October 11, 2007 Full photos Version

RADP 12

With the coming of digital photography I have become increasingly sensitive to the constructive criticism that some trip reports just have too many pictures, and none of the bad ones are weeded out... that said I realize there are also folks who also take the attitude of "the more pictures the better", so, I'm going to do TWO trip reports for this trip one with no more than 20 pictures for the whole day all on one page that is for that day, and the other version with as many pages as it takes for all the pictures both reports will have identical text, that said there is still the editorial decision as to WHICH 20 photos to feature, and I'll just have to take my beast guess as to which ones I think are the best, or best illustrate the report. Since this is the first page of the "all the photos" version of the trip report here is a link to the first page of the "limited version" of the report for those who prefer that.

summary

The first day of RADP October trip in 2007, arriving after an overnight drive from Charlotte NC the wife dropped me off at the Magic Kingdom where I had the whole day to myself before the first RADP meet that evening for the fireworks at the Mickeys Not So Scary Halloween Party ( MNSSHP ). That said it was a bit of a long day and I was a bit wore out for part of the evenings festivities, after sitting out the parade at the Rose Gardens structure (former load structure of the Swan Boats)I met up with some RADPers for the fireworks, before making one last attempt at catching some of the live entertainers I had been looking for all evening.

After the overnight drive to WDW my wife dropped me at the Magic Kingdoms "guest Drop off" which is also the Taxi stand and is located between the Ticket and Transportation Center (Ticket and Transportation Center), Polynesian Village Resort, and the Parking lot it is on the same road as the Kennel for the Magic Kingdom.

I arrived at the Ticket and Transportation Center WELL before opening so I grabbed a bench and wrote a few postcards to friends. Even though they weren't letting off-site day guests into the interior of the Ticket and Transportation Center courtyard until just before park opening, when I approached the gate and asked where the nearest restroom was they pointed me to the one inside the gates, which I thought was a very nice and reasonable thing to do. I recent years I've become interested in many somewhat esoteric aspects and details of Walt Disney World and one of those aspects are its bathrooms, so I took the early morning empty bathroom as an opportunity to snap some photos. Much like many of the older restrooms in the Magic Kingdom and Epcot the predominant color scheme in the Mens rooms is Brown, though in at least some cases I've heard that the womens rooms are Blue (the ones next to City Hall is an instance where I know that the womens room color scheme is Blue and the Mens is brown) does anyone know what the color of this Ticket and Transportation Center south complexes womens rooms are? Later in the trip I got the chance to take a nice set of photos of the Ticket and Transportation Center North bathroom and it was obvious they had been much more recently renovated (with a color scheme that I like much better). I made sure to take a photo of the "hand-washing instructions" tile too, Brawny and Sparkle, both products of the Georgia-pacific Corp. sponsor the hand washing stations in the restrooms of WDW, if it is anything like the deal WDW is rumored to have with coke then WDW gets free product, in this case it would likely be hand towels and perhaps toilet paper in exchange for the advertising placement. Upon leaving the restroom I went back outside the gate and took some photos of the monorails to pass the time until they started letting day-guests in.

Above: Although I got some good photos of Monorails Green, Gold, and Lime while waiting, this "close up" of pink on the Express loop entering the station may be my favorite of the batch.

above: When I visited Walt Disney World in June of 2007 there were plywood refurbrishment walls around this area at the base of the ramp down from the monorail station and in a portion of the ferry boat loading area... when I returned in October of 2007 I found these large water fountains that provide nice cold water one in each of those locations, and they are even in the Ticket and Transportation Center colors. Also note how bright the concrete base is (compared to the surrounding slab). Years ago I seem to remember stainless steel models at the Ticket and Transportation Center that may have not had cooling capacity large enough to deal with the massive number of people that pass through this area.