Tag: Disney World

Wild Wednesday – November 13th, 2013

So today isn’t really a picture of a real wild animal but one day I managed to catch a good clear shot of the tiger built into the big tree at the Animal Kingdom that I wanted to put up.

I see more and more details every time I look at the tree – the awesome part I like about this shot is that the tiger seems to be looking down at the Disney guests.  As I mentioned in a previous Wild Wednesday post I really like the big cats and that may be why this picture speaks to me.

But once it again the whole tree points to the details that Disney puts into things – I am continually impressed.

Tiger in the tree at Animal Kingdom
Tiger in the tree at Animal Kingdom

Magic Memory Monday – Daisy Hugs! – November 18, 2013

I’ve missed a couple posts in the past week as we have had company over and I haven’t been able to get at the site and still do my Goofy Challenge training.  But that should all be sorted now and I can get back to putting up some more posts.

For the Magic Memory today this picture caught my eye as I was reviewing some old pics from our December 2010 family trip to Disney World.  We were wandering out of Epcot to take the monorail to Magic Kingdom when we randomly ran into Stitch and Daisy doing greetings.  A bit of a strange combination but it was good – plus there wasn’t any wait so we were able to come up and visit them really quickly.

Our daughter couldn’t get to Daisy fast enough – basically flew into a hug.  I managed to snag a couple quick pictures and our daughter was just so excited.  She was less than a month over 2 at this point and getting that hug from Daisy was a huge highlight for her.  Any time we went anywhere for the rest of the trip and we saw characters she would ask for “Daisy hugs”.

It is pretty amazing to me how much the Disney characters can touch people (kids and adults) and become such a big part of them.  Our daughter still loves Daisy to this day 3 years later.  Considering what kids could latch on to instead, I’ll take my daughter looking for “Daisy hugs” any day.

K and Daisy Duck in Epcot
K and Daisy Duck in Epcot

Magic Memory Monday (2) – Rapunzel – November 11, 2013

Following in the theme of the post from earlier today of our daughter K’s meeting with Cinderella in Magic Kingdom – this next pic was from a few minutes later when K met with Rapunzel.

The cast member playing Rapunzel really captured the fun of the character from Tangled and spent a lot of time laughing and joking with K.  The laughter and fun seemed very genuine and our daughter certainly had a lot of fun with her.

I don’t know if it was because it was pretty quiet or just what, but K got to spend a lot of time with the princesses that night and she loved every second of it.  She was so happy and excited and this picture seems to capture it.

I love seeing moments like this where the kids can just let go and have fun.  Awesome.

K and Rapunzel in Magic Kingdom
K and Rapunzel in Magic Kingdom

Magic Memory Monday – Cinderella – November 11, 2013

Today’s memory comes from our last family trip to Disney World (in Jan/Feb 2013) – our daughter (K) had a few Disney Princess dresses with her on this trip and it was a bit of an imperative to see as many of the Princesses as possible on the trip.

We got lucky a few times during the trip where the meet and greet area in Magic Kingdom for the Princesses was pretty much a walk up with only a few families in front of us.  Both times we stopped in they had Rapunzel, Aurora and Cinderella (with the order reversed one visit to the next) meeting with folks.

The cast member who was playing Rapunzel both times was awesome, she really captured the energy of the character as portrayed in Tangled.  But today’s memory was of Cinderella.

We were next in line and while we were waiting the PhotoPass photographer had some issues with her equipment and quickly wandered off stage to fix it.  Once Cinderella had finished with the people she was visiting with she noticed the photographer wasn’t there and wandered over to us in line and took our daughter’s hand and walked her over to the greeting area to talk.

Luckily I had our camera out ready to go – even still I almost didn’t get this shot – luckily the Canon T4i I use frequently is a pretty quick camera and good with lower light conditions.

It was a big moment for our daughter and the cast member playing Cinderella really made her day.  It was a pretty cool.

K and Cinderella in Magic Kingdom
K and Cinderella in Magic Kingdom

Thinking Disney Thursday – Which Disney ride is most special to you? – November 7th, 2013

Which Disney ride is most special to you?  I think most Disney fans have a ride that holds a special place in their hearts.  The reason why a particular ride is a person’s favorite is probably a lot different for each person.  But that is kind of one of the special things about Disney, the parks, the rides, the hotels, the atmosphere – even though many thousands of people go through the parks every day, people are still able to find a personal connection somehow that will keep bringing them back or at least give them a good warm and fuzzy when they think about it.

