We bumped into Spaceballs: The Team at the next leg, where I was chosen as the person that could match lyrics to a song. I did indeed know it (the crappy added on song for Jasmine at the Aladdin show in DCA) and we moved on, ahead of Spaceballs, who didn't know it.
Aside: Playing alongside other teams in a real race made this the most exciting MA ever, I thought. Although about 3 times I squinted into the distance and said "Hey look, it's Fellowship, they're ahead of us!" But it'd be 4 tourists in white t-shirts with backpacks. I swear, since Fellowship's win last year, I've gotten paranoid delusions.
After our "3rd place" booster and the victory at the Grotto, we were back in the groove. GD's leg was fine, other than the standard cramping we were both having, thank goodness! The Star Tours thing was a good puzzle, although I think there may have been a typo in the instructions. We went through that at a good pace, then decoded Atlantean. It may have taken a while, but just doing something correctly and as quickly as anyone would do it felt really good to me.
We went on to my favorite one, in Innoventions. We got lucky and got on just as Tom Morrow was beginning his spiel. As soon as we got in we took a right and hit the Google search. The site told us to find an envelope marked with coordinates, but we hadn't seen any coordinates before, huh? We pull them out and GD notices that the room is bathed in blacklight! We find an envelope with the latitude/longitude written in glowing ink and we did the happy hugging dance!
The MA crew member nearby laughed at us. It was such a cool idea, using the blacklight like that! After writing down the numbers in normal ink and closing the window we were out of there.
We were standing on the balcony of Innoventions when a team brushed past us going
in via the exit ramp. We said, "Excuse me? This is the exit." They said "Yeah, we're going in through the exit" with big grins on their faces. They knew very well that it can take much longer to go through the entrance what with the rotation and the spiel. We wrote down their team number, big tattletails that we are, but hey, this was a timed event, damn it.
Ok, so we need to get from Tomorrowland to the Disneyland Hotel. To Monorail or not to Monorail? The line always looks long but it's really not - it's just a matter of when the next train shows up. But we realized that it was not only the fast leg of the Monorail trip, but also that worst case scenario was that it took us about the same amount of time but we'd get to NOT WALK. Endurance was sooo vital to this.
So we got to stand in line, watch little birds take dirt baths in the planter and hop around, smile and breathe and talk and have a snack out of our backpack. It was anxious waiting, but still, what a break.
We felt a lot better when we got to the hotel. But that collage thing....wow. I'd never seen that collage before. In the time we were there tons of other teams showed up. I have no idea how long we stood in front of that case, straining to look at the higher items, trying not to give away the ones we'd found.
There was a bit of levity there though, a few jokes between competitors, and a bit of marveling at the collage itself. I'd like to go back and get some pictures of stuff I remember from my childhood. So many toys and books and junk, an amazing amount of memories.
Going home now, more after lunch
