I just need to add this: On one of my backstage tours I learned that Walt Disney used to say “put the money where the guests can see it.” And…yeah…if you took one of those tours you saw right away the difference between the guest areas and the backstage work areas which were pretty functional. Here’s a shot of the Expedition Everest ride that really brings it home…

The part the guests don’t see doesn’t need to look like anything more than what it is…the building that houses the ride. Everywhere in this shot you see the mountain peeking around the sides of this structure is where it can be seen from the guest area. All the ride structures look like this away from where the guests can see them.

So…my point: this is what Chapec forgot in his single minded pursuit of bigger and bigger profit margins; Put the money where the guests can see it. The guests don’t see money that only makes the executive suite richer.

This came across my Facebook stream just now, in a post about an Orange County Register article about Disneyland Magic Key holders…

From the post: “The top-tier Disneyland annual pass cost $699 when Chapek became Disney parks boss in 2015 and $1,599 when he was fired as CEO in 2022 — a 128% increase. Today, the most expensive Disneyland Magic Key pass costs $1,899.”

Chapec ruined the parks even more than I’d realized at the time. I was commenting in the previous post about how massively the cost of the annual passes had risen, and how now it seems like they don’t even want anyone who isn’t wealthy going to the parks on a regular basis at all.

The New Yorker ran this last May about how your average Disney goers are going into debt rather than giving up their park time as the costs have exploded.

In 2023, Ashley, a freshman at Quinnipiac University, in Connecticut, had fifteen thousand dollars in her bank account. Excited by her newfound freedom as a college student, she decided to start going on solo trips. Walt Disney World, in Orlando, Florida—a place she had fallen in love with as a child, after visiting for the first time when she was four—seemed like an obvious choice. She went during her winter break. Then she returned, six times, in two years. “It’s just so magical,” she explained. “It keeps drawing me back.” Soon enough, her account balance had dwindled to just five dollars.

(you will probably need a subscription to read this) She ended up going to work for Disney and also having a thousand dollar credit card debt she needed her parents to help her pay off.

This is not sustainable. At some point attendance is going decline, but I think they’re baking that into the plan. If you have fewer guests but they’re wealthier you can still turn a tidy profit and your operating costs have gone down.

It’s a total betrayal of Walt Disney’s vision of what his parks should be, but his part of the company’s history just a small fragment of the total, and the people running it now see him as a marketing gimmick not a standard bearer.

I’m glad I got to visit for a few years before Chapek got his hands on it. In retrospect I started noticing the changes in tenor almost immediately; the big screen TV breaking the theming of the Belle Vue lounge, turning the Sid Cahuenga bungalow at the entrance to Hollywood Studios from a place to buy actual Hollywood memorabilia (where I got my autographed photo of Tommy Kirk in Old Yeller) into a photo-pass sales place because the profit margins on photo passes were higher, and finally, and most infuriatingly, turning The Writer’s Stop into a tap room because selling beer to adults made them more money than selling books to kids and adults.

I’m thinking now it wasn’t just having to wear a face shield in Biergarten during COVID that made a certain someone decide to retire early. He would have seen what Chapec was doing to the parks from the inside.

The only thing tying me to Disney parks now is the 100 DVC points I got regrettably talked into buying again after I’d sold all my other points because I was so disenchanted with what Bob Chapek had done to Walt Disney World. Part of the reason I bought back in was Chapek was shown the door and Bob Iger came back and I thought Chapek’s greedy disrespect for the parks and guests was over and that most of it would be undone.  But the nit picky greed has only got worse. Of course Disney was all about the money…as a certain someone once riddled me when I was considering going with a friend to a DVC presentation…

He: What does Mickey Mouse eat?

Me: Cheese I guess…?

He: What’s in your wallet.

The advice I got then was to break both my arms so I couldn’t be talked into signing anything. But eventually I did because I just loved Boardwalk and wanted to stay there every year. I got enough points in Boardwalk to do just that and the signing gifts I got were lovely.

When I signed back on some years later for the same number of points what I got as a signing gift looked like cheapshit WalMart stuff.

I think I knew then I’d made a mistake.

For a while I had annual passes at both Walt Disney World and Disneyland. But the very act of buying them by then resembled the insane Christmas mobs trying to buy Cabbage Patch Dolls or Tickle Me Elmo. I remember vividly buying back my WDW annual pass during the brief window of opportunity that opened, and hundreds of us logged in only to be placed into a queue where there was no guarantee that any of the Limited Available Passes would be left when we got to the front of the line…and a bunch of us were texting each other in some social media channel waiting with baited breath to see who got theirs, and encouraging the others to stay in line because who knows, you might get yours too… Well I got mine but I had to wonder…where’s the Disney magic in all this..?

