This could get rambly

I expect I'm going to have MANY brain-dumps over the coming days as I process and remember various things about the trip that I either enjoyed, disliked, or otherwise made note of.

Today's thought was about the Liberty Belle, which is the name of the boat in the "Liberty Square Riverboat" attraction at the Magic Kingdom. We did the ride, which is a quite leisurely spin around a short (half-mile) man-made river  in the park.

I watched it pull in to the dock and figured it was a typical Disney piece: lots of cosmetics to make it look nifty, with a lot of modern technology underneath to make it go.



We got on and I started looking. First from the stern. Looked for signs of prop- or thruster-wash. Nope. Eyeballed the construction of the sternwheel. Looked pretty hefty for being cosmetic.
Piston rams were shiny stainless. With zerks.
Dropped down to the lower deck, and looked closer. Good-size pistons, steam venting on the exhaust stroke, with a lot of valves hither and yon ... leading to ... a boiler.
By the time we got off the boat I was 99.44% sure they were running a real steam-powered boat.



Wiki confirms it. (With a note that it does run on a track under the water; no shock there given the liability involved if they run it aground!)

MrsZ did not understand why I thought that was so damn cool.



We also rode the Teacups, which MrsZ found thrilling:


And I found terrifying: