Steve's Current Notes
Week of October 8, 2000

I am going to give you a little insight into our trip, Right, now I've got to head off to Talladega, AL and the Winston 500 on Thursday morning.  I'll be returning on Monday, October 16.

I foolishly thought America's No.1 tourist destination would be less crowded if we traveled there in October (when all kids should be in school) rather than during the summer months.  Wrong.  The park was packed on our first day and it never got any better as our trip wore on.

However, before we left town, I was almost bitten by Murphy's Law.

I had read several comments about the battery life of my new Olympus D-490 digital camera, some of which said they'd taken about 100 photos with their original set of batteries and became concerned the batteries in this new camera would die midway through our trip to Mickey Mouse land.  

I had ordered the MahaCell charger and four AA NiMH cells and an AC power adapter earlier last week.  I didn't want the original batteries to die midway through the trip and especially didn't want to be faced with trying to purchase batteries inside the park.  I had the option of paying $28 for overnight shipping when I place the order online on Wednesday.  I chose the 2nd day UPS air route for $18.  UPS normally delivers to our house in the morning, I thought I would be safe with the second day option.  I almost got whacked by this decision.

On Friday morning when I left the house to go pick up Andrew from school for this trip UPS hadn't made any deliveries.  I admit it,  I was getting a little nervous about the delivery making it before we had to leave for the airport.  As I drove out of the neighborhood toward his school I kept a lookout for the familiar brown UPS truck, but spotted none.  The idea of having to purchase batteries at Disney was looming stronger.

After picking Andrew up, we had several errands to run before returning home.  We stopped for lunch, made a major withdrawal at the bank and stopped for gas.  We would be getting back to the house around one o'clock and be ready for our departure to the airport at 1:30 PM.

I called home at our stop at the bank to ask Suzy if (by chance) UPS had made any deliveries while I was gone.  I suppose I was trying to relieve some of my anxiety!  Unfortunately, she reported no deliveries had been made yet.

While I was filling the car with gas. I noticed a UPS delivery truck sitting next door at one of the fast food restaurants in our neighborhood.  My logic kicked in.  We were in our neighborhood and there was a UPS truck.  It would be logical that this truck might be the one that delivers to our house.  Now I had to decide whether to be obnoxious and interrupt the guy's lunch and ask for my package.  Fortunately, that move was avoided.  As I pulled up the truck, the driver emerged, I excused myself and asked the hopeful question.  Unfortunately, I didn't get the answer I was hoping for.  He didn't deliver on our street. "I think that truck should be coming from that direction," he said as he pointed Southeast.  I now thought I would be leaving for Orlando before the expected package arrived.

However, it all worked out.  When I pulled into the driveway at home I noticed a small box sitting inside the garage.  Sure enough, it was the package from Thomas Distributing.  Suzy said the UPS delivery came about five minutes after I had called her from the car.  I had just enough time to open the box and stuff the contents into a suitcase before we took off for the airport.

Our travels were uneventful.  The flights left and arrived on time, which was no small miracle.  From my air travel experience, I had expected some major delays, especially on a Friday afternoon.

Upon arriving in Orlando, we grabbed the services of a sky cap in the baggage claim area to help us with our bags.  It's a good thing.  There are no cabs at curbside in the baggage claim area, unlike most airports.  To catch a cab in Orlando, you have to go down an elevator and then travel to a special taxi holding area.  If you're not familiar with the airport, you might never find a cab on your own.  For this reason, I'll bet there is a huge bootleg cab business at the Orlando airport.

We hopped a $40 cab ride to the Hilton Walt Disney World Resort, where the check-in process presented the biggest challenge of the trip, so far.  When making the reservation, almost 6 months ago, I had asked for two connecting rooms, which were smoking.  Yes, I had uttered the S word.

The front desk person had quite a challenge with this chore.  After several minutes of punching on his computer keyboard, he turned to me and asked if we needed two connecting rooms or rooms that were near each other.  The question seemed ridiculous.  There we stood, two adults and two small children.  Doh.  I said I had requested/reserved two connecting rooms and that's what we needed.  I gave him the option of upgrading us to a two bedroom suite at no additional charge.  

He didn't accept my generous offer and after a heavy sigh (he must have been watching Al Gore at the first Presidential debate) he informed me that he had found two connecting rooms, but they were not smoking rooms.

We had been standing there for about 15 minutes, so I said we would take those rooms, knowing that in about five minutes at least one  would become a smoking room.  Suzy added a comment about how few smoking accommodations hotels, restaurants and other places of business make these days.  After all, smokers still make up about 30 percent of the population, but they're treated like second class citizens.

After getting into the room, we had a few minutes to unpack our things before heading back downstairs to catch a taxi to Disney's Contemporary Hotel.  We had a 9:15 reservation with Chef Mickey and his dinner buffet.  The picture taking was about to begin.

