This meet schedule was originally published on AllEars.Net and is used here with permission.


2nd Annual Holiday RADP Meet Weekend
December 6-7 1997
Part Two


The Following Persons Attended the Saturday RADP Meet at Epcot's Fountainview in Future World. If you attended the meet and are not listed here, please email me (it'll help us get an accurate count, also). If your children, spouses, friends and family etc attended and are not listed here, please send their names. Also, I'd love to include what state/country you are from, so please let me know that too! I have not included email addresses, but will do so for anyone interested.

I welcome your comments and photos to be included here in this scrapbook of our wonderful RADP weekend!

Those persons who won a GiveAway prize have it noted after their name. Many thanks to Rita Aero (WDW For Adults and Families Too), Meli Emmons, Becky Ashley and the O'Donnell Family for their contributions to the Giveaways.

Thanks to EVERYONE who attended! It was grand meeting all of you!


Amy (and Eeyore) - Texas
Lorna Annis - New York
Aven and Gene Baral - Florida
Sam the Bartender - Florida
Ira Brickman
Stacy Bronstein
Melanie, Jessica, and Ashley Carvalho - Santa Mickey Flag
Palmer Chappelle
Cindy and Rob Collier - Oregon
Michael Connors - Florida - Rita Aero's WDW For Adults Book
Kenny Cottrell - Florida
Jan DeVries - Grand Rapids Michigan
Diznee39
Jennifer Edwards - Florida
Meli and John Emmons - New York
Eureka and Jim Freeman - New York - Minnie Liberty Pin
gardenia - Florida
GenieEFL - Florida
Karen Harland - Canada
Teresa Henslee Downer and Bruce
Rick Howard - Florida
Tim Householder
Pam and Bob Koskovich
Rick, Carol and Michael Koster - Louisiana
Pam Kratz - Missouri - WDW Holiday Ornament
Deb, Brian and Alex Koma - Virginia
Tod and Sue Kruithoff
Sue Kruse - California
Bill and Lorelei Levesque - Florida
Scott and Carol McDonald - New York - Australian Boomerang
Andrea, Paul and Holly McKenna - Texas
Mona Macknair
Brian and Carmella Martsotf - North Carolina
Bruce and Marta Metcalf - Tennessee
Arlen Miller - Florida
Rolly Janna Nichols - Disney Marathon Pin
Larisa, Lucy and Brian O'Donnell - Australia - Disney Buttons
Rob Olsan - Florida
Kim Ortesa
Greg Orwin - United Kingdom
Eric Patterson - Florida
Mark Perry - StormAlong Bay Button
Julian Robinson - United Kingdom
Chuck Ross - Pocahontas Silk Tie
Melanie Ross
Kristi Sabin
Ron Satterfield - Florida
Janet Saunders
Michael Scibetta - Florida - Disney Institute Pin
Donna and Steve Schwartz - Michigan - Wilderness Lodge Pin/Pen
Pat Sklenar - Connecticut
Jeff, Katie and Brian Spencer - Alabama
Ed Sterrett - Florida
JT Toad and Guest - Florida
Andy Toth - Pennsylvania
Vanessa Warmath - Florida
Deb Wills - Maryland
Craig and Allison Wingerson - North Carolina
Charles Wong - Hunchback Watch
WBDPDS
Rusty Wyatt - Florida




During Saturday evening, again, a number of smaller groups gathered and enjoyed each others company -- about 14 folks dined at Artist Point, another dozen or so danced and drank their way around Pleasure Island.

I was part of the group that enjoyed an evening at Artist Point in the Wilderness Lodge. Even though we had Priority Seating for 8:20 pm, we had to wait for our table....well, we were a rather large sized party since there were 14 of us. Here's Karen and Barb before dinner.


Meli writes: We were the first to arrive at Wilderness Lodge for the small group dinner at Artist's Point. We were fortunate to have stayed there in 1994 but had not been there during the holidays. The tree was beautiful and had little teepee lights on them, like the big overhead teepee fixtures featured in the lobby. It was very crowded, and there was a musical group performing.

