updated  May 2, 2001

Friday December 24, 1999 - Christmas Eve

We were going to Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood, but the plane tickets to Orlando were about $700 cheaper that tickets to Ft Lauderdale. We decided to fly to Orlando, spend the day at Disney and then drive to Hollywood Beach.

Our plane landed at MCO at around 10:50am. We picked up the rental car at National and drove straight to EPCOT. We arrived in the EPCOT parking lot at 12:05.

We headed for the GM Test Track to get a Fast Pass. This is the new system intended to virtually eliminate lines at the most popular attractions. There was quite a traffic jam at the Fast Pass gates. These gates are located right in front of the Test Track on the right side. Each person that wants to ride later must stick their park pass into the slot. It pops back out along with a printed ticket (Fast Pass) that shows the window of time to return. A couple of the machines appeared to be malfunctioning. Another delay was caused my people scanning MANY tickets. They had plastic bags full of tickets, probably for everyone in their group. Each ticket had to be inserted into the gate. It takes some time to do this. Anyway....we finally got through and got our passes. Our window to return was 5:20 - 6:20pm! That was about 5 hours later!

One problem with the Fast Pass system is that once the pass is issued you cannot obtain another one for another attraction until the first one has expired. This means that we would not be able to get another Fast Pass until after dinner. The other inconvenience is that once you get the pass you are now locked into a schedule. As you probably know, it can be time consuming to try to get from one place on Disney property to another. We had to wait 5 hours to ride Test Track. This is a long time, but not long enough to comfortably leave EPCOT and visit another park and then return at the scheduled time.

OK, enough complaining. It DID eliminate the long wait in line. We returned at out reserved time and walked right into the indoor queue area. It looked like there was a longer queue that fed into ours. Maybe this was the standby line?

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At the end of the queue area is a staging area similar to Star Tours. There are 4 doors (I think) that lead to pre-show rooms. These rooms are where they show some safety information for the ride and show the types of tests that you will experience.

Upon exiting this room there is a short line to the cars. There are red, blue and yellow cars. They have two rows of three seats. I have heard that there is a single rider line that has almost NO wait. This line helps fill in the third seats in the rows that would often go empty.

The car takes off and runs through several tests. There is a cold room and a hot room. There is a rough road area and a test of the ABS (automatic braking system). First the ABS is off and the car starts to skid. Then they back you up, turn on the ABS and this time there is no skid.

The end of the ride is the acceleration test. Here the car goes outside of the building on a banked track. There is very fast acceleration and the car hits about 65 MPH at the end of the loop. They take your picture at some part of the ride where people are looking scared. I can't remember exactly where the camera was. It took a good picture of my family fending for their lives so we bought one.

This is a great ride. We can't wait to ride again on our next trip.

The ride lets out in a gift shop. Have you ever heard of such a thing? The shop has lots of car shirts and hats and magnets. The cool items we found are the Test Track magnets and the Hot Wheel sized Test Track car.

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While we waited for our Fast Pass time we walked around EPCOT. First we had lunch at England at the Fish & Chips take-away shop.

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There were several British people in line. That was a good sign. This shop is run by an authentic Fish & Chips chain from England, Harry Ramsen's. The food was pretty good, but the portions were fairly small.

On to the Millennium Village.

I thought the Millennium Village was a disappointment. The displays looked like the attending countries did not spend very much time or money to develop them. One interesting exhibit was Saudi Arabia. It has a large tent set up with cranks for some visitors to control. The cranks control the movement of a miniature flying carpet. Placing the flying carpet over a specific portion of the display causes a 3D cardboard pop-up scene to appear. While this was somewhat interesting, it looked like a child's pop-up book torn apart and stuck into a large book prop.

In Brazil, you walk through the "rain forest" that is vertical columns with thick colorful padding all around. Each one makes a sound when bumped into.

In Sweden they have a large walk-through egg that has a real snowman in it. Unusual.

Some of the countries only have a small table or booth where they sell things. There is a larger store at the end of the building with some mice international items. There was a book for sale in there called something like "A Day In Disneyland". It is a large picture book showing candid shots of what goes on during a day at Disney. It was published by Hyperion Book in October 1999. I have checked everywhere and can find no trace of this book. Strange.

I thought there was supposed to be a Millennium pin store at the exit of the Millennium Village. We couldn't find it. It turned out to be in Millennium Central instead. This is where the open air purple tent has been put up between Innoventions.

Next we went to Journey Into Imagination. We wanted to see the new ride that replaced the Dream Weaver and Figment. First we decided to go to Honey I Shrunk The Audience because there was NO line. It was good as always. This time I caught the "mice" as they scurried about. Interesting effect.

After the movie we went on the new Imagination ride. There was no line there either. I thought that this ride was a disappointment. The upside-down room was interesting. There must have been a malfunction, because we entered a completely dark room with no sound and sat there for about 1-2 minutes and then moved on. I could see as we left that the walls were covered with anechoic foam to deaden sound. I read a description of this ride in the Mousetails newsletter. I think this must be the room where the train is supposed to race through.

