With our Toy Story Mania FastPasses acquired, we walked back to the front of the park (I spotted this cool TRON billboard to the left on the back of the Great Movie Ride on our way), to the Rockin’ Roller Coaster. The standby line was listed as only 20 minutes so we took it and were on and off in less than that, so we did it again! My daughter really loves that coaster now, ever since the second time she rode it (in the front car).

Then it was time for the Tower of Terror. Before our trip, my daughter had said she was going to ride a new ride at every park. Friday evening at Epcot she rode Mission: SPACE. Would she get on the ToT with me? The last time I tried she backed out while we were in line. This time, my wife was with me and though my daughter shut her eyes and kept her fingers in her ears the entire time, she made it through the ride! She actually enjoyed the drop sequences (especially when the doors are open and you can see out into the park) but just hated the pre-show and build up of the ride. Regardless, she did it and I was proud of her for doing so.

To my surprise, Star Tours was still open! It was supposed to have closed for its makeover after the “Last Flight to Endor” event back in August but apparently they decided to extend the window. I guess that sucked for all the people who thought they’d be the last to ride it then but I got to ride it one last time myself before it really closes on Tuesday, September 7. I’ll be anxiously awaiting its re-opening in May 2011.

It was time for our FastPasses so we made our way back to Toy Story Mania where I racked up a meager 160,000 points. They no longer show the high score of the day, just the top score of the car you are in (that was me!). I guess practicing on the Wii isn’t helping my accuracy.

Now we were cutting it close as we had 12:20pm lunch reservations at Tutto Italia Ristorante in Italy at Epcot. We walked back to our call in the Hollywood Studios parking lot, drove over to Epcot, and caught the tram to the front. We swung by the Will Call ticket booth to turn in one of our vouchers from the Give-a-Day-Get-a-Day promotion for FastPass Exchange cards (more on that later). A brisk walk through Future World and the World Showcase later we walked into the restaurant barely 20 minutes after our reservation time and were seated. Whew. The food was very good (I had the spinach gnocchi) and we had some time to relax and cool down after our busy morning and fast dash to lunch.

The rest of the day was spent using those cool FastPass Exchange cards. Basically it was a card you could put into the FastPass machine that would give you a FastPass for right now. And even if all of the FastPasses for a ride were gone, there was still a special machine you could use to get yours immediately anyway! You could use the card six times and there were two different categories of rides. For example, the Donald rides at Epcot were Soarin’ and Test Track and the Daisy rides were Captain EO, Living with the Land, Maelstrom, and Mission: SPACE so for each of those categories you could get three FastPasses. The beauty of these cards is they remove the stress of having to plan your day around your FastPass return times … you just ride when you want to ride. They were great! We rode Soarin’ twice in a row in a 30-minute span … try that with FastPasses or the standby line! So we got to ride all the major rides without any major wait times.

My daughter even wanted to go on Mission: SPACE again and do the Orange Team (intense) version this time where they actually spin you and you feel the gravity of the launch. I was a little worried she wasn’t going to like it, but at least she was already familiar with the basics of the ride from yesterday. She did great and loved it! My favorite quote from her was “my head feels heavy!” as we were “launching” to Mars.

Another highlight of the day was the return of Captain EO. This 4-D film starring Michael Jackson, produced by George Lucas, and directed by Francis Ford Coppola had been replaced two years earlier by Honey, I Shrunk the Audience by the first time I visited Epcot in 1996. I remember seeing ads and clips about it when I was a kid though, and had always wanted to see it. Man, it was so … 80s! They showed a short “making of” vignette in the pre-show: dancers rehearsing in leotards and leg warmers with big hair, a young George Lucas (young everyone!), and cheesy electronica synthesizer music. Classic! Apparently Lucas sticks with what he knows because there’s a scene in the opening minutes of the movie that involve Captain EO’s ship flying through a trench that is so Death Star-esque even my daughter leaned over to say “it’s just like Star Wars!” The other striking similarity in the film is to the Borg in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Captain EO preceeded that series by several years, but just check out the similarities between the Borg Queen from Star Trek: First Contact and the Supreme Leader in Captain EO:

And look here, MJ is dancing with Borg commandos!

Star Wars/Trek similarities aside, it was a fun movie to watch, if only for nostalgia’s sake. Let’s face it, the 3D technology that was cutting edge when Captain EO was made in the mid-80s can’t compete with Avatar. Man, though, could Michael dance! The choreography was something else.

