Picking up from last time –
So I’m waiting in line for a photo with Darth Vader. Today, it curled around instead of being one continuous line. I don’t know if they changed that because of yesterday, or if that was because it was always the case. Either way, it was still plenty long, but was harder to feel/judge this way.
Ahead of me, I saw two people from corral A(!). I asked (half-jokingly) eesh, how long is this line? Thankfully (as I’d hoped), they’d waited in the two other long character lines as well as this one. So, that’s why they still weren’t even through the 5k when the rest of us riff-raff in other corrals showed up.
As time went by, I started to get a little more nervous. The sun started peeking out. I saw all the runners go by. And the joggers. Then we saw the walkers. We started seeing people with the last corral on their bib. I found it pretty nerve-wracking.
Some people in line were relaxed. “Ah, don’t sweat it. We’re fine. We’re fine!” But the girl in front of me was also nervous. We kept peeking around a far off corner (to the best of our ability) to try to find the end of the crowd. We did not want to see those balloon girls!
But at this point, once we’d already put over fifteen minutes in on this photo, we couldn’t very well give up now, now could we?
My feeling became, “Okay, if I see the balloon girls, I see them. I never have and I don’t want to, but if I see them, I’ll just jump out of line, jog ahead, and get them in my rear-view.”
Knowing I was waiting an inordinate amount of time for a photo, and I’d only get a quick shot at it, I stood in line practicing the facial expression and body position I wanted. I felt a little silly, but with as fast as the line was moving, I wanted to make sure I was ready to hit it and run.
While we were all waiting in line, we saw Darth Vader leave for one of his breaks. The loudness of the grown of the audience was incredible. Thankfully, the moment Darth Vader disappeared behind the door for his break, he came right back out. Ah, Disney Magic.
I also heard a runner going by all of us and say that there was another Darth Vader stop later in the race. I wasn’t confident enough that that was true to leave the line. But goodness was I going to feel like a total schmuck if I saw another shorter Darth Vader line later. (Thankfully, I never did see another Darth Vader photo stop.)
Once I got to the front of this one, there were probably five rotating Disney cast members helping with photos.
And this is where I’ll pick up next time.