Ouch!

Because I'm an overachiever, we hit three parks yesterday: the Magic Kingdom, Disney's Hollywood Studios, and Epcot. I've lived in Central Florida most of my life, and when we were children my brother and I would study the map of the Magic Kingdom to plot out our attack on the park. We went about once a year, from what I can remember, and over the course of those years we got to know which rides required us to race to them upon park opening, which we could wander to at a more leisurely pace, and in what order we would accomplish these things.

So with that in mind, Choreboy and I had finished off all the "vital" rides at the Magic Kingdom by 11:00, those rides being defined as Pirates of the Caribbean, Thunder Mountain Railroad, the Haunted Mansion, the Carousel of Progress, Buzz Lightyear (what??), the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse, and the Jungle Cruise. We then ate brunch, and grabbed a shuttle bus over to Disney's Hollywood Studios. It's a newer park, and although I've visited it multiple times I don't have the knowledge of it I have of Magic Kingdom, plus it's been about 15 years or thereabouts since I've been there. In that time they added the Tower of Terror -- I think it was under construction the last time I was there -- and also the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster. I could have lived without the Tower of Terror. Freefall is all well and good, but this has freefall-stop-more freefall-stop-go back up-freefall-stop... GACK! My brain hurt after that. But the Rock'n'Roller coaster, well... rocked. Choreboy and I had done the dorktastic thing and both wore our NaNoWriMo 2009 t-shirts, and ran into a lady in line for the coaster who is also attempting NaNo this year. We were also scolded by a few Disney employees for not being at home pounding out wordcount. Heh.

We pretty much raced through Epcot, hitting just a couple of high points (Living With the Land, which had been closed on our official honeymoon, and Mission: Space), and then headed back to the Magic Kingdom so I could buy my "The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves" t-shirt that I'd decided was a must-have at Pirates. Why didn't I buy it earlier, you ask? Especially since it was clearly a "must have" item? Because it was 9:20 in the morning, and I had it in my head I was NOT going to tote that thing all around the parks all day. See, genius-level thinking at work.

I should have bought it earlier. Because we had to almost literally fight our way back to Pirates at about 8:00 that night, bought the shirt, then wrestled our way out of the park only to be stuck in a ginormous herd of departing folks bound for the Ticket and Transportation Center as we were. It was somewhere in here between leaving Epcot and trying to get out of the Magic Kingdom and get home already that my right hip finally gave out. I have a bit of sciatica and bursitis in that side, and the sciatica kicked in fitfully at first, but by the time we were trying to get to the parking lot I was walking ridiculously.

It didn't help that we lost the car, which had us wandering around the parking lot for probably an hour after we left the Ticket and Transportation Center. You'd think one of us would have been intelligent enough to mark where we parked, wouldn't you? You'd be WRONG. We got there so early the trams weren't running, and all we were concentrating on was the mad dash to the Magic Kingdom, not petty little details like, say, how we're going to get the hell out.

Whoops.

All that said, it was an awesome day. I'd better be well-rested to crank out the 5,000 words I want to have pumped out before I hit the office tomorrow. Eh, we'll see.

Now if I could just lift my right leg more than six inches off the ground...