You know when you need to go to the dentist, and you dread it but tell yourself you're stupid for that? Well, maybe instinct is better to be followed. :P I went in yesterday for a regular cleaning. They found a couple of small cavities they want to fill, no biggie. I spent the whole appointment looking at the clock, hoping I'd be done in time to rush over the freeway to the movie theater to catch the 1:10 showing of Pirates. And just as they're finishing up? I feel a little pop, and the hygenist says, "...oh." o_O And suddenly there's a big gap on one of my teeth. Apparently, while she was flossing, she popped out one of my old fillings. They rushed to put a temporary filling in there, while I stared and the clock and crossed my fingers. Seriously, I have my priorities!

When they were done, I made an appointment to come back this morning to have a permanent one put back in, and rushed out the door. I had 10 minutes to get to the theater. I made it - in ten minutes I got through the Intersection of Doom (although, admittedly, that intersection isn't as bad as it was before the road widening a few years ago), got to the theater, bought my ticket, bought snacks, and got in to the theater just as the previews started. Woo! It was fun to see again, and be able to notice the little stuff that I was too worked up to notice the first time.

But no zoo today. :( I had to get up at the butt crack of dawn and go get my filling replaced instead (and get one new one done on top of that). It was quick and easy, though. Only took one Friends episode (I <3 technology) and they were done with both, and I was almost completely un-numb by the time I got home.

Not as many books this month, 'cause I started re-reading the "His Dark Materials" trilogy in anticipation of the movie! Didn't include those here, 'cause they're already on my all-time favorites list.
( May 2007 Books! )

And because I'm in a big Disney theme parks mood this week, here's a few nifty videos I've found:
( Look under the cut for links and descriptions! )

OMG THEY AWESOMEIFIED HOLIDAY BELIEVE.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcnB9YnQGy8

That show was my favorite Disneyland fireworks show up until Remember began, and OMFG, they made it even better. The start of the Silent Night segment is PERFECT, and they made my favorite part (the Nutcracker segment) even more amazing. And that finale? *craps pants* I WANNA SEE IT IN PERSON.

Yes, old lady, you touched me once more. *walks off singing the (ripped off from WDW) theme*

ZOMG I SAW WICKED AGAIN!!! *squees and runs in circles* And OMG, Kendra Kassebaum is totally my hero. She's so freakin' awesome. Again. :P

Headed up to Orange County early, and pit-stopped at Disneyland for awhile! I got there just as Parade of Dreams was hitting Main Street, so I stopped to tape that. Yaaaay, Lion King show stop! Afterwards, I decided to go get my Jack Sparrow love, so I joined the long-ass Pirates line. After half an hour of waiting, just as I'm getting past the parrot/map part inside, the line stops moving... and never restarted. We got the dreaded about-face command from the CMs. *cries* After hearing some of the crap coming out of the mouths of the family behind me (your child is obnoxious because YOU are obnoxious, asshat) directed at the CM, I stopped to tell the CM thanks for doing his job well, and good luck in dealing with the stupid people. Seriously, I get so sick of the crap people give CMs when a ride breaks down, as if it's their fault. They deserve major kudos for dealing with that all the time. Anyways, I ended up just wandering around for awhile after that. Got some food, and watched the watch artist on Main Street for awhile. God, their artwork makes me so jealous. He was doing a watercolor of Lady, and it was AWESOME. If I had his mad art skillz, I could die happy. Also stopped at World of Disney and window shopped for a bit - I figure that if there's anything I really want from the parks, I should get it now! But in the end... yes, I went to Disneyland and didn't go on a single ride. :P

