Along with Camping (which is our favourite summer activity), Disneyworld is our favourite family vacation spot. Even before we had kids we'd been to Disney twice - it was the first place my wife and I went when we got together (both of us had also been when we were kids growing up with our families). In 2001, when the kids were old enough, we flew down in our first family trip to Disneyworld (and it was a trip of many firsts) and in 2003 we went again, this time staying in our RV at Fort Wilderness. We've gone again numerous times - at least once a year since 2005 - and yup, we're officially Disney addicts. It's a place where we can all "be a kid" and get away from "regularity" .... no cellphones, no IM, just fun. (One could claim we are, as a family, 'stuck with each other for a week' and perhaps that is part of it).
While we liked taking the trailer in May and camping, some of our later trips were in December, and so taking the trailer was somewhat impractical as it would have required dewinterizing the unit in warmer climates and towing through some awful winter weather (namely the mountains of Pennsylvania and Virginia) to get there. On various trips we've stayed at Pop Century a few times, All Star Movies, Port Orleans Riverside, Port Orleans French Quarter, and once in the wilderness cabins at Fort Wilderness in May: hardly 'roughing it', these cabins feature air conditioning and a dishwasher!
Here's a few photos of our trips (just hover over the year below):
Hover over a year above ...
... and while you'd think that not much would have changed over the course of the years, as our family has grown-up the nature of our trips has changed from simple amusement (rides, rides, rides = rush, rush, rush) to a more relaxed vacation doing all those _other_ things like taking-in shows and relaxing at dinners. One of the things I particularly enjoy nowadays is to sit down for an hour and a half to enjoy a relaxing dinner in the middle of a hectic day!
A Few Cherished Memories ...
On our trip in May of 2009, the entire family was chosen for the 'Harbour Attack' segment of the Backlot tour in Disney Studios. After being given rainsuits, we were 'shot at', 'torpedoed', and drenched with a thousand gallons of water from the dump-buckets seen in this photo. Small segments were filmed of us 'under attack' with lots of water spraying about then these small segments were put together with stock video footage and a soundtrack to resemble a Hollywood-style attack sequence reminiscent of 'Pearl Harbor' showing the crew of a PT boat under attack. It was a one of those 'once in a lifetime' experiences!
There's a lot of great memories we have from our various Disney trips, like these ...
Speaking of firsts, our first trip in 2001 was full of them! Both of our kids were chosen to participate in the (now vanished) Diamond Horseshoe Jamboree show. Here Christina helps 'the country-western guitar guy' with his rendition of Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer.
Jennifer helped the magician with the 'amazing paper napkin show'. Kids say the darnest things and Jenny proved that.
Magician: So, what does your daddy do?
Jennifer: He teaches
Magician: So, what does he teach?
Jennifer: His classes, of course!
You just had to be there: we almost died laughing.
Another first was the monorail ride - in the front. The park was almost empty (I mean, for Disney at least!). The average wait was five to ten minutes to get on almost anything. Several times we got to ride in the front of the monorail. My kids, apparently, like trains almost as much as I do.
Shows: The Magic of Disney ...
The timing of many of our trips was no accident: the week before Christmas is probably one of the least busy times at the parks and one in which all of the parks are decorated for the holiday season. The 'regular' parades give way to the Christmas parades and, at Disney's Hollywood Studios park, the Osborne family spectacle of dancing lights. With 3.5 million lights (originally consuming 800kW when they used incandescent lamps - probably a lot less nowadays that they are using energy-efficient LEDs) it is indeed a spectacle! These lights dance and are sequenced to the music of the Trans Siberian Orchestra. Quite a sight to behold. The show is complete with fake snow (which, although it resembles spit, was preferable to the real stuff we encountered when we returned home :).
I like Disney's parades - they always have a good show with a catchy tune which seems to linger long after you come home ... here's one that pops into my head now and then:
Find and board a magic carpet ride,
Go soaring, free-wheeling,
A magical feeling,
All you need is right inside,
Just believe and if you imagine,
Just believe and your dreams will come true.
Ahh yes, if you've see the "Disney Dreams Come True" parade you probably recognize that one. At Christmas, though (or at Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party) they run a special Christmas parade, "Mickey's Once Upon a Christmastime Parade". This is one of the best parades I've seen - I was amazed at the 'finished' look of the parade: the characters are fun but I really appreciate the technical aspects like the perfect synchronization of the music as the parade progresses.
And then there are the fireworks shows like 'Wishes' presented with behind the castle as a perfect backdrop (the wallpaper for this page was taken during one of these shows. During the holiday season they also run 'Holiday Wishes' with extremely cool fireworks including shells which explode to reveal presents (cubes) and other shapes.
