After a gap of more than two years, it was time once more for the Snook and I to head to the US for a visit with the fam. Work commitments resulted in a shorter trip than we’d planned, but we still managed to fit in stops in Indiana, Orlando, Chicago, and Los Angeles. (Oh yeah, and Space Camp. That ruled.)
Yeah, so our flight from Sydney was sorta nightmarish. Eventually I stopped hyperventilating though, and we made it to Chicago without any further difficulty. We spent the night at the Holiday Inn Express (excellent bed, nice and clean, and the airport shuttle was much appreciated). The next morning we picked up the rental car and drove to Indiana, where we discovered… SNOW.
SNOW. IN APRIL. That sucked. Especially since everybody had been telling us how unseasonably warm the weather had been, so we hadn’t brought a lot of warm clothes. (Special thanks to my Aunt Deba for both putting us up yet again and for sending through these pics.)
The week in Indiana was a haze of family visits, carbs, dogs, and kids. As mentioned on the blog, my Mom booked us all in for a session at the JC Penney Portrait Studio to commemorate the occasion. While the Snook and I managed one decent shot, the rest didn’t fare so well. That photographer SUCKED. Here’s one of all the “kids.”
Me, Joey, and Snookums. I wish I hadn’t worn a shirt with that ridiculous dangly thing on the front.
This is the one that had my Mom spitting mad. Why didn’t she make it landscape instead? We were all crowded in on the one side, and poor Rodd is just a disembodied head. And there’s lots of room over where Dan is! Not to mention that we’re all looking in different directions. It’s kinda funny, actually.
As you might imagine, quite a lot of time and effort went into the baby wrangling. At one point, there were like ten adults maniacally singing the ABC song in a frantic attempt to get Penn to look up at the camera. He looks pretty sweet here with Amy and Dan though.
Here’s little Penn with a football backdrop. Now that’s a cute smile!
After a week of visits, the Snook and I packed up and boarded a flight to Orlando. It was time for some warm weather and theme park action!
We landed in Orlando and went to pick up the rental car. Through some fluke, we ended up with a PT Cruiser. A burnt orange metallic PT Cruiser. I know! The Snook and I had been wanting to ride in one of these for some time, but MAN, I can unequivocably state now that they’re an absolute bitch to drive. Worst car ever. It has a blind spot the size of a tank and practically no power. But we looked cool!
We stayed at the Royal Plaza, one of the “Downtown Disney” hotels. I’m a bit torn on the hotel recommendation. On one hand it’s super conveniently located and everything was clean and comfortable. They’ve got frequent shuttles to and from all the theme parks, too. On the other hand, they were out of single king bed rooms so we had one with two doubles, which was random. And when I smashed a coffee cup on the first day and rang down to tell them about it, they helpfully sent someone to clean it up… but never replaced the cup. It was just a bit faceless. We got a special rate through Mousesavers though, so I’m not complaining too much.
You know what I will complain about though? The ticket prices at Disney World. Man, they really soak you! The hotel concierge helpfully informed us that we could save $150 if we sat through a time-share presentation, but it would have eaten up half of one of our days. We just said “Screw it” and paid the full fare. Here we are at the Magic Kingdom on the first day. We headed straight to Adventureland and Frontierland to do the big rides before the lines got too long.
Our first stop was Pirates of the Caribbean, and since there was no wait, we got straight on. The “Davy Jones waterfall” effect at the beginning is BRILLIANT. Seriously, it was the best thing I saw in all of Disney. So, so cool. The Johnny Depp animatronics were pretty good too, but not nearly as jaw-dropping. The crowds were so thin that morning, we rode Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, and the Haunted Mansion all in succession.
Tourists.
Snookums takes a shot at some “Injuns” from the fort on Tom Sawyer Island.
Here we are on the Jungle Cruise. The park was actually starting to fill up by this time, and we actually had to get a Fast Pass to get on this ride.
On the train. I actually dragged the Snook on all the “Old People” attractions: the Tiki Room, the Carousel of Progress, the Hall of Presidents, the Tomorrowland Peoplemover. We like the slow stuff.
Everytime a character appeared, a queue of like 50 parents and children would materialize beside them. So my only recourse was a telephoto lens and trickery! Here’s Snookums with Pooh, Piglet, and Tigger.
Me and Cinderella’s Castle. We eventually did make it over to Tomorrowland and Fantasyland, but we were getting pooped by that point. We got a FastPass for Space Mountain but our time slot was, like, five hours in the future. Whatever! We decided to cut out early.
