"Doctor Strange said not to touch anything!" - January 2018 solo MDAS/WDW (FINISHED Sept. 4)

January 24 (part 2)
Marvel Intensifies (continued)

I had been a little tempted to skip dinner, grab a snack from the deck, and go to the Super Fan Challenge instead--I'd had such a good time the first time around, plus then I'd be out early and have a head start up to the deck for the show. I ultimately decided not to, and I was glad once I got there that I'd chosen to go to dinner. I hadn't realized, but my tablemate's CM family member was able to join us for the entire meal that night, and we all had a great conversation about the day.

Again, no pictures from dinner, but since I got there before my dinner companions I snapped photos of the menu (which of course has already been posted on the DisBoards many a time by others, but hey).

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I indulged in a Smash, which was pretty good but nothing I'd get a mad craving for. I don't remember what I got for an appetizer.

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For my entree I ordered the Mjolnir Meatballs and Pasta...and sadly, this was the one meal that disappointed me. The sauce was fine but nothing exciting, and I found the meatballs very dry. I probably should have asked for something else, but I hate being a bother and I was just a little concerned that I might run late to the deck show if the meal got slowed down too much.

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No after dinner drinks, but I had the Ravagers' Devil's Food Cake for dessert. It was decent, but again I wasn't wowed by it. I don't know if I would have enjoyed the meal more if I'd more closely followed my server's suggestions, but based on what I ordered this menu was the one with which I was the least impressed. It was too bad, since the design of it was charming (I loved the way they broke it out by character) and I'd wanted to like it more. On the bright side, it was the first time that day I'd had a good appetite, and I finally got some real food in my stomach.

During dinner we discussed the events of the day and the upcoming events of the evening. I was assured that while the weather could potentially scuttle the deck show, standard operating procedure was for the captain to steer us into better weather if at all possible, and there had been plenty of time for him to make that adjustment ahead of the upcoming show.

I apparently made a quick stop by my stateroom after dinner. I'm not sure why; I really should have gone straight up to the deck to stake out a spot. But while I was there, I noticed that one of the neighbors had been inducted as a Novice of the Mystic Arts!

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Huh, Dr. Strange has better handwriting than I'd expect from a man with nerve damage...or from a doctor.
 
January 24 (part 2)
Marvel Intensifies (continued)

The night before I'd decided I wanted to watch the deck show standing on top of one of the benches that encircle the outside of the hot tub structures in order to see over the crowd. Others had the same thought; I arrived before most of the crowd, but not before the smarter members of the crowd; the spots I'd been interested in were already taken. With the throng of people standing up near the stage already two or three bodies deep I decided to stand close instead while I could still pick a group of people shorter than myself behind whom to stand. It was a little windy still, but the rain had stopped and the wind and motion of the ship weren't so severe that the show had to be delayed or cancelled (though I would later learn that some of the wilder stunts had been redacted from the show--it's really no different than when choreography changes at Fantasmic! to account for a wet stage and avoid having anyone slip and fall).

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The stand for Tony Stark's macguffin was in place, ready for the demonstration. Clearly this was going to be a perfectly safe and ordinary Stark technological presentation with no shenanigans. Not long after I arrived, we started getting live updates from a reporter on the scene on Deck 10, as well as from the ship's captain and the security crew showing off the camera feeds and other security measures around the ship. ::yes::

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So...fun fact. I majored in film studies back in undergrad, and I actually wrote my honor's thesis on what I called "immersive cinema," which I defined as films designed to create the illusion that the audience and the people and events depicted in the film occupy the same narrative reality. It's a surprisingly broad topic; you see it in modern mainstream movies mainly in the form of mockumentaries and shaky-cam films, but I also devoted a large portion of my thesis to discussing examples found in themeparks, with a focus on Disney World. I'd just finished my second College Program stint the semester before I wrote the thesis, and had spent a lot of my days off watching or riding a 3D movie or motion simulator in the parks four or five times in a row and furiously scribbling notes while waiting in line for the next go around. Sometimes I went to observe the films themselves (Muppet*Vision 3D has a surprisingly complex narrative relationship with its audience when you really sit down and think about it); sometimes I was there to watch the other audience members (ever notice how many people reach up to catch Donald when he yells "Help me!" in Mickey's PhilharMagic?). Anyway, that's all just to say that when I see this kind of reality-augmenting use of video done well, I find it particularly charming.