People from our group started coming in dribs and drabs and we eventually moved from some of the big, soft chairs to the area where the spring bubbles up. Unfortunately, the animal wrangler started doing a demonstration right where we were hanging out. Eventually it was over and the crowd dissipated. There was a cool village set up and it was all made from gingerbread and other edible things! There was a port and it had The Little Mermaid theme, with both Ariel and King Triton in the water and some of the shops along the dock were named after TLM characters (Sebastian, Scuttle, etc.).


Karen Writes: Barb and Deb drove us to the Wilderness Lodge. Again, I was totally astounded by how beautiful this resort is! After gawking like a tourist, and meeting *more* folks, we went to Artist's Point for dinner. I sat between my Meli-friend and John, and talked non-stop. We ate stuff I had never heard of before, and can highly recommend the salmon patty things, from the starter menu. Deb chose a magnificent wine for us white wine drinkers, and I had steak. I *always* have steak. *grin*


We sat in 2 adjacent tables. I got to enjoy the company of Gene and Aven Baral and Rick and Leslie Howard -- Rick's Brother and a Friend joined us also. Each table shared a huge platter of hot and cold appetizers. If you are interested in experimenting with different foods - do try there. There was plenty to eat and the fresh vegetables were outstanding! (Photo Above: Karen and Meli; Photo Left: Rick Howard and Deb)


gardenia selected a nice cabernet to go with dinner and both tables tried a bottle of Woodward Canyon. We got a tad silly after dinner. Here's gardenia, Susan, Caleb and Michele Warner...


Meli adds: It was a lovely dinner, great food, great friends, great wine (thanks!) and great fun! Karen was the first to leave as she had a date with the boys (Kenny and Sam) ;-) but we soon left after, it was getting late and we were getting tired. As we left, we notice there were only a few other people left in the restaurant, and the lobby was pretty empty, too!

Photo Right: Gene and Aven Baral and Leslie Howard


Pictured here in front of the Wilderness Lodge Christmas tree is:
First Row: Gene Baral, Deb Wills, gardenia, Aven Baral
Paul McKenna, Susan Provda, Andrea McKenna





Sunday December 7
Magic Kingdom Toad-In

toad banner

Sunday 12/7 at noon, folks attended the first of 2 Toad-Ins at the Magic Kingdom. JT Toad, creator of the Save Mr. Toad website and organizer of the Magic Kingdom Toad-In filed this report on the rec.arts.disney.parks newsgroup....

toad1.jpg

When my friend and I arrived Mr. Toad's Wild Ride at a little before noon, a couple things were disturbing. One, no other Toad fans were there. Two, there was an AWFUL lot of Disney security people there. Eventually, some other Toad supporters showed up and things began to look up. (Still no reporters or photographers.)

As we were hanging around, we spotted at least three groups of trenchcoated, earpiece-wearing security personnel, as well as several plain-clothes security and some security disguised as janitorial personnel. Plus some more security.

A few people were coming up to us and we were explaining why we there and what was going on and nearly everyone we spoke to was very supportive. We got a lot of thumbs-up and the like. We were also cheered by a group of people from the rec.arts.disney.parks newsgroup, but they were in line and didn't stop by to chat.

MELI Writes: I could not believe the number of suits we saw as well as "undercover" security. When was the last time you saw someone on the custodial staff with an ear piece? There was a guy sitting at the tables directly across from Toad Hall taking pictures...of us. No one was fooled. One maintenance guy went by with, I guess, a "picker" -- it looked like the sort of thing you would use to change a high light bulb or grab something off the top shelf -- and we joked that it was an electric prod.

