations, but knew that it wouldn’t be too bad because of the Rain. So we waited until 15 minutes before and headed over. There were some people there but not too bad and we managed to get a front row spot just about where we wanted to be without having to walk too far.
Illuminations was the regular Illuminations (which those also had done earlier in the evening) and then the special New Year’s Eve addition began. They announced the different countries and said what time they welcomed in the New Year. As they did that a mini fireworks show went off in each of the countries. It was then time to ring in our New Year. They did the required countdown which you could see on the globe, and then more fireworks went off. During the display we could also see the Sorcery in the Sky fireworks going off in MGM – we enjoyed that extra little perk.
After the fireworks we began to make our way out of the park, which was actually still open until 1:00. I really did not want to leave when everyone else was – while not everyone was drinking that night, plenty of people were. Plus it was still raining pretty hard. Drinking, rain, and crowds – not a good traffic situation. So once again we went back to Innoventions. The place was pretty deserted, because everyone basically just left after the fireworks. No one was at Toon Tag so we convinced two other tourists walking by to play with us. After they left a couple of the CMs played a game with us. They told us that they had peeked outside during the fireworks. They also told us that about 5 minutes before they had to inform people that it was almost time for the fireworks – so many people lost track of time hanging around inside away from the rain. After our little chat and two games of Toon Tag, we figured most of the crowd probably cleared out, so off to the lockers we went. Only a few people were left there so we had plenty of room to get our stuff together and packed so the rain wouldn’t get it wet. About 5 minutes later we were at our car and it stopped raining – not for good, but we were able to put stuff away in the car and get our wet ponchos off and wet shoes off and get in the car without getting everything too wet. It did rain some more that night, but by that time all the heavy stuff was gone by – just in time for the park to close.
One thing I didn’t mention earlier was the party hats and horns. They had locations set up in various areas of the park – maybe about 4 places (I remember the rose path on the way to Canada, Odyssey Center, France or Japan or someplace around there and probably a country on the other side.) They had listed on the time schedule they would be handing them out at 6:00, but in reality they started about a half hour early. When you approached the area it seemed like it would take some time getting them, but it went pretty fast. They directed everyone to the end of the line and said one person should go through the line and when you got towards the front they directed people to different areas of the table saying that they all had the same thing. At that point in time and for about an hour after, horns were blaring all over the place which got to be a bit annoying at times. I don’t know if the rain had stayed away the horns would have kept up, but once the rain started things did quiet down. We happened to be nearby at the time and picked them up and stuck them in the locker at one point and then I ran over, while Val waited Innoventions, and picked them up sometime before we went to the fireworks. At midnight not a lot of people had any horns left because the rain kind of wilted them and people just tossed them. As far as the hats went, well our heads are just too big for them to stay on properly. Most people didn’t seem to have a problem, and I never thought my head was that big, but I did have a problem with the hat – I had to kind of shove it down in an awkward position to stay on. Next year I will bring some elastic with me and fix it right. Yes that is right, I have every intention of being there again next year.
One other thing I didn’t mention was the different areas set up for dance parties and special performances. I don’t remember where they all were, but I know there was a place in Japan and a place right outside of Innoventions in the center. Since it was raining so hard we didn’t even check all the special shows going on for the special party – hopefully next year we will. However, we did get close to the place near Innoventions and it was hopping. The music there was for the teenage crowd and they were all out there having fun. The weather was pretty warm – low 70s – so dancing in the rain was not too bad if you are young and not recuperating from the Norwalk Virus. The only problem was a group of those kids that we saw in the restroom were 120% soaked to the bone and had to go right onto an air conditioned bus for a long bus ride. Anyone want to guess how many of them ended up sick? None of them had anything dry with them and just being inside the building they were shivering like crazy.
OK – I think that is all I can say about New Year’s Eve, although I’m sure I’ll think of something I forgot later.
I had decided that we would spend New Year’s Eve at EPCOT and somehow even after being sick we were going to do it. This was one of the few days we were up and out early. The weather reports were predicting rain for the evening – bummer, all that planning and all the good weather we had, it would have to rain for New Year’s Eve. I was determined though to have a good time.
We knew that in some previous years on New Year’s Eve that the park had been closed to off-site visitors extremely early and then even to on-site visitors pretty early. Our plan was to get there before park opening so we would be guaranteed to get in. We planned to get to the gate about 8:30, and we made it by 8:55 – not bad for the late risers. We had brought supplies with us for the whole day thinking we might not get to go back to the car, so our first stop was the lockers. We got one of the last big lockers available. I think they should have been asking people whether they needed a big locker or not because some people might have been able to use a small locker and then others that wanted a big locker that came after might have gotten one. I think probably by 9:30 all the lockers were gone. We knew it was going to be a long, long day so we had come prepared with beach towels and beach pillows to take a nap in the afternoon – we wanted to make sure we were in the park for midnight and there was no guarantee that would happen if we left. However, with what happened later that night, there would have been no problem.
