Mousefest 2006 - Magic Kingdom Meets

Tonga Trivia

We were pretty much in the groove of the morning wake up routine, with Carlene dropping me off at the parks before heading back to the motel for a nap, but when we got to the guest drop off at the Ticket and Transportation Center this morning I realized I had forgotten the camera back at the room ACK! Well... I had a breakfast meet this morning, at the nearby Kona Cafe so I told Carlene I'd give her a call after breakfast, now I could have had Carlene drop me off directly at the Poly, but I figured she already knew where the TTC drop off point was and I was getting there plenty early, so why not take a nice stroll across the grounds of the Polynesian resort hotel. On the stroll to the hotel I looked up to my right and saw what looked like an eagle or some other very large bird of prey perched atop the building and facing out away from me looking out over the lagoon, DARN! and me without my camera! Soon enough I was at the main building of the Polynesian Resort Hotel and checked in for the "Tonga Toast" breakfast sponsored by AllEars.net, and the Mouse Fan Cafe portion of MEI travel, now it was nice to eat at a breakfast with some other All Ears folks (and some authors of Disney Related books like Steve Barrett), but we were divided up into two tables and what really made my morning were the folks at my table! I was seated beside Mike Demopolis of the Sharing Magical moments and Mouse Station podcasts, I had been a frequent voice mailer to his podcast, but had just met him in person the previous day at Epcot, so it was nice to get to know him a little better, on my other side were some nice folks from MEI travel, I remember meeting a lot of MEI folks this year and look forward to seeing more of them in the future, they just seem like great Disney fans and thus are probably some of the most knowledgable of Disney Travel agents. But the thing that really blew me away was when I found out something from the three people sitting ACROSS the table from me, there was a guy dining by himself (or his wife may have been at the far end away from me), and a father and daughter pair, the two fellows didn't seem to know each other, but they did have something in common, they BOTH listen to my podcast, Now I know that a lot of Disney fans congregate at WDW for Mousefest, but the odds of this happening are so slim! I'm CERTAIN I have LESS THAN 200 subscribers, at that time it was less than 150 I'm sure. Almost everyone who I had ever met in person, that had told me that they listen to my podcast were other Disney Podcasters... and here were TWO (non-podcaster) listeners to my show, I still think that Mousefest of not the odds of this happening were Incredibly slim, this really made my day! (But once again I can't help but note...and me without my camera!!)

After breakfast, I called Carlene and went to meet her at the Taxi stand for the TTC where she had dropped me off earlier, camera now in hand I headed for the Magic Kingdom, I had a lagoon to cross to get to Triviafest on time, no time to waste on this crossing! Still I made it there with a few minutes to spare before the event began. everyone who wanted to participate started out with four sheets of paper with the letters "A", "B", "C", and "D" printed on them the idea was as the questions were asked you raise the letter form the correct multiple choice answer and as folks got eliminated they turned in their sheets of paper, the winner, as expected ended up being the odds on favorite going into the event JamesD Dzneynut of the DisneyWorldTrivia.com forums. But in the final three there was a surprise the last four Triviateers were the aforementioned JamesD, Jeff from Houston (the meandering mouse, and there was a woman on an ECV whom know one from DWT seemed to know, it's neat seeing someone who is obviously a long time fan like that come out to these things and get connected to other fans, perhaps next year I'll actually catch her name! After the ipod winner was decided we continued to answer trivia questions for a while and Lou passed out some more items, books, lanyards and so forth. )

After trivia fest I headed over to Adventureland I knew there was going to be a series of RADP meets this day in fact they were already supposed to have done the Pirates of the Caribbean meet, and a Dole Whip break, when I got to the Jungle Cruise I met one other Disneyfan Indybill he mentioned that they hadn't even gone by to head to Aloha Isle yet so we figured Pirates had went long, I had had a tough time deciding to go to this meet because another meet I wanted to head to was the Inside the Magic Haunted Mansion meet, so I took this as an opportunity, figuring I could catch up with the RADP folks later. I grabbed a fastpass for the JC (just in case), and headed over to the Mansion. The massive group in front of the Columbia harbor House was easy to pick out, I was probably one of the last folks to arrive (due to my late decision) and after Ricky took a quick video of the group to use as his vidcast for that week (yep, I'm in it), we headed over to the mansion. Ricky played audio of the meet on the podcast, but he was with the group that went in the first stretch room, apparently the capacity is 70 because with a head count of 84 13 of us were left back, I figure that the discrepancy in the count was due to the fact that one dad was holding his very small child, and I had counted them both as our group came in, whereas they probably did not count that little girl towards the rooms capacity.