July 4th 2008 PHOTO trip report

[standbyme]

Well, I may never set a record for best trip report as Avatar has…so I will go for most delayed trip report! This report is for my July 4th trip. I have been kinda busy and really hadn’t had time to post some of the pictures I took that day.

I had never been to the park on the 4th before and finally decided that this was the year since CF threw in SO many special things…it was just too good to pass up…even if gas was $4.12 a gallon.

We started the day off with the very first “Breakfast With The Characters” in the (former) International Restaurant. We arrived just a few minutes after it opened and found a table right by the window. When I bought the tickets in advance for this I had high hopes of a nice sunny day that would make a nice photo op for the high wire over the fountain…that was not to be…it was a dreary drizzly morning.

Eating in the International Restaurant is always a good time for me…I just like the view…even on a dreary day. It is cool to see the park in a different way every now and then. (This was the big selling point to get me to the first KIC Day.) As for what the breakfast was like…it was not bad, not great. I will give them that they were just starting out and it would take time to work the bugs out…but it seemed like you had to “work” at getting hot food. If it sat in the pans long it was barely warm…so basically my family would watch when they brought out a fresh batch and then go up. (Cold eggs & French toast is not very appetizing.) Like I said, this was the first morning…so I’m sure they will get better as time goes on. The way the character aspect of it was set up (at least while we were there) was that Dora & Spongebob stood at the far end of the room and the kids…and adults could go and meet them and have their picture taken. (1 free 8x 10 was included with each order.

Being this was the first breakfast, it seemed like there were quite a few “suits” just observing how things were going…I was asked about 3 times before I left “How was everything“,“Did you have a good time“. I kind of lied and said everything was good…they were so nice I didn’t really want to mention the food being slightly cold!

I think everyone was really TRYING hard to please…and that goes a long way with me. So, in the end, would I recommend the breakfast? I guess it depends on if you are there for the food or the view…if it’s just the food I say no…but it was certainly a memorable way for us to start out the 4th of July.

When we came out of the restaurant the park was just opening to the public…it was raining a little and it seemed like the park was doing a good job at selling rain ponchos. I will not go into a ride by ride report…I will just say that we headed for Nickelodeon Universe for the morning…I will pretty much concentrate on the “special” things that we saw on the 4th.

Luckily the rain did not last…and when it cleared up I did manage to take a few photos of International Street’s 70’s makeover.

It was great seeing the old Hanna-Barbera characters out…this was one of the main “selling points” that got me to come this day.

I will say that as much as I love them…it seemed like most of the crowd were not that thrilled to see them…at least for the 15-20 minutes that we hung out with them…they had plenty of time to just dance around and wave at people going by. George looked pretty bored a lot of the time. Don’t get me wrong…some people WERE thrilled to come up and see them…but it appeared to me that at least half of the crowd going by were happy enough to just look over and point and keep walking…I guess times HAVE changed. As a side note…when you got really close to George he had a nice case of B-O going on!

I did get to see Fred Flintstone & (a strangely taller than usual) Barney Rubble later in the day but I did not get pictures of them.I would like to thank the park for bringing these characters out like this every now and then…it does help bring some people to the park and it is nice for us “old-timers” to reminisce.

The Clown Band was out and about during the day.

The big event of the day was obviously Rick Wallenda’ s walk. I watched both the “practice” one and the real one…both were fun. While walking amongst the crowd during the walks I was amazed at some of the things that I heard and saw. SEVERAL times I overheard people saying things to the affect that they hoped that he would fall! I think it is sad/sick that people would hope to see someone possibly die…or at the very least severely injured just for a story to tell down the road. We are a great society.

I have seen tons of photos of Rick on the wire already posted here on the site that are better than what I took, so I won’t bore you with those…but here are a few photos of the people who were holding the ropes that steadied the wire:

You would not believe how many people would not want to walk around these people…so many people ducked under the ropes…I even saw a girl with an umbrella struggle to get underneath a rope so that she wouldn’t have to walk a whole 6 feet further…whoever said the customer is always right did NOT work with the public!

I do have a question that I have not seen addressed. The park hyped that the high wire was 112 feet high…and I don’t see how they could make the claim if it were not true…but can someone explain how if the lower observation deck is 50 Feet from the ground….and the wire was on top of the roof of that…how did that add up to 112 feet? Did they fudge something? Don’t get me wrong…it was still cool to watch, and I wouldn’t do it at 25 Feet…but was it really 112 Feet?

We closed the evening off with the big fireworks show…although because of my stupidity we missed most of it. An hour before the fireworks were to begin I went to the foot of the fountain and camped out a spot early. Unfortunately I did not know where the best area was…I was about dead center, but a little towards the left…MISTAKE! Once the fireworks started we could only see maybe a third of them…yes, we could have gotten up, but it just seemed to late to try and find another spot before they would end…live and learn.

I do wish that maybe the park had either a sign up or maybe an associate kind of telling all of the people sitting to the left of the fountain that the view would not be good…when the fireworks started there was a mass exodus to my left with people yelling and walking in front of us…it did ruin the mood. It was a day that was glad I had not missed…but it did end on a bad note missing most of the fireworks show.

So, thanks to everyone at the park for putting SO much effort into making July 4th into a truly memorable day!

Oh yeah…as an extra, here is a photo of the Batman motorcycle that was on display the next day:

[Avatar]

Hey there stanbyme – sorry to be so long to post a response to your trip report but in the spirit of delay, I guess it’s better late than never!

Hey though I did enjoy reading your report and thanks for taking the time to do it and the pictures with descriptions was great too. I liked the photos of rope holders.

Also thanks for the photo and descriptions of the character breakfast, we have wanted to go to one soon as we have done several at Disney and have enjoyed them.