So which ride for us?  Spaceship Earth in Epcot at Disney World.

Our connection goes back to our first trip to Disney World as a family in 2008 – My wife and I were down with our son (who was 17 months at the time and our daughter wasn’t born yet) for Disney World Marathon Weekend and we went to Epcot later one evening and took our son on Spaceship Earth.  I had never been on it and my wife had many years previously so we didn’t know what to expect from our son – would he enjoy it?  would he sit quietly and not disturb the other riders?  The kinds of questions that all parents probably ask themselves.

Our son was fascinated, entranced even.  He watched everything in awe.  It was great to see.  As the cars turned around at the top of the ride to slide backward down the slope he watched the stars and once he couldn’t see them anymore he started to cry.  He cried and repeated “bye, bye stars”.  He was only 17 months and didn’t have a huge number of words yet but he found a way to express how he was feeling.  The ride had a major impact on him – while we were sad he was upset, we were happy that he had made that connection.  The ride is a must do for us for any of our trips now.

Spaceship Earth in Epcot
Spaceship Earth in Epcot

Wild Wednesday – rhino! – November 6th, 2013

Today’s pic comes from the Kilimanjaro Safari ride at Animal Kingdom.  Sometimes the ride can be a bit of bust if the animals aren’t particularly active or hanging out close to the safari trail…but other times you can get the animals very close to the truck and get some awesome shots.

Probably the animals that we have had the most luck getting shots of are the rhinos – almost every time we have been on the ride we have managed to get good shots.

The shot below shows a rhino less than 10 feet from safari truck – pretty awesome.

rhino at Animal Kingdom
rhino at Animal Kingdom

Sometimes you just need to dance – Magic Memory Monday – November 4, 2013

The memory today is actually 3 photos in a series.  During our first family trip to Disney World in January 2008 for the Disney World Marathon we ended up at Hollywood Studios one night while the kid dance party was going on (can’t remember the official name for it).

Our son was only 17 months at the time and really didn’t know many of the Disney characters yet but the music was hopping and he couldn’t get out of the stroller fast enough to get dancing.  He charged up to dance on the edge of the group of kids dancing and just did his thing.  I believe he danced a bit with Goliath the Lion.

Being on the edge of the group though he was the only one who saw Mickey and Minnie coming in from off-stage.  I’m not sure he really knew who they were at the time but he sensed they were something special and charged over to them – luckily I had my camera because even as it was I only managed to get one quick shot of him running toward them.  Not the best photograph but just awesome that it is just T running to them and them reacting to him with really no one else around – brings back some great memories.  A special moment.

After that Mickey and Minnie joined the dancing kids and T got into the mix.  So there is a shot of him dancing with Mickey with Mickey clapping for him and you can tell at least one other parent in the background is watching T and smiling and pointing.  Spreading the joy with dance!

Even with Mickey then turning around to interact with others just got deeper into dancing and you can see the joy and happiness he had just other dancing and grooving to the music.

The only downside is we had to shut things down a bit early as T decided to sit down for a rest in front of the big speakers and since we figured him being able to continue hearing was important we decided to call it a night.  He cried most of the way out of the park at that point – sometimes you just need to dance and he wanted to keep going.

Still a great memory from that first trip – just the joy he had dancing and interacting with the characters was fantastic and it is always nice to remember those moments when there is unconditional happy!

T running toward Mickey and Minnie at Hollywood Studios
T running toward Mickey and Minnie at Hollywood Studios
T dancing with Mickey clapping at Hollywood Studios
T dancing with Mickey clapping at Hollywood Studios
T dancing at Hollywood Studios
T dancing at Hollywood Studios

Disney trips – racing and family – January and February 2014 – Pop for #wdwmarathon weekend and Beach Club in Feb with the kids

So as highlighted on biggoofyrunner.com, my wife and I will be doing a couple only trip to Disney World in January 2014.  We will be participating in the Disney World Marathon weekend (we are both signed up to the Goofy Challenge) and as we will both be running we are not bringing the kids with us.  We decided when we when we booked it we would do that trip as inexpensively as possible while still staying on Disney property.  This led us to booking the Pop Century resort for the 5 nights we will be there – by booking a Disney hotel we are getting the Magical Express which will make it a lot simpler and faster to get to the hotel from the airport (also makes the heading home day a bit less stressful).

