Chapter 32
When I Was Eight

(Originally posted August 21, 2012)

Once we were out of the car, we still had the entire parade to go by behind us, and we’d never taken the time out to watch this parade before. Now we had a prime location.

Some of the characters acknowledged us in particular based on our Grand Marshal-dom, like Pluto!

We were still on Cloud 9.

Hi Mickey!

I love how some of the more obscure characters are in the parades.

The dancers are such troopers. There was literally sweat POURING down their faces since this was the end of the parade route. I read once somewhere on the DIS that if you are hired to be a fur character in a parade, you are almost guaranteed to get heat stroke at least a couple times during your employment. After seeing the intensity with which these performers dance, I believe it!

We’ve never gotten to meet Abu. Maybe we’ll see him at one of the parties someday.

I love how all the characters have the same general choreography so you get to see, for instance, Lady Tremaine sneering her way through this dance.

The Belle dress for the parade is so much fancier than any of the other ones she wears. The color is a true gold rather than the usual yellow.

The parade ended pretty soon after those last few characters went by, and the crowds very quickly dispersed. We said a quick goodbye to the family we’d shared our Grand Marshal experience with, and then it was time to continue our day! We saw this guy lurking in the bushes.

We were once again back in Liberty Square, and didn’t have very firm plans as to what else we wanted to hit in this park, so we decided to do another attraction neither of us had visited in MANY years.

I think The Hall of Presidents definitely gets a bad rap 90% of the time people talk about it. You just really need to be in the right mood to appreciate it for what it is, and then it’s really remarkable. Between the amazing audioanimatronics and the patriotic message, it is an attraction that shouldn’t be missed at least every couple of trips. On the other hand, I feel like parents often drag their kids who aren’t quite old enough to see it, and then both kids and parents find that the air conditioning is the perfect place to take a nap. I know that the last time I watched the show, when I was probably eight years old, that’s exactly what happened. And if you remember it as a boring attraction from that age, it’s hard to convince yourself to try it again once you would probably appreciate it a lot more. But we made ourselves.

I know there are several stories behind this presidential seal, and one of them is a big misconception. I can’t for the life of me remember which is the true one and which one is not. One of these days I’ll need to go back and re-listen to the podcast where Lou interviewed someone who did their master’s thesis on the Hall of Presidents—I think we can trust them!

Anyway, the show was great, and neither of us fell asleep! I think they’ve reworked it quite a bit since I was eight… After exiting the Hall, we decided once again that it was time for a snack. On this trip, whenever we were remotely hungry, we got snacks. It was the only way we were ever going to use up all those snack credits!

We walked through to Adventureland.

And we got in line at Aloha Isle. That’s right—it was Dole Whip time!

Between all of our trips, we have become Dole Whip connoisseurs, and we have come to a collective conclusion. The best Dole Whip product is the Pineapple Float, BUT you have to get it in Walt Disney World. In Disneyland, we got the Pineapple Float, and the only option was to get it with straight pineapple dole whip. The secret to a magical pineapple float, however, is to get it with pineapple/vanilla swirl. This creates the perfect balance of sweet and sour, and it tastes delicious!

After finishing our float, we decided to try out the Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom game using the cards we had picked up earlier.

Since my mission had sent me to Adventureland, we picked a portal and tried it out. There was something to do with Scar, and my mission to try to beat him sent me to the Tortuga Tavern for my next portal, which we put off going to. The animation portion of the game is great, and the cards are beautiful, but I don’t think we’re exactly the target demographic for the game. It’s so time consuming that I think you really have to devote an entire day just to playing, so I’m betting it’s more fun for locals and people who get to come more often than we do.

Moving on from Sorcerers for now, we wandered back into Frontierland without too much of a plan as to what to do next. We saw that the next showing of the Country Bear Jamboree was set to start in a few minutes, so we decided to check it out. I also hadn’t seen this show since I was eight and Tracy had never seen it. We both love bears though, so we thought it would be fun.

Honestly, of all the new/first-time-in-a-long-time experiences we had on this trip, this was the one I was most on the fence about. The music just isn’t much to my taste at all, so the thing I really liked about the show was the humor. Obviously “Blood on the Saddle” steals the show, but since I didn’t really know any of the other songs, I found myself looking at my watch a few too many times. This is one of those shows that I bet gets more fun as you get more familiar with it. At least the bears were cute and the animatronics were great!

As we came out of the theatre, the Frontierland Hoedown was going on, so we joined in the fun.

This is one of those great pieces of unexpected entertainment that incorporate unique characters. We did the hokey pokey with Clarabelle the Cow and Brer Rabbit.

We were really excited to see Clarabelle because her existence is sort of a running joke between Tracy and me. We enjoy playing Epic Mickey on the Wii, and Clarabelle is randomly a character that you have to race against in that game. We never were able to get past her level because she’s too darn fast, and she’s just such a ridiculous character. Never expecting to see any trace of her in the parks, we were surprised to see the coming soon posters for Clarabelle’s Ice Cream Parlor when we were at Disney’s California Adventure. We almost thought it was a joke. And then suddenly, there was a walk-around Clarabelle character right in front of us during this hoedown. It was all a little too much for us to handle!

As we finished the hoedown and the characters all dispersed, we headed back toward Adventureland. We had some Fastpasses that were burning a hole in our fannypack!

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