Mousefest Friday, December 7, 2007!

MouseFest Friday, December 7th.

It seemed that no sooner did my head hit the pillow the night that the alarm went off proclaiming “Day 2 Mike! Time to get up!”

First stop was Disney’s Animal Kingdom for the annual Kilimanjaro Safari Meet.

It was quite a challenge gathering everyone for this annual event. Deb welcomed everyone as the Mousefesters gathered to the left of the attraction. This meet was huge as in a total of 257 people for this meet.

Nothing beats riding Kilimanjaro Safaris with Fred Block, founder of MagicMeets.

Nothing.

I had a tough time trying to take photos as Fred had me laughing so much I almost dropped my camera.

Out of about 20 shots only this one of some Rhinos came out decent. All the other photos can be used in a course called, “How not to take photos!”

From there it was on to Dinosaur to witness Matt Hochberg meeting the challenge made on the previous day. Matt gutted it out and has lived to tell the tale. However next time he needs to keep his eyes open.

The next stop on this day was the AllEarsNet team luncheon at Pizzafari. This was one of two times on this day where I treasured the opportunity to just relax between the time blocks of meets.

It reinforced the notion that during Mousefest everyone needs to make time to stop, relax, eat, and hydrate. Even if you follow this rule you will most likely be exhausted come Mousefest end so it is best to do whatever you can to keep this eventual exhaustiveness to a minimum.

After lunch it was on to Disney MGM/Studios for two specific meets.

The first of these was the second annual Studios Central Star Tours meet which is growing in popularity every year. There was a good showing for this meet as my estimate was in the range of 80 people.

Next came the second annual Podfest hosted by Lou Mongello. This meet is the annual gathering of all those who do Disney related podcasts. I don’t know how many podcasts were represented but there were a LOT. It took almost 30 minutes to introduce each podcast and hear from the principles.

It was after Podfest that I wish I could have cloned myself to be in two places at once. Although I wanted very much to attend the MuppetVision3D meet I had to leave to host a dinner at Ohana at the Polynesian Resort.

Again I was glad this dinner was on my schedule. Once more I was offered time to just sit back and relax in between the running around I was doing. Funny though, I did not find myself eating as much as I normally would during a Walt Disney World trip. On the contrary, that morning I had to cinch my belt one more notch because my usual notch was just a bit too loose.

Oh wait; this is Mousefest”¦the ultimate diet program”¦how silly of me to forget.

I have to mention that the “entertainment” at Ohana left a lot to be desired. I would go so far as to say that the entertainment would not have been even good enough to make those early American Idol shows”¦if you catch my drift.

After dinner I realized I had the luxury of having nothing on my schedule for that evening so I wandered back to EPCOT with some friends in search of my cousin Patty who that evening was attending the Candlelight Processional.

We took in the Lights of Winter, and then walked around World Showcase before stopping to watch Illuminations (my second time this trip).

I never found Patty at EPCOT but did talk to her later that evening. She enjoyed CP.

I enjoyed Illuminations

I began to notice a little fatigue settling in so it was off to Pop Century for a long winter’s nap for tomorrow would be Saturday, the big day”¦MegaMouse Meet Day.