Zorac's LiveJournal

Monday sees us finally checking out of the Swan, hermorrine's friend kindly furnishing with transport to the airport - via a Mexican lunch with her and the girls. The flight was for once smooth and uneventful - except for a malfunctioning Jetway leaving us stuck on the plane for half an hour before we could actually disembark.

In the evening, we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean (the movie, this time) - which was great fun, but finishing late enough to scupper any chance of a sit-down dinner and reducing us to take-out. This we ate chez hermorrine while watching Better Off Dead - a t00by movie if ever there was one - before heading to bed.

Sunday was the symposium's closing morning. The last event was the charity auction over brunch - we only caught the tail end of it, but a few of the items went for really quite impressive prices. We said a lot of goodbyes, and there was much hugging and taking of photos.

In the afternoon, we made our way over to DisneyQuest - home to neat interactive games. Among other things, we got to don VR helmets to fight comic-book villains with a lightsaber or fly a magic carpet, paddle a raft through a virtual jungle, pilot a multi-legged rescue vehicle on an alien planet and do battle with the Pirates of the Caribbean. I also got to play on a bunch of classic arcade machines - the original Space Invaders, Asteroids, Pac-Man etc.

In the evening, there was cheesecake - and packing.

On Saturday, we didn't get up until quite late, so I only ended up seeing one talk in the morning, although I did do some browsing of Kompulsive Alley. Lunch followed much the same pattern as Friday - low scores for the food (a cottage pie and Bertie Bott's) and high scores for the speaker. Ari Rapkin gave a very interesting multimedia talk about how ILM work some of their magic - the cloth simulation being her particular area of expertise. Plenty of nifty clips, including Dobby out-takes and naked!Yoda.

In the afternoon I only went to one talk - a very enthusiastic Steve Vander Ark and angiej on the Past, Present and Future of the Wizarding World - see The Harry Potter Lexicon. I also actually did some shopping - picking up a copy of the Gnome TossFling game for $5, a couple of books (one HP related, one not) and a magic wand - soon to appear in an icon for voldie_zorac. There was also the entertaining Fandom Squares for those of us skipping the Founders' Feast.

In the evening, hermorrine and I took advantage of our money-off coupons for the buffet at Gulliver's - which was nice, particularly in getting to have multiple desserts! I got bullied into putting footwear on by the safety-paranoid staff (it's a fair cop) and had my photo taken with Goofy. Later on, we hosted a game of Trivial Pursuits, where I showed off my lack of knowledge of American Sports and History and expetesso showed off her strength at snapping corkscrews (the one we were sent up was obviously a touch flimsy - on the second attempt, the hotel sent up a Cast Member armed with a more heavy duty one).

Friday was the first day of formal programming, so it was up bright and early to grab donuts for breakfast with the first talk. I caught a full morning of talks, all of them interesting, with the highlight being Dr. Roger Highfield's on The Science of Harry Potter (such that I was inspired to pick up a copy of his book). I also enjoyed talks on Fandom History (having missed most of it) and Fanwords (despite t00b only getting one tangential mention).

The lunch was rather disappointing (soup, plain salad and a cookie), but Judith Krug's Keynote was both interesting and informative (as well as being entertaining). I did know that the HP books had been the target of banning campaigns, but I wasn't previously aware that they were so overwhelmingly the most popular choice. I was pleased to hear, however, that most banning attempts ended in failure. It also reminded me of a TV advert/infomercial I saw earlier in the trip in which a guy asks about a book in a library only to find that it has been banned. The librarian demands his name, and when he refuses and tries to leave, he is approached by to serious-looking men. The tagline was along the lines of how it's great that America is Free (and not like that). Oh, the irony.

The afternoon programming was mostly taken up by the Slash Panel and the one on "Can Draco Malfoy Be Redeemed?" These had been moved to the Great Hall on the grounds of expected attendance - which must have numbered several hundred. Both panels were very interesting, with plenty of good points raised. Some of the audience participation was a touch irksome with people just spouting a long speech on Their Opinion - I kept wanting to say "And your question was..?", but all-in-all it was good.

Next up was the Quidditch. I was playing for the San Juan Seagulls (a.k.a. John's All Stars), along with Captain queerasjohn, aegeus, sternel, thethrillisgone, ursamajr and vlamidala. The game was fast and frantic, but great fun. We eventually lost 60-160, owing to the entire randomness of catching the Snitch (and I've heard rumours that the other team's Seeker had inside information), but claimed a moral victory ;-)

In the evening, it was the FictionAlley birthday bash over at the Copa Banana in the not-a-Dolphin, so for variety's sake, we decided to have dinner at when of the restaurants over there. Big mistake. To start with, no one came to seat us so eventually we picked our own table - the only one that had actually been cleared. No menus were forthcoming so eventually I got up and snagged some from behind the cash register. After we'd been sitting there for the best part of a quarter hour, one of the waitresses deigned to come and take our order - but it was a good ten minutes before even our drinks came, and considerably longer before we got food.