(Quietly, from the distance: NERD!!)

The plot of the deck show is pretty straightforward (my goodness, who ever would have expected HYDRA to try to steal Tony Stark's technology macguffin??). Though I'm not going to go line-by-line, this next part is chock full of spoilers for it.

I do actually want to give special mention to the Stark Expo dancers who came on at the start of the show.

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I'd made the decision not to take video of the entire show, both because I assume other people have already put it on YouTube and because that sounded like not being able to put my phone down and pay attention to the good bits. So, unfortunately, I have only a very short video clip of something these four dancers did very, very right, without anything to show for how this began--but what it boils down to is that about halfway through their dance routine, the audio cut out. Just...gone. No music, no sound effects.

And

they

kept

going.


Not one of them missed a beat. Not one of them fell off-rhythm. For a second or two there was a hush in the audience, but as it became clear that the dancers were going to keep going to the end, everyone started clapping in beat and cheering louder and louder for them. I scrambled to change my phone's settings to video, and caught the last few seconds of it:

Link to a TinyPic upload (sorry; I didn't want to mess with YouTube and couldn't get it to embed).

Also, you can see in that video clip how windy it still was--I'd forgotten just how much until I watched it again!
 
January 24 (part 2)
Marvel Intensifies (continued)

After that the show seemed to go on as it was meant to, though it seemed to me like they continued to have some minor technical difficulties with audio and spotlight control.

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Loki, you were just hanging out with us in the atrium, why betray the human race like this? Please just go enjoy the shawarma with Thor.

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Oh snap, Red Skull, I thought you were dead? Except later it turns out he's guarding the Soul Stone. Whatever. DCL tells me he's still heading up HYDRA, so let's just roll with that.

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T'Challa arrives and the fight against Hydra commences. The use of fireworks to make it look like Iron-Man was flying around over the ocean and shooting down drones was actually really good, btw.

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A mysterious Spider-Teen appears! But where did cameraman Peter Parker go? It is a mystery that will never be solved.

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Seriously, the use of video to depict action on other parts of the ship was great; I think it allowed them a lot more flexibility than a pure stage show would have in staging all of the action.
 
I started worrying about whether it's okay to put individual (or near-individual) photos of other guests, and particularly of their children, on the internet. All my commentary was positive, but I feel like when some rando on the internet posts a picture of your child and singles them out for praise it's still just a little skeevy. I can mean it from a place of pure innocence, but when I think about how I would feel if I came across some random internet person's commentary on my family I just feel like I'm not entirely okay with it.

I've only recently started posting pictures of my kid and even then I think twice. I appreciate your thoughtfulness.
 


January 24 (part 2)
Marvel Intensifies (continued)

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HYDRA betrayed you, Loki? You don't say!

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Just as all seems lost, Doctor Strange finally shows up! I think his line is something alone the lines of "Looks like it's time for me to step in!" Yeah, Stephen, you think? Where the heck were you this whole time? Of note: I'm told that he normally flies in from overhead, but on this night he just charged in from offstage looking as officious as he could. The flying thing sounds a lot more impressive (darn wind!)

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I had forgotten until I was writing this up and going through my photos that Dr. Strange's solution to this problem was to open a portal to the Dark Dimension and have the Avengers chuck Red Skull into it.

:lmao:Stephen, I get that that worked really well for you with Kaecilius and his zealots, but believe it or not the Dark Dimension is not actually your personal garbage disposal for antagonists!
 
January 24 (part 2)
Marvel Intensifies (continued)

Now that the day was saved, the mercenaries Tony Stark had hired as additional backup finally showed up.

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It seems Peter Quill wanted to stop for ice cream because you just can't get good ice cream in space, and of course they missed the whole thing as a result. Of course, that didn't stop Peter from taking a central position in the final group hero pose. :rotfl:

It took a couple minutes for things to wrap up and then for the crowds to disperse enough for me to slip out via the Quiet Cove (pro tip: if you're there without children, position yourself nearish the pass-through to the adults-only area for a quicker escape--I hadn't even been thinking about that when I picked my spot, but it worked out really well for me). I headed straight down to Fathoms for the Ravagers' Club, knowing from my experience missing half of the Snuggly Duckling takeover that the characters wouldn't be there long and I'd want to be in place before the scheduled start in order to enjoy the whole thing.