And in all of the parks, various attractions are indeed shows like the live-action "Voyage of the Little Mermaid" and mixed-media (live and film) "Magic of Disney Animation" at Hollywood studios - these are particularly well done and entertaining!
Rides
What can we say, there are people who like slow-moving, entertaining rides and there are those who like thrill rides. We like the aforementioned 'traditional' Disney rides and my personal favourites include Soarin' (an IMAX-based hangglider simulator ride), as well as three 'staples' in the Magic Kingdom: the Haunted Mansion, Splash Mountain, and Pirates of the Carribean. Hopefully Disney does not forget the kind of entertainment that has made them so popular and unique as opposed to so many other theme parks.
So what makes a true 'Disney' ride? Consider my favourite, Splash Mountain ... at it's heart, it's really a very basic log flume ride but Disney turned it into an entertainment extravaganza! For over eight minutes the rider is slowly taken through the animated tale of Brer Rabbit (which makes a lot more sense if you've seen the movie the ride is based upon, Song of the South, but can be followed regardless). Along the way, you encounter a drop into the briar patch ("the" drop) but that element is by no means the entire focus of the ride as it would be in a 'regular' log flume ride - the show attached to the ride is by far more important than the "mechanical" elements of the ride, namely the drop. Attention to detail is also a Disney hallmark ... in this ride, like most others, no details were spared. And that makes this log flume ride special as opposed to the hundreds of other log flume rides in hundreds of other amusement parks anywhere. Virtually all Disney rides incorporate a show like that: the Tower of Terror attraction features a pre-show based on the Twilight Zone series, and the classic Haunted Mansion also features the famous pre-show with the 'stretching room'. It is these elements which make a Disney ride much more than just a regular amusement ride: they are more 'entertainment' than simple 'ride'.
And let's not forget the catchy Disney-tunes which run through your head long after you get home. Ever found yourself humming "It's a Small World"??. Parades, shows, and many rides feature tunes like this one from Splash Mountain:
How do you do? Fine! A friendly greetin'.
How do you do? Say it when you're meetin'.
How do you do? With everyone repeatin':
Pretty good, sure as you're born.
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, one of the 'quintissential' Disney tunes, also came
from Song of the South, on which Splash Mountain is based.
Besides the 'traditional' Disney rides there's Soarin', a new favourite, which really makes you feel like you're on a hangglider. An IMAX movie makes you really feel like you're flying over scenic wonders in California and no little detail is missed: when flying over an orange grove, for example, orange scent is wafted through the air ... they don't seem to miss a thing. For the more adventurous there is 'Mission Space' but be forewarned that you pull real G's and this could easily be construed as a 'vomit comet' ... there are air sickness bags right inside the ride and I understand they are frequently used! (I did the 'orange team' _once_ in 2005 when it was still quite vicious). For the less rugged, try the green team for the same experience without the G forces.
And one of Disney's latest rides is Toy Story Mania, an arcade-type ride in which riders shoot at 3-D targets racking-up points in the process (picture Buzz-Lightyear on steroids). The system even has modes built-in so during delays when the ride should be moving you are entertained by practice-rounds.
Geeking Out!
Just because you're on vacation doesn't mean you can't still be a geek ... it's just more fun! I recently built a three-axis recording accelerometer, and the real test was to bring it to Disney World. Outlined on
this page is raw data from the accelerometer as well as analysis, inluding integration of the data to yield both velocity and positional data, for rides such as the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Mission Space, and others.
The music playing in the background is from Soarin', a hanglider simulator ride. Between the IMAX projection and the gentle motion of the simulator you really get the feeling of flying. This has become on of our favourite, 'gotta do it at least twice' rides!
Dining Experience
In earlier trips to Disney we'd always eaten the standard greasy fast-food fare that most people eat - the past few trips involved eating better (LDL numbers may have had a bit to do with that) and with that in mind we did the dining plan and ate at a number of Disney's unique restaurants and saw a few dinner shows. The nice thing about the dining plan (at least the _old_ dining plan ... they changed it for 2008) was not having to worry about a thing - everything was included and there was no need for anything extra. The new plan is not nearly as good a deal, unfortunately. Regardless, the Disney dining experience, to a large extent, turns the trip into a cruise (where the highlight of the day is indeed the dinner). There are a number of very interesting restaurants around the parks but beware, being on the dining plan does take a few hours of each day away (which is not necessarily a bad thing when you're looking for an hour to just unwind).