After stuffing our locker, we headed off in search of breakfast. We settled on the place in Innoventions – Electric Umbrella I think. The park was absolutely crazy packed. I can’t remember the last time I saw EPCOT so busy and I have been there during some of the busiest times of the year. We knew we wouldn’t be able to do a lot today, but that was okay – we would take advantage of the extra magic around. After I finished eating I hurried over to Test Track to get a couple of FPs. Upon arriving there I couldn’t believe the people – the FPs return time were for around 5 or 6. I almost said forget it because the lines were about 25 deep, but then I realized they were moving really quick so I got in line. When I got to the front of the line I saw why they were moving quickly – the CMs were pre-printing the tickets and handing them out, no using the machines. I actually got through that line quicker than times I have been behind one or two people that had multiple tickets. I don’t remember the time for the stand-by line at that time, but it was quite long and just got longer during the day – at one point it was actually listed at 4 hours. Not sure what the single rider line was, but it must have been crazy too.
I then went back to the restaurant and picked up Valerie and we headed over to Honey I Shrunk the Audience to get FPs for that – since the CMs handed out the tickets at Test Track we could still use the FP line here. We never did use these tickets, because we were in The Land until well after they expired. At this point the weather was absolutely gorgeous. It was warm, but not too warm and sunny. I was hoping the weatherman would be wrong for tonight. I’m not sure if we rode Journey into your Imagination then or not, but I know we did sometime during that trip (see why you should take notes or do the reports as soon as you get home, because you forget things).
It was still pretty early but extremely crowded so I decided we would go to The Land and see if there was any room on the Behind the Seeds Tour. There were still openings for all the tours, but we decided to go on the very next one, which was about ½ hour later. We decided to take a bathroom break and just sit and relax and do some people watching before the tour.
They first take you backstage and everyone tells who they are and why they are taking the tour. Before entering the greenhouse, you stop and look inside a window at one of the labs and then go into one of the labs where they work with pest control, which they of course explain. Then it’s into the greenhouse. They happened to have a lot of gourds in the greenhouse because they were left over from the Food and Wine Festival and the theme had something to do with gourds. There was one kind that was really squishy and we got to feel it – can’t do that on the boat ride. The plant I loved the most though was the “Sensitive Plant”. If you touched it, the leaves curled up – it didn’t hurt it, it was a temporary thing and they would reopen, but it was very cool. I am not a master gardener by any means and know very little, but I do love to grow plants and look at plants. I have always loved going on the boat ride and looking at the cool ways they have for growing their plants, but it was much cooler to be able to get up close and actually stop and look. There was also plenty of time for questions too. We did get to take a piece of the raw cotton that they had harvested as a souvenir. I have wanted to do this tour for so long and one thing or another always seemed to come up and we never did it – I won’t make that mistake again. I was so happy I took the time to do this and on such a busy day it was a great way to get away from the crowds for a while. It is very cheap too .
After the tour, we headed over to the other end of the food court to watch the Toll House Cookie demonstration. It was cute watching the little kids make the cookies, but I really wish the viewers got a free sample too. It was suppose to be 12 and under and the old guy working there was a really bad judge of age because he asked a couple of girls if they wanted to participate and it was so obvious they were way older than 12 – she was very short, but other things gave her away. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but it was very crowded and some kids missed out because of those older kids. As a matter of fact for the next scheduled time an older girl asked if she could participate and he said they sometimes made exception to the 12 or under rule but it was too crowded to let the older ones in. That girl was tall so I guess he judged her as older, but she definitely wasn’t – I felt bad for her.
For those that haven’t seen this – it is located at the end of the food court in The Land building. They have two tables set up and all the kids get a little chef hat. The first thing they do is give them each a wet wipe to clean their hands – of course two seconds later more than one of the kids are right back getting them “dirty”. Then each participant is given one ingredient to put into the bowl and one of the kids is selected to mix the stuff. Then each kid puts one spoonful of dough on the cookie sheet and the last one puts the rest of the dough on the sheet. It doesn’t matter how big each spoonful is because the magic oven cooks all the cookies the same size. They are each given a little container of chocolate chips and told to sit and wait for a minute while the CM brings the cookies to the magic oven for baking and a minute or two later out come the finished cookies that they baked. Not only does the magic oven cook the cookies in a few short minutes, it also puts them in individual envelope wrappers.