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They pushed this event pretty hard on the morning announcements and so forth, so I was surprised Fathoms wasn't packed--it was busier than I usually saw it during daytime events, but there were plenty of seats to be found. I think there's just a limited number of adults who are free to come to a dance party immediately after the deck show (i.e. adults who don't need to mind any children).

Sure enough, the Ravagers showed up pretty quickly.

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They pretty much just took free reign over the club, wandering around, commenting to each other on the surroundings, asking guests weird questions, and walking on the furniture. A CM was handing out tiny tasting desserts, and one of the Ravagers took one look at a guest eating one and started shouting about "Can we get this man a smaller dessert?? This one is too big! Please, we need a smaller dessert!!" Also, while I had been waiting for the deck show I'd taken all the glow necklaces Dreams Unlimited had sent in my gift basket and wound them around my arms, up underneath my sleeves (Doctor Strange gotta have glow magic, you know?). One of the Ravagers insisted on shaking my hand, then helped me put the glow necklace back together when he accidentally knocked it apart. He was an spaceship engineer, you see, so he knew how to do these things.

After a few minutes of that, Star-Lord and Gamora showed up to get everyone dancing. Well, Star-Lord showed up to get everyone dancing. Gamora watched disapprovingly. Once everyone was up and dancing they eventually slipped out, but they were there for a while, Star-Lord dancing and Gamora sitting in one of the chairs and stubbornly refusing to dance.

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There were a couple people I'd previously met there, and we talked and danced together and I had a fabulous time despite the fact that I don't usually like to dance. After a little while the people I knew made their exit to head to bed, and I only stuck around a few minutes longer before taking my leave as well, ready to go somewhere cooler and quieter...but not quite emotionally ready to admit that the day was over. I went back up to Deck 9, which was eerily quiet now, and sat on the bench by the hot tub from which I'd originally intended to watch the stage show (btw, it turns out that would have been a bad spot--the little roof over the hot tub would block your view of some of the action on the rear funnel).

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Captain America: Civil War was playing, and I gave it maybe half of my attention as I caught up on my travel journal. There was a lot to write about from the day, and as I finished my notes on what I'd seen and done, my entry turned introspective. There had been a lot of ups throughout the day, but more downs than I had anticipated as well. As someone who was very invested in the fandom on offer, it had been a jam-packed, often overwhelming day, and despite everything I did feel a little bit like I hadn't quite gotten everything in. Overall, though, it had been a lot more good than bad, and it had ended on a high note with the deck show and the Ravagers (or, well, ended on a nice, quiet note with the chance to sit in the cool air and reflect on everything--the night air and the stiff breeze finally made my costume a comfortable temperature).

My thoughts turned, too, to what it really means to experience this kind of trip as a solo traveler. My bingo buddy, D, had commented that she loved cruises because "by the end, everyone feels like one big family." And while it's an enormous environment full of tons of people, it's kind of true. I had surprised myself--me, both introverted and shy--by making connections among both CMs and guests. Those relationships are ephemeral, formed with the expectation that you will enjoy each other's company for the week and then part ways for the rest of your lives, but the connections still felt real (even if part of me was always aware that the CMs are literally paid to be nice to guests).

I can imagine that if I'd gone as part of a family group, it would have been easier to remain insular, to not reach out and make those connections. While non-solo travelers would sometimes engage with me, their main attention was always focused within their own group. The feel of the trip so far had been entirely unlike the feel of being in WDW, where one is treated with politeness and helpfulness but where connections don't really get made--you speak with a CM for maybe a few minutes, then never see them again.

I wrapped up my entry as the movie's credits rolled, gathered up my bags, and made my way down to my stateroom at last.

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Though it was nearly 2 AM, I had to take a quick shower before I could go to bed in order to remove the hair dye. I had never used it before this trip and had been a little worried it might stain my hair, but it came out cleanly (highly recommend). And then, finally, it was time for bed.

I mean, it was time for bed after I swung that towel-Mjolnir around for fun, hitting the bed and myself and the couch a couple times. I bet that's reeeeal fun for parents of young children.

