Mousefest 2006 - Magic Kingdom Meets

Detour and Island Hopping

After the Cruise on the Rivers of the World the time management discussion resumed, folks were ready for lunch, so the RADPers decided to head over to the Columbia Harbor House to eat before it was time for the Mansion meet, I looked at my entertainment schedule and saw that I could squeeze in a set of recording the Main Street pianist before the 2:00 meet time.

Upon returning to the Mansion I saw a few folks gathering for the Mansion meet, but not the folks I rode the Jungle Cruise with, those folks were still working on lunch. While we were waiting for them a few folks from tagrel.com came by doing a scavenger hunt, they needed to find a Hidden Mickey in each land and one of their teams also needed to get a picture of folks spelling out Mickey sort of cheerleader style with each person making a different letter I got to be an "M". After a bit the folks still eating sent word that there wasn't time to do the Mansion before the Tom Sawyer Island meet, and they were skipping Mansion, this worked absolutely perfectly for me since I had already done the Mansion, and I was looking forward to Kevin's Tom Sawyer Island scavenger hunt, so I went to where they were eating and hung out with them until it was time for us to wander on up to the raft docks. While we were wandering up to the raft dock I was talking with Sam about my conclusion I had come to at that point about the Liberty Belle steamboat. I had noticed looking at photos of it that the two small rear pipes were where the steam vents, so I thought that perhaps the central stack was just for show, but Sam took a look at it and later when we were on the island he pointed out to me that if you looked at it closely you could see ripples in the air above the central stack so what it is is the central stack is the exhaust for the combustion products (which I imagine is either #2 fuel oil like the steam trains burn, or perhaps propane) and the smaller stacks just vent the steam once it's been used to drive the pistons.

While we we waiting we found out the rules, Zazu, Julie, and Praline were Kevins assistants in the scavenger hunt they were heading one raft ahead of everyone else and going to three different locations on the island, each of the rest of us got an index card, and when we found one of the assistants they were to put a sticker on our index card. Once we had all three stickers we were to proceed to Aunt Pollys where the prize would be awarded. While we were waiting Kevin re emphasized that the "hiders" would only be in normal public areas, and other guests would be on the Island as well of course so we should all be "good citizens" if you will, it's good with a big group like this to go over the basics, we did have some kids attending this meet and spelling these things out a bit is probably good for everyone, but especially so for the kids.

I made decent time in the scavenger hunt, first I found Jan on the far side of the island almost directly across from the Mansion, then I headed to the other half of the island across the suspension bridge and into the fort where Julie was up in one of the turrets, heading back to the other half of the Island it took me quite a while to find Zazu, he was in a childs play house designed to look as if it was built from junk salvaged from the river by Tom and Huck.