After a short rest back at the hotel, we caught a shuttle up the street to Downtown Disney. That place is NUTS. Everything is so expensive, and all of the restaurants had ridiculous wait times. We eventually managed to get a table at Cap’n Jack’s, which was okay, I guess. We also slammed some margaritas and bought some minifigs at the Lego Store. We headed back for a good night’s sleep before our SPACE ADVENTURE…
We’d already been planning on visiting Kennedy Space Center even before I discovered the Astronaut Training Experience on their website. We booked in… and here we are! The drive from Orlando was pretty straightforward (about an hour) and we were greeted by the instructors with our polo shirts and team assignments. Sweet.
There were about two dozen people there, divided into two teams. One team looked to be all from the same company, there on some team-building exercise. Our team was mostly tourists, with a fairly high international contingent (Brits, Aussies, Germans). I was the only girl on our team. The instructors explained everything we’d be doing and gave us a little tour. Here’s the Snook and I in front of the shuttle simulator.
And here’s the awesome part: For our big mission simulation, six of the team would be on board the shuttle simulator while the others acted as Mission Control. The instructors were going to draw names out of a hat to assign the jobs. First up was Shuttle Commander (aka Tate Donovan’s role), who has to actually pilot the shuttle and be in charge of everything. And who got that job? Oh, THE SNOOK. I fell over laughing. The next job was Pilot (aka Lea Thompson’s role), who actually doesn’t pilot the ship but who does sit next to the Commander and help out. And who got that job? ME. I WAS DYING, FOLKS. WE WERE GOING TO GET TO FLY THE DAMN SHUTTLE. I was bursting all day.
Anyway, we next had a short tour of the Astronaut Hall of Fame so we could familiarize ourselves with the history of the space program. Then we boarded a bus and headed over the causeway to the main visitor’s centre. One main theme throughout the day was the scrapping of the shuttle program in favor of the original Apollo-style “capsule on top of a rocket” idea. Here we are waiting to get patted down by Security before heading in to our “Lunch with an Astronaut.”
Shuttle Butter. SHUTTLE BUTTER. How can you not love that?
The lunch was excellent, by the way. We were joined by John Blaha, an astronaut and fighter pilot who, amongst his many other accomplishments, spent four months aboard the Russian Mir space station. He was really cool, just telling us what it was like to be in space and answering our questions.
And here we are with John Blaha after lunch!
The other big topic of the day was the International Space Station. On our VIP tour of the Center, we got to walk through this mock-up of one of the ISS modules. Here I am with the toilet.
And here’s Snookums and the shower.
This is an actual ISS module that they’re preparing to take into space. Does that blow anybody else’s mind? This funny silver can is going to get loaded into the shuttle’s payload bay, shot into space, and then screwed on to the existing structure (which is apparently about 60% finished). People are going to live in this. People are going to head to Mars from this. Isn’t that nuts? (I was also amazed at how casual the NASA folks were about us taking pictures. “Oh, yeah, go ahead! Whatever you like!”)
The Launch Pad. This is apparently as close as any civilians ever get, and it’s way closer than the gantry the normal tourists have to stop at. Our tour guide Bob was great at answering all our questions about the shuttle. Apparently there are only a few flights left – mostly just to finish taking up the bits of the ISS – before the shuttle is scrapped completely.
And here we are at last: OUR MISSION TO THE ISS! Everybody had a script with lines and actions to be performed. The Snook and I really did have to find and flip switches on those panels and enter in commands on the computer. Every so often there’d be a “BOOOOP! BOOOOP! BOOOOP!” alarm warning and Mission Control would have talk us through putting out a fire or something. It was rather stressful, to be honest. One of our “Mission Specialists” took this photo of me in the pilot’s seat.
Here’s Shuttle Commander Snook. Yeah, he’s crapping himself. Our instructors had informed us that he’d be bringing us in for our landing manually (using just the stick). Folks, he did spectacularly! We landed just fine. The only blot on our mission at all was that we left two astronauts out in space… but in our defense, they were taking too long. It was a tough call.
While the other team did their mission, we got to play on the simulators. First up: the Multi Axis Trainer. Folks, I’ve been wanting to do this ever since I was twelve years old. And yeah, I was the first one to step up. Our instructor explained as he strapped me in that, since your stomach is the center of the rotation, you don’t puke. Theoretically. Here we go!
I didn’t have to try to contain the spin or anything; I was just along for the ride. Here I am flipping upside-down. It’s a crazy feeling! You have no way of knowing which way you’re about to spin. I managed to go about 45 seconds before I asked them to stop. I am extremely happy to report that I had ZERO feelings of pukiness afterwards. Seriously. There just wasn’t any nausea. So that was good! (The Snook still decided to pass on this one.)
Here’s Snookums getting strapped into the 1/6th Moon Gravity Simulator. Basically, you’re attached to a bunch of bungee cords and springs that make you move as if you’re on the moon.
BOUNCE, BOUNCE, BOUNCE! Apparently it was really hard to get any momentum going. I think Snookums looks like a puppet here.
