Has it been that long?

I was on a roll this fall with keeping this up to date, but it looks like the Holidays in December took it's toll.  I'll add something on here this weekend, but in the meantime, the Cincinnati Horsehoe Casino opens this Monday!  Here's what it looks like from my office!

A nice day for a walk in the park

We went to Woodland Mound today for a nice little hike in the park.  We took the Praire Loop trail, which is only 0.8 miles long, but we wandered a bit just to enjoy the weather.

Second Day in Disney - The Animal Kingdom!

After the character breakfast, we went back to the hotel for a bit.  Just to relax, and to figure out what to do next.  We thought it would be a good day to see the Animal Kingdom.  So, we hopped a bus from the hotel, and went on over!  We were walking in, when Sydney saw the above sign, and said, "Ummm, Dad, why's there a dragon on the sign?  They have all real animals, except that one?"  I told her I didn't know, but she wanted a picture of it.

Animal Kingdom's Christmas Tree

We then wandered in, and started looking around at the park.  She saw the Tree of Life almost immediately, and she knew that was the centerpiece of the park.  We noticed that a showing of "A Bug's Life Adventure" was starting, so we filed away in line.  This line seemed to go on forever, and it wound around and through the roots of the great tree, until we were under it.  And we were in an ant hill, and I felt quite claustrophobic. Luckily it was only a ten minute wait till the show started.  The show consisted of poofs of air being blown at us, and fog, and lot's of spiders dropping from the ceiling.  Sydney wasn't not amused.

We then made our way back to the Asia exhibit, to see the tigers.  We spent a short time looking at a couple of monkey exhibits, and then wandered back into the habitat.  

First thing in the exhibit were giant fruit bats.  They were very active, and HUGE!  I think I got a couple good pictures of them.  Then, moving on we came to the Tigers.  They were very active for a change, and were walking around quite a bit, and cleaning themselves.  I also spotted a gentleman getting a picture of flat stanley at the exhibit, too!

We then stopped for lunch.  Syd had some chicken tenders, and I had a mandarin chicken salad.  Quite good, actually!  It was our Quick service meal of the day.  We then wandered on over to the Africa side of the park, and got in line for the last safari of the day!  We didn't wait in line all that long, it moved fairly quickly.  We were both excited and Sydney was hoping to see an Okampi.  Well, it was the first animal we saw!  

She was a little scared when the bridge started to collapse, but it was all in good fun.  The ride ended shortly there after, and we headed back to the entrance of the park.

On our way, we saw this Saddlebeak stork, which was being fed by a keeper.  We watched it for a couple minutes, when this guy flew up into the tree above the stork!

Just a normal Red-Tailed Hawk, but this guy had a purpose in mind.  He knew it was feeding time, and he waited until the stork turned it's back, and then he snatched the food from the stork.  The stork freaked out a little bit, but the keeper gave him more food.  It's not the first time the hawk had done that, and they were trying to catch him to re-locate him.

We saw a bunch of birds all roosting as we made our way out.

Afterwards, we took the bus back to Epcot, and wandered around for a while.  We had something to eat, and saw the firework show.  It's a big production with lots of fire effects, and this huge globe in the middle of Epcot's lake.

Epcot's Christmas Tree is pretty at night, too!

Second Day in Disney - The Character Breakfast

So, the first day in Disney we saw the princesses at the Royal Luncheon at Epcot.  I had already made reservations for the Character Breakfast at the Grand Floridian, so that's where we started our day.  The line for the bus was extremely long at our resort, so we grabbed a taxi, and had them take us straight to the Grand Floridian.  The Grand Floridian is one of Disney's luxurious resorts, and it really shows.  It's a dramatic looking resort, very large in scale.

When we walked into the lobby, we were greeted by their newly put up Christmas tree, and large Gingerbread house!

The Gingerbread house

Since we took the taxi, we had some time to kill.  We walked through a couple of gift shops, and browsed all around the lobby.  Syd found a pin that she really wanted in the gift shop, so I bought it for her. I wasn't really sure how many pins we'd see on a day to day basis, and they go for about $7.95 at the low end.

Our reservation time came, and I went to the restaurant.  They had us stand in line for a picture first, and then we were seated for breakfast.  It was an all buffet style breakfast, with a kids size bar, and an adult size bar. As we walked in, Sydney saw Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, and the Mad Hatter.  She immediately got "grumpy" and said that she didn't want anyone's autograph here.  We sat at the table for a couple minutes, and I was just about to stand up and say "If this is your attitude, we're leaving!" when Alice in Wonderland stopped by.  

She immediately engaged Syd in a conversation.  She asked about her autograph book, and if she could sign it.  Syd immediately warmed up, and let her sign the book AND got a picture with her.  You can see that she's almost as tall as Alice is.  

The waitress came over and took our order, and gave us some Pomegranate and Orange juice, and me some coffee.  We walked up to the buffet, and I helped Syd get a plate of bacon and Mickey Waffle's.  I got her back to the table, while I went up to stand in line for the omelet station.  When I came back, Syd told me that I'd missed Mary Poppins, but she'd gotten her autograph.  She also said that she would stop back by for a picture.  True to Ms. Poppins' word, she stopped by after a couple minutes, and got a quick picture with Syd.

Just after Mary stopped by, The Mad Hatter tried to stop by, and Sydney said, "No, keep walking..." He stopped and chatted for a second, but didn't seem at all put off that Sydney didn't want his autograph or picture.  Tigger stopped by, too, but he didn't give us any warning, he just kissed her on the top of her head, and rubbed his paw on my head.

A short time later, the photographer stopped by to see if I wanted a copy of our photo.  I said that of course I did, and she charged me $30.  I did not realize the photo was not included.  Apparently the picture with the princesses is included from the day before, but not in this case.  Ah, well, you live and learn.  And when you stay in Disney, you learn to spend money.

Ooops, before I forget, Disney's electric parade

While leaving the Magic Kingdom, we did see a bit of Disney's Electrical Parade.  It looked beautiful, but we didn't stay to see the whole thing.

Our incredible luck, the Princess Luncheon in Norway

I forgot to mention earlier, but when we did the Perry the Platypus adventure to Mexico, we did not stop there for lunch.  We went over to the Perry station between Mexico and Norway, and turned in the phone.  I had looked at the Mexico's pavilion lunch menu, and it didn't look like Syd would like anything.  I knew there must be a restaurant, or quick service restaurant in Norway, so we walked over and started talking to a hostess.  She wasn't really clear, but she mentioned that their sit down restaurant featured traditional Swedish food, and was kinda pricey.  I figured we'd treat this as our sit down dinner for the day, and I saw something I could eat, so I figured why not.

We walked in, and they had us wait behind another family.  The family was getting their picture taken with Belle from Beauty and the Beast.  I thought that was weird, and I saw other princesses walking through another section of the dining hall.  I thought it was a princess lunch, but only in that section.  After a minute, Syd stepped up and got her picture taken with Belle, too.

Sydney and Belle

I still hadn't put it together, but when the waitress took our order, she said that we should hit the buffet quickly, since the princesses would be in our room soon!  I asked Syd if she was okay with this, and she was excited!  Unfortunately this was before I knew about the autograph books, and so we didn't have one with us.  Shortly Aurora stopped by.

She was very nice, and chatted with Syd for a couple minutes.  I could tell Syd was loving every minute of it!

Next was Cinderella!  Syd again was happy to pose!

Snow white was next.  I had told Sydney before she got there that she should ask her if she knew a place we could find any apples!  Syd didn't want to remind her of any bad memories.  Last but not least was the little mermaid.

She was very cute, and animated, and chatty.  She asked about a couple different things that escape me now, but it was all in character.

The only downside was that Sydney's meal, a hot dog and corn, came out grilled.  We asked if we could get it steamed, and the waitress brought another right out!  That was awesome!

Our first day in the Magic Kingdom

We started off leaving at 7:30am, and heading to the Magic Kingdom. We got off the bus, walked into the town square, and I thought I might get a good picture at the train platform.

We caught the train to begin with, and road around the park to fantasy land.  We then rode the Teacups, and we both had a blast.  

We wandered a bit, and ended up in front of Cinderella's castle.  She saw a horse drawn carriage, and asked if we could ride it.  So, we did, back to the front of the park.  Then we walked back a bit to the bakery, and got a cinnamon roll, milk, blueberry bisquit and chocolate milk.  Then wandered up to the town hall and got buttons, and the Collectible card game at the firehouse next door.  I thought we’d have to prove it was our first time there, but the buttons were just free to give away.

Syd wanted to walk over to Adventureland, so we did, and on our way to Aladdin's Magic Carpet Ride, we saw the classic "Swiss Family Treehouse".  I had fond memories of it, she thought it looked neat, and so we went in!

Afterwards, we walked down a bit towards our next goal, and happened to walk into a tour group getting into the fast-pass lane of the Jungle Cruise.  Not knowing any better, we followed them in, and walked onto the ride.

Syd and I on the Jungle Cruise!

It was just as campy, and quirky and old fashioned as I remembered it, and Syd loved the corny jokes.  So, we had a great time riding it.  It seemed much shorter than I remembered it.

We finally made it to Aladdin's Magic Carpet Ride, and hopped on!  I admit, I was nervous at first.  I don't handle fast rides well, and I didn't want to disappoint Syd by not riding ANY rides with her, so I let go of any stress, and just tried to enjoy myself.  I succeeded, and we had a great time!

Syd trying to pull the sword free...