It was around 1:30 at this point and we were getting hungry. We couldn’t decide what to eat because even though no longer sick, some things just were not appealing to us. We finally decided Japan would do. We took the boat over near there and then checked to see if we could get in without a PS. The lady said about 20 – 30 minutes – no problem we took a seat to wait and watched Miyuki through the window. About 10 minutes later we were being shown to our seat. That is one of the great things about traveling with only two people – don’t have to worry so much about PS, even when busy. We were seated at a table with a mother, father and four or five teenage girls – not all theirs. They had all the rooms open and every table full. They also had all the dividers between the rooms open and this made it a rather loud experience. It would have been nicer if they could have shut a couple of the dividers. One lady was attending two rooms with water and such, but they could have divided every two rooms. Of course there was the traditional cooking demonstration they do there – as always fun to watch. The teenage girls were fun to listen to and at one point they were talking so loud and one of the girls said “you know why something or other” and the guy at the next table said “why?” (not those exact words, but you get the picture). The whole place was so loud and they were enjoying themselves, so probably didn’t realize how loud they were. I think the guy at the next table was just trying to be fun and not being rude – at least I hope not. Either way it was quite funny and the girl was so surprised she just shut up for a minute in a stunned silence and then went on a little quieter. I quickly filled up after having been sick and skipping an entire day of eating. I did however eat all my shrimp.
After paying our bill we waddled downstairs to poke around in the store. They were refurbishing it, but still had about half open – including some stuff sitting on tables outside (not in the little booth). We stopped and watched a few people pick the pearls. I don’t know if it was this day or another we were in Japan, but we encountered one little girl that picked out a pearl that apparently had never seen this kind of thing before. Her mother took a picture of every step – she will be able to clearly remember that experience with all the pictures. We thought that was a very good idea to do that.
We then started heading back to Future World and figured we would see some street entertainment type things along the way. The show in France was absolutely mobbed and you could barely see anything so we kept walking. When we got to the UK there was about a 30 minute wait until the next World Showcase Players show. We had seen the Christmas Carol show another day, but they were back to the regular show for New Year’s Eve. We wanted to sit and relax with back support, but all the benches in the area where the show would be were taken. However, we realized one likely family was only there to eat their fish & chips and would probably leave after finishing. So we sat down on the curb and sure enough a little while later they left and we grabbed their seat. We knew people would be coming in crowds, and obstruct our view, but we planned to just stand on the bench during the show. As always a fun show, although with such a big crowd it got quite hard to hear.
We then decided it was time to take a little rest. We headed back to the lockers and picked up our beach towels and pillows and headed over to the area between The Land and The Living Seas. We had originally planned to bring some blankets with us, but the weather was nice and warm so we didn’t need that – the beach towels were good enough to lie down on. No matter where you went that day if there was a space, people were stretched out taking relaxing breaks. We chose this spot because it was a little more out of the way, although still a lot of people there. We walked up to the top of the hill near the tree line – you can actually see backstage there. Most of the people were at the bottom of the hill, but others were spread out all over the hill. It was a nice relaxing spot. You could hear the park noise, but not really loud – kind of like listening to the waves at the beach. We rested there for about 45 minutes or so and then it was getting close to our FP times for Test Track. We brought our stuff back to the locker and headed over to Test Track.
When we got there the stand-by line was ridiculously long – I think this was the 4 hour waiting time. But we had FPs so it would be a short wait for us. The last time we had been there the stand-by time was a lot shorter but they seemed to take longer to let the FP people through. This time the FP line was going remarkably quick. We rode the ride and because someone during the day had given us 4 extra FPs for this ride, we got right back in line. When we hit the outdoor portion of the ride we realized it had started to rain – very lightly. After exiting the ride we went to use our remaining two FPs and at that time they were still running the ride. A short time later however they made an announcement that the ride would be shut down for an undetermined amount of time and if the people in line chose to leave they would not be given any special reentry. We weren’t sure how hard it was raining so we waited for a little and they came through the back of the FP line to tell us we could leave and would receive a FP to return at any time, so we left. When we got out it was pouring. Many people were hanging out under the roof near Test Track, but we realized it was not going to be a quick shower and put on our ponchos and walked over to Innoventions.
We pretty much just sat there and relaxed watching Toon Tag and playing a little bit too. Our plan for dinner was to eat at the Mexican Fast Food place, but it was raining too hard for that. We decided to walk over to Mexico and check out if we could get any seating inside. However, because it was New Year’s Eve and pouring buckets outside everyone came inside and there was no seating at all left that evening. We did see some people eating the take-out along the rail that leads down into the plaza, so we decided to do the same thing too. We found a spot, which was kind of hard to do because everyone was hanging out inside, and while my DD saved the spot I ran over and got us some food. We split a meal because we really weren’t very hungry but needed a little something. This worked out great, I just held my umbrella over it and it didn’t get wet. The only problem was trying to get to the utensils on the cart – they had put the flaps down on the side and you had to duck under to get the stuff. I had a tray and an umbrella so this was kind of tricky – should have gotten that stuff first. After dinner we rode on the boat ride a couple of times – no line even though the place was crowded. We figured most of the people hanging out had probably ridden it earlier and were bored and just waiting for the rain to let up.
