Everyone in the Carroll family is looking forward to the usual joys of Christmas, but this year we are especially excited because after all of our presents are opened we will be hopping a plane for our annual visit to Disney. Last year we went to Disneyland so it has been two years since our last trip to Disney World. We leave knowing that the park will be more crowded during the holidays, but we are well prepared to employ our proven crowd avoidance techniques.
One of the things that I look forward to with every Disney trip is all of the great food and fun restaurants. This year I got up at 4:00 a.m., 90 days prior to our visit, to make all of our reservations and to ensure that we got the times and places we wanted. We reserved some of our old favorites but also selected a few new places.
Our first day will be spent at Hollywood Studios where we will have dinner at Mama Melrose. As part of our reservation we purchased the Fantasmic dinner package. Fantasmic is our favorite show at Disney World and the dinner package gives you access to special reserved seating and means you don’t have to fight the crowds. To us this is always worth the extra expense.
The next day will take us to Animal Kingdom, where we will enjoy lunch at Tusker House. We have not eaten at Tusker House since it was converted to table service. We are not sure what to expect here.
Day 3 will be spent at Epcot where we will have my favorite counter service meal, Fish and Chips (and beer) at the Rose and Crown Pub. It requires no reservation and it is perfect for a picnic lunch in the small park located at rear of the England pavilion. If we are lucky we will be able to listen to British Invasion while we eat.
Day 4 we finally make it to Magic Kingdom. Here we will dine on a traditional turkey dinner at the Liberty Tree Tavern. This is always one of our favorites.
Day 5 we will return to Epcot and eat at the Biergarten Restaurant in the Germany pavilion. We have been to the Biergarten in the past but it has been quite a few years. The German music and dancing along with some pretty good food always makes this an enjoyable experience.
Day 6 is New Years Eve, and we have decided to make it a flexible day. This means that we will float around to different parks and resorts in order to avoid the most crowded spots. We might try to check out the holiday food selections at some of the resort hotels.
New Years Day is also scheduled as a flexible day, but we plan to start with breakfast at the Cape May Cafe at our home resort, the Beach Club.
We will kick off our last day with breakfast at Chef Mickey’s at the Contemporary Resort. While the kids are a little beyond the target age group here we are just not ready to give up this traditional stop. We also enjoy taking the monorail to the Magic Kingdom after breakfast.
By the time we return to the real world I am sure we will have put on a few extra pounds, but I am also sure we will have smiles on our faces.
Recently I have been dreaming about taking an extended bicycle tour. I have always thought it would be fun to hit the road carrying all of my supplies with me, sleeping in a tent, eating in small town cafes and enjoying the slow pace of lightly traveled country roads.
I have had a on again off again relationship with my road bike for about twenty years. In recent years it has mostly been off as my physical condition indicates. But, watching Lance Armstrong ride the Tour de France and the book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” has re-ignited my interest.
While an extended trip is probably not practical in the near future I do plan to start putting a few miles on my road bike. I recently had it tuned up at a local shop and finally took it out for a spin yesterday morning. My ride in through the local park proved to be a challenge. The rolling hills felt like the Alpe d’Huez to me. But, with frequent stops and lots of water I felt pretty good in the end. I hope to get into shape over the next few weeks and ride a few local rides this fall.
A few web searches turned up some really interesting blogs about people that have taken bicycle touring to the extreme. This one, downtheroad.org, really caught my interest. It is about a husband and wife that sold their house and spent the last few years touring the world on bicycles. Some of their videos are fascinating. You can see more videos here.
Aaron has been looking forward to the opening of Prowler, the newest roller coaster at WOF, for a long time. Today was opening day. As annual pass holders we were able to attend a special members only event where we got to be some of the first people to ride Prowler. You can see an excellent review by James Rao at Theme Park Insider. Also, check out my comments to his post.
I was surprised to find out that there is no Flickr group for Worlds of Fun. I took some pretty interesting pictures last weekend and so I decided to start a Flickr group. Right now I am the only member!
Aaron and I are season pass holders, so I will be taking a lot of pictures there this summer. Here is the first set.
This amazing video really shows what it was like to travel to California during the 1950s. I can’t believe how much California and Disneyland have changed over the years. But, it is also incredible how many things in Disnelyand are still familiar. This video really captures why Disneyland is still the happiest place on earth.
Leigh Ann said she would make some of these neat jackets for our next visit to Disney. Watch the video to see what I mean.