Up next: White Sand and One Last Bingo
 
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I apparently made a quick stop by my stateroom after dinner. I'm not sure why; I really should have gone straight up to the deck to stake out a spot. But while I was there, I noticed that one of the neighbors had been inducted as a Novice of the Mystic Arts!

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Huh, Dr. Strange has better handwriting than I'd expect from a man with nerve damage...or from a doctor.

Oh bummer that we didn't get one! Our son was on stage for one of the performances. It would now just be one more piece of paper floating around the house though. I haven't figured out what to do with all our cruise stuff.
 


Great trip report. I was on the same trip with my wife and 9 year old son. ( I posted a marvel day at seas only report back in late January or February of just that day ). One of the most fun days we ever had on a cruise, we met all the characters and met son loved every second of it. I remember you ( or I should say you in your costume) in the game show, as I couldn’t get past the first round and would have been eliminated had I made it to white board round but I’d have done really well in the jeopardy round and the last name all the characters round. The costume was awesome, definitely stood out in our memory.
 
Oh bummer that we didn't get one! Our son was on stage for one of the performances. It would now just be one more piece of paper floating around the house though. I haven't figured out what to do with all our cruise stuff.

Huh! I wonder why you didn't get one. I've never done Disney with a group that included any kids young enough for those kinds of shows, and it wasn't my area when I worked in WDW, so I really don't know how all of that is run. And yeah, I feel you on the cruise stuff. So far I've been holding onto all the papers because they're helping me finish this trip report, but I've normally been tending not to hang on to that kind of thing anymore. Frankly, I donated most of the stuff Dreams Unlimited sent me in the gift basket; I really don't need more travel mugs or decks of cards and that kind of thing.

Great trip report. I was on the same trip with my wife and 9 year old son. ( I posted a marvel day at seas only report back in late January or February of just that day ). One of the most fun days we ever had on a cruise, we met all the characters and met son loved every second of it. I remember you ( or I should say you in your costume) in the game show, as I couldn’t get past the first round and would have been eliminated had I made it to white board round but I’d have done really well in the jeopardy round and the last name all the characters round. The costume was awesome, definitely stood out in our memory.

I remember that! Your report made me want to do the trip all over again. And thanks! It's really neat to run into you on the boards after being on the same cruise.
 
You are an excellent writer! I am really enjoying your report.

I had one brief moment of panic when you talked about the Ravagers club. My sleepy geek brain confused that with the more horrific 'Reavers' from Firefly and was like 'Good God, why would they have them on a cruise!?!' But then I translated properly.

Can't wait to read the rest! :flower1:
 
Wow, that is one crazy Marvel-filled day! I would have multi-quoted, but it just got to be too many!

You should check out some of the info from Marvel's Summer of Super Heroes at Disneyland Paris. They have these HUGE statues (like 3x life size) in the Walt Disney Studios Parc, as well as a show, which has so many special effects (thankfully the one time I got to watch it all the way through, all of the effects were working, like drones making it look like Scarlet Witch and Dr. Strange were getting a car to hover).

 
Wow, that is one crazy Marvel-filled day! I would have multi-quoted, but it just got to be too many!

You should check out some of the info from Marvel's Summer of Super Heroes at Disneyland Paris. They have these HUGE statues (like 3x life size) in the Walt Disney Studios Parc, as well as a show, which has so many special effects (thankfully the one time I got to watch it all the way through, all of the effects were working, like drones making it look like Scarlet Witch and Dr. Strange were getting a car to hover).


I'm going to have to watch that! I found out about the Summer of Heroes after I'd booked my trip (and wouldn't be able to change it to go before the Summer of Heroes ends, anyway), so I've been a little disappointed about that. I'm glad the show is on YouTube, though!
 
I'm going to have to watch that! I found out about the Summer of Heroes after I'd booked my trip (and wouldn't be able to change it to go before the Summer of Heroes ends, anyway), so I've been a little disappointed about that. I'm glad the show is on YouTube, though!
Oh, don’t worry too much about missing a DLP trip for it. This show was really cool, but you had to wait at least 1.5 hrs to get into the theatre (literally they cut the line off because they keep track of the number of people going thru the turnstiles into the queue holding area, and there is no secondary standby line). It has also been notoriously unreliable, with it being rare that all the effects working, and not an unusual occurrence for something to break mid-show and cause the whole thing to be cancelled (that happened the second time I tried to see it). There also was an Iron Man experience stage show, but it wasn’t too impressive, and a Guardians dance off, which could be fun, but still not worth a special trip.