Then it was over to meet roguecows to go see Wicked!!! EEEEE! OMG, it was SO AWESOME again!! The audience there was even more receptive than the one in San Diego. They REALLY got into it! Hell, people were screaming and cheering as soon as Julia Murney hit that last note in "The Wizard and I" and cheered through the whole duration of it! Kendra Kassebaum was once again TEH AWESOME. She is the bestest best Glinda EVAR. "SPARKLES!!!!" XD Since the Kendra "Popular" vid I linked to last time on YouTube has since been removed (YouTube taking down good bootlegs makes baby jeebus cry!) here's a new one I found on there (although she totally bifs up one line :P)! I also really loved when the Tin Man's hat totally fell off in the middle of "March of the Witch Hunters" and he couldn't get it back on. Ah, the bane of live theater! :P Dammit, why can't this show be around all the time?! :P

Here it is, as promised. This is my complete listing of theme park show videos. If there's something here you'd like to request that I capture, just leave me a note and I'll add it to my to-do list! This list includes the date and details of each video as well as links to the entries where they've been uploaded (if applicable).

( Walt Disney World, SeaWorld, and Disneyland videos... )

Four trips to Disneyland in two weeks... I'm SO banning myself from Disneyland for awhile, for the sake of gas money. dcpesses, unspokenlonging and I finally got a chance to head back to the park togther!

( The report! )

Lots of pics, mostly of Sorcerer Mickey and Pirates (some good Jack ones!) are up here!

All the people out there who talked smack about the Pirates of the Carribbean refurb can kiss my rear. It ROCKED like a rockin' thing. And here is my illustrated report to show it off!

richiied, sana_chan and I got to the gates around 7:45 this morning, and the line to get into the park was already almost to the center of the esplanade. By the time we got through the turnstyles at 8:15, the line for Pirates of the Caribbean ended under the train station.

On Main Street.

Yes, you read that right, the line went from the ride entrance, all the way back to nearly the park entrance, and here is the photographic proof. For those who have no idea how long that is, here is a map with the line traced out in red. I dutifully photographed our progress toward the ride, which was surprisingly quick. Note our horror at the line, as we waited in Frontierland. There were lots of detours set up in the park - at opening, the entrance to Frontierland was ONLY used as a queue area for Pirates - only those in line were allowed in. As we got closer to the ride itself, we could see that there was a lot of filming going on just outside the entrance. Lots of morning newscasts and such. But ZOMG, they had Pirate Mickey and Pirate Goofy!!! I totally turned into a six-year old. I also like the merchandise display table strategically placed right next to the line. I SO want PotC Monopoly. Now. I also wanted to conduct my own pirate raid on the media's craft services table that was placed tantalizingly close to the line.

Just under an hour after we got in line, we reached the front. FINALLY! Luckily for us, the people around us were just as psyched as we are. Hell, Crazy Old Lady in front of us was the first to start belting out "Yo Ho" when we got into the caves, and the whole boat immediately joined in.

( Rundown of the changes - there be ride spoilers ahead for them what don't obey! )

Left Pirates, and stopped in Pieces of Eight. We were very bummed to see that the Aztec gold medallions had completely sold out since last weekend. Ah, well - will get them later. Also wanted to check out the Disney Gallery POTC exhibit, but it's not open yet. I'm glad they're bringing it back, though. God, I spent hours drooling over Jack's costume last time it was there. :P Stopped for breakfast at the Riverbelle, and I got me a Mickey Mouse pancake. As we were eating, I also noticed that Disney had a photographer walking along the line. Why? So that people can get their photo taken while in line for Pirates, then come back and buy it later. I kid you not, it was quite possibly one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen. People were totally going for it, though! More power to them. :P At that point, the line looked like this, with the rest of it continuing out to the Hub through Frontierland.

Checked the tip board in hopes of Jack Sparrow doing meet and greets - alas, not til July 7th. :'( But Pirates was listed as a 105 minute wait. By comparison, Splash and Space were each listed at 60. Go figure. Anyways, Pirates is what we'd come for, so we jumped back into line to go again! This time we started at the entrance to Frontierland and waited I'd guess 45 minutes or so. Not bad at all! Oh, and there was a baby ducky following us!

It was, however, the longest Pirates ride I've ever had. It broke down while we were next to the three singing guys and the donkey in the burning town. Eventually they shut off the audio, and we just watched and laughed at the animatronics as they clicked and hissed along. Luckily, we once again had the Boat of Awesome that kept everyone entertained by singing Yo Ho and cheering and joking around and such. When a CM finally came out to say they may have to evacuate us, we all teased her about breaking us down in the wrong spot (read: not by Jack) made her take our food orders while she was at it. ;) Hey, it kept her laughing in the situation, and that rocks. Finally, after 20+ minutes of sitting there, they got it back up and running. Truth be told, we were really bummed. We wanted to be walked off. :P Ah, well.

We headed out after that, but not without a stop for Aladdin love and a stop at World of Disney and 20th Century Music. Pics are all up here (SPOILERS!), although I linked to most stuff in this entry. The park was packed with AP holders and other Pirates fans and it's freakin' hot today (around 90), but it was so worth it. PIRATES ARE LOVE.

My overall opinion on the refurb? Love it! I think they did a great job of adding to what was already there, without making it look like they change everything. Yes, some stuff has changed, but not all that much. The Jack AAs are awesome - they're REALLY good likenesses (although I will admit the last one looks very slightly off to me), and they move very much like Jack Sparrow, even in something as simple as a turn of the head. As much as I'm a purist when it comes to Disneyland stuff, I give this one two big thumbs up. And judging by the number of boats coming up the final lift that were full of cheering occupants, I'd hazard a guess that there's plenty of others who agree. To any refurb-bashers out there: if you don't like it, then stay the hell away so the line will be shorter for me! :P

I liiive! Kinda. :P I've been feeling really crappy this week, and I'm still trying to figure it all out. A couple of weeks ago, I more or less gave up caffeine, thinking that's what's been giving me headaches (I noticed that my headaches tended to come right after drinking a pop or coffee or something). I also started chugging bottles of water like crazy to help fight off dehydration and all. It worked for a few days, but now I'm getting headaches every afternoon, sometimes accompanied by dizziness. I've gone to bed really early a couple of times this week. I'm starting to wonder if it's an eye issue, though. Both my parents have glasses, but neither my brother or I ever needed them. But I'm finding that I have trouble with headaches when I'm focused on something like the computer screen or a drawing or a book or whatnot. And the dizziness comes if I'm scrolling a lot on the computer screen, or looking back and forth a lot and switching pencils or markers or whatever while I'm drawing. I don't feel like my eyesight is bad - everything looks fine to me - but I wonder if I'm getting the headaches because my eyes are straining to make a correction to a problem I'm not even aware of. Grr.

Anyways, as I mentioned, I did some drawing this week. I really wanna learn my Prisma markers well, so I played with that. Man, those are cool. I looked around online for techniques with those, and played with it a bit. It's very reminiscent of watercolor painting, but with markers. I have no idea where the inspiration came from, but I did this little doodle. I had to get creative with colors, because those markers are hella expensive and I only have a set of 24. As such, I have no grey. Yay, creative coloring!

On to the good stuff! Wolf Center yesterday morning - I played around with pulling weeds in the garden again, then did some office work. And while I was eating lunch, a tapping sound on the sliding glass door scared the crap outta me. I turned around, and there was a roadrunner pecking at the glass. I ran into him several more times, startling him once and causing him to make a FUNKY clicking noise that is apparently their alarm call. Too cool!

Got home and had a message from the place I interviewed last week, saying they needed to get some information from me. But of course, when I called back today, they'd had a power outage so everyone had gone home. Doh!

But the freakin' coolest thing this week? ( Kirsten goes to Grad Nite at Disneyland! Woooo! )

Finally got a chance to meet up with other VF mods/admins for a day of photo geekiness! Wheeee!

( A day at Disneyland - the Mark Twain, PotC 2 world premiere construction, and lots of shows! )

( Photos - Mickey and Snow and Remember, oh my! )

...and to thank you for sitting through my Disneyland ramble, you can listen to LeAnn Rimes' "Remember When" because that's one of the most touching Disneyland songs ever written.

Back to the laziness! My parents are headed out of town, so I'm back to slacking around. We went to the Wild Animal Park on Monday. That was fun! I hadn't been there for awhile. I was a bit bummed that the giraffe feeding part was closed, but I've done that before and I'm sure I'll do it again, so I'll live. We did, however, get to do the lorikeet feeding. I was a little lori magnet! I ended up with three of them climbing all over me. Only one of them was actually drinking the nectar, the others were just climbing in my hair and on my shoulders and fighting with each other. And biting my ear. It was also interesting to see the new tram route, since they shut down half of the big railway for construction. We had an AWESOME driver - he knew what he was talking about, and he made it fun. Most of the drivers just kinda talk about the animals, but he was cracking jokes and being very energetic. Huge thumbs-up to Alex, for being quite possibly the best tram driver I've seen to date. Lots of Wild Animal Park pictures up here! I ID'd as many species as I could remember, but I am so bad at identifying all the antelope species, so I couldn't remember most of those.

Yesterday was Disneyland! WOO! It'd been a month and a half for me since I'd been there. It actually wasn't all that crowded, which was really nice. We had to FastPass Space Mountain and single rider Splash, but we waited for most everything else. We got extra lucky on the Matterhorn - they pulled our car into that side loading area when we got to the end, since it was getting too backed up. So they told us to just hang out there for a second while they got caught up (so that the ride won't break down). For our troubles, we got to go around again. Yay, free ride! The new Haunted Mansion stuff in the attic... OMG, that bride could give me NIGHTMARES. She's CREEPY. My brother and I also did Buzz Lightyear a lot. Note: never compete against a guy who worked at a laser tag arena for years. Once he finally got a good gun (you regulars know how hit-or-miss that can be!) he hit 500,000. DAMN. And I thought I was cool for breaking my own record and hitting 382,000. We stuck around for Remember, which was awesome as usual. And crowds were light enough that we didn't show up until almost 9 and still got a spot in front of the castle - right in front of the churro cart, actually. Okay, and I'm officially confused now: are they moving the walkway again? 'Cause it didn't go in front of the castle last night, it went around the hub on the Tomorrowland side. Not that I'm complaining - I like it better that way - I'm just curious if that's a reagular thing now or they're just trying to confuse us by moving it around again. The only bummer in the show was the Pirates scene - they didn't use the Matterhorn/Frontierland launch points, so the cannon fight was way back in the back. Not nearly as impressive. But I got my graduation Mickey ears! Yaaaaaay! No photos, though, 'cause I was really lazy and just didn't feel like pulling my camera out all the time. :P In consolation, you can look at me being uber-cool on Buzz here, here, and here.

Not much else going on! My fridge has been confirmed as Dead, and I should be getting a new one sometime this afternoon. I'm really looking forward to seeing how they get it up here, actually, as I live on the second floor of a building with no elevator.

Happy Cinco de Mayo, all!

And to the Disneyland nuts on my flist... HAPPY FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF THE 50TH CELEBRATION! One year ago today, we packed into Disneyland like sardines to get a glimpse of the new entertainment, and were blown away. The enthusiasm, the Disney history, the screaming and cheering... so many memories of that day. I remember showing up at the parking structure at 5:45 am, only to have a security guard tell me I couldn't wait there until 6 am. So I drove laps around the local residences, then raced back... along with about 50 other cars jockeying for position. Then, waiting in line first thing in the morning with a crowd of great VisionsFantastic members, cheering and singing and me being hyper off the Frappuccino and giant Pixy Stick I had for breakfast while waiting in line.

Today, RU42 posted a great video that he shot of the event, including footage of the lineup at the gates and the opening ceremony. I actually found myself with tears in my eyes as I watched and remembered. The video can be downloaded here at VisionsFantastic (free registration required, to prevent hotlinking). I have to say, as much as I'm not a Christina Aguilera fan, I really loved her "When You Wish Upon a Star" rendition. And of course, LeAnn Rimes' "Remember When" is one of my favorite Disney songs EVER. And Julie Andrews and Art Linkletter... *dies*

While I'm at it, I must link to RU42's opening night of Remember... Dreams Come True video from that day (again, free VF registration required). SO AMAZING. You can hear people shouting along (10,000 die-hard Disneyland fans shouting along was the greatest sound EVER) and screaming and going nuts over the official premiere of what is, in my opinion, the greatest fireworks show ever created. And yes, the girl who you hear say "That's worth $50, right there" at the end is me. :P That show is the BEST.



You never know
Where your dreams might take you,
So keep them safe and sound,
Don't let reality break you...

Oh, noes, I did it again! :P Went to Disneyland yesterday with a few other mods/admins from VisionsFantastic, and had a BLAST. We had a big ol' photo meet, and geeked out over cameras and Disneyland. We got there at opening, and didn't leave til 11pm. Good times! It was really crowded, but since we weren't worried about doing everything in the park, we dealt with it.

We spent most of the time wandering and looking for good photos, and occasionally going on rides that we passed. I started a new game: try and see how many different animal species (particularly birds) I can find and photograph in Disneyland. I got a good start! Eventually I'll build a little website, just 'cause I can.

Some of the highlights:
-Baby ducks: I saw baby ducks for the first time this year! I'd been asking where they were 'cause I hadn't seen any yet. Then over by Tom Sawyer Island I finally saw them, and there were TONS of them. I saw one momma duck that had so many, I had to wait until I looked at the photos to count them. SIXTEEN. SIXTEEN baby ducks with one adult.
-Splash Mountain: freaked me out. The first Brer Rabbit that you see was MISSING AN EYE. You could see the mechanism to move the pupil around, but the pupil itself was gone. SCARY.
-Disneyland Railroad: We came SO close to getting a tour of the Lilly Belle. One of the VF members was working the train, and he was trying to get us inside. Alas, it didn't work out. But we sat next to it. My Disneyland history meter was off the charts.
-Remember: We claimed our spot about 3 hours early - front row, baby! They made the "this show may be cancelled due to winds" announcement, but it went off just a minute or two late. That show is still pee-in-my-pants amazing. And I was proud of myself for shooting at 1/10 sec with NO TRIPOD and decent sharpness. GO ME!
-Fantasmic: The dragon didn't actually breathe fire, and that made me sad. But at least they didn't blow up Mickey mid-sentence this time. Oh! And Mickey had a new robe! Old one, new one. Yeah. Go back to the old one. And I think I've just been elevated to Fantasmic!loser status for noticing that on the spot.

And, as it was a photo meet, pics are up here. Lots and lots of them! TONS of Remember photos, and lots of Sorcerer Mickey in Fantasmic, as always!

I should really study for my Conservation Bio midterm tomorrow, but I am a bad procrastinator... ;)

So, as y'all know, I ended up at Disneyland yesterday! Katrena called me the day before and asked if I wanted to go. 'Twas nice and relaxed! With all the rain, it was fairly deserted, although still a bit busier than a normal weekday (due to Spring Break hours). In fact, DCA was busier than DL! In the end, though, we didn't get rained on at all. And yes, we eventually got on the Matterrhorn 5-10 minutes after I made the phone post. :P Tower of Terror cracked me up... on the screen where you "wave goodbye" to yourself, in the corner there was some sort of computer error message. I wish I'd seen it in time to get a pic! On the Mansion, the attic is already changing a lot. It's much more well-lit, and the little heads that pop up and shout "I do!" are all gone. I'm kinda anxious to see the changes that should be coming in the next couple of weeks. Oh, and the rooftop off to the right as you leave the attic was REALLY brightly-lit. On a sad note, the waterfall on Big Thunder was shut off, so the BigThunder!penis was only dripping a little bit. *giggle*

We were leaving by like 7-ish, 'cause it was REALLY windy and we figured Remember would be cancelled anyways. Instead, we headed over to Rainforest Cafe for dinner. Oh, man, their banana mudslide thingies are the BEST. We'd been waiting for them all day, LOL. SO YUMMY.

Oh yeah, then we forgot what level of the parking structure we ended up on, and went through Mickey and Daisy before realizing that we were parked on Goofy. At least we knew the general area we were in. :P

No pics this time, 'cause I really only took a few, and I'm took lazy to organize and upload those. :P

I didn't end up at the Wolf Center today. With the storm this week, their weather has been pretty unpredictable, and the staff is out of town a conference and didn't really leave anything for me to do. So I saved myself some gas money.

I got a copy of the "Wicked" soundtrack this week... HOLY CRAP, that's amazing music. I absolutely love it! I really, really need to see this show! It's coming to SoCal this summer, and then Seattle after that... as soon as I know where I'm going to end up after graduation, I need to get tickets.

( Joining the GW rant bandwagon... )

So yeah, I went to Disneyland again yesterday, with almandot!

( Report under the cut! )

Headed out after that, 'cause I'm still feeling sick and had a migraine. :( I still felt like crap when I woke up this morning, so I called the Wolf Center and let them know I couldn't make it today.

Pics are up, though! Lots of random stuff this time - rides, fat ducks, Remember, etc... http://xfkirsten.smugmug.com/gallery/1280851

Disneylaaaaaaand! One month to the day, unspokenlonging, dcpesses and I went back to Disneyland.

( Disneyland report... )

ETA: OMG! WDW Pirates rehab phtotos! http://itm.textamerica.com/

Woo! Disneyland! I had a total blast yesterday with unspokenlonging and dcpesses and Kira!

( Disneyland-ness! )

All photos for the day are up here! I made up for two trips of few photos, so there's 138 there for your Disneyland pleasure. ;) Lots of Fantasmic, 'cause, well, that show just totally rocks my socks. Still.

Mmmm... and I woke up to Aladdin and the King of Thieves on TV. YUMMY.

So yesterday, sana_chan decided she wanted to go to Disneyland. And she said I needed to go, too. So I'm all, "Dude, I'm not doing anything. Let's go." So me, sana_chan, richiied, and Katrena headed up to Disneyland today!

( Disneyland day report! )

Pics are up, as usual! Nothing real fancy - since we were so late getting there, it was pretty much just rides. Mostly pics of the on-ride photo preview screens, 'cause I'm a cheap tool like that. http://xfkirsten.smugmug.com/gallery/1175665

...I should probably do my reading for class tomorrow. It's the All-Faith Service, so I gotta remember that classes start earlier tomorrow. I've forgotten almost every semester for the last couple of years, and end up walking into class when there's only like 10 minutes left. I WILL remember tomorrow! At least it means I'm done with class earlier.

Oh, and I finally went ahead and reported the Netflix DVD missing last night. Got an e-mail this morning saying that it was returned to them. Bah. They're sending it to me again, though, and at least it's not listed as missing on my account anymore.

Holy crap, I am SO tired. But this was so amazing, I had to post it.