I noticed to my alarm that Disney wasn’t warning you your pass was about to expire, like they used to, like sending you big postcards and emails and texts reminding you weeks beforehand to renew. I missed renewing my Disneyland pass and was distraught for a year before circumstances seemed to open up a chance at getting another one.  ABC/Disney had cancelled Jimmy Kimmel and everyone was in a rush to cancel their Disney+ subscriptions and the little devil on my left shoulder started whispering in my ear I bet they’re selling annual passes now…

The last straw was when it came time to renew that annual pass and I was told those passes where no longer being sold, but that I Might be able to get one of the other new ones that one was being replaced with. At full price of course since it was a new pass not a renewal. And only if there were any available.

And I had enough of it. Time was you wanted an annual pass, you just bought an annual pass. And then every year you got a notice to renew. Some years that notice came with a promise of extra months on the pass.

But then time was you didn’t need a reservation to enter the parks, just your pass or your ticket.

It just kept getting more and more astronomically costly to go, at the same time it kept getting more and more difficult to go. Everything that used to be part of the package you got simply by going was being nickeled and dimed to death. It seems now that “plus it” thing Walt Disney often spoke of isn’t about making the guest experience better, it’s about plussing the bill.

The other day I chanced across this blog post from Magical Dad Blog on Facebook, that really speaks to me too, even though I don’t have kids of my own like he does…

Disney’s former CEO proudly called things like the Magical Express, free FastPass, and complimentary MagicBands “revenue opportunities left on the table.”

Chapek’s memoir excerpts came out this week, and he defended, even bragged, about every price hike and perk cut, pointing to 18% profit growth as the proof. I’ve been thinking about his phrasing a lot the past few days.

I know what that “revenue” left on the table looked like from our side.

It looked like my kids watching Mickey cartoons on the Magical Express while my wife and I sat there realizing we hadn’t thought about logistics since we landed in Orlando.

It looked like MagicBands arriving in the mail three weeks before the trip and my boys carrying them around the house because they couldn’t wait to leave.

It looked like touching your wrist to a reader and hearing that unique Disney chime instead of the cash coming out of your wallet.

Sure, those things never showed up on a quarterly earnings call, but they’re the reason families chose Disney over every other vacation on earth.

To me, that’s not revenue left on the table, that’s the magic that Chapek so happily torched in the name of a bottom line.

Disney’s new CEO, Josh D’Amaro, started at Disneyland 28 years ago and worked his way up through the parks, including a stretch running resorts and transportation at Walt Disney World. He knows what that table used to look like because he helped set it.

Here’s hoping the table eventually gets set again, and a few more kids get to fall asleep on the bus back to the airport with a MagicBand still on their wrist.

…What I have is the Disney kid inside of me, who a certain someone awakened after a long sleep, and I walked into Walt Disney World and Epcot for the first time…and it all came back to me.

I am skeptical any of it changes due to new management. They’re all about the money now, not the magic. Which is not to say they weren’t about the money before, but at least they were also about the magic. The trick they pulled to make renewing your annual pass impossible so you had to buy a new one every time was the last straw for me. The annual passes saved the regular visitors money. They’re not interested in those visitors anymore…the people who came just to spend some time in Walt Disney’s World and believe in that great big beautiful tomorrow for a while. If you’re not there to spend lots and Lots of money they don’t want you.

It’s a small world after all… There’s a great big beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day…

I want that magic back. But I don’t think it’s ever coming back.

I have a Disney World vacation coming up first week in March that I’d hoped to make into a road trip, because the California train rides just made me long for the open road again, even if it was just I-95.

But the weather made me rethink it. My car is practically embedded in what they’re calling around here “snowcrete”. No kidding, it’s hard as concrete and not likely to get any easier to shovel until we get some warmer temperatures.

Then there is the mess the weather has been making of the roads in the Carolinas.

I can’t count on any of this getting any better by the time I have to leave for Florida. And I can’t just cancel that reservation and put it some other place on the calendar because it’s a DVC points reservation and they are nearly impossible to reschedule when you’re close to your DVC year end. I have a nice one bedroom villa reserved which gives me a full size complete kitchen and walking access to Disney Springs and I’m going. Plus, that first week in March has many special Disney memories for me.