By late dinner-time we were ready to head back to the hotel. We didn’t bother with the World Showcase this trip since we are planning on coming back in October during the Food and Wine Festival. It had been a late night yesterday and we had another early morning tomorrow so we drove back to Port Orleans and had dinner in the food court before turning in for the night.

Tomorrow: Animal Kingdom and the Magic Kingdom.

She’s using  a pretty standard 3-column template with a simple-but-elegant theme. Notice she’s even copyrighted the term “nonline.”

Pretty creative. I might need to discuss content management and security with her though. Right now anyone with physical access to her room can modify the blog with a simple swipe of their finger (or by using one of the handy dry-erase markers nearby).

Not being able to really enjoy the great outdoors, we took the opportunity to get some work done around the house including painting our master bedroom, bathroom, and closet.

Since part of our lanai is covered (not just screened in) I was still able to grill out on Sunday. Burgers, scallops, corn, and pineapple!

Around 7:00pm, the rain stopped and we actually spotted blue sky out over the Gulf. A quick check of the radar showed that the bulk of the storm system had passed and was now over Tampa. There wasn’t another line of storms on the radar, so we quickly packed up a picnic dinner, threw some lawn chairs into the truck, and drove over to Largo Central Park for the fireworks. We actually avoided going to the main park since we figured the grass field would be totally soaked and muddy (especially since there was an attempt to break the world record for having the largest number of people doing the Twist in one place). Instead we found a great spot at another park down the street with a clear view. We ate dinner in the car and played basketball on the nearby court while we waited for it to get dark. It was a great show, as usual, and my daughter had a pretty good seat on the roof of the SUV.

We got home late from the show, so we had some fun with sparklers tonight instead.

Happy Independence Day! Party like the Founding Fathers.

The “Day & Night” short at the beginning was also very well done, a cool combination of traditional and 3D digital animation. Great storytelling without a single line of dialog.

Some random thoughts (without spoilers):

• I immediately noticed the “95″ on the train in the opening sequence (this appears in every Pixar film and is a reference to the year “Toy Story” was released
• I felt there was a Darth Vader/Emperor nod between Baby and Lotso at the end
• did you see the Pizza Planet truck?
• the scene in the incinerator … wow, powerful imagery (and more great storytelling without actual dialog)
• Spanish Buzz: ¡muy bueno!
• want more easter eggs?

I’ve read that some people enjoyed the movie more in 2D rather than 3D, saying that the glasses make the overall film darker and not as vibrant. The glasses didn’t really bother me though, and the 3D is not meant to be “in your face” 3D but instead adds depth to the scenes which I thought was cool. Even my daughter, who is wary of 3D films (after a bad experience at MuppetVision 3D when she was little) kept the glasses on the entire time.

Will there be a TS4? There are no plans for one right now, but it sounds like there will be a TS short in front of “Cars 2” next summer. Personally, I felt TS3 was a perfect ending to the trilogy and should left to stand on its own.

Don’t mess with Boba Fett, he’s all business!

The Gammorean Guard wasn’t very talkative either.

The “parade” was cool, seeing all the characters go by, especially the “local Florida garrison” of Imperial Troopers:

One of the celebrity guests in the parade was Jeremy Bulloch, who played Boba Fett. Since it’s the 30th anniversary of the release of “The Empire Strikes Back” I thought that was pretty neat. Pac Man and “Empire” both turned 30 this week? Wow, 1980 was a great year for geeks …

Of course my daughter loves the Star Wars saga so she had a great time as well. We got to “meet” and get autographs from Darth Vader (who knew he had such good penmanship, much less signed autopgraphs?), a couple of Storm Troopers (signed “Stormtrooper TX-352″), Boba Fett, Queen Amidala, and Luke and Leia. We also saw, wandering around, Chewbacca, some Ewoks, Tusken Raiders, the Cantina band, and various other characters. Unfortunately the lines for Darth Maul and C3PO/R2D2 closed before we could get in them. We didn’t even bother with the Star Wars-themed Disney characters (like Darth Goofy, Jedi Mickey, etc.).

Let me say that I’ve also never seen the line for the Star Tours line as long as it was in quite a while. In addition to it being a Star Wars Weekend, it was probably more popular since it will be shut down for rennovation in September before re-opening in May 2011 (for next year’s Star Wars Weekends).

Oh, and we did manage to squeeze in rides on Toy Story Mania and the Rockin’ Roller Coaster before we had to leave.