As we got closer to the front, the Fantasyland Babe CM ride operator had a suit with her, and seemed to be on the podium phone an awful lot! The first car had JT, J, a virgin Toad-rider RADper and the very nice reporter. The second car had Hubbly, me and the other RADper. I'm sorry that I didn't get the chance to ride with JT --it would have been a blast. We had a lovely ride to nowhere in particular and then met up with the others to ride the other side (as you know, it's two, two, two rides in one! Each side is different). We found out that they were letting us jump the line so we didn't have to wait again (and I'd like to point out that it was a 25 minute wait. Are you listening Disney suits?). We had the same line up in the cars...the other folks went, and the car that was supposed to be ours had a bit of a protein spill. Even though they wiped it up, we asked to wait for the next car, which was Toady. After our second ride to nowhere in particular, we all joined up again, and one of the CMs told us that they thought perhaps we were going to lay down on the tracks! The reporter left and one of the RADpers went on their merry way. The rest of us kept separating and bumping back in to each other, finally leaving JT and J by City Hall.


Meli, John, JT and other ToadIn Supporters toad2.jpg

The reporter (Liz Langley) replied that Disney didn't return any of her calls and some more discussion occurred while I was talking to another park guest, but the manager pretty much left Liz alone once she explained that she had paid for her ticket to get into this park and she just wanted to ask us a few questions and take a few pictures.

As we were talking, my friend tried to hand out one of our postcards with Judson Green's address on them. The manager (Camille) explained that we couldn't pass out materials. My friend explained that she was merely providing information that this person had ASKED for (the web address is printed on the cards), but Camille was pretty firm on the matter. Anyway, I told Camille that we wouldn't distribute the cards and crisis was averted.

One of our plain-clothesed Toad spies had told us earlier that he'd overheard a security guard saying that they were going to give us ten minutes and then disperse us. It is our belief that Liz saved our butts by being there as a representative of the press. The last thing Disney wants is pictures of security guards dragging fans of one of their own rides down the streets of Fantasyland splashed on the front page of the paper.

We then decided to actually go on The Ride, which one of the members of our group had amazingly NEVER been on. We talked to a lot more people waiting in line about the ride.

Anyway, we finally got up to the cars and security was watching us from everywhere. There was a woman on the phone the whole time we were on the ride, probably poised to call for backup immediately.

Of course, we just rode the ride without any more fuss than the usual screaming about our imminent doom as we crashed through Toad Hall, the town square, Winky's Pub (featuring Rapunzel the naked lady) and into an oncoming locomotive.

When we got off, the Disney officials looked so relieved and genuinely pleased that we hadn't done anything violent that they actually let us bypass the line for a ride on the second side. We enjoyed the pigs, chickens and weasels immensely.

Afterwards a Mr. Toad ride operator told us she was glad we didn't lay down on the tracks or something, and assured us that she wouldn't have run us over.

toad4.jpg

We said our goodbyes to Camille the Fantasyland manager (who I must say was very nice, considering the circumstances) and went about our own ways in the park.

As we visited City Hall to file our support for Mr. Toad, we were cheered by several employees who liked our shirts. My friend asked if a memo had been passed out about us and the guy said, "Memo? You were on TV!"

We walked around Walt Disney World all day and got quite a lot of support from employees, most of whom had heard of us. One employee told us that they were talking about us in the break room and that they all agreed that Mr. Toad should stay open.

The one thing that was really missing was some mainstream press. I finally found out why there wasn't any yesterday. I talked to a representative of Orlando's Channel 9 who said that Disney wouldn't let them inside the park. They had a team out there for 3 hours, but they never saw us because we were INSIDE the Magic Kingdom.

Thanks to everyone who came out on Sunday and everyone who will come out this Sunday and very special thanks to Liz Langley.

JT Toad
Toadi Acceleratio

Save Mr. Toad's Wild Ride!




Sunday, December 7
Brown Derby Dinner

Sunday night's festivities were highlighted by a RADP Dinner at the Brown Derby. This evening had been planned for months. As far back as May, gardenia had been talking with the staff at Brown Derby to set up the logistics for this event. The advance planing paid off as the evening went very smoothly!

Folks began gathering around 5:45 as the group from Tower of Terror made their way back up Sunset Blvd. 54 RADP'rs from around the world wined and dined together for several hours.


