Thursday May 1st 2025

I returned to my practice of using the Disney theme parks as a place for exercise this week. The Easter vacation blackout days associated with my entrance pass are over. It is nice to be able to stop at one of the theme parks to just walk around, checkout any changes, observe the visitor antics, maybe eat some food and generally have a good time. I don’t have to ride everything in the park to achieve value.

Getting to the parks has improved while I have been staying away. The expedited accelerated roadwork on Interstate 4 has reached a milestone. The accelerated part of the effort began around the beginning of the year with a plan to have a number improvements that would usually take several years completed by the end of the year. The “expedited” part involved adding a lane in each direction to alleviate slow downs and backups. The new lanes opened this week. They seem to work. The interstate doesn’t seem to be backing up as often or for long periods of time. The traffic on all the surface roads also seems to have improved. Drivers aren’t trying to use the side roads to avoid the interstate as much.

On Monday I went to Disney’s Magic Kingdom, but I didn’t plan very well. First, it was the night of a separate admission After Hours night. For the admission price a select number of guests gets access to the park after the regular park day ends at 10PM, but people attending can start arriving at 7PM. As a result, the park gets busier as the night goes on rather than getting less crowded. My second mistake was not checking the weather forecast. A thunderstorm shut all of the outside rides and activities down for more than two hours, although the actual rain only fell for fifteen minutes or so. I got a little wet.

Today I went to Disney’s EPCOT for my exercise. It wasn’t too busy. I got in three or four miles of walking, road a couple of rides and took lots of flower pictures.