And I am practically swimming an Amtrak points after that last set of trips to California and back. So I reserved a roomette on the Silver Meteor there and back on points alone. The only expense this incrues is I will need a rental car and and a rideshare to and from the car rental place, both of which will cost me less than the road trip there and back would have.

This gives me some peace of mind about being able to actually make it to Orlando. Be nice after the deep freeze we’re in here to spend at least a little time in that lovely warm Florida sunshine…

Oh…wait…

Official updates
From National Weather Service · Last updated 3 hours ago
EXTREME COLD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 7 PM THIS EVENING TO 10 AM EST MONDAY… …FREEZE WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 7 PM THIS EVENING TO 10 AM EST MONDAY

* WHAT…For the Extreme Cold Warning, dangerously cold wind chills as low as 14 to 20 degrees expected. For the Freeze Warning, hard freezing temperatures as low as 22 to 27 degrees expected.

* WHERE…All counties in east central Florida, including Volusia,
Lake, Seminole, Orange, Brevard, Osceola, Indian River,
Okeechobee, Saint Lucie, and Martin.

I took a wee trip to Disneyland and now I’m back at my brother’s house. He lives about two miles from the Amtrak station at Grover Beach. There are two trains that run up and down the coast regularly from there. The Very Nice Coast Starlight which runs from Seattle to San Diego, and the Pacific Surfliner which runs from San Luis Obispo to San Diego. Both stop at Los Angeles Union Station and I have traveled on both of them to and from there, but only the Surfliner stops in Anaheim. The biggest problem with the Surfliner is I have to catch it in both directions at an ungodly hour. This time instead of asking my brother to get up at 5:30am to take me to the station I rented a room at a nearby motel I could walk it from. But I still had to be up by 5:30am just to make sure I got dressed and ready to walk to the station before the train got there. In Anaheim I have to cross my fingers that a ride share will pick me up at 5am from a hotel near Disneyland to get me to the station. Which means I need to be up sometime after 4am to dress and make sure I’ve packed everything.

It’s about a six hour ride on the Pacific Surfliner from Anaheim to Grover Beach, and a large segment of that around Vandenberg is kinda boring if you’re not on the ocean side of the train, until you catch sight of the launch facilities there. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of lumpy treeless hills and no cellular data signal for about an hour and a half. I was wishing I’d brought a book along.

A situation at work has been super stressing me out since I got here and I’m going to try one more time to find a resolution to it, otherwise I’m going to need to disappear into my vacation for the rest of the trip and take whatever static I get out of it. I won’t go into details other than remark quietly under my breath that I am ready to retire again. One heart attack and an ablation later I am not up for a lot of stress anymore.

I got not very much relaxation out of my Disney visit, and maybe a big part of that was how crowded the parks were. Also that notification that I had a fifteen hundred dollar hospital bill waiting for me that I wasn’t expecting. But I should consider myself lucky health expenses wise. I asked if it was another out of network doctor trying to gouge me (this has happened before) and the hospital said no it wasn’t a doctor charge but a hospital charge. I’m still going to run it my my health insurer.

My Disney visit was good…I adore California Adventure…but I am still just as stressed as I was before I went. On the other hand…I’m back in California…so there’s that.

My problem with cancelling my Disney+ subscription is I did that months ago when I found out my Disneyland annual pass had been allowed to expire and they never told me that was going to happen.

The theme parks are apparently run as separate entities under the corporate umbrella, and Disney World spares no effort to let me know when my annual Disney World pass is getting close to expiring. I get email notices, letters (big poster card letters) in the mail reminding me that it’s time to renew. Disneyland could not have cared less and when I found out I was heartbroken because it was such a lucky break that I got it at all. Disney hands out chances just to buy an annual pass now like they’re indulgences from the gods above. So in my anger I cancelled Disney+ even though I really Really wanted to watch the next installment of its Percy Jackson series.

But I have many, Many more issues now with Disney and the parks, not the least of which is I just don’t feel safe going down to Florida anymore.

…and if DeSantis’ homophobia wasn’t enough…

‘It’s just scary’: In Florida, parents ponder future with fewer vaccines

Madeline HalpertBBC News

“We’ll end up having pockets of outbreaks of different types of infectious diseases,” Florida’s former surgeon general, Scott Rivkees, told the BBC. “Individuals who are older, immunocompromised adults and children who may have cancer, for example, are going to be afraid to go out into public.”