From the time we entered the dining room until dinner was finished, I started putting the Olympus D-490 through its paces.  Mickey, Minnie, Donald Duck, Goofy, Chip and Dale each made an appearance at our table for greetings and photo opportunities.

And the dinner was good.  That was a surprise.  I had been expecting some rubberized dinner, but to my surprise I found many items on the buffet line to my liking.  I went for the prime rib and rosemary chicken and in fact, I went back for more chicken.  The kids chose pizza and chicken fingers.  No surprise there.

I had brought along both the 8 meg smartmedia card that came with the Olympus D-490 and a Sandisk 32 meg card.  I started out with the 32 meg card, which had promised to hold at least 64 1600x1200 photos.

Knowing that I would be snapping quite a few photos, I also brought along my Digital HiNote Ultra 2000 notebook computer and the serial cable so I could download the photos on a daily basis and be ready for a full day of picture snapping the next day.  When we returned to the hotel that evening, I pulled out the AC adapter that arrived earlier that afternoon, connected it to the camera so I could save my batteries during the download process.  I had 24 shots from dinner with the characters to download.

The serial download is very slow and was made slower by the fact that the combination of my notebook, Windows NT 4.0 and the Olumpus CamMedia software didn't like the speed of 115,200 I had set from COM 1.  To successfully download the shots, I had to slow the port down to 57,600, which made the downloads painfully slow.  The CamMedia setup has an Auto option for the speed, but I never tried this setting,  I assume it will select the fastest speed the camera and computer will successfully communicate with each other.

After the shots had been downloaded, I checked my shots with IrfanView and after I was sure the downloads were good. added some insurance by making a backup copy on another partition on the hard drive.  I then had the camera erase the card so I would ready for a full day of shooting as we headed to the Magic Kingdom on Saturday.

I am going to have the enhance some of the photos that I took at Chef Mickey's dinner to get rid of some red eye.  It's impossible to avoid some red-eye when you're shooting close-up in a dark restaurant.

On Saturday, our first day at Disney, we chose the Magic Kingdom.  Andrew was so excited about this trip there is no way we could have chosen any of the other parks.  We got up early to catch the 8 AM shuttle to the Kingdom.  From the time we entered the park, it was packed.  I thought we had arrived during the summer.

We spent most of the morning in Tomorrowland as we prepared for a day of standing in lines.  The first attraction to grab our attention was the Indy Speedway.  I'm not going to outline each of the rides that the kids took in, but leave it at that we spent a full day in the Magic Kingdom and still didn't get to everything we wanted, leaving the park at 10 PM.

When we got back to the hotel it time to download photos, which literally took all night.

Olympus had promised a 32 meg card would hold 64 shots in the SQ mode (1600 x 1200), but when I returned to the hotel I had taken 84 pictures and still had room on the Sandisk memory card.

I connected the AC power adapter and began the download process.  I say it lasted all night because I went to sleep and left the computer and camera connected to each other.  I disconnected them in the morning when the download was complete.  It's unfortunate the notebook didn't have a USB port where I could have utilized the speed of the SanDisk card reader.

I had brought along my pedometer to measure how much we walked in the theme park.  Our first day clocked in at over six miles.  It's a good thing I had started an exercise and walking regimen earlier this year.  Otherwise, I would have been dead in the water.

On Sunday we chose Epcot.  After the ride through Spaceship Earth we headed to Innoventions which is where companies like  AT&T, IBM, Honeywell, Monsanto and  SEGA display their new wares.  The kids were starting to get bored, so I had the bright idea to drag them through the 3-D exhibit, featuring "Honey, I shrunk the audience." This was not the best move.  At one time I looked around and Katie had her head buried so she did not have to look at the screen in 3-D.  Andrew had done fine until he looked at the screen and a giant snake, complete with mouth wide open, was staring him in the face.  He was scared and started crying.  Unusual for this trooper.  It took him a while to get over this movie and would not go near another 3-D exhibit during the rest of our trip.  We then checked out the Land, which featured the theatrical presentation,  "Circle of Life," featuring  The Lion King's Simba, and his pals, Timon and Pumbaa.  After the Land, Andrew chose the Living Seas exhibition. 

By this time the kids were thoroughly bored and I had suggested to Suzy that we make a quick lap through the World Showcase.  Katie and Andrew both are studying China in school this year, so we wanted to stop by the China pavilion.  On the way there we made a stop through France (Andrew's school teaches French as it foreign language) and Japan.  It was as we were exiting Japan that we learned of a World Showcase activity to keep the kid's attention.  The kids were given a mask to decorate and each country would add something to it.  It was here that I also remembered the passport program, where each country will give you a stamp in your passport.  Suzy went to find a couple of passports while I watched the kids finish their masks.

