Disney Weekend

My family recently spent a wonderful weekend at Disneyworld in Orlando. My sister and brother-in-law received a few days at a Disney-area resort as a Christmas gift and were kind enough to invite my parents and me to join them. There are pictures here. We have a group photo taken by the Disney people, but it's kind of hard to access.

We spent Saturday at the Magic Kingdom. Pretty standard fare there - character greetings, "It's a Small World", "Pirates of the Caribbean," "Space Mountain" and "The Haunted Mansion" (the last two I snuck off and rode on my own). The best ride experience was when all of us (minus my dad) squished into a single Teacup - what a blast! My niece and nephew were extremely well behaved and lasted the whole day. We had a "character dinner" with the Pooh characters and then everyone else went back to the hotel and I went to Epcott to watch the fireworks show (I was determined to squeeze every minute of pleasure from my tickets). As always, I was extremely impressed by the great customer service and cleanliness at Disney. And they do a really good job with managing the wait times. Rides explicitly state the expected wait time AND some rides have the FastPass option, where you stop by at say 2pm and get a ticket that gives you near-immediate boarding for a later time (say 5-6pm).

On Sunday we visited the Animal Kingdom (and we wore matching shirts). I had never been there and given my love of zoos, I was very excited about it. However, I had a hard time meshing the zoo/theme park aspect. In a zoo, you stroll around and look at all of the exhibits. At a theme park, I like to sprint from ride to ride. So it was hard to get used to the dual aspects. But still, it was very nice. They had a great "African Safari" ride. Everyone loaded into a big truck and the story was framed as if we were going on two-week safari on an African game reserve. We drove through some open-air exhibit (including giraffes, okapi, elephants, ostrich, wildebeest, oryx, lion) and this story unfolded of the game wardens finding some poachers and an orphaned (animatronic) baby elephant. At some point we even went over a "rickety" bridge that started to tilt precariously. It was cute how they had a story to keep the kids interested AND see some great animals up close. They also had a walk-through African section with gorillas and gerenucks. Very cool. During our day at the Animal Kingdom we also saw two live shows. Like the movies, The Lion King show was AWESOME and Finding Nemo was just OK. The final cool experience at the Animal Kingdom was their "Expedition Everest" roller coaster. Again, Disney was genius by having a "single rider" line, so I was on within 25 minutes. And it was a really fun! That night we headed back to the Magic Kingdom to see their Spectromagic parade. Then, sadly, it was time for me to head home while the rest of the family stayed for a few more days.

Back in Gainesville, the weather has been pretty much ideal. For the past week we've had clear blue skies with puffy white clouds and a constant light breeze. It's been so lovely that I've been walking to and from work (and to and from home for lunch) nearly every day. The walking saves gas AND earns me some "activity points" so that I can have more dessert! I keep saying that calories are my new alternative fuel, LOL. I'm sure this great weather won't last much longer, so I'm trying to enjoy it. Is anyone else doing anything special to enjoy Spring?