If Florida goes ahead, it would be one of the first states to officially do away with childhood vaccination mandates, which have long been a fixture in parents’ back-to-school plans. In April, Idaho’s governor signed a law loosening vaccine requirements.

These moves come as Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine sceptic, undertakes remaking US vaccine policy, and the nation’s public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is in turmoil.

So, dig it. DeSantis’ Florida removes vaccine mandates for school children and Walt Disney World is full of children and their parents. Pixie dust, magic and disease.

I got talked back into DVC and now I have points in Saratoga Springs (gives me walking access to Disney Springs) but I can rent my points out and get some of that money back. The parks have changed so much since I started going in 2006 it’s not the fun it used to be. The Writer’s Stop is a tap bar now, because I suppose you can make more money selling beer to adults than books to kids. Star Wars has overrun half of Hollywood Studio, The Great Movie Ride is gone, MuppetVision 3D is gone, the riverboat and Tom Sawyer Island are gone, the bar seats are back at the Tune-In Lounge but you still can’t order food. And tickets are worthless if you don’t also make a Park Reservation. Don’t get me started about park reservations!

And…a certain someone is gone. For all I know he’s back in Germany because a green card just doesn’t cut it here now.

I just don’t feel like going anymore. It isn’t fun anymore. It isn’t magic anymore.

I reckon I’ll probably let that annual pass expire too. It’s a shame because I really liked going, and even with all the complaints I just listed I could still enjoy going because Disney World is so big and I can have a great time just wandering around the parks and trails between the resorts. I do a lot of pleasure walking. But it’s in DeSantis’ Florida and I don’t feel safe going there anymore.

I had this wee adventure on the way back home to Baltimore from Disney World last Sunday. About ten miles into my trip the car’s message system beeped at me and the center console told me I only had 10 starts left. Above that number was a small icon indicating that the complaint was I had run out, or was about to run out of DEF.

I understand why they’re doing that countdown thing when it comes to the emissions control system, it’s because lots of drivers will simply ignore it otherwise, but I absolutely hate it and I think it’s a potential life threatening thing to just shut down the car when the count runs down to zero. When it started happening to me a couple years ago on my way to California, because my catalytic converter failed, I was in Grand Junction which did not have a Mercedes dealership and the nearest one was in St. George Utah, which meant driving several hundred miles through empty roastingly hot desert.

My car is a 2012 E350 Bluetec that I took delivery of December 2011. I am its first and only owner, not counting the factory and the dealer. It has that OEM 642 engine everyone seems to hate but I’ve had no trouble with it (ironically not counting the emissions control system which I’ve had to have worked on Lots, like the DEF tank heater replaced which cost nearly two grand, and both NOx detectors replaced). This is probably because I give the car every service the factory indicates except the oil changes. Those I did twice as often (every 5k) until the car reached 170k and now I do them every 3k. I do them myself except at the 10k service intervals where I let my mechanics do the oil change too.

And also top off the DEF tank. So that nominally gets done every 10k, but if I need to visit the mechanics in between those service intervals, like I’m taking a cross country road trip and I want the car checked over first, I’ll ask them to top off the DEF tank then too.

My car currently has 209k on it, most of that road trip driving. I am able to walk to my office, and to most day to day things I might need right here in my city neighborhood. So the car does not get commuter miles. I do a lot of pleasure road tripping in my cars and this Mercedes makes a wonderful road trip car..

Only once before have I had a problem with the DEF tank running low and that was because a shady dealer didn’t do it, or change the fuel filters like they were supposed to either, and I had to find out, that time also on the way up I-95 from Disney World. Good thing you can get that stuff at any any truck stop.

So this time I thought it was another case of the mechanics not topping off the DEF tank. But the guys I use now are really good and very trustworthy. So I gave it some thought.

I did the emissions recall two Julys ago, got a check for 2k from MBUSA…and lost 4 mpg (why??). I wondered if the car was sipping DEF more since then and maybe that 10k interval just wasn’t cutting it now. I had the car looked over several times before taking a road trip to visit family in California and asked them to top off the DEF tank then. So I might not have noticed the DEF tank was draining out faster than before since the emissions work.

I stopped for some road food and checked to see if I still had a countdown. I did. Now I only had 9 starts left. I had a reservation for the night a South of the Border, which yes is barely a two star motel but every room has its own private covered car port which makes it worth it to me. I figured I would buy some DEF at a truck stop along the way, get myself to South of the Border and my room. Nine more starts would be more than enough. Once I was there it would be easy to empty the trunk and add some DEF to the tank.