Here is a description of the video:
In July 1956, the five-member Barstow family of Wethersfield, Connecticut, won a free trip to newly-opened Disneyland in Anaheim, California, in a nationwide contest. This 30-minute amateur documentary film tells the fabulous story of their fun-filled, dream-come-true, family travel adventure, filmed on the scene at Walt Disney’s “Magic Kingdom” by Robbins Barstow.
Sorry I got a little behind in my posts. We are now back in Kansas City after two more days of non-stop fun at Disneyland. On Sunday we arrived at the park at rope drop and stayed until almost close. Monday we again arrived at rope drop and stayed until 12:00 noon – at which time we made a bee-line to LAX to catch our flight home. We finally made it home at about 8:30 Monday evening.
I have a lot of pictures to go through and some detailed reports to write. But first I thought I would post some of the pictures of one of my favorite part of every Disney visit – the characters.
While my kids are usually not very interested in interacting with the characters, I find that when they do it always turns into a memorable experience. I don’t know what it is, but the characters never fail to make everyone laugh and have fun. On this trip Leigh Ann scheduled a character breakfast at the Plaza Inn. I think it was breakfast with Minnie and Friends. Usually at these character breakfasts you can count on Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Pluto. For some reason they also always have Chip and Dale. Not sure why Chip and Dale are everywhere – I have yet to meet a Chip and Dale fan. Is there some reason they have to put Chip and Dale everywhere? Anyway, at this character breakfast there were an unusually large number of characters with no real theme. Besides the usual suspects we also met Pooh, Rafiki, Brer Bear, Eyore, and my favorite, Captian Hook. There were a few other characters around but we were done eating before they made it to our table.
Later on in the day we ran across Mary Poppins and Bert. Becca had a great time with them.
As these pictures show one of the characters gave us laugh and made us act crazy. What a great time.
Day 2 was exhausting. Aaron and I were at the park from rope drop (8 a.m.) to almost midnight. Becca and Leigh Ann were smart and went home early. I will provide highlights in a later post. In the meantime here are a few photos. I took video most of the day, so the photos for Day 2 are limited. I will post the video once I have a chance to edit it.
Just a couple of highlights and pictures from our first day at Disneyland. We arrived about 1:30, checked in to our hotel and headed for the park. The first highlight of the day was riding the new Mark VII Monorail. What an excellent way to enter the park. Especially since it tours Tomorrowland and gives you great views of the new Submarine Voyage attraction. Hopefully we will enter through the front gate later so that we can “walk down the middle of mainstreet”.
Since the park closed early we were somewhat limited in what we could cover. The biggest highlights were taking our first ride on Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage. We only had to wait about 40 minutes (the que line said 30?). The ride was worth the wait. It seemed like it was a very long ride. Well worth the wait.
We were also able to get in: Matterhorn, Space Mountain, Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters, Star Tours, Snow White’s Scary Adventures, Pinocchio’s Daring Journey, Casey Junior Circus Train, Mr. Toads Wild Ride, Alice in Wonderland.
We ended the day with two highlights. It’s a small world holiday and Indiana Jones Adventure. Small world was recently renovated and was dressed up in a holiday overlay. The greatest surprise was the smell of ginger bread when as you went through the european part of the attraction. I will try to post a video later.
The last highlight was getting Mom to ride the Indiana Jones Adventure – temple of the forbidden eye. Mom actually had a great time and everyone really enjoyed seeing her do something she would not normally do. We might even get her on it again.
Dance is such a big part of our everyday lives that I had to start a series of year in review posts with a little slideshow featuring Becca and dance. This is her second year as part of the premier dance team. Last year was a big adjustment for her. Since she was younger than most of the girls last year it was difficult for her to figure out where she fit in. She was only in a few dances and she ended up breaking her arm right before nationals. This year she was a fully immersed in the team and was able to enjoy a wonderful year with many great successes.
It is incredible to see how hard these girls work. Watching these dances go from a rough concept to an unbelievably polished and synchronized performance is such a wonderful experience for Becca. The discipline, hard work, and focus that it takes to perform at this level has taught Becca many valuable lessons. The year had many highs, and only a few lows. I know that we will not forget the great performances and the many wonderful things that Becca has experienced through dance this year.
One parents thoughts, ideas and experiences while raising two wonderful children, one of which has Asperger's syndrome.
Our family loves to travel. I will use this blog to share our many adventures.
Please feel free to share your thoughts by adding comments to any of my posts.