From that ride, we took a brief break in the Tiki Room, and enjoyed the show.  Then we wandered into past the Haunted Mansion and towards Fantasyland.  We would've gone into the mansion then, but the ride was temporarily shut down.  We jumped onto the carousel, and Syd and I pretended to race our horses.  While we rode, we noticed a child pulling the sword out of the stone...and the sword came free!  So, Syd went to try her luck.  Not today, apparently.

We then decided to take a break.  I suggested that we ride the monorail around to Epcot, and take our bus back to our hotel from there.  She really liked the monorail, and it was nice and relaxing.  We did have to switch trains once, but we got to Epcot, and as usual the monorail runs a loop around the park before stopping.  Syd saw the entrance to the Living Seas, and asked if we could go see Nemo.  I thought it would be a short trip from the front gate, so why not.

Remember how we were going to take a break at the hotel?  Yep, we forgot about that.  After going through the Nemo ride, we went into the aquarium.

She at first saw the manatee's, and ran up to them!  She had done a report on them, last year.  We then heard about a dolphin show happening, and ran to catch it, too.  This was her first time seeing dolphin's perform, and she was very excited!  They put on a great show, and we wandered around the aquarium.  A conversation with Crush was starting in 15 minutes, so we went to wait and take in the show.  The show was okay, but Syd didn't get picked, and the show didn't last very long.

I was getting hungry at that point, and I know she hadn't eaten, so we headed out of the Living Seas.  It was about 3:30 at that point.  We went to head towards the Mexico pavilion since I remembered a really good meal there at my last trip to Epcot.  On the way, we passed a "Phineas and Ferb: Help Perry with a Mission" Booth.  I signed Syd up as Agent S, and she got her own smartphone.  The mission was to head to Mexico (Lucky coincidence!) and defeat Doofenschmirtz.  

Now, with some sarcasim intended, handing a bunch of kids smartphones to complete an informational scavenger hunt in the park creates quite a crowd of kids, focused on their phones.  Very similar to adults on a busy street.  But think much busier park, many more kids, AND adults all trying to use their cellphones, too...chaos.  But, the Scavenger hunt was informative, and fun, so it really got the kids attention.

We finished up the Mexico mission, and then got a "Quick Service" meal at the San Angelo Cantina.  And that's where I fell in love.  With Queso Empanada's!  They were very delicious, and I couldn't get enough of them.  Syd, however, just made do with a popsicle and some tortilla chips.  

We then made our way to the buses in front of the park.  We caught our bus to the hotel, and retired for...a couple of hours.  Magic Hours were in effect at the Magic Kingdom, and they were open till midnight, no, 3am, and there was a special firework's show at 10pm.  So, we hung out at the hotel till 8:30pm and headed back to the Magic Kingdom.

Cinderella's Castle at night!

Unfortunately, that was a bad idea.  The streets were blocked off, and packed, as a parade was going to happen in a couple of hours, and so a lot of people had lined up early.  We made our way back around to the back of Adventureland, and I saw that there was no-wait on the Haunted Mansion.  We walked back to it, and Sydney was understandably frightened.  I described the entire thing in detail to her to try to calm her.  There was a short line, though, and a couple of kids younger than Syd were in it.  We talked to them, one had been through it before, and one hadn't, and they both said that they heard it was funny, not scary, and were looking forward to going on it.

So, we stepped into the pre-ride, "Expanding room", and they began the intro.  The scary voice came on, the paintings all elongated as I had described to Syd.  She held my hand, but watched the paintings...and when the light's blacked out at the end of it, she screamed, and started crying and wouldn't move.

A couple of mothers came over and explained to her that it wasn't scary, that the worst was over, and she shouldn't be crying.  The cast members even talked to her (in scary makeup) but said that it wasn't scary, and that it was like Scooby Doo, but that wouldn't dissuade her.  We went out the back way, which was much scarier, and made it into Fantasyland.

Where she threw a fit because she thought I was mad at her, and ran away from me.  She wouldn't let me get close to her to talk, so she stayed 10 feet away from me, and I away from her while she pouted. It was about 9:30, when I finally told her that I was going to take the train to the front of the park, and head back to the hotel.  We walked back to the train, only to find it closed.  She was distraught.  We walked back towards the castle, and I got her some popcorn.  She begrudgingly ate it.  After a few minutes, the fireworks went off and were spectacular!

We then rode the Mad Hatter's Teacup ride again, waiting for the crowds to die down.  It was about that time that I found out the park was open till 3am, and was shocked.  They open at 8, so that's an incredibly long time for a park to be open, about 19 hours!   Syd and I wandered through Fantasyland to Tomorrowland, and found a Quick Service restaurant.  We both had a late dinner, but the audio animatronic piano player bugged her.  We wander on through Tomorrowland afterwards, and went to the bus to take us back to the resort.  We got back about midnight.  So we had a very full day.