Santa's helpers included Rusty Wyatt who passed out the 3x5 cards for folks names and emails for the Giveaways and Steve Schwartz made up Name Tags for everyone. This kept folks relatively busy while our tables were readied. Here's Steve and his wife Donna.



About 6:10 we were escorted into the Brown Derby and took up an entire section of the restaurant. We had 3 wondrous servers to assist us. During the pre-dinner chat, Deb and Rusty went around the room and did the drawings for the GiveAways.... Special thanks to the following folks who donated GiveAways -- Rick and Gayle Perlmutter for an autographed copy of WDW For Couples; Kristi Sabin, Eureka, and the O'Donnells.


We never did great an Official RADP Dinner Photo of the whole group...but we did get photos of each table... Here we go around the room.. ....


Paul McKenna, Katharine Warner, Holly McKenna, Caleb Warner, Andrea McKenna, Michele and Patrick Warner



Rob writes: thanks to everyone who helped organize the 12/6 12/7 meets. Cindy and I had a wonderful time and meet some really nice people (including you!). We have already heard via e-mail from some of them and will hopefully stay in touch. From Left to Right: Rob Collier, Bob Seaner, Regina Seaner, Lorelei and Bill Levesque, Cindy Collier.


Karen writes: I ended up sitting at the "children's table". *grin* Jen and I kept the bad-boys in line. Kenny, Sam, Chad and Rusty. We all got filet mignon, and I loved the potatoes that came with it!!! Sam picked out a nice wine for us, and it was a blast. I won a Pocahontas tie, and was gifted with a lovely Mickey picture frame by Deb and Barb.I had my photo taken *so* many times, I have no idea of who has pics of me! Eureka gave me the rest of the chocolates she had handed out, and Jen and I shared this decadent chocolate/praline dessert. Mmmmmm...... and I had a coffee called A Nutty Irishman. I forget what liqueur was in it, but damn, it was good! Around the table are: Rusty, Karen, Chad, Kenny, Sam, and Jen


Norm writes: I have just attended my first RADP meet at the Hollywood Brown Derby at MGM Studios. There must have been at least 40 people there, quite an international crowd including Australians, Canadians and Brits (I'm one of them). Met Deb Wills for the first time, a wonderful person, and many other cool RADpers. A great evening (when the drinks eventually arrived) and the food at the Brown Derby is very good. Eureka introduced me to their Grapefruit cake, which sounds sickly but is excellent. Very special thanks to Deb for all her hard work, even if I didn't win a prize in the draw! And would you believe that the only other Brit there, Andy, turns out to live 3 miles away from me in London!



From Left to Right: Andy Sewell, Brent, Norm Fisher, Eureka, Czar Jim, and Rob Olsan


From Left to Right: Larisa, Lucy and Brian O'Donnell and Michael Conners.



The Final Weekend Mystery Guest came to the Tower of Terror meet; but not everyone at Dinner took the fall....so our last Mystery Guest was announced -- Laura Gilbreath (Tigger2) and Lee Zimmerman from San Diego, California. Laura writes: Back in May, Debbie Wills (of WDWIG) asked me if I would consider being a "Mystery Guest". I couldn't make the Saturday meet because of a prior commitment, but decided that we could make the meet on Sunday...so Lee and I made plans, and kept our secret for 5 long months. :-)

From Left to Right: Larry and Pam (Scrappy) Kratz, Laura Gilbreath and Lee Zimmerman (tigger and pegasus are in the photo too)



and actually Lee was feeling a bit left out of all the fun...so I hopped over and sat on his lap and gave him a Big Mickey Santa Hug!



The Spencers! Katie, Jeff, Susan and Brian



From Left to Right: Steve and Donna Schwartz and Meli and John Emmons



From Left to Right: Don and Sid Arnez; Von and Scott Liljenquist



From Left to Right: Dave, Mary and Kimberly Rogers Merlib Writes: Today was the day I had been waiting for. We were to meet fellow RADP'ers at the Brown Derby for dinner and I was really excited. Finally, the much anticipated time was here. I was really looking forward to meeting some of the people I had been chatting with via mIrc and whose posts I had been reading for about two years, especially Deb Wills, gardenia and Jeff Spencer.