So as basically soon as I arrived at DL, I lined up to get into the Pumbaa lot. Soon, enough cars were lined up and waiting that the right lane of Disney Way became a parking lot, and they let us in to get us out of the way. We made it into line around 12:15 am or so, and began the long wait. At about 1:30am, they started sending people through security. It took until 3:30 am for us to get into the holding area in DCA - and we were only a few hundred people back in line! The gave us our wristbands (to identify the approximate time we entered the line) as well as our guidemap (since it was a special 50th anniversary map, we were limited to one!) and our free mouse ears!! The back of the ears have "July 17, 2005" embroidered on them. The line snaked back from the entrance into Hollywood Pictures Backlot, and we joined up next to Cruella DeVil's trailer. We busted out the Disney Scene-It... unfortunately, the DVD player was a no-go, so we just did the trivia questions. By sunrise, we managed to get through the whole deck. As they started to lead us out to DL park, we found out that the line behind us ran all the way back out of the Backlot, down the street past A Bug's Land, through Paradise Pier, past Grizzy River Run, and through Condor Flats. For those who don't know the layout of DCA: basically, the line ran the length of all the major pathways in the park. By the time they stopped bringing people into line at 6am, there were 14,000 people waiting. We were easily in the first 750.

As they led us over to DL, we were treated as celebrities. Cast Members lined the esplanade, waving and greeting us, and saying "Welcome home!" It was sappy, but SO sweet. When we got to Main Street, the CMs there also lined the street and greeted us with more cries of "Welcome home."

Ran and grabbed a spot for the ceremony, and was not disappointed! I felt my eyes start to water when Diane Disney Miller started reading off Walt's opening day speech. The usual suspects were there: Iger, Eisner, etc. Art Linkletter was the emcee, and Gov. Schwartzenegger was also on-hand. They finished off by having everyone in attendance sing happy birthday to Disneyland.

Afterwards, we went over to Space Mountain. Man, I missed that ride! It's so much smoother than it was before, and I really love how the new music works with the ride. Great effects, too! Lines there were huge all day - in excess of 2 hours.

Surprisingly, lines elsewhere were fairly normal for a busy day. As it turns out, I hear that they stopped letting people in when they reached just 45,000. Capacity on a major holiday is closer to 60-70k. They left us plenty of room!

At 4:45, the exact time at which Walt read his famous speech 50 years ago, they played a video of the speech. I started to tear up again, but managed to hold it back. That was short-lived, however. They then went into a nostalgic music video set to "Remember When"... and I totally lost it. I had tears streaming down my face. Such a touching video. I'm dying to find a copy of it.

Of course, with the huge crowds we had to grab a spot early for Remember. We got great seats! I also noticed a couple of changes in shells just since I saw it a couple of weeks ago. Then to the 10:30 Fantasmic!

I headed out shortly after that, but not before I stopped in a shop to look for dated merchandise. They had been selling it at the Festival Arena, but the lines there were miles long all day. I felt so lucky: I found ONE dated shirt left, in all of Main St... and it was in my size! Score! I also found out that they're selling the sheet music to "Remember When," so I picked up a copy.

As I walked down Main St on my way out, they were replaying Diane's speech on the Jumbotron outside the Emporium. The words were being broadcast all over Main Street, and it felt so right to be walking out of the park after that, hearing her describe Walt's vision being described over the PA system by his own daughter. As I left, I stopped to look up at Walt's apartment. I had to just sit there for a few minutes in awe of it. I realized that it really hadn't sunk in what I'd just experienced. A once-in-a-lifetime date, celebrating a HUGE milestone in the most well-known theme park in the world. And I was there to see it turn 50. I had the whole walk back to Pumbaa to think about that, and I'm still in awe.

One thing that still amazes me was the people in the park today. Despite getting up in the early hours (or for some of us, never going to bed at all!), almost no one came across as cranky to me! People were polite and friendly. When we were looking fo a spot from which to watch the fireworks, one family actually offered to scoot around so that we'd have enough space.

Of course, my camera was with me constantly... and I took plenty of pics! Once again, I want to marry my new camera... ESPECIALLY after I saw how my Fantasmic photos came out. After months of the opening Mickey photo battle, I won it on the first try with this camera and my zoom lens! Hooray for heavy zoom and 1600 ISO!! http://xfkirsten.smugmug.com

Maybe I'll have more tomorrow... I've been up for 44+ hours straight now - and it's time for bed!