Tag: Walt Disney World

Wishing Disney Wednesday – Magic Kingdom Christmas decorations – Dec 25th, 2013

This pic was taken during our January 2010 family trip to Disney World at Magic Kingdom.  We were down for 3 weeks that January staying in a townhouse off-site and I did the Goofy Challenge during that trip.

It was bloody cold there that year.  It snowed at the starting line for the half marathon that year… Most of the time Disney has the Christmas decorations down prior to when we get there for the marathon weekend but they were up this year.  With it being so cold it was kind of surreal to be in Orlando with jackets and Christmas decorations everywhere.

Cold aside, Disney holiday decorations are awesome – including how they light up Cinderella’s castle.

I could stare at the castle in this pic for hours.  Peaceful.

Magic Kingdom Christmas decorations
Magic Kingdom Christmas decorations

Magic Memory Monday – Going for a (Surrey) bike ride – Dec 16, 2013

Sitting here typing this while watching the MST3K presentation of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians – awesome stuff.  A fun and happy show for a fun and happy picture!

The photo / memory for today is from our list trip to Disney World.  We stayed at the Beach Club and while we were there we decided we were finally going to get around to renting one of the Surrey bikes which you can do at a few places at Disney World.  I can’t remember all the spots but definitely at Port Orleans Riverside and the Boardwalk Inn.  In this case we wandered over to the Boardwalk Inn Resort and renting from there.

 

We got one of the ones with 2 adult seats and 2 kid seats out front.  We did a couple trips around the Boardwalk area just enjoying the exercise and fresh air in a quiet and picturesque setting.  Definitely a good memory and well worth the cost of the half hour rental!  Highly recommended.

Heather and Ted riding a Surrey bike at the Boardwalk Inn
Heather and Ted riding a Surrey bike at the Boardwalk Inn

Thinking Disney Thursday – Why can’t you wear a Minnie Mouse dress on a Star Wars Speeder Bike? Don’t put limits on imagination – December 12th, 2013

Thinking Disney Thursday today comes from our family trip to Disney World in January/February 2012.  We stayed at the Beach Club Resort and really enjoyed being able to walk to Epcot and Hollywood Studios from the hotel.  Today’s pic was taken at Hollywood Studios just outside Star Tours.

Our daughter spent a fair bit of time that trip in her Minnie Mouse dress which created some interesting pictures that you wouldn’t get anywhere else – such as someone sitting on a Star Wars speeder bike while wearing a Minnie Mouse dress?

Now, granted this picture was taken before Disney purchased Lucas Film and the rights to Star Wars so you will probably start to see more things like this as time goes on but before that you really wouldn’t see places where franchises mixed.  Hollywood Studios is a special place where you can see Disney, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Muppets, etc – most places you see one franchise.  The mixing of franchises is pretty cool and allows for some cool mashups and images.

Basically – Why can’t you wear a Minnie Mouse dress on a speeder bike?  Frankly from a child’s perspective it makes perfect sense and they will mix and match franchises all the time when they are playing – it is only as adults that we feel the need to keep them compartmentalized and that limits our imagination.

That is my Thinking Disney Thursday thought for today – don’t place limits on imagination.

K on speeder bike at Hollywood Studios wearing Minnie Mouse dress

Magic Memory Monday – Joy – Dec 9th, 2013

Today’s Magic Memory Monday post comes from our 2009 trip to Disney World.  It was our first trip as a family of 4 with our daughter having been born just a few months before.  We stayed at Port Orleans French Quarter and absolutely loved the place.  It provided great convenience with the ability to hop a boat down to Downtown Disney, a very good on-site pool, great places to walk around and an awesome little park for our son to play when my wife and daughter needed to rest.

The trip was in late February so by this point we had been trapped inside for a few months already by a wonderful Winnipeg winter and T was just overjoyed to be able to get out and run around like a maniac.  I was just happy he could do it outside and not in the house.

The picture is a capture I got as he hopped off the playground slide and ran full tilt back to the ladder to give it another go.  You can see just the sheer joy on his face – I can’t look at this picture and not smile.  Wonderful.

T at French Quarter playground
T at French Quarter playground

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

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.

Thinking Disney Thursday – Perseverance and Passion – Oct 31, 2013

Perseverance and Passion – our son T showed quite a bit of it the day this picture was taken.  It was during our first family trip to Disney World – it was before our daughter was born and T was just 17 months old at the time.  It was his first trip and mine too.  We were there for the Disney World Marathon weekend (the wife did the half and I did the full).  We stayed at the Pop Century that trip (coming full circle as my wife and I will be staying there for the 2014 Goofy Challenge – no kids for the weekend!).