Some of the restaurants at which we enjoyed eating were the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater in Hollywood Studios, Le Cellier steakhouse in the Canada pavillion at EPCOT, both the Crystal Palace and Cinderella's castle in the Magic Kingdom, and the Grand Floridian Cafe. OK, I might be biased because I am Canadian, but Le Cellier served the most amazing filet and the cheese soup was great with the pretzel bread they serve there! Judging from the fact they book-up solid for reservations months in advance leads me to believe there are a host of others who agree. Funny, too, in 2007 we met a young lady working there who was from Welland. We've also tried a few different restaurants at EPCOT including Les Chefs du France (which we all agreed was the _best_ restaurant we'd been-to in 2006 ... my kids even tried escargot. Unfortunately, the restaurant seems too crowded nowadays with tables wedged into every nook and corner).
We all enjoyed dinner at the castle and its one of those places I've always wanted to see - on earlier trips we'd heard that there was a restaurant inside the castle itself but we'd never been there (probably didn't want to spend the money back then :). Servers address you as 'My Lady' and 'My Lord' and the entire place carries a medieval theme. The experience now includes a short dinner show and a photo with Cinderella.
In 2005, 2007, and 2010 we took-in the Hoop-dee-doo revue at Fort Wilderness campground (the same campground we stayed at in 2003 and 2008). The Hoop-dee-doo was similar, I thought, to the old Diamond Horseshoe Jamboree from over a decade ago in which both of our kids participated (The Diamond Horseshoe is another attraction miss at Disney). Still fun though, especially with a large group - nine of us in 2005, six of us in 2007, and eight of us in 2010.
Indeed, dinner shows like this are great with a group. On our 2005 trip we met friends of ours who were down there the week before we arrived. We're all seen here at the revue.
Like everywhere else, some restaurants have had their ups-and-downs. We found the Coral Reef at EPCOT, for example, disappointing in 2005 but were impressed in 2007 when we tried it again. We've also had a poor experience at Alfredo's in 2006 and haven't gone back. On the whole, though, the food at most of the upscale restaurants was great. Now, my personal favourite is the inexpensive sci-fi dinner theatre in Hollywood Studios to which we've been three times - more for the camp atmosphere of a fifties drive-in theatre showing low-budget horror flicks than anything else. They advertise it as 'eating good food while watching bad movies'. That particular venue was what I consider as a true Disney experience - something you just won't find anywhere else :). p.s. I recommend trying the artichoke and spinach dip with tortilla chips ... tastes _way_ better than it sounds!
Disney Past
A few memories of long-gone Disney rides ...
And speaking of "Disney Past", here's a scan of an old Disney guidemap. It is undated, but judging from the attractions, and when I was there as a kid, probably dates around 1972. A few neat attractions no longer at the Magic Kingdom include the Main Street Cinema, 20000 Leagues, Flight to the Moon, and the Skyway between Tomorrowland & Fantasyland. Strangely, "If You Had Wings" which opened in 1972 is not shown on the map (although I recall it being there). Carousel of Progress nor Space Mountain are shown on this map as they opened in 1975, nor are the later Thunder Mountain (1980) and Splash Mountain (1992).
A few years later, and we took a second trip to Disney staying in my uncle's motor home. This guidebook from 1976 holds a host of good memories! Aside from the guidemap on the last page, showing rides at the time, these pages also list the ticket required for each attraction. At this time, Disney sold coupon books and a ticket, varying in value from "A" through "E" with an "E" ticket being required for the best and most popular rides. I'm sure you'll get a kick out of this one and it will certainly educate you as to the origins of the phrase "An E-Ticket Ride"!
We still collect park maps periodically so we can cherish those great rides we remember like "Journey Into Imagination ...."
One ride I sadly miss is the original "Journey into Imagination" with figment which closed in 1998 (I saw it in 1991 and 1992). Recently, on YouTube (search 'Disney', 'Journey', 'Imagination' and look for the original by Martin Smith), I saw a home movie (a very, very professional one, though) of the original and was reminded just how magical that ride was (for me, at least). You can also find the full video on Figment's Imagination. Figment, a mythical little character with...
Two tiny wings, eyes big and yellow.
Horns of a steer, but a loveable fellow.
From head to tail, he's royal purple pigment.
And there--Voila!--you've got a Figment!
... guides us through many possible scenes in our imagination. Our host, Dreamfinder, begins by collecting "sounds, colors, ideas -- anything that sparks the imagination" in the idea bag and from there, we take a flight of fancy. My favourite scene was the tale of monsters where we see figment holding a book closed from which monsters appear to be trying to escape. Watching the movie still gives me the "warm fuzzies" :). I am unsure as to why Disney ever got rid of the ride, only to replace it years later with something considerably less inspired, but I suppose for every ride Disney has ever changed there is a fan out there who laments it.
Imagination, imagination.
A dream can be a dream come true,
With just that spark in me and you.