Our Really Very Big Long Day

Or
Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

Okay, the lions come later when we went back to Animal Kingdom Park (get the Park Hopper!  It's worth the extra money!)  But we started out very early, before the sun was up, to get to Magic Kingdom and our breakfast reservations at the Crystal Palace.  Here's where it gets tricky.

We've been here a few days by now and my daughter has been avoiding people in costumes.  "The characters kind of freak me out."  We sit down for our Breakfast with Pooh, and I lean into my husband and say, "This is gonna be a waste of money."

Then they show up.  Suddenly, we're all six years old and OMG, half the delight is watching the really little kids light up in stunned amazement.  It's Pooh Bear!  And Piglet!  Such dear old friends.  And...  The costumes are blessedly pristine.  You want to hug them, they look so invitingly adorable.

If you could see the ear to ear grin on this sixteen year old cynic's face after this encounter...

And here I am with my favourite pal:

We had expected to spend more time in the Magic Kingdom but some of the Big Kid rides were down for maintenance and it's a lot like the park in Disneyland.  We enjoyed our time here, but felt it was geared more to the little ones and decided to head back to Animal Kingdom Park before hitting Epcot for dinner and Illuminations.

Now, I'm a sucker for parades at the best of times.  We were all a bit worn out so when we heard the parade was coming, we took a vote, picked a spot and sat down then sent my son for ice cream.  We happened on a place with a great view of the Tree Of Life, which is an amazing structure when you take time to study it the way we did while waiting for the parade.  Here's one shot of a portion of the trunk:

And finally, along came the parade, for which I had fairly low expectations.  I guess I thought Mickey would be dancing on some kind of float while "It's A Small World" sent you into convulsions.  I don't know what I expected, but as my daughter pointed out to me, "Disney does not do things half-way."  It was a spectacle of puppetry the likes of which I have not seen.  Here's a stellar shot she took of Rafiki, from the Lion King.  

And the music was upbeat and awesome.  Of all the parks, Animal Kingdom was hands-down our favourite.

Off Topic, But I Couldn't Resist

Or
Isn't He Cute?

I know I'm supposed to be offering up details of our trip to Disney World, but as I was going through the photos, I found one of my nephew that I can actually post on my blog.  Further to preserving the magic, it doesn't show his face, but OMG, isn't he cute?

This is when he first learned to sit which was only a few weeks back.  Now he's crawling and pulling to stand and my sister is Freaking Out.  This boy is gonna be running and she is gonna be exhausted.

But he is soooo cute.
Makes you think of Dr. Seuss books, doesn't it?

Preserving the Magic

Or
What You Won't See

One of the phrases that became a running joke during our trip was, "That's Not Disney!"  Eg. Bat Junk.  I have some truly awesome photos of the giant bats, but they're somewhat pornographic.  No need to put that up here.  This is family programming, people.

The other was "Preserving the Magic."  We first heard it on our Hotel Safari.  The weather was predicted to go down to zero overnight so the keepers had to put the giraffes in the barn.  That meant we wouldn't see them on the Savannah during the evening safari that we had booked for an obscene price and a unique, up-close experience.

Dani to booking agent: "Is it worth the price?"
Booking agent: "Are you ever going to Africa, Dani?"
Dani (thinking I am such a sucker):   "No.  Okay.  Here's my Credit Card Number."

So we're on the truck and they're telling us the giraffes are not out and we're all getting frowny faces because it is cold and we've paid real money and then the guide says, "But we are going to take you into the barns to see them.  This is not something Disney does.  They like to preserve the magic, but in special cases like this [read: when you've paid real money] we allow it.  But you can't take a camera in there."

They then unloaded us into a barn and warned us not to spook the animals and we all walked in and had seventy foot giraffes loom over us and lean down to eat out of the trays that were right in front of our faces,  human eye to huge eye, with only a chain link fence between us.  It was pretty awesome.

Not that you'll believe me, because we weren't allowed to take photos.  Which brings me to my own brand of 'Preserving the Magic.'  It is becoming more and more difficult to maintain privacy on the internet, but I do try to preserve my husband's and kids'.

Note: my daughter doesn't necessarily afford us the same courtesy.  She has already posted some of our photos to Facebook, but this is different and so I won't be showing any photos of any faces but my own.

Here is the view from our balcony showing that I was not the only one to enjoy it.  Hubby and son did too.

 
Point of Interest: You can't really see it, but below them is a fenced in area that we asked about during the safari.  The guide explained that when the built the first lodge, they put all the fire exits into the savannah--where the animals are.  Duh.  So they had to build a 'boma' to keep the humans and animals separate.  They fixed that when they built the second lodge, Kidani village.

Note: we walked over to Kidani and even though it's a bit brighter and newer, we were happy with our choice at the main lodge.

We did a lot of walking on this trip.  My daughter brought a step counter and by the end, we calculated that we had walked approx 45 km on our week long vacation.  We are SO HAPPY we waited until they were teenagers before taking this vacation.  I saw people dragging little ones, pushing strollers....  Oh the work!

