1:30 am our phone rings. As is normal in such cases, I rolled over and went back to sleep. But sleeping wasn't in the cards.
It was my daughter in New York that is house sitting. The refridgerator was hot and everything in the freezer was melting!
The next three hours was spent transferring as much food as possible into another fridge, then cleaning and troubleshooting. Finally at 4:30 we gave up and left the refridgerator unplugged. The rest of the contents were a loss and a friend in our hometown would spend hours in the morning trying to fix it.
It is difficult to not worry about things that are so far away.
As a result of spending the night working on the fridge, we had to sleep in and we got a late start to Epcot.
A late start was OK because it gave us an excuse to drink taquela shots and margaritas near Mexico. I don't know if it was the heat or dihydration or drinking it too fast or what but the alcohol hit us fast and hard. So hard that Linda had to sit on the floor at the China 360 movie to keep from falling over.
The Illuminations fireworks started over the Epcot lake. As we watched the Disney fireworks, nature started a fireworks show of its own behind our backs. A massive thunderstorm was moving in - so large that the weather radar had painted the area red, indicating severe storm. The map showing lightening strikes was covered in lightening bolts. We decided to run for it, but only made it from Japan to Germany before the skies opened. We ducked into the bathroom area for cover and tried to wait the storm out.
A large gathering of survivors huddled near the bathroom area for shelter. Lightening was striking all around us, and the rain was coming down sideways.
We watched the weather radar on Linda's cell phone as we each put on rain ponchos.
Occasionally someone in the survivor group would panick and decide to run for it. Five steps out, they were drenched with lighting flashing all around them. They would soon vanish into the night, never to be seen again.
Finally, the radar showed the red mass had passed over our location and we were finally orange. Orange on the map meant heavy rains and lightning strikes. We decided our ponchos wod protect us. We left the safety of the bathrooms and the other survivors and make our way across Epcot.
The only people running for the parking lot were those with ponchos. Some people became very creative for ponchos, using everything from trash bags (I hope they were clean) to Disney store bags.
The Mogadishu Mile was made famous in the movie Black Hawk Down. US Rangers fighting in Ethiopia were left behind by their armored carriers. As a result, the Rangers had to run back to camp. Our race through this monsoon was our Mogadishu Mile.
I remember joking at one point "I didn't know Epcot transformed into a water park at night". Sidewalks became flooded with several inches of water thus soaking our shoes, yet we ran on.
Disney has regular marathons in which running enthusiasts can run across the Disney property. I have always wondered what it would've like to run in a Disney marathon, and I think I now know. As we were running through yhe storm, others who had found shelter anywhere they could were cheering us on! The only difference is that after a Disney 5K, you get a metal! We should have received a metal for the Nemo 5K.
We finally reached Epcot's giant golf ball that houses Spaceship Earth. A large number of people were gathered under the ball for protection. Gathering under tallest object in the park during a thunderstorm is a horrible idea. We pushed our way through the gathering and contined on.
By the time we made it to our car in the parking lot, it had stopped raining. Figures.
Our ponchos failed to protect our shoes and offered minimal protection from the driving rain. Soaked, we climbed into the can, proud we survived the Epcot Mansoon.
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