To add to the evening's entertainment, the not-a-Dolphin Fountain decided to live up to its name - without warning, a waterspout appeared out of the floor (we heard someone at a nearby table suggest that the basilisk was attacking). Thankfully, it wasn't close to where we were seated, but other diners were less fortunate - water continued to bubble up for some time until maintenance turned up to fix it. There was no great surprise when the check also took a long time to arrive after we requested it.

The party itself was great fun - nmalfoy spinning the disks, queerasjohn single-mindedly trying to glitter the entire fandom and "mischief maker" drinks in FictionAlley cups. I indulged in much t00by dancing (including my popular Mact00bage number, the Time Warp), proving along the way that despite being male and straight (and thus in a tiny minority), I can still sing along to the entirety of It’s Raining Men and will shamelessly request Y.M.C.A. Thankyouverymuch...

Thursday was a lazy day. We got up late to meet expetesso for lunch and then an afternoon at the grotto pool. Yes, I went on the water-slide. I am a big kid. Come five o'clock, it was time to join the line for symposium registration - a very long line but fortunately, after it was spilt I was in the much shorter N-Z line. Plus I got fangirled by thegraybook (yes, that’s an exaggeration) while I was waiting, so it’s not that bad at all, really.

Later, while hermorrine was at a prep meeting for the slash panel, I fetched the infamous Fandomopoly down to the games room, suffering (ahem) considerable fangirling (not of me, of the game - and of malachan, the game’s creator) in the process. Along the way - or possibly later on, I can't remember who I met when - I met a whole bunch of people, including ali_wildgoose, anatsuno, anna_maria, dancingrain, dinahrae, sincelastjuly, heidi8, jlh, leiabelle, moondroplette, constantine, nmalfoy, nystana, queerasjohn and plenty of other folk.

Our last day in the parks was at EPCOT, the park of two halves. In the morning, we did parts of future world, featuring (among other things), the Big Giant Golf Ball (aka Spaceship Earth), Honey, I Shrunk the Audience (yet another 3D movie thing), Body Wars (Star Tours-like motion ride with synchronised video) and the all-new Test Track - fun, if sometimes violent and very fast.

Afternoon saw us working our way around the World Showcase (a.k.a the Magic Snackdom - and yes, we did indulge). Not heavy on the rides (beyond a gentle log-flume in a Viking boat), this was more a sightseeing trip. A special mention goes to the "Human Statue" who was doing a hilarious job posing for photos with the tourists. It's all very authentic - and yet at the same time, all very fake. Dinner was at the Rose and Crown - a fair stab at faking up a British pub, where we did have an excellent view for the evening's fireworks.

Tuesday saw us taking the bus to the Magic Kingdom - twice. Morning and early afternoon were for the "lesser" rides - nothing too serious, and much of it rather twee - but nonetheless enjoyable. Special mentions to The Pirates of the Caribbean (who we’d be seeing more of later in the trip) and the Tigger-bouncing on the Winnie-the-Pooh ride. Mid-afternoon, we headed back to the hotel for a nap and then dinner at the Italian restaurant.

We then returned to the Magic Kingdom to take advantage of the E-ride night - limited capacity opening for another three hours after the park's normal closing (in this case from 11pm to 2am), allowing us to take on the big rides with virtually nothing by the way of queuing. Also, there's the fun of taking on the three mountains in the dark - OK, so Space is always dark, but it certainly added to the fun of Splash and Big Thunder. We also experienced the ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter - a nice piece of "less is more" with well placed effects - and darkness. As the rain had delayed it, we also got to see the late night illuminated parade, which was really quite nifty.

Monday was our first day hitting the theme parks, so we made an early start to catch the boat to Disney/MGM studios. Plenty of fun was had, including the Tower of Terror - an excellent plummeting elevator experience, Rock'n'Roller Coaster - indoors, with a standing start and loops, and Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The latter is a highly authentic rendition of the original, albeit with a few twists - the entire audience plays along to decide who gets into the hot seat, and phone-a-friend is replaced by phone-a-complete-stranger. Due to not being first with the fastest finger, neither of us actually made the hot seat, but when the scoreboard came up at the end of the show, I had taken second place and hermorrine tenth - out of an audience of several hundred. Go us!

Later on, we caught the Indiana Jones stunt spectacular - which really was quite impressive (not least for the large moving sets). Dinner was at "Mom's Place" - with the waiters laying down the law: no elbows on the table, no dessert unless you finish your vegetables etc. The kids at the table next to ours were recruited to keep an eye on their elders - and were positively delighting in reporting misplaced elbows and the like to their waiter (goodness knows how long it'll be before their parents can get them to behave at the table again) - poor Grandma was fed some of her unfinished veggies. Oh, and the drinks had electric ice cubes :-)