After some warm-ups and basic practice, the three of us decided to play H-O-R-S-E. Needless to say with my daughter being relatively new to basketball, she quickly fell behind. When she missed another shot and got her “S” she cried out in frustration: “stupid hors!” (read that aloud if you don’t get it).

My wife and I looked at each other for a second, then couldn’t help ourselves and burst out laughing. Of course my daughter thought we were laughing at her and got even more upset so we had to try to (delicately) explain why what she had said was funny.

We’ll definitely play with a different word next time.

I’ve evacuated from a jet (on the tarmac) and gone down the emergency slides during a passenger-initiated evacuation (back in 2003 when someone thought there was an engine fire).

I’ve been to a GWAR concert.

All of that pales in comparison with what I had to do today: coach a bunch of 9- to 12-year olds in a basketball scrimmage.

My daughter has started taking basketball lessons at a local rec center and on Saturdays there are league games. This was the first day of the league so the coach who runs the program did a rundown for the parents and kids present of how the games work, the schedule, the rules, etc., etc. Then it was time for the game. There were only 13 kids there so they were split them into two teams (red and blue). One dad had already volunteered to be a scrimmage coach for the spring season, but another volunteer was needed for the other team (the guy who runs the program is the referee). Before any of the other dads present could jump in (assuming they would have), the head coach/ref points at me in the bleachers and says “you’ll help me out, right? Come on down.” I tried to protest that I know nothing about coaching basketball but he wouldn’t hear of it (and it didn’t help that I was wearing a Dayton Flyers t-shirt, so he probably knew I had been watching the recent NIT tournament). Talk about being on the spot!

Now, I obviously enjoy watching and attending sports … but that’s where my “expertise” ends. I can’t really talk sports, I don’t follow statistics, I’m not that familiar with rules, I don’t know strategies, and I especially know nothing about coaching!

But before I knew it, I was on the sideline helping the kids get into their red team and blue team jerseys (luckily I didn’t have my daughter on my team). The game consisted of two 20-minute halves, with mandated substitutions every 5 minutes (to make sure everyone got to play). I had a team of 7 so I had to do two substitutions each time. The kids were wide-ranging in skill levels, so I had two strong, older players, two intermediate kids, and then 3 real beginners (“just keep at least one kid on the court who knows how to dribble” the coach told me). I stood on the sideline trying to shout words of encouragement while mentally juggling who I had to take out/put in, what the score was, etc. I knew I was in trouble when during a time-out one of the older kids said to me “Coach, can we switch from man-to-man to zone?” and all I could say back was “uh, sure?” You know how you should never show fear? Yeah, well, I think I failed at that … these kids knew I had no idea what I was doing and I was stressed out.

I think the game ended in a tie, but man, that was a harrowing 40 minutes! The other team’s coach obviously had more experience than me, which probably made me look even more incompetent to the parents in the bleachers on the other side of the court. I could just imagine the grumblings going on over there, but as my wife told me after the game: if they didn’t like it, they could volunteer next time.

Whew.

The park was really crowded, evidenced by how quickly the FastPasses were being distributed: we got there around 10am and went immediately to the Pixar area to get FastPasses for Toy Story Mania and yikes, our return time was 5:30pm! We also ended up with a 7:15pm time slot for the Tower of Terror and 9:15pm for the Rockin’ Roller Coaster.

We had lunch at the Sci-Fi Dine In Theater. My daughter and sister had never eaten there and my wife and I hadn’t been there since the mid-90s. It’s modeled after an old drive-in movie theater where you sit in little cars and watch old black-and-white movies on the screen while the wait staff roller-skates around.  It’s cute (cool ambiance) and the food is decent (I heard the milkshakes are great but I went with a flavored vanilla coke instead). I amused myself by MSTing the old movies and commercials while we ate.

Since we had all day before we could ride those “popular” attractions, we spent the rest of the day wandering around taking in the shows and other rides like the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular, Star Tours, the American Idol Experience, the Great Movie Ride, Beauty and the Beast,the 3pm Block Party Parade, and Drew Carey’s Sounds Dangerous. We even went through the “One Man’s Dream” exhibit that details the history of the Disney family and how Walt went from humble newspaper cartoonist to family media mogul, including dioramas and models and drawings of the various parks and plans.

After finally getting to ride Toy Story Mania around dinnertime, we split up for a bit. My wife and daughter went to see the American Idol final show while my sister and I went to MuppetVision 3D and also rode the Tower of Terror (or, as we renamed it, the Tower of Awesomeness!). We had gotten four FastPasses for ToT but since my wife and daughter ended up not going, we made two girls’ day by offering them the extra tickets so they didn’t have to wait in the standby line.