And they were fine with us taking a 'down day' to visit Downtown Disney which turned into a tour of several resort areas outside actual pay-to-get-in parks.  We took a stroll around the boardwalk which I assume replicates or, um, evokes (?) Atlantic city and/or the eastern beach culture?  Whatever it was, we were enthralled with the attention to detail and the way we were transported from Africa to Murtle Beach in a thirty minute shuttle bus ride.  Here's my husband taking in the fake Eastern seaboard:

My daughter and I were quite taken with this area and decided it was one we would love to stay in if we came back.  And I'm really glad we took a day to check out other hotels and restaurants.  Our lunch at Olivia's cafe was one of our favourites and it was just a nice, relaxing day all around.  Like a real vacation, despite it being our coldest day there.

Here we are deciding where to go next.  My husband kept his hood up much of the day, leading the kids to refer to him as The Dementor.

We ended the day by checking out the monorail, the Polynesian, where we took this photo of pure Disney Magic, and finally snuck up to the top floor of the Grand Floridian to watch the sunset.

Hippo Ballet

Or
Magic really does happen there!

For Christmas, we gave the kids (and ourselves!) a trip to Disney World in Florida.  We rather brilliantly booked it for their 'value season' in mid-February.  I'm not being facetious.  We are genuinely happy with our choice.  We skipped the waterparks and were a little shivery the day the temperature refused to climb above 12 degrees celsius, but for the most part the weather was a wonderful step-up from the snow and freezing temps we left at home.

Note for others debating a trip this time of year: you'll have shorter wait lines and longer patience when you are not overheated.

We also got a deal on rooms at Animal Kingdom Lodge.  After I'd booked it and begun looking at maps of the area, I was a little concerned.  Animal Kingdom is about as far from everything else as you can get.  This turned out to be fine for us because we're basically recluses, our kids were old enough to have patience with longer shuttle rides, and we're all nature lovers at heart.  We loved looking onto the savannah from our room and I loved the sunrises off our balcony--which was less popular with the teenagers who cried "close the curtains!"  We had a stunning full moon rise there one evening too.  Made us feel just like we were in Africa :)

I'll write a few more posts to be published later this week, but wanted to get these photos up because this was one of my peak moments.  Worth the cost of admission--which ain't cheap!

To set the scene...  It is our first day, first park (Animal Kingdom.)  We've already done the Kilamanjaro Safari which is a 'ride' at the park.  A rather pithy driver with an under appreciated sense of humor took us around their savannah.

Note: This is not to be confused with the safari we did later in the week through our hotel's savannahs.  This safari is one that anyone visiting Animal Kingdom Park can do.  We saw giraffes and elephants and hippos and learned that hippos don't actually swim.  They can hold their breath for ages and walk along the bottom of waterways.  For those of you who have never watched the Kratt brothers, hippos are one of the most dangerous animals in Africa.  They are highly territorial.  On our safari, we saw a few pair of hippo nostrils, but were more impressed with the 'bask' of giant, salt-water crocs.  (Yes, the collective nouns is a 'bask' or a 'float.'  I looked it up.)

After that we took a walking trail.  Don't ask me what it's called.  The one where you see the giant bats I think.  There were a couple of walks and everything you see is amazing.  Anyway, we came up to a window into an aquarium and we gave the colourful fish a passing glance, but the moving rock in the background caught our eye.

Look close and play the Jaws theme in your head.

My daughter had already filled our camera, but I had my iPhone so started snapping.

Note: I dragged my laptop all the way to Florida and did not do a lick of writing.  However, the laptop was invaluable when it came to downloading our photos and the hotel had a laptop safe so it was worth the extra weight on my shoulder (considering I had to run twenty gates with it, trying to make our connection on the way home.)

Back to the hippo.  I was in awe.  I mean, these are killer animals.  Don't believe me?  Look at the expression in these eyes.  Die.

They're probably still angry about Fantasia.  I mean, they're working their reputation as a Bad Ass for centuries then Disney outs them as frigging ballet artists.  To give Walt his due, these animals are crazy graceful underwater.  As this behemoth swept past, I thought I was watching a performance of the Sugar Plum Fairies.  And really, doesn't he/she look secretly happy while taking an en pointe stance here?

It was a fairly magical moment.  More on our adventures in the next few days.

Wayne's Weather Window

I'm playing catch-up on a lot of fronts today.  It feels good.  One thing I wanted to do was send a photo to Wayne's Weather Window.  My daughter took these when we were on our way to Grandma's house for Christmas Eve.  Unfortunately, Wayne is not accepting photos at this time.