Despite the rain, I was determined to see Illuminations at midnight (actually it began at 11:30 I think) but I was not going to walk around in that terrible weather. I think it poured buckets continuously from 7:00 – 1:00. Many of the sidewalks were rivers from so much rain. Mexico was so full of people it wasn’t really a good place to hang out, so back to Illuminations and Toon Tag we went. We sat on the benches, but many people were camped out on the floor – plenty of room in that building. Originally we had planned to go over to Mexico about 2 hours early and get a front row seat to see Illuminations, but knew that it wouldn’t be too bad because of the Rain. So we waited until 15 minutes before and headed over. There were some people there but not too bad and we managed to get a front row spot just about where we wanted to be without having to walk too far.
Illuminations was the regular Illuminations (which those also had done earlier in the evening) and then the special New Year’s Eve addition began. They announced the different countries and said what time they welcomed in the New Year. As they did that a mini fireworks show went off in each of the countries. It was then time to ring in our New Year. They did the required countdown which you could see on the globe, and then more fireworks went off. During the display we could also see the Sorcery in the Sky fireworks going off in MGM – we enjoyed that extra little perk.
After the fireworks we began to make our way out of the park, which was actually still open until 1:00. I really did not want to leave when everyone else was – while not everyone was drinking that night, plenty of people were. Plus it was still raining pretty hard. Drinking, rain, and crowds – not a good traffic situation. So once again we went back to Innoventions. The place was pretty deserted, because everyone basically just left after the fireworks. No one was at Toon Tag so we convinced two other tourists walking by to play with us. After they left a couple of the CMs played a game with us. They told us that they had peeked outside during the fireworks. They also told us that about 5 minutes before they had to inform people that it was almost time for the fireworks – so many people lost track of time hanging around inside away from the rain. After our little chat and two games of Toon Tag, we figured most of the crowd probably cleared out, so off to the lockers we went. Only a few people were left there so we had plenty of room to get our stuff together and packed so the rain wouldn’t get it wet. About 5 minutes later we were at our car and it stopped raining – not for good, but we were able to put stuff away in the car and get our wet ponchos off and wet shoes off and get in the car without getting everything too wet. It did rain some more that night, but by that time all the heavy stuff was gone by – just in time for the park to close.
One thing I didn’t mention earlier was the party hats and horns. They had locations set up in various areas of the park – maybe about 4 places (I remember the rose path on the way to Canada, Odyssey Center, France or Japan or someplace around there and probably a country on the other side.) They had listed on the time schedule they would be handing them out at 6:00, but in reality they started about a half hour early. When you approached the area it seemed like it would take some time getting them, but it went pretty fast. They directed everyone to the end of the line and said one person should go through the line and when you got towards the front they directed people to different areas of the table saying that they all had the same thing. At that point in time and for about an hour after, horns were blaring all over the place which got to be a bit annoying at times. I don’t know if the rain had stayed away the horns would have kept up, but once the rain started things did quiet down. We happened to be nearby at the time and picked them up and stuck them in the locker at one point and then I ran over, while Val waited Innoventions, and picked them up sometime before we went to the fireworks. At midnight not a lot of people had any horns left because the rain kind of wilted them and people just tossed them. As far as the hats went, well our heads are just too big for them to stay on properly. Most people didn’t seem to have a problem, and I never thought my head was that big, but I did have a problem with the hat – I had to kind of shove it down in an awkward position to stay on. Next year I will bring some elastic with me and fix it right. Yes that is right, I have every intention of being there again next year.
One other thing I didn’t mention was the different areas set up for dance parties and special performances. I don’t remember where they all were, but I know there was a place in Japan and a place right outside of Innoventions in the center. Since it was raining so hard we didn’t even check all the special shows going on for the special party – hopefully next year we will. However, we did get close to the place near Innoventions and it was hopping. The music there was for the teenage crowd and they were all out there having fun. The weather was pretty warm – low 70s – so dancing in the rain was not too bad if you are young and not recuperating from the Norwalk Virus. The only problem was a group of those kids that we saw in the restroom were 120% soaked to the bone and had to go right onto an air conditioned bus for a long bus ride. Anyone want to guess how many of them ended up sick? None of them had anything dry with them and just being inside the building they were shivering like crazy.
OK – I think that is all I can say about New Year’s Eve, although I’m sure I’ll think of something I forgot later.