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We’re in Orlando this weekend for our annual Labor Day mini-vacation at Walt Disney World.

The day started out great: blue sky, white clouds, nice temperature. We got up early and headed over the Disney’s Hollywood Studios (formerly MGM Studios) since it opened an hour earlier for resort guests. Once inside, we made a bee-line for the new Toy Story Mania attraction. It was only a 30-minute standby wait, so that was the first thing we did … and it was great! You sit in a four-person car (two on each side) and use a toy gun to shoot at targets in the Midway-themed ride. You rack up points as you go, and your score is tallied on a separate screen. I got the third-highest score of the day (177,000+ points) but since we were there first thing in the morning I’m sure that didn’t last long.

Eventually we took the ferry from Hollywood Studios over to Epcot, where we had lunch reservations at Tappan Edo in Japan. Mmmm … fantastic! Our chef, Akira (not the Akira), put on a good show and cooked some fantastic food.

Unfortunately, while we were inside at lunch, the rain moved in. Unbenownst to us, this was caused by the outer bands of Hurricane Gustav moving through Florida. Actually, by the time we left the restaurant, the rain had stopped and the day had turned overcast. We figured that would be the end of it. But no, the rain continued on and off during the rest of the day, meaning we spent most of it in our rain ponchos.

Disney is well known for the use of cutting-edge technology in their rides and attractions, and rarely do you see public breakdowns. Well, we ran into one on the newly revamped Spaceship Earth ride. The latest remodel has included touchscreens in each car. During the beginning of the ride, you can select your language, where you’re visiting from, etc. Your photo is also taken. Well, unfortunately the system in our car crashed shortly after we boarded, so I got to watch the system reboot … literally. The BIOS screen was first (with a customized Spaceship Earth logo), then strangely, the GRUB boot loader was used to boot Windows XP (Start menu and system tray on the bottom of the screen):

I watched as the little wireless icon re-connected to the Spaceship Earth network and eventually the system started working again. Unfortunately, by then we were past the photo part of the ride. At the end, the system asks you questions about what you’d like to do in the future and then builds some sort of customized animation using your headshots in it. Since our system was rebooting and never took the photos, we didn’t get to experience our “customized future.” Oh well.

We finished the day at Magic Kingdom, riding Splash Mountain (we were already wet anyway) and Space Mountain, and visiting the Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor (also highly recommended!).

Around 7:45 in the evening we decided to head back over to Hollywood Studios to see Fantasmic. After taking the monorail over to the Transportation Station, and then waiting for the bus, we were informed that the park had closed at 8pm (it was now 8:15pm) since the show was at 8:30 (we thought it was at 9). So we ended up just catching another bus from Hollywood Studios back to the hotel and calling it a night.

By the way, the title of this post is a play on a short story by Cory Doctorow.