CONSTANT VIGILANCE!

Oh, right! I was in Orlando two weeks ago! And I miss it every day.

As usual, I tweeted about my trip as I went along, adding the hashtag #aintbaroqueFL except for a couple times when I screwed it up because let’s face it, typing on a cellphone is hard and annoying work. If you missed it, you can read back over my tweets here (just keep clicking backwards till you hit ’em; apparently the hashtag is too old to be searchable. Lame, Twitter!).

And again, as I have before, I took music-related pictures! Follow the cut or miss an embarrassing photo of me doing karaoke.

Here we have the instruments of the live band that was playing at the Grand Floridian — even though it wasn’t really a Disney vacation, we had high tea at the GF and went to Downtown Disney because I am a crazed addict. (Apologies for the blurriness; I was testing my phone camera’s zoom option and obviously it was a tremendous failure.)

The main attraction of Universal Studios was of course The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. They had a real Zonko’s and a real Honeydukes, but most of the shops were facades. I don’t remember a Dominic Maestro’s from the books, but I’ve only read most of them once about four years ago (or whenever the hell the last one came out; Lord knows I’m not reading THAT one again) so what do I know.

This is the Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit [sic; I’m not stupid], a roller coaster with a sound track. When you get on the ride, there’s a screen built into your lap bar that enables you to select from a bunch of different songs that have been cut to fit with the coaster. They have everything from country to techno, but — shockingly! — no classical music. I know! I was offended too. But I’m a go-along-to-get-along kinda gal, so I went with No Doubt’s “Hella Good” the first time and that harder faster Daft Punk song the second time; I figured I may as well have some fun with it.

This is the chorus of Hogwarts students with their… frogs, or toads, or something. Apparently it references that bit I once saw in a trailer where they set MacBeth The Scottish Play to music. I’ve seen about 5 minutes total of all the movies, so I have to trust Elizabeth on this one (that poor girl; every ten seconds I was asking her another question about details from the movies and books. To give you an idea of the level of fandom I occupy, I at one point completely forgot what Gringott’s was).

And finally, the moment you’ve been waiting for — KARAOKE! This place had a live band and backup singers and was so much fun we went twice. Elizabeth sang Katy Perry’s “Hot ‘n Cold;” I sang “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” by The Darkness because they didn’t have Boston’s “More Than a Feeling.” How can you not have “More Than a Feeling”?! Epic fail.

For larger photos, check out the Facebook album.

I have my sights set on a trip to Disney proper in very early June, although that’s not in the slightest bit definite. Orlando misses me, though.