DATELINE: Thursday, June 24, 2010 Fort Wilderness Campground, WDW

Ah dear readers, the intrepid travelers today enjoyed their first full day in the Walt Disney World Resort.  It was a diverse day marked by many different activities in the sweltering heat of the Florida summer.  Whoee!  We took off this morning for Universal Studios in the naive anticipation of taking in the new World of Harry Potter.  It was just us and two billion of our very closest and tackiest friends.  Do you know they allow people to show up there in bathing suits??!! And, by the way, there is no age limit on those who are allowed suits... 

Right out of the chute our group got separated with Barry yelling at Beth (who was in the shop buying a very necessary rubber band to hold back her newly Raven-hued hair) that the line was moving really fast and she better get there. Beth high-stepped her way through the crowd excusing herself past the angry hordes only to find herself at the front of the line with no Gwen, no Wick and no Barry.  Huh.  Sure enough they got themselves in some demented conga line of people who were led halfway through the park before being returned to the same slow-moving line of fanatic Potterites.  Fanatic Potterites are people who are silly enough to arrive in the dead of summer, in Florida thinking they just have to see the newly opened attraction -- I say wait - maybe years by the looks of the crowds.

 I'll include this one picture in the hopes of whetting your appetite for heat stroke and crowd entertainment.  It is much bigger than this would make it look and the ride itself was quite amazing.  Let's see we paid $109 each to get in, $84 for lunch, $5 for the hair thingy, $8 for lemonade, $4 for bottled water and $18 for parking.  It works out to exactly $185 each to ride the damn thing!  Now you may think I have the math wrong but you would not be figuring on the fact that Gwen had to sit the ride out - had I mentioned that Gwen is the biggest Potterite of us all but when the ride literature states that no one with a prothetic limb is allowed to ride for fear the limb will depart its owner during flight - you just can't be too careful with someone who suffers the degree and severity of motion sickness that Aunt Gwen experiences.  So, campers, count it, that's $185 smackeroos each for the Harry riders and an extended wait in heat like the face of the sun for Harry waiters.  More importantly, we've gathered up another priceless experience and all agreed we only wished we had all the children with us to torture.

That experience and Wick's early morning blood draw appointment necessitated a three hour nap in the afternoon which was followed by the renting of the golf cart!  Whooee, this was one of Beth's favorites part of the whole day. 

There is just something about having a golf cart that feels so resort-y and cool.  See how happy I look?

See?  Even the guys are all thrilled.  Of course we had just witnessed actual Sky Writing right over our campground.  At first Beth was pretty sure Barry had hired a sky writer to tell her he would marry her all over again - it is our 40th Anniversary you know -- but Beth had never heard him refer to himself as Jes and the little plane kept going and going letting us know that Jesus loved us.  Well, that is good too I suppose. (joking -- don't send hate mail)

We spent the evening zipping around the resort in our golf cart and examining the neighbor's decorations.  Right next to our site a family had created a 'hidden Mickey' out of pine cones:

While down on Possum Way two lady RVers were enjoying this bunch of nonsense:Look at the statuary in front of their rig, the lamps, the stuffed animals covering the dash.  The screen room housed a media projector and behind that they had one of those giant Mickey Mouse blow-up movie screens.  Wow.  I think I prefer the pinecone Mickey.

Only one more day till the cruise!  We can hardly wait to see you all!