Since I will very likely not set aside another time to send to Wayne, I will post these here.  This works out better anyway as I couldn't decide which of the two dozen photos I liked the best.  I'll let you guess where these were taken:

iWife

Or
A side-by-side comparison for the discerning husband

We were joking in Australia that my brother-in-law was getting the most up-to-date version by marrying my baby sister.  I'd be the Classic, my middle sister is the 2.0 and baby is the Latest Release.  For example, when 2.0 signed the wrong witness line on the Marriage Certificate (yes, I'm putting it out there for the entire Globe to enjoy) 2.0's husband said, "I thought they'd fixed that glitch in this version."  Nope, part of the charm in all three models is our ability to nod our heads with understanding then completely screw up really important stuff.  (See my post on Ssssnakes.)

Relating this amusing little tale to my daughter, we came up with a number of improvements by the manufacturers (my parents) as they released each model into the world:

2.0, for instance, has a better memory (birthdays in particular), is faster, has a bolder design, better social networking capabilities (she's on Facebook) and is generally more technically advanced.  (She was the one who always had to set the time on the VCR.  My parents still call her to walk them through how to use iTunes--and set the time on the microwave.)

The Latest Version of course has massive bug fixes (she's learned to live with Huntsmans).  It's definitely a smaller (yes, I'm still claiming you're shorter than me) more user-friendly design.  She's without attachments--pretty much in The Cloud due to the fact that all her worldly possessions were lost, stolen, or otherwise disposed of on her way to Australia.  This one takes socializing to a whole new level.  If you want FaceTime, this is the one for you.

Let's not completely dismiss the original, though.  Yes she tends to be hardwired into place and often crashes while multi-tasking, but she was innovative for her time and still has room for growth.  No, her features aren't as polished and fresh as later models, but she's been a workhorse despite hard use by children.  A romantic would call her a Classic.

I just need one man to buy that line.  Since he's the kind of guy who's willing to hang onto something old and do the maintenance to keep it running, I think I have a chance.

Oh Brother

Or,
The Wedding Of The Century

I couldn't do this series of posts on my trip to Oz without giving the wedding itself a bit of press.  My sister and (new) brother-in-law had their hands full this year.  They spent a month here last Christmas and returned to Brisbane in the middle of the huge floods that devastated so much of the area.  They were fortunate to be on higher ground and only adversely affected second-hand by things like a lack of groceries in the stores.

On the silver lining side, my brother-in-law is a builder.  Guess what?  Lots of people needed their homes repaired, renovated and rebuilt.  His phone began ringing as soon as he turned it on after landing and he's been extremely busy since.  Meanwhile, they also bought a house and began to renovate it for themselves.  Then my sister had the baby early due to complications.

On our side of the ocean, over Christmas, we had concluded that since my middle sister and her husband would be in NZ for the World Cup in October, it made sense for everyone to converge in Oz for a wedding around that time.  My parents were intending to visit about then anyway and I was just planning to get my hands on that baby soon as he was born, but I did as I was told and waited to get on a plane until late September.

My baby sister really didn't need to be planning a wedding and a family reunion in the middle of the rest of her Very Big Year, but she did.  And it was beautiful.  Thunder rolled in overnight, waking all of us and making us groan that the outdoor wedding would have to be moved inside, but when we got up in the morning, the skies had cleared.  The sun came out, the birds sang, and no one fought over the shower.  The biggest drama was that baby didn't really enjoy his tuxedo as much as the rest of us did, but what man does?  We stripped him down pretty quick and when he fell asleep took hilarious photos of him looking like a best man who'd passed out after an all-nighter with his bowtie askew, his jacket as a blanket and his Sophie Giraffe tucked in beside him.  (Look it up - best gift for baby showers ever.)

I don't have permission to post their photos to the internet, but you can't see their faces in this one.  Check out the view where they got married.  Stunning, isn't it?

Note that you don't really dress up in lace, tulle, hoop skirt and veil when it's already thirty degrees and humid at ten in the morning.  You keep it simple and--this note applies for prospective brides worldwide--when the photographer asks the groom to pick you up and spin you, give some thought first to your tolerance for being dizzy.  Baby sister was already having problems walking in those Cinderella shoes on the wet grass.  After this performance, she might as well have been knee-walking drunk.  Definitely a good laugh for the rest of us, but not always the look a bride is going for.

I'll close with the biggest, warmest Welcome To The Family hug for my brother-in-law.  I was a tiny bit mad at him for charming my sister into abandoning Canada for the opposite side of the globe, but what girl has a chance against that accent?  And he's remarkably tolerant of her need for sister time--a stellar quality in any man as far as I'm concerned.  He's even gone to the trouble of raising up the new house so he can put a relo-suite in the lower floor!  (To be fair, his family visits from out of town too so I suppose it's not just for me, but it's a very generous thing to do regardless.)

And lets not forget, he's helped bring into the world a handsome new boy who is not only The Cutest Baby In The Southern Hemisphere, but my nephew.  I love him right there for that one!

Now if he could only teach me to say, "G'day Mate" so I don't sound like such a Stupid Tourist....