We met back up with the other half of our party to go to the 8:30pm showing of Fantasmic, which was great, but a little chilly. We were in rows near the front and the cool evening breezes were blowing some of the spray from the water screens on us. By the time we finally got out of the Hollywood Hills Amphitheater (Disney really needs to re-work the exit strategy on that venue) it was time for our last FastPass: Aerosmith’s Rockin’ Roller Coaster.

My daughter hadn’t liked the coaster the last time she rode it but I was proud of her for giving it another try. We even got to ride in the front car! My sister and I sat up front, with my wife and daughter right behind us. It was a blast! I love that coaster …

That was a perfect way to end the day. Considering how crowded the park was, really the longest line we waited in was to get our picture taken with the characters from Up! (Doug, Russell, and Carl). All of the FastPass lines worked out great and we got to see and do everything we wanted to.

The Plain Dealer posted a brief interview with the cartoonist, thought to be his first since 1989. A C&H stamp will be issued by the post office later this year.

I loved reading “Calvin & Hobbes” growing up, and have all of the books, including the complete hardcover collection. I still read the strip daily and find that it has a whole new enjoyable meaning for me now that I’m a parent.

Since we were just coming for the day, we figured on just staying at the Magic Kingdom and not doing any park-hopping. Thus, we decided to try out a few of the attractions we either had never been on, or hadn’t been on in a long time. First things first, we got Fast Passes for Space Mountain. The ride had been closed for remodeling since April and is my daughter’s favorite roller coaster at Disney. It just re-opened this past weekend so we definitely wanted to get on it. No surprise, our Fast Passes obtained around 9:30am were for 5:30! That gave us the rest of the day to wander around. Thinking we could get a sneak peek of the Space Mountain changes, we hopped onto the Tomorrowland Transit Authority. To our surprise, the tunnel through Space Mountain is totally dark and you can’t see any of the ride anymore (we found out why later, once we got onto the coaster). Still in Tomorrowland, we rode the Astro Orbitor, another ride we hadn’t been on (in about 13 years). It was a first for my daughter though and she really loved it, considering it just goes up and down and around in circles just like the Magic Carpets or Flying Dumbos (just a bit faster).

After lunch we went to Fantasyland, rode the obligatory “It’s a Small World” and also went to see PhilharMagic (a personal favorite). In Liberty Square we went into the Hall of Presidents to see that show (I could have sworn I saw the Bill Clinton “robot” check his watch while Barack Obama was speaking! ), which is now narrated by Morgan Freeman. In Frontierland, the river boat ride is now part of the promotion for Disney’s new upcoming animated feature, “The Princess and the Frog.”  The film doesn’t come out for another two weeks but there’s already a New Orleans-style parade featuring the princess (and prince) and some Mardi Gras-type characters and music. We rode the slow river boat around Tom Sawyer’s island (which we didn’t get to) with some great views of the back side of the Thunder Mountain Railroad coaster.

I couldn’t convince my daughter to go through the Haunted House, so we walked back to Tomorrowland intending to use our Fast Passes to Space Mountain and found it had been shut down! “Technical difficulties” the cast member outside the line said. He told me to check back later and any Fast Passes would still be valid. We snagged Fast Passes for Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin and then had dinner. After a race over on the Tomorrowland Grand Prix, we went to the Monster’s Inc. Laugh Floor where my daughter had a joke she had texted in read in the show!

By this time, Space Mountain was running again! We noticed a few changes while going through the line, primarily the addition of interactive video game screens on the standby side of the line and the “closed roof” of the waiting area. You can no longer see the coaster itself (what little you could see) while in the back-and-forth area of the line. This actually makes the ride itself darker because you can’t see the people in line. The “stars” seem to stand out more since there is less light on the ride. The coaster track itself hasn’t changed and it’s still my second-favorite Disney coaster (behind the Rockin’ Roller Coaster at Hollywood Studios and just ahead of Expedition Everest at Animal Kingdom).

After our speedy space ride, it was time for our Buzz Lightyear Fast Passes so we got in line to “shoot some aliens!” It was getting late, so we found some seats near the front of the park for the SpectroMagic parade, which my daughter, who actually awake this time, loved. Since no view of the evening fireworks could beat our last trip we left the park and drove to our hotel for the evening. Tomorrow morning we hit the road for the panhandle.