I stopped at a Flying J and bought a cubetainer of two and a half Gallons of DEF. When I started the car again it said I had 16 starts left.

Wait…what…???

I didn’t think that was in anticipation of my putting DEF in the tank and now I’m wondering if it wasn’t some glitch in the system and the tank had plenty of DEF in it. So I kept on driving hoping the next time I stopped I’d still have some starts left. Periodically I checked the messages. I had one message, I had 16 starts left. I checked again. Same story. I stopped to take a bladder break. When I started the car again there were no messages, no indication of a countdown happening. I double checked the message list. Nothing.

?????

Now I’m thinking maybe the sensor that tells the car the DEF tank is nearly empty was glitching and now it wasn’t. Or now it was telling the car the DEF tank was okay when it wasn’t. I had no idea, but I promised my car I’d add DEF to the tank when I got to South of the Border and I was going to do that.

So I get to South of the Border, check in, drive to my room (those private carports are Really Nice, you drive right up to your room door and even if it’s pouring rain you can unload the car for the night no trouble) unloaded the trunk, took out the trunk liner (the car has to be a working member of the household so I bought one of those when I took delivery) and uncovered the DEF tank.

The cubetainer of DEF came with an extendable pouring spout that fit snugly into the DEF tank filler. I started pouring. The tank took nearly all two and a half gallons. I think maybe there’s a pint or less still in the cubetainer.

The next morning I drove the rest of the way back to Baltimore without any trouble or new messages. As I read it, the DEF tank in my car has about a six and a half gallon capacity. So there was probably still four gallons of DEF in it. I don’t think that should have caused any problems.

Anyway…new rule: when I do my own oil changes from now on, I will also top off the DEF tank. And it would be nice to have a feature that lets me see how full the DEF tank is. But the sensor that’s in there might not be capable of that.

The chatter I’m getting on the Mercedes forums is the sensor in the DEF tank that tells you when you’re about to run out is getting flakey. Oh well. I’ll ask my mechanics about it when I do the next 10k service in a few weeks. I love my car, but that countdown thing sometimes makes me wish I had a 1973 240D. With a four speed stick.

My initial impressions about returning to DVC have not been wonderful. In my previous incarnation I would spend February/March in Saratoga Springs because it gave me walking access to Disney Springs, and my birthday week at Boardwalk because that gave me walking access to my two favorite parks, Epcot and Hollywood Studios. I have fewer points this incarnation, but more than enough for a week in Saratoga Springs, which is now my “home” resort. This trip I shelled out extra points to get into a room I thought would be right next to Disney Springs. But no…the extra points put me right next to the main building, which I guess was a premium spot but not what I wanted. And the view off my balcony might as well be a brick wall.

So maybe extra steps to Disney Springs benefits my overall health. Fine. Whatever. It’s not crippling, just annoying. But I came back into this expecting better than I was getting now.

This morning I attempted for the first time to use one of the laundry rooms here, only to discover they don’t put nearly enough washers and dryers in them here. At Port Orleans Riverside they have lots at every pool. I reckon the thinking here is there are enough rooms that have their own washers and dryers in them they don’t need a lot of those in the common laundries. This was an unpleasant surprise. 

Previously I either wasn’t staying long enough to need a laundry or, if I was staying on hotel row for a few nights and then going to my DVC room, I would use the excessively long time between DVC check-in and check-out to go to a local laundromat and get my things clean. I would pack lots of clothes for my birthday week at Boardwalk because Septembers in Florida can be sweltering. This was so as not to need to do the laundry until I got back home. My birthday falls on peak hurricane season…hahahahaha…but the points and hotel stays are cheaper then so…okay.

When I discovered how easily I could get into the laundry at Port Orleans I decided to pack fewer clothes and use the resort laundries instead. I’ve been trying for years now to limit the amount of luggage I take with me on my road trips, all to no avail. But fewer clothes in the main luggage helped a bit.

I began checking out the laundry rooms after I got here, and discovered they were tiny by comparison. But also mostly empty. So this morning I tried getting into the laundry across from my room, which was somewhat larger because it’s in the main building and pool complex. It was fully occupied. But there was a web app I could use to tell me when the machines became available. I figured that app was also how you paid, similar to payment to use the machines in Port Orleans, and other hotels nowadays. (which is Very Nice because you don’t need a lot of quarters…)

Oh great…now I can do my laundry!