Characters were also limited, with really only Captain America being available for everyone (and they did this new Fastpass thing which would get all snatched up within about 10 minutes). If you wanted to meet Spider-Man you had to book a special package. And they had a marvel buffet dinner but you only got to meet 2 characters: choose between Thor, Loki, Black Widow.

So, that’s not to say it wasn’t fun. I mean they had some cool things and I did check it all out. But I would have been disappointed if I had planned a trip just for Marvel.
 
Oh, don’t worry too much about missing a DLP trip for it. This show was really cool, but you had to wait at least 1.5 hrs to get into the theatre (literally they cut the line off because they keep track of the number of people going thru the turnstiles into the queue holding area, and there is no secondary standby line). It has also been notoriously unreliable, with it being rare that all the effects working, and not an unusual occurrence for something to break mid-show and cause the whole thing to be cancelled (that happened the second time I tried to see it). There also was an Iron Man experience stage show, but it wasn’t too impressive, and a Guardians dance off, which could be fun, but still not worth a special trip.

Characters were also limited, with really only Captain America being available for everyone (and they did this new Fastpass thing which would get all snatched up within about 10 minutes). If you wanted to meet Spider-Man you had to book a special package. And they had a marvel buffet dinner but you only got to meet 2 characters: choose between Thor, Loki, Black Widow.

So, that’s not to say it wasn’t fun. I mean they had some cool things and I did check it all out. But I would have been disappointed if I had planned a trip just for Marvel.

...Yeah, that doesn't sound like the greatest. But that does kind of confirm what I was at least trying to tell myself--I booked the trip for DLP itself (well, and London) and I'm not missing out on anything I was expecting to do. And, too, with this being my first and mmmmaybe my only DLP trip (more likely: my only DLP trip this decade), waiting for hours for one show (possibly multiple times) wouldn't be the best. And man...if the special effects are that finicky, I feel bad for the CMs. Since I didn't work onstage I never had to deal with it directly when Fantasmic! got cancelled for weather, but I remember getting chewed out by a frontline CM who was tired of getting chewed out by guests over it.

But I'm sure I'd still dig it if it had lined up with my trip.

Disneyland had a Guardians dance-off that we caught last fall outside the Mission: Breakout ride; don't know if it's quite the same, but yeah. It was fun and I was glad we came across it, but I wouldn't go all the way to Disneyland for that specifically.

Edit: I watched it through, and I'm glad you pointed me to that video! But yeah, I think if I'd made a special trip for that it probably wouldn't have lived up to my expectations.
 
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You are an excellent writer! I am really enjoying your report.

I had one brief moment of panic when you talked about the Ravagers club. My sleepy geek brain confused that with the more horrific 'Reavers' from Firefly and was like 'Good God, why would they have them on a cruise!?!' But then I translated properly.

I always do that too!
 
You are an excellent writer! I am really enjoying your report.

I had one brief moment of panic when you talked about the Ravagers club. My sleepy geek brain confused that with the more horrific 'Reavers' from Firefly and was like 'Good God, why would they have them on a cruise!?!' But then I translated properly.

Can't wait to read the rest! :flower1:

Ack, I missed your comment! Didn't mean to ignore you!

Thanks, and I'm glad you're enjoying it. And, uh...I may lose my geek cred over this but I have never watched all of Firefly. Got enough of it to know what people are talking about, but just never watched the whole thing through.
 
Ack, I missed your comment! Didn't mean to ignore you!

Thanks, and I'm glad you're enjoying it. And, uh...I may lose my geek cred over this but I have never watched all of Firefly. Got enough of it to know what people are talking about, but just never watched the whole thing through.

Oh I think your geek cred is firmly intact based on this cruise alone. :worship::thumbsup2
 
January 25
White Sand and One Last Bingo

We last left off after a long, full, extremely Marvel-filled day. Having been up (relatively) early and stayed up late, I opted not to set my alarm before going to bed. While I knew that the water slides and so forth on Castaway Cay would be less crowded earlier in the morning, I was more interested in getting a generous amount of sleep.

