11:08 AM Oct 20: Resort bus playing steel drum version of Cantina Band music.

We were on our way to Downtown Disney. The steel drum Cantina Band is intended to match the Caribbean Beach resort.

We thought we had this morning pretty well planned out... go to Downtown Disney for shopping, have the store ship our stuff back to the hotel, then catch a bus for Hollywood Studios. But it turns out you can't catch a resort bus direct from Downtown to the Parks.

So we ended up going back to the hotel anyway. We went back to the store that was going to ship our souvenirs and made them go dig our bag out of the delivery storage area, which we gathered was an unusual request.

11:10 AM Oct 20: RT @GeoffJohns0 Yes, Hawkman will have wings. And a big mace. Oh. And he and Green Arrow don't get along. At all.

11:11 AM Oct 20: Sounds like I picked the wrong century to stop watching Smallville.

Although the vacation may have brought me to a nice disconnect from work, the iPhone allowed me to keep up with everything else.

11:38 AM Oct 20: Barring arctic climes, DisneyWorld must be the largest geopolitical landmass with no Pepsi products.

Rhonda really wanted a Mountain Dew by this point of the trip.

4:25 PM Oct 20: There is a seat at the Prime Time Diner where Gertie the Dinosaur stares directly at you.

And I was in it. Small room, way on the right as you walk in, by the windows of course. Gertie's big eyes watch you eat.

Here's that cage from the second Pirates movie, as seen on the Studio Backlot tour:

Among all the fake planes from Pearl Harbor, you can still spot Jabba's skiff and a downed snowspeeder. You have to feel pretty bad for these oversized props, because they look like hell, slowly decaying in the unforgiving Florida sun and rain.

6:54 PM Oct 20: Kind of wish Hollywood Studios was less about how they make movies and more about being inside the movies.

Really. Here we are, on the verge of EVERY effect being CG, and Hollywood Studios is still showing off green screens and water buckets. Give me an impressive Indiana Jones stunt show; don't bother to stop the action every minute and explain how the stuntpeople have to fall onto rubber mats and trampolines. Boring. This park is twenty years old. It's time to change that mission statement.

6:55 PM Oct 20: On our way to Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party.

Monorail tweet!

7:21 PM Oct 20: Found our Disney brick! The numbers are not in order.

What is up with that. Your brick's number will get you close (IE, by the parking lot tram stop and not by MK bag check), but you still have to scan a hundred bricks once you find that vague zone. Dumb.

That Walk Around The World thing is in a weird place right now, because the dates on all the bricks are old enough to seem old (mostly late '90s) but not old enough to seem impressive/historical.

Rhonda and I were a little skittish about ponying up for Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party, which is a separate cost. But it was worth it. First of all, having pseudo-scary stuff all over the place was right up Clark's alley. Then we scored three sacks packed with free candy... which was also awesome for Clark. He really enjoyed looking around the park for the big TRICK OR TREAT balloons that indicated a new line of candy. The park was busy, but not offensively so. We actually got to ride freakin' Peter Pan's Flight, the attraction with the worst wait in the entire World.

But the biggest coolness was the fireworks...

When you stand in Fantasyland, they literally explode all around you. 360 degrees. I generally can give a crap about fireworks, but when you're at ground zero, it's pretty impressive.

That picture is our view from by the Winnie-the-Pooh ride, which is just where we happened to stop when we heard the choreographed music come piping in over the PA.

And then my iPhone battery ran low, so no further updates from the Halloween party.

11:34 AM Oct 21: One of my favorite Park bits is when they play alternate versions of the show music while you're in the queue.

A new day and a chance for me to catch up on some thoughts that had been floating around all trip. That's one of those subtle Disney touches... take a bit of well-known movie music and re-perform it as background soundtrack.

I also enjoy how they match merchandise to rides, like putting Cars stuff over at the Test Track store, or WALL-E toys at the exits of Mission: Space. I know you Disney is just a soulless marketing machine designed to take your money types will be ticked at that, but piss off. Like you don't spend money on things and experiences you enjoy.

11:42 AM Oct 21: Really weird being inside a lit-up Space Mountain.

That was a straggler from the Party night. They opened the new Space Mountain just a few weeks after our trip.

1:25 PM Oct 21: Tom Sawyer Island. Have not found any paintbrushes.

Disney Secret time: every morning CMs hide several paintbrushes around the island. If you find one and return it to a Cast Member, you get an all-rides Fastpass for the day. Nice perk for visiting what is mostly an outdated and forgotten (not to mention hard to get to) part of the park! I'm sure any and all paintbrushes are gone by 1:30 in the afternoon, but I was scanning the grounds anyway.

Viewing Tom Sawyer Island as chiefly a big playground, Clark had a ball there. Loved the caves, loved the fort. Small but nice restrooms over at Fort Langhorn.

4:59 PM Oct 21: Between Stitch and Monsters Laugh Floor, Tomorrowland is way better than it used to be.

I can't recall a time when Tomorrowland was this good. Even with Space Mountain on rehab. Historically, there was a bunch of dorky, lame-ass rides there (Timekeeper, plus whatever inhabited the Mission to Mars building) and then Buzz Lightyear started turning that around. Buzz, Stitch and the new Monsters show have really elevated a zone that was largely defined by a couple boring carnival rides (Speedway, Astro-Orbiter) and a single coaster.

Of course, sucky, lame-ass Carousel of Progress is still there, but that was a Walt Favorite so everybody is loathe to dump it (plus, they have nothing to replace it.) We didn't get to that one on this trip.

5:44 PM Oct 21: By the time we get home, everyone I know will have already finished Uncharted 2.

They didn't.

11:34 PM Oct 21: Clark just is not tall enough for the Splash Mountain ride photo to be worth it.

Yeah, just the top of his head. Not really going to pay extra for that.

Noticed on this trip that the traditional ride photo zone is seriously under attack. Let's be honest, they've always been expensive souvenirs, not matter where you go. So now people just hold their cell phone up to the monitor and "steal" the picture. And there's not much the park can do about that without looking like a dick.

Disney's PhotoPass system is a great riposte, connecting your ride photo to an online system where you can buy prints later, plus decorate them however you like with Disney-designed borders and character inserts. But not all of the rides have been upgraded to this level; the Splash Mountain photo area looks even more like a cattle pen than anticipated thanks to everybody reaching over each other to snap pics off the old CRT monitors.

Ten years ago, DisneyQuest allowed visitors to sort of create their own webpage... and this was back when "webpage" meant a lot of centered, bolded text plus a webcam image and an Under Construction animated gif. That sounds like something that could be brought back, with the Parks tracking your entire visit and then automatically creating an online diary of your trip... just by scanning your ticket and centralizing all the data. Complete with ride photos, high scores from attractions like Buzz and Toy Story Mania, user-submitted pictures from a connected iPhone app, Kim Possible mission status, personalized screens like the new finale to Spaceship Earth, and special messages triggered by meeting costumed characters inside the Park. Imagine paying $20 for a nice memory book that shows up in your hotel room on the last day of your trip.

Disney's hip with Apple. Let's get on that.