Chapter 127
Going to the Dogs

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(Originally posted December 30, 2013)

August 10, 2013

I wish I could say we had learned our lesson and found the perfect way to avoid waiting in line forever at the beginning of Expo day two, but this is how we saw it: we could either a) get there a couple extra hours early and spend that time sitting in line waiting to get in for the D23 extra hour or b) show up at around 9:00 again and realize it would probably take about an hour to get from our spot in line into the actual building. With option A we would have had to wait even longer than option B, so we decided to sleep in as much as was possible and showed up at about 9. The line was impressive and more that a little intimidating…

As we waited, we saw that someone was filming video by flying this little remote controlled helicopter over the crowd.

We also got to see Dr. Doofenshmirtz’s Waffle-inator in action.

Eventually, we made it inside. It maybe took a little less long than our wait had been the previous morning because the volunteers had obviously gotten a little more efficient at processing tickets.

I’m not going to lie—our first stop was to see the new booth that had been installed for Day 2: a meet and greet with the canine stars of Super Buddies!! That’s right, we got to meet one of the “famous” puppies from the Buddies franchise. It was actually really interesting watching the trainer interacting with the dogs while we were in line. I can’t imagine training dogs that young to be so responsive to commands.

Right before our turn, the first of the puppies finished his shift and got swapped out for another one.

So this was the puppy we got to meet. He really was a superhero.

We also weren’t supposed to be allowed to pet the puppy, but I let my hand lightly brush against him while I stood up. He was so soft and cute!

Keeping with the theme of the morning thus far, also going on right now was the Dog with a Blog cast doing a meet and greet. We hoped that Stan—the titular dog himself—might be there with them, so we went over to check it out. Alas, there was no canine to be found, though I did recognize the cast members from the show.

Our next stop was back at the WDW Radio booth. We hadn’t gotten to spend anywhere near as much time here during the Expo as we would have liked—there was just SO MUCH to see and do everywhere else—but we enjoyed standing on their squishy carpet and sitting in their chairs for a few minutes to take a load off before the day really got started.

The gals from MouseFan Travel also started dancing, so that was fun to watch.

As crazy as it seemed, it was actually getting to be about time for lunch. Time was flying on this second day of the Expo—much to our dismay because I know part of us wanted it to last forever.

We got a pastrami sandwich, which came with some delicious chips.

Once again, the food was better than what I was expecting for convention fare. Tracy LOVES dill pickles but HATES sweet pickles with a vengeance, and we didn’t know which kind the one on the sandwich was. She took a bite and instantly spat it out, trying to scrape the sweet pickle off her tongue with her fingers. A few seconds later, we saw a young girl at the next table doing the EXACT same thing. I guess no one likes sweet pickles!

Earlier in the day, I’d thought we didn’t need to get any StagePasses this morning, but then I realized too late that the distribution for the Voices of the Disney Parks panel had been in the morning not the afternoon. The passes were all gone when we tried to check it out. This left our afternoon mostly open, though we thought we may still want to try the standby line to see this presentation.

The next place we planned to go in the meantime was the Treasures of the Walt Disney Archives exhibit. Here is the description from the D23 website.

The line wasn’t too bad, and before too long, we were in the first room, which was filled with this line of Disney Princess-inspired gowns by fancy designers.

Tracy wanted the Rapunzel dress.

In the archives exhibit, the first room was filled with memorabilia from Once Upon a Time. We are HUGE fans of the show, so we were pretty excited to see some of these classic props.

(Sidenote: We recently watched the winter finale, and boy oh boy, was it something else!! I can’t wait for the show to return in the spring!)

The archives exhibit also had this Big Rock Candy Mountain model on display.

We pretty much breezed right past the props and costumes from Oz: The Great and Powerful (aka the Oz movie we’ve never watched) and Return to Oz (aka the Oz movie that gave me more nightmares as a child than pretty much any other film).

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