Snookums feeds Dippin’ Dots to his robot buddy. SNOOKUMS AND JINX, FRIENDS FOREVER!
Much, much too soon, it was time to graduate. Here’s me getting my certificate and goodies.
And here’s the Snook. Afterwards we hit the Gift Shop to load up on Space Swag before heading back to Orlando.
In case you can’t tell, I completely and heartily recommend the ATX Program for anybody wanting to live out their space fantasies. The instructors and tour guides were excellent, enthusiastic and knowledgeable about all aspects of the space program. Lunch was great, as was the talk by John Blaha. For the time being, it’s as close as you or I are going to get to being astronauts!
After ATX, we headed back to Disney to the Animal Kingdom Lodge, where we had dinner reservations at Boma. This was also excellent. I’d read positive reviews online and it definitely lived up to expectations. It was a buffet of African-themed dishes and we just ate ourselves silly. (Definitely book ahead though; I heard the hostess quoting somebody a 90-minute wait time.)
The next day we headed to Epcot, which neither of us had ever visited before. We went straight to Soarin’, which was… a big disappointment for me. I kept waiting for it to get exciting and it never did. The only buzz I had was from frantically inhaling during the orange grove segment; I’d heard they pumped in orange smell. (They didn’t.) It was a massive letdown. Test Track, however, was pretty damn sweet. We liked that one.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present Captain Jack Sparrow.
I found Epcot pretty boring, to be honest. I guess that’s why they allow you to drink! Here’s Snookums enjoying a beer in “Italy.”
Here’s me and Spaceship Earth, which is much, much smaller than I’d imagined my whole life.
Snookums enjoys some baklava in “Morocco.”
Gay Paree!
Me and Dopey. I love a fellow with stickey-outey ears!
Me, Dopey, and Snow White. She’s so pretty.
Snookums and King Louie. What monkeys!
Snookums poses with a catch in the “Finding Nemo” attraction.
And here he is building molecules. Some Dad and little kid watched with fascination as he finished his structure. “So what is it?” I asked. “Ethanol.” Now there’s a science lesson.
And that was pretty much it for Epcot. Next stop: Gatorland!
Snookums had found Gatorland on the ‘Net before we’d left and we just couldn’t resist. It’s an old-school roadside attraction with lots of animals and things to do. Here Snookums feeds a llama.
Snookums, me, and flamingos.
The gators are, of course, the main attraction. They’ve got a massive big penned in area with dozens of them. You can buy hot dogs to throw into the water and watch them snap up. I was amused by all the signs warning parents to keep an eye on their kids.
Gatorland has several different shows a day, including “Gator Wrasslin’”. This guy hauled a pissed off gator out of the water, jumped on its back, and proceeded to teach us all about it.
And here’s the fun bit. We’d paid an extra $10 each to participate in “Adventure Hour.” This means we got to go inside the fence at the breeding marsh and chuck pieces of steak at the gators from THREE FEET AWAY. We’d been told that the gators were trained for movie work and wouldn’t come any closer or, you know, eat us. It was still pretty scary.
Seriously, they’re RIGHT BEHIND US.
Another show that I particularly enjoyed was the “Gator Jumparoo”, where chickens were dangled over the water for gators to snap at.
Don’t try this at home, kids!
We enjoyed the “Swamp Walk,” which showed off Florida’s native plantlife.
What does a hungry man need after a day of gator wrasslin’? A steaming platter of gator nuggets, of course! (Kinda tastes like fishy chicken.)
Finally it was time to leave Florida and head back North. We flew into Chicago where we were met by my cousin Jenny and her partner Dave, who promptly whisked us off to…
Wrigley Field! It was my first time ever sitting in the bleachers. What a gorgeous spring day in Chicago.
Ahhh, Miller Lite and cheap hot dogs. There’s Kel, Snookums, me, Sal, and Dave. How great was it to see some of my Weasels!?
Senor Hotdog! Too bad I can’t even remember what bar we were in. That’s Jenny, Sal, Hotdog, Snook, and me.
The next day, Jenny and Dave took us on a tour of Chicago’s north shore. How pretty! Here were are with Lake Michigan.
At this point, Snookums and I parted ways. He headed home to Australia, while I went back to Indiana for a few more days with my Mom. Then I headed to LA to stay with my sister…
Amy put me straight to work helping out with Penn. Here I am feeding a baby for the first time in probably 25 years (since Antny was a baby, basically). I have no idea why I making that face.
Yeah, I got it everywhere. But he seemed to like it!
Bath time! Okay, I look even crazier here.
Saturday we got to watch Dan’s softball game. Penn’s a big fan!
And now, pictures of me and my nephew. I love him and miss him to bits!
The end!