The downside to this approach was that by the time I woke up and got moving it was too late to eat in Lumiere's, and thus I had missed my last chance to have breakfast anywhere but Cabanas. I was honestly feeling pretty blue; MDAS had been what had hyped me up for the trip to begin with, and with it over I was managing to feel the post-Disney blues while I was still three days away from the end of my Disney vacation! Rather than try to force myself to be happy, I took some time out to just let myself feel what I was feeling and work through it. It seems a little silly, but my feelings throughout this trip seemed a lot more intense than in regular life. Higher highs came with lower lows, but at least the latter were brief because there was always some reason to perk back up.

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My notes tell me I'd had breakfast around 10:00; the time stamp on my dock photo tells me I got off the ship around twenty minutes later--so I must not have needed too much time to get back in the groove! Since I wasn't really sure whether there were changing rooms on the island (and didn't want to carry a bunch of stuff) I just wore my swimsuit and cover-up and my cheap plastic flipflops. I had a watertight case for my phone (one of those plastic dealies on a lanyard), and brought my external charger and a book with me in the popcorn bucket (super handy for keeping the sand out of things).

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Rather than wait for the tram, I took off walking--while I wasn't quite as physically active back in January as I am now, after several days onboard a cruise ship I was ready to stretch my legs, and also too impatient to stand around waiting. Of course, a tram came by just as I was setting out.

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The weather seemed gorgeous to me, if just a tiny bit breezy--but that was apparently enough to nix a lot of the port adventures scheduled for the day. Later I'd find that the weather wasn't quite as perfect as it first appeared in the morning.

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I continued to the family beach, and promptly removed my flipflops when I reached the sand. I never bothered to put them back on until I got back to the ship; even when I went back to walking on pavement I found that the walkways were kept so clean and the weather was so mild that I was perfectly comfortable going everywhere barefoot. It reminded me a little of days at Typhoon Lagoon, where it seems like the sand and pavement should be too hot and painful for bare feet but neither is.

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Where else in the world do you see this?

I hadn't arranged anything ahead of time, but decided I wanted to snorkel if only so I would have a definite Thing To Do for a while. See, the thing is...I'm not really much of a beach person. Sunbathing? Just splashing around in the water? That sounds nice in theory, but in practice that kind of thing leaves me feeling at a loss as to what to do with myself. While I'd been able to enjoy a few blissful hours of not doing much of anything on the Cozumel port day, that's a rare mood for me and I could tell this wasn't going to be that kind of day. So I went and rented a set of snorkeling gear and set a goal to get out to the far side of the lagoon and back.

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January 25
White Sand and One Last Bingo (continued)

Since I had my phone waterproofed, I set it up in camera mode before sealing it up with the idea that I'd snap some underwater photos. The results were...less than satisfying. Half the time I couldn't get the touch screen to register the command to take a photo, or the difference in pressure inside the case would cause it to register a touch on the wrong part of the screen and change to a different camera mode. At one point I was floating out in the middle of nowhere trying to turn off a weird color filter and just changing it to one unwanted filter after another. :sad2: But here, enjoy the fruits of my labor:

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I think I have a future in underwater photography, no? :laughing: I wouldn't do this again; I spent too much time worrying about my phone (about whether water was getting into the case, whether the lanyard was still attached to me, etc.). I could see doing this with an actual waterproof camera I could tie tight to my wrist, but not with a phone in a case hung from my neck. It was neither good for pictures nor good for ease of mind.

I did splash my way out to the far side, though, and I did see a number of the sunken goodies Disney has put out there. I was struck, though, by a feeling I've had before when swimming in the ocean, which is that I feel like humans really do not belong in the ocean. It is very clearly not our natural habitat.

Still, I at least got a decent panorama of the shore.

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By this time I was kind of ready to be done snorkeling. The exercise felt good, but I don't swim much these days and am not particularly good at it. Also, while I had some SCUBA experience about a decade back, I'd never actually been snorkeling. Is there some kind of trick to not getting water down the snorkel? Because there was constantly water in my snorkel and it seems to me like that defeats the purpose. Still, I took a scenic route back to shore to see more sunken boats and things; might as well make the most of it.
 
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