So I kept checking the app to see when the machines in that laundry room were available. But it kept reading zero machines available. So I checked the other Saratoga Springs laundry rooms and the only one showing any availability was way on the other side of the resort. I began to think I’d need to go to that Laundromat in Kissimmee again, and what the hell am I spending all this money to be back in DVC again??

Get me started on the pathetic welcome package they gave me when I rejoined…

So I decided to walk over and check. Sure enough the web app was broken and all the washers were available. There was a couple using the dryers (there were Lots more of those) and I asked if they’d tried the app and is that how you pay. Oh no, says they, the app isn’t necessary and the machines are free.

Well okay…that’s a perk. I guess it makes sense given that some rooms have washing machines in them, so maybe it isn’t fair to those of us staying in the studios to charge us for using the ones in the common laundry rooms.

So maybe now I’m not so unhappy being back in this thing again…

I had a surprisingly nice dinner at Biergarten yesterday. I say it was surprising, because I’d just assumed that all the servers I used to know there (excuse me…Cast Members) had either retired or left Disney by now. But no…several who remembered me and a certain someone were still there and I got to talk to a couple of them about what was going on with me, and what was not going on with me and a certain someone. One of the servers came over to chat with me for a bit and congratulated me on my return to work at Space Telescope.

I’ve had the theme song for the first series of The Littlest Hobo (the one I grew up with, not the second series music) going through my head all night for some reason…

Looking forward to my next Walt Disney World DVC vacation first week in March. I’ll be dining at the Brown Derby in Hollywood on the sixth, to reminisce about the angrygram I got while eating a Kobe steak dinner. If the Kobe steak is on the menu I’ll definitely be having it. 

Mostly just trying to forget that my country is circling the drain, because half the country is one half easily manipulated half-wits and one half stone cold bigots that would rather burn it all down than let the rest of us have a share of the American Dream, and the other half can’t decide whether to fight for the Dream, or make peace in our time.

When Walt Disney was alive nobody would have ever thought it would come to this. Conservative man though he was, he’d be spitting nails that a man like pussy grabber Donald Trump was in his Hall Of The Presidents. When I was a young boy and Walt Disney was alive I believed in that great big beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day. It seemed obvious. We were looking at the stars, and not paying attention to what was in the human gutter.

It seems I am always buying one of these Oaxacan wood carvings every time I go visit Epcot Mexico. But this one was a Must Buy the moment I saw it…

I’d never seen the artists do a crab before, and here in Baltimore and along the Chesapeake Bay Maryland Blue Crab is serious business, so of course I took it home with me.

I went out for breakfast this morning, and saw this on the way back to my hotel…

Seen on the way back to the hotel this morning. The sticker on the rear window says they’re firefighters and sure enough the car turned into the firehouse a block ahead.

I’m guessing it makes for some interesting conversation in the firehouse as, so I hear, the firefighters all pretty much supported DeSantis. But maybe that changed when he took away their park perks along with all the other Reedy Creek employees.

(Disney paid for and operated its own emergency services through the mechanism of the Reedy Creek Improvement District. DeSantis was going to take it away from Disney until someone finally explained to him that would mean Florida would end up paying for everything that Disney was, plus also taking on all its debt. So he settled for stacking its board of directors with his cronys and changing its name.)

I go out for my morning coffee walk and I see one of the maintenance crew trying to clean up some white chalky footprints off one of the walkways. I can’t figure who was wearing white paint on their bare feet.

So just now I’m spraying sunscreen on my bare feet before I go out again because just a few minutes out in this sun and my feet are already starting to show a tan. Then I realize that’s probably what happened this morning. Someone dumped a bunch of sunscreen on their feet and tracked it all over that walkway before it dried.

I put a bunch of paper towels on the floor of my room before I started spraying my feet. Should be dry by the time I’m ready to go to Hollywood Studios.

I’m doing dinner tonight at the 50s Prime Time Cafe, and hoping they’ve put the chairs back in the Tune-In Lounge.

Definitely T-shirt and cutoffs weather here. I really need to be careful wearing sandals out in the sunlight here with these pale white feet of mine. Also the rest of me.

I’m at Port Orleans Riverside for a couple weeks. I’d extend my stay but I told the guy I worked under at Space Telescope before I retired that I’d be back home June 2 and he wants to discuss my coming back to work there part time.

So…making the most of this one while I’m here…

Still stunned that Facebook recommended “Tico Assmann” to me (see previous post). My head is still spinning, but that might be vertigo from the train ride.