Meli adds: I met Mary at my very first RADp meet held in January 1997 at the Fifth Avenue Disney Store, and had since met her husband and daughter at Hercules Summer Spectacular at the New Amsterdam Theater.



Kimberly Rogers and Miranda Patton have some fun at the Brown Derby Too!~ RADP'rs in training!



All Mystery Guests were presented with a colorful WDW Entrance Gate Frame for their favorite photo. Meli, Laura, Eureka and Karen



Meli and Laura share a few laughs and love their WDW Frames


The radp-babes got into the act and all gathered around the Brown Derby Tree for this group photo op.


The Czarina herself is in the lower middle of the photo. Then, left to right: Karen "LadyLurker" Harland, Pam "Scrappy" Kratz, Laura "Tigger" Gilbreath, Barb "gardenia", Michele "MamaMouse" Warner, Deb "Jasmine" Wills, Andrea "TigerLilly" McKenna, and Meli "MistressMeli" Emmons.



Julian and Susan met the week before at Wilderness Lodge and had a great time. They were both huge helps during the Brown Derby dinner... Julian was kind enough to order my meal and beverage and Susan took photos with my camera!



Deb and Barb finally have a chance to sit down and relax after a wonderful night enjoying dinner with 54 friends.


Heartfelt thanks to Philip and all the staff at Brown Derby for making the evening so VERY special! You all did a SUPER job!

After dinner smaller groups went to World Showcase and Fountainview in Epcot for Illuminations and light watching, still another group headed over to Pleasure Island.

The Following Persons Attended the Sunday RADP Meet Dinner at the Hollywood Brown Derby in the MGM-Studios.

Those persons who won a GiveAway prize have it noted after their name. Many thanks to Rick and Gayle Perlmutter (WDW For Couples), Eureka, gardenia, Kristi Sabin and the O'Donnell Family for their contributions to the Giveaways.

Thanks to EVERYONE who attended! It was grand meeting all of you!


Don and Sid Arnez - Indiana - Typhoon Lagoon Pin and Commerative Eyes and Ears
Sam "the Bartender" Ault - Florida
Cindy and Rob Collier - Oregon
Michael Connors - Florida - American Express Fanny Pack
Kenny Cottrell - Florida
Jennifer Edwards - Florida - Goofy Pin
Meli and John Emmons - New York - Disney Marathon Pin
Eureka and Jim Freeman - New York - Rick & Gayle Perlmutter's WDW For Couples
GenieEFL - Florida
Norman Fisher - United Kingdom
Laura Gilbreath and Lee Zimmerman - California - Beach Club Pin and Pen
Karen Harland - Canada - Pocahontas Silk Tie
Pam and Larry Kratz - Missouri Commemerative Eyes and Ears
Bill and Lorelei Levesque - Florida - StormAlong Bay Button
Scott and Von Liljenquist - Mystery Gift
Andrea, Paul and Holly McKenna - Texas - Mystery Gift
Larisa, Lucy and Brian O'Donnell - Australia
Rob Olsan - Florida - WDW Holiday Ornament
Mark Patton - Hunchback Watch
Miranda Patton - $50 Swan/Dolphin Coupon
Chuck Patton
Susan Provda - Florida - Mickey Tote Bag
Julian Robinson - United Kingdom
Mary, Dave and Kimberly Rogers - Connecticut
Ron Satterfield - Florida
Donna and Steve Schwartz - Michigan - Rainforest Cafe Priority Seating Coupon
Regina Seaner and Bob - Virginia
Andy Sewell - United Kingdom - Commerative Eyes and Ears
Jeff, Susan, Katie and Brian Spencer - Alabama
Michele, Caleb, Katharine and Patrick Warner - Conneticut - Commerative Eyes and Ears
Deb Wills - Maryland
Chad Wilson - Florida
Rusty Wyatt - Florida

Page 1 of the Second RADP December Meet here.

Page 3 of the Second RADP December Meet continues here.



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