When we booked the trip we intended to not buy any tickets and just enjoy non park Disney stuff during this trip as we weren’t bringing the kids.  We are both annual passholders but my ticket expires before we get there and my wife’s expires the 2nd day of our trip.  As we didn’t intend to have a family vacation with the kids to Disney World this winter (due to putting in a pool this past summer) we figured we wouldn’t renew our passes and then on our trip if we couldn’t take not going to a park we would buy a day pass each and just go with that to get our fix.

That was our plan back in September at least.  As time progressed I think we both started feeling guilty about not taking the kids on the Disney World Marathon weekend trip, plus we were both starting to look at Disney stuff as we were getting ourselves pumped for the race trip and frankly I know I wasn’t very good at hiding what I was looking at from the kids.

So long story short we were randomly looking around at flight prices on Expedia and hotel deals on Disney.com and we found some surprising deals that we thought we might be able to deal with financially.  In the end we found flights out of Minneapolis (we will have to drive there from Winnipeg but even with gas, food and hotel rooms for the drive there and back we will save well over $1000).  We have done the drive to Minneapolis before as part of our Winter 2013 family trip to Disney World and the kids did really well – we do have to watch for winter storms coming in but with the timing of the trip we can adjust our driving day going down by a day or 2 and beat the storms.

We are doing the Pop Century as part of the Disney World Marathon trip for my wife and I – we have stayed there before and we found it tight when we were there with just our son – now with 2 kids we are worried about it being too crowded.  Plus the double beds at the Pop are a bit small for me (at 6′ 2″ 218 pounds with wide shoulders I can use a double myself if I am greedy).  So we wanted to bump up to a moderate to get bigger beds and maybe a bit more room – we really were hoping for French Quarter but that didn’t work out with our travel times.  We looked a few of the other moderates online to see what would work and in the end we admitted to ourselves that we have been spoiled our last few trips to Disney World with the family.  We have done our last 2 family trips to Disney World at the Beach Club Resort and we love it there.  A huge part of the draw is the ability to walk right into Epcot and have a short walk to Hollywood Studios (plus the kids love the pool area).

Once we made that admission to ourselves it didn’t take too much to convince ourselves that the club level jump in cost wasn’t too bad considering we know how much we have used the club room (Stone Harbour Club) in the past when we got a bump to club level.  We used it for all breakfasts, snacks, travel cokes and waters and beers for the room – with the discounted room rates this was a cost win bumping to club for the trip.

Yeah…so we went from saying no trip so that we could rebuild our reserves to doing a week club level at the Beach Club…I think we may be very slightly addicted to Disney World.

Wild Wednesday – Wicked Cool Pigeon – Oct 30, 2013

The coloration on this thing is phenomenal.  Saw this bird during one our trips to Animal Kingdom.  It is in the bird house part way through the Maharajah Jungle Trek.

I just love the colors on the bird and I was ecstatic that it decided to perch on a pillar right beside and I was able to grab this pic.

I wish the flying rats here Canada looked that nice.

Colourful pigeon at Animal Kingdom
Colourful pigeon at Animal Kingdom

Wild Wednesday – Big Cat – Oct 30, 2013

Man I love cats – especially big ones.

I am going to try something else new to supplement the Magic Memory Mondays and Thinking Disney Thursdays posts.

In keeping with my alliteration theme I have been trying to decide if I should try a Wild Wednesday or Wishing Wednesday.  Wild would be animal themed photos and posts and Wishing would be pictures and thoughts that get me thinking about going to Disney World.  I really can’t decide which to do so I will start with Wild today and see how things go from there.

So back to the big cats – Disney World has a few places to see big cats – Animal Kingdom has Kilimanjaro Safari comes to mind with the lions and the cheetahs but they always seem pretty shy whenever I have been on the ride.  So the Maharajah Jungle Trek is my place to see the big cats – tigers to be exact.

Now the tigers can be elusive some days too but some days you can get really lucky.  The day I took this picture was one of those days.  One the tigers was wandering around the main fountain and caught it taking a drink and surveying the area.

Love the markings and the quiet strength – just awesome.  You can just tell that bugger can just move it wants to.  Maybe that is one of the reasons I am drawn to the big cats – most long distance runners are gazelles.  Me?  Not so much.  But the tigers remind me that big carnivores can run too and they can sometimes catch the gazelles, if they are smart and strong and keep pushing.

That being said no one is going to mistake my running style for that of a graceful cat either.  Three legged elephant maybe?

Tiger on Maharaja Jungle Trek
Tiger on Maharajah Jungle Trek