You know, I really did have every intention of blogging every night of this trip. At various moments every day I would say to myself “I’ve got to put this on my blog”! As you can see though, I failed miserably… now I’m going to try and play a little catch up.

So lets pick up where we left off shall we?

I woke up on the morning of day 3 and headed straight in to that ‘event’ I spoke about in my last entry. I think I’m safe to say that it was a call-back audition for several roles at the various parks of Walt Disney World. I sat in on the call-back conferring with the audition panel on a few things. It didn’t take long for me to get the gist of how they do what they do.

(If you are an aspiring Disney performer and you read this, please do not contact me about casting… I am not a casting director, nor do I play one on TV visit disneyauditions.com)

From there I headed into a few meetings with the other half of the team to hammer out the finer points of how my work will affect them. Again everyone was very nice, and surprisingly very receptive to possible change. So lets be done with the business stuff for a bit and talk about the rest of day 3.

When work was done my goal was to make it to Animal Kingdom before it closed.

These “Where Dreams Come True banners are showing up all over the property since Oct 1 is the kickoff for the new campaign.

The new Expedition Everest has been calling my name from the horizon since I arrived in Florida, and I hadn’t had the chance to get a little closer. I wrapped up work a little early that day (since Animal Kingdom closes at 5:00 most days) and boogied over to the mythical village of Serka Zong.

For me Expedition Everest lived up to every bit of the hype, and then some. I decided to go through the regular queue instead of the single rider line because I wanted to see all the wonderful stuff that Joe Rhode and his team gathered on their trips to Asia. The visual detail in the queue alone was breathtaking and, I hate to say it, even surpasses the richness and realism of Indiana Jones in Disneyland. At every turn I was greeted with some nugget of scenery that both supported the story of the attraction, and taught me everything all sorts of little factual tid-bits about Everest and the legend of the Yeti.

Then the ride itself. It is awesome! Of course the backwards coaster, and killer caves were wonderful. But the real standout here is that giant, and I do mean GIANT audio-animatronic Yeti! It is freakin’ huge and moves so naturally that even a Disney vet like me can’t help but scream when it’s swinging it’s massive paws at me.

There are reviews of this attraction all over the internet so I won’t go into too much detail… I will maintain though that this is the absolute coolest mountain at any Disney theme park (at least that I’ve been to).

The rest of the night was pretty boring. I headed back to my hotel for a recharge nap, then grabbed some dinner at Downtown Disney.

Thats all for now. Stay tuned for the rest of the story.