Their interest had changed.  They wanted to hit as many countries as possible to get their passports stamped.  And in typical Disney tradition, they didn't just stamp the passports.  The young foreign interns working in these countries took time with each kid to write something in their native tongue in each of the kid's passports.  These young people interacted with the kids as if they were the only ones in the park.  Very Disney.  Very impressive.

With interest renewed, we canned the idea of heading out of Epcot and into the Magic Kingdom.  On the passport trek, Katie and Andrew made it to Norway, China, Germany, Italy, the USA, Japan, Morocco and France.

As we were leaving the park we happened upon a new Disney tradition...pin trading.  The kids were easily hooked.  We got them both a starter set and we were now pin traders.  Again typical Disney, if a cast member is wearing a lanyard with trading pins attached and you want a pin that's on the lanyard, the cast member has to trade.  From this point on, the kids walked around with their lanyards strung around their neck and checked out every Disney cast member to see if they had a pin worth trading for.  It was fun, expensive and addictive.  Disney strikes again.

Before we knew it, we had spent the full day in the park and when I checked the Pedometer, we clocked in another eight miles.  The puppies were barking.  

Once again, I started my photo downloading and was sleep before I knew what was happening.

On Monday, we were heading to Katie's favorite, Animal Kingdom.  Since this was going to be our last day we wanted to make an early start, arriving at the park before the gates opened.  Katie had been there with her sixth grade class, so she was our tour guide.  As soon as we walked though the gates we spent some time getting photos with various Disney characters and then it was off to make lunch reservations in the Rainforest Cafe, something that was very high on Katie's list.  You really don't get a reservation, they call it priority seating, which means you don't have to wait as long as if you had just walked up.  The first priority seating slot was 2:15, so we grabbed it and headed off into the Animal Kingdom.

It had turn frigid overnight and we froze our backsides off in Animal Kingdom, having planned to only be wearing shorts and t-shirts, we donned the sweatshirts and jackets and wished we had long pants.  Everyone there was chilly.

We headed off to the Africa section where we took in the Kilimanjaro Safari.  This is a 100 acre animal preserve and Disney takes you through it in safari like trucks.  We saw antelopes, rhinos, rhinos, warthogs, giraffes, zebras, elephants, crocodiles, hippos, baboons, wildebeests and lions during our Safari before we headed to Camp Minnie and Mickey Festival of the Lion King live show, again featuring some of our favorite characters from the Lion King movie.

From the Camp it was off to Asia, where the main attraction was a ride on the Kali River Rapids.  The signs leading up to this exhibit were intimidating.  They didn't say you might get wet, but rather, "you will get wet" and "you might get soaked."  With the cold weather there was no waiting line for this ride, so we took our spills down the river.  We got lucky and only got a little wet.  It was so much fun and since there was no line, we went for it again.  Andrew and I tempted fate further with a third ride and escaped all three runs down the river getting only mildly wet and never soaked.  We didn't try for No.4.

That was it for Animal Kingdom.  We took in our lunch at the Rainforest Cafe and headed to the Magic Kingdom to complete our time.

Katie wanted to take in her favorite, the Winnie the Pooh attraction, again.  Pooh had a 75 minute posted, so Andrew and I headed over to Splash Mountain, where the wait was posted at 90 minutes.  After Splash Mountain we met Katie and Suzy for another run around the Indy track and by now the park was closing down for the evening.  However, we had purchased an extended night ticket from our hotel and we got to enjoy several of the most popular attractions until later that evening.  The park was deserted and the only way you could get on one of these chosen rides was with a special armband.  We chose several trips on Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin in tomorrowland.  Andrew, Suzy and I wanted to hit Splash Mountain ago, but Katie wanted no parts of this log flume ride, so she waited patiently was we splashed down the mountain and its five-story drop twice.

By the time we headed out of the Magic Kingdom we were exhausted, having walked more than nine miles, and were quite chilly.  Our puppies were really barking and the kids fell asleep in the room before the pizza, I had gone to pickup, arrived.

I set about downloading Monday's photos, let the camera and computer enjoy each other's company for the evening and hit the sack.

We were departing on Tuesday, so we didn't want to take in a park.  Instead, we grabbed the Disney shuttle to their Boardwalk hotel and enjoyed lunch in the ESPN restaurant, where they had more television sets playing ESPN that you could count.  There were even ESPN TV's in the bathroom.

We took a spin through Downtown Disney and returned to the hotel, grabbed our bags and headed to the airport, having clocked in another five miles when we returned to Winston-Salem, dead to the world.  No one had to be rocked to sleep last night.

And so much for my battery worries.  The camera is still showing the battery at full capacity after some 200 shots and many times of stopping to view our photo selections on the camera's display during the day.  The photos from this trip total more than 76 megabytes.  I am sure I could go back in and weed out a few shots before I archive them to a CD to safekeeping.