Vacation!
First: ausiewanab & I went to Disney World for my birthday & it was AWESOME. We also hit Universal for the first time, specifically for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
The good:
Parks practically empty due to frigid temperatures. One night we had Epcot World Showcase damn near to ourselves because it was so cold.
Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party. IT SNOWED ON MAIN STREET, U.S.A. *dances with glee*
Cinderella's Royal Table for my birthday dinner. Met princesses, have the pictures to prove it! Even if Ariel looked a bit like a drag queen...a scared, scared drag queen.
The bad:
The frigid temperatures. There are bits of me chapped that you do NOT want chapped. Let me just leave it at that.
Toy Story Mania: Didn't get to ride because of the crowds. I don't wait in hour long lines for anything short of multiple orgasms, thanks.
Universal IoA is a weird mix of good & bad. On one hand, the rides we went on were EXCELLENT & innovative. Spider-Man was everything a 3-D show/ride should be, and made Honey I Shrunk the Audience look laughable. Harry Potter & the Forbidden Journey was awesome & I loved that they had the entire bloody cast in it. I literally shrieked "NEVILLE!" at the end. Because I'm that girl.
HOWEVER. The park was obviously pretty old & tired. Dr. Seuss Land (or whatever it was called), should've been bright and vibrant--a children's book come to life! Instead it was faded and worn and kind of sad. Marvel Super-Hero Island was pretty well kept up, but had only 3 rides. Jurassic Park had two, and one was a water ride that no one was going on in 40 degree weather. And The Wizarding World of Harry Potter was ridiculously small--the line for Ollivander's Wand Shop was at least an hour long and went all the way through the entrance to Hogsmead. The stores were so packed you couldn't even browse. And the ride itself, despite an amazing & immersive queue, had one sticking point: you enter the line and immediately are told that bags will need to be stowed in a locker. Approximately half the line is then shunted in to a locker area where you have to scan your fingerprint in to a computer, get a locker, stuff your crap in it, then get BACK in line. At the end of the ride you then have to fight your way BACK in to the SAME locker area, get to the computer screen, scan your fingerprint again to retreive your stuff. If you don't do it quite right, you have to wait for a "wizard" to come help you and prove it's your stuff. As you can imagine, this takes a DAMN LONG TIME. I was there a good 15 minutes and my fingerprint actually worked on the first try.
On the way out we stopped for lunch at Captain America's Diner & had easily the worst meal EVER. My cheeseburger was cold, the fries soggy, and that was AFTER standing around waiting for someone to help us in the LITERALLY EMPTY diner.
So. While the ride, and the Hogwarts area, was amazing, I don't know that I'll be going back any time soon. I did get a bitchin' Ravenclaw t-shirt, though, cuz that's how I roll.
Anyway: pictures! There's also one of me in front of a full-size Iron Man 2 suit, but I haven't stolen the good photo yet :)
Second, I saw Tangled and am stupidly in love with it. No really, I'm trying to fic. It's kind of sad.
Also, I'm definitely noticing a trend: Han Solo, Hatter, Flynn Rider...I like bad boys who come around for the girl. This does not bode well for my future ;)