A Visit to The Mouse House

I just returned from a long weekend in Florida. I went to Orlando with my sister, Heidi, and my Mom. We went to see the Christmas lights and also to celebrate Mom's birthday. The first stop was Animal Kingdom. I was working on my socks - you know, the Trekking socks that I was planning to have done LAST July 4th ... the red, white and blue ones ... mm-hmm those. We saw the Tree of Life - it is a truly amazing site! The animals carved into it are very lifelike. We also saw the "It's Tough to be a Bug" show - it was fantastic!

After Animal Kingdom, we went to MGM. Lunch was at the Sci-Fi Drive-In theater - it was so cool! There is a huge screen, and there are "cars" from the 50's that have tables in them. On the screen, they play clips from old scifi movies. Also at MGM is the Osbourne Lights display. This family had so many lights that their neighbors got an injunction, so they moved the display to Disney World. I couldn't believe how many lights there were! After a quick tour of the lights, we took the boat launch over to The Wilderness Lodge for dinner. Heidi had arranged for a special birthday dessert for Mom, and we had a very nice dinner. I ordered a martini that was blue and had a blue blinking cube in it! At the end of the night, we staggered back to The Swan (our hotel) and fell into a coma until morning.

The second day, we went to Epcot. We rode a new ride, called Soarin'. It is really neat - you sit in a row of seats, and when everyone is buckled in, the row of seats is raised in front of a huge screen. Air blows on you and a movie plays, giving you the sensation of soaring over California. Well worth the 75 min wait! We toured the world, then had dinner in Germany. The food was wonderful and there was a great floor show. After dinner, we went to the Candlelight Processional - it was one of the best Christmas shows I have ever seen! It is the story of the nativity, with a special guest narrator (ours was Stephen Curtis Chapman), an orchestra, a choir of Disney cast members, and several guest choirs from high schools and churches all over the world. After Epcot, we ran over to The Magic Kingdom for Spectromagic. What a neat parade! All of the floats and characters were covered in lights. One of the floats had the Three Pigs on it, and when the pig dipped his paintbrush into the barrel decorated with white lights, all of the float's lights (for every float, not just that one) turned white, and when he dipped the paintbrush into the barrel decorated with colored lights, all of the floats turned colored, again. Very cool.

On the third day, we went to The Magic Kingdom for the day. We rode the Jungle Cruise, the Delta Queen, and Pirates of the Caribbean. Mom had her first smoked turkey leg! We watched the fireworks over Cindarella's castle, then buzzed over to MGM for Fantasmic. That is an awesome show! There were fireworks, pyrotechnics, water spraying, and all sorts of wonderful effects!

Tuesday was my last day, but Heidi and Mom stayed one more night, to return home on Wednesday. Tuesday morning, we got up and took the monorail over to The Grand Floridian to see the huge gingerbread house. We had a fun breakfast with Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Alice, The Mad Hatter, and Mary Poppins. The gingerbread house was incredible! The decorations were very elaborate - with each window box filled with red and white sugar pointsettias. After we saw the gingerbread house, we took the boat launch over to the Beach Resort to see the chocolate carousel. It smelled sooooooo good!!!! Each horse was sculpted of chocolate with chocolate curls for a mane, and was decorated with a different motif. One horse was decorated with a red blanket and a bridle of sugar pointsettias, another with a green blanket with holly, and a third with a blue blanket covered with sugar snowflakes.

We had such a great trip - lots of fun and laughter all weekend long!