While I used to find Figment irritating, I later enjoyed the ride and the music (and Figment!). The new ride seemed really dry and only mildly interesting.

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We hiked over to Norway to ride the Maelstrom. There was a 20 minute wait for it. The queue could use something to make it more interesting. The lines are very cramped. Anyway, the ride is a good one.

We went on a search for the mini village with toy trains. We finally found it between Germany and Italy(?).

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From there we went to the new Mouse Gear store by Innoventions. Lots of neat stuff. We try not to buy too much in the parks since we get a 10% discount at the Shopping Village, oops, Downtown Disney with the Magic Kingdom Club card.

We found the Millennium Pin area. So many pins, so little money. We (I) bought lots. I hope to eventually scan my pin collection and post it on my site. Here is a small sample...

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Now it was time to get back to Test Track to use our Fast Passes.

After the Test Track ride we had dinner at the Electric Umbrella and took the Monorail to the Ticket and Transportation Center (TTC) and transferred to the Monorail to the Magic Kingdom.

I wanted to go on the new rides, Pooh and Buzz Lightyear.

There was a 10 minute wait at Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin. The queue area is really neat (so how come I didn't take any pictures???). There is a huge Magna-Doodle and a huge View-Master. There is also a large Buzz Lightyear that talks. The effect is similar to Madame Leota's head in the crystal ball at the Haunted Mansion, except that here Buzz's head moves all around!

The ride cars have two laser guns and a steering control. The idea is to use the guns to hit as many Zs as possible. Each Z hit scores points on the display under the gun. Some of the Zs start an animated scene to start up when hit. This ride broke down about every 60 seconds. The cars would stop. Then the lights would come on and hidden fences popped up to keep people form falling off the elevated track.

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There were a few cast members (CMs) crawling around under the cars trying to see what the problem was. When we got to the tunnel with projected images on the curved ceiling and wind blowing, it became clear that this used to be Eastern's "If You Had Wings". That part of the ride was just about my favorite in all of the park when I was young. It gave the effect of skiing down a mountain.

We need to ride this again sometime when it doesn't break down.

We rode on the Tea Cups with no line. We waiting in a 15 minute line for the new Winnie The Pooh ride "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh". On our last trip here this was Mr Toad's Wild Ride. We rode it on the day before they closed it. We were very sorry to see it go. We always rode it several times on our trips to WDW. Luckily there is still a Mr. Toad ride at Disneyland.

The ride is much like Toad in that it is small cars that ride through on a track. Mr. Toad was in the dark with fluorescent lights. The lights are on for most of the Pooh ride. One interesting feature is that the cars, or honey pots, bounce up and down when following Tigger bouncing up and down. There is also a neat effect of Pooh falling asleep in bed and then he rises out of his body. This ride is ok, but it is now just a little kid ride. Mr. Toad was for everyone. Oh well.

Now it is 8:40 pm and the park closes at 9. We headed for the Haunted Mansion. There was no line. The Mansion was great as always.

We left the park and tried to get on a Monorail, but it was broken. They suggested taking the boat, so we did. It was COLD! The temps were falling into the 40's. The boat took us to the TTC where we transferred to a Monorail to EPCOT. We walked to the car and drove to Downtown Disney. We got the Lego Store are about 10:30pm. That means it took an hour and a half to get from the MK to EPCOT to the car and the Downtown Disney.

We also went to the World Of Disney store, the largest Disney store in the world. I bought lots of pins and other souvenirs. This is where I get 10% off with the Magic Kingdom Club Card. AMEX might get the discount also.

We got hot chocolate at Ghirardelli's and drove to the motel.

Saturday Dec 25, 1999 - Christmas Day

The Pleasure Island stores opened at 10:30. We found Pokemon cards at a store there. There was also a pin kiosk.

At 11am we went to the Rainforest Cafe. There was no wait. We had a good lunch. The portions were way too big. We had volcano sundae for dessert. Huge and very good.

We then drove about 4 hours south to Hollywood Beach for a relaxing week of doing nothing.

Jan 1, 2000 - New Year's Day

We drove back to Orlando. We took the Florida Turnpike. Each food plaza has a different penny press. Here are the ones I pressed.

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I also found Popeye, Olive Oyl and Brutus beanie-type dolls at the Popeye's Chicken at one plaza.

We spent a few hours at the Disney Marketplace before our plane left. We found a "Forever Disney" CD kiosk inside the Team Disney store. I made a CD of tracks that I didn't get on previous CDs. At the open-air toy shop I found boxes of extra track for the monorail sets! They have boxes of straight track and boxes of curves. I think they were about $10 for a box of 4 pieces.

There is a pin cart here and a pin trading area. The 10% discount works here. It was a good thing it did!

We watched little kids (and a few adults) get soaked running through the large fountain that comes out of the sidewalk. It is quite entertaining.

We left for the airport. There is a great Disney store at the airport, but they DO NOT give the 10% discount.