One of the mornings we took T to play on the play structure / play area before we headed off to a park.  He decided that morning he was going to climb the slide of the structure and he must have spent 15-20 minutes trying.  To be perfectly honest I can’t remember if he made it to the top or not but what I do remember is his attitude while he was trying.

He never once got upset or gave up.  He would get half way up and then slide back down, then he would get back up and try again.  I must have dozens of photos of him on his morning climb and whenever I look at them I am always impressed with the look on his face.  He is focused and shows no frustration whatsoever.   He looks happy in the challenge.

That is a Disney thing too – happy in the challenge.  Think about what the Imagineers do – creating something new – mixing engineering and artistry.  Or Walt himself – the things accomplished by that man don’t happen without perseverance and passion.

It is also a running thing – perseverance and passion.  You can’t do a marathon without a bit of both.

My son (and Disney) continues to teach me things.

T and his mountain at Pop Century
T and his mountain at Pop Century

Thinking Disney Thursday – with a little help you can take on anything – October 17, 2013

This one comes from our last family trip to Disney World – Hollywood Studios specifically.  The Jedi Training Academy – once our son heard about it we knew we were going to have to do it.  Over the course of the 9 day trip we tried twice and on the second go we got him in and while we were at it we signed up our daughter who had just turned 4 a couple months previously.

She was excited at first and then got scared once she realized she was going to have to fight Darth Vader and started saying she didn’t want to do it.  We knew she would be disappointed if she didn’t do it in the end so we cajoled her (and think a bribe was involved too) to follow through with it.

She definitely had fun doing it (as did our son of course) even though she was maybe a bit young and had a few issues doing exactly what she was told – she tried but got a little overwhelmed.  The Disney Cast Member who was teaching the Padawans that day was very good and when it came to be her turn he really helped her out and kept chuckling through the whole thing.  In the end I think her total was 1 hit on the Jedi Master and 2 on Darth (she was swinging pretty wild) but everyone had a good time.

But I guess the big thing I took out of this was that she was a bit scared and intimidated by Darth but with the help of someone who genuinely wanted to be there and help out she was able to fight past being scared and enjoy herself.  With a little help – you can take on anything.

The pic was near the end of the encounter – she has already gotten Darth a couple times at this point and if you look closely I think you can see that Darth looks a bit frightened.

K versus Darth Vader - Hollywood Studios - Jedi Training Academy
K versus Darth Vader – Hollywood Studios – Jedi Training Academy

Thinking Disney Thursday – stop and smell the flowers – October 10, 2013

Going to try something new here – in addition to the Magic Memory Monday posts I have been trying on this BigGoofyRunner.com subsite I am going to add Thinking Disney Thursdays – these will be picture posts too but while Magic Memory Monday posts will be more about specific memories or feelings the Thinking Disney Thursdays will be more about certain ideas or thoughts about life that you get from trips to Disney World / Walt Disney World.

This picture comes from our last family trip to Disney World in Jan/Feb 2013 – on our first day going to park this trip we wandered the 5 minutes from the Beach Club to Epcot.  It was still early in the day and the World Showcase Portion of the park was not open yet so there weren’t many people around.  This allowed us to capture this pic of our daughter stopping to smell the flowers in a big flower garden.  There were rides we wanted to get to and things we were excited to get done our first real day at Disney and she decided that could all wait.  There were flowers to be smelled and that is what she was going to do!

Awesome message really – the flowers are great and they add to the overall atmosphere there but it is so easy to just let them slip into the background – this picture reminds how important the details can be sometimes and how much enjoyment you can get from the little things.

Epcot flower gardens - stop and smell the flowers
Epcot flower gardens – stop and smell the flowers

Magic Memory Monday – October 14th, 2013

Disney’s Beach Club Resort at Walt Disney World – the folks there have been very good to us.  We had stayed at the Yacht Club once as the second half of a split vacation – spent 4 nights at Caribbean Beach and 5 nights at Yacht Club.  We ended up picking the Beach Club for our next family vacation after that (just because it was closer to the quick serve meal locations which is important with the kids).  That trip we ended up getting a lovely surprise of a bump up to Club Level which was awesome and helped make the trip.

That helped us decide to go back to the Beach Club Resort again on our next family trip in Jan/Feb 2013.  My wife and I had stayed at the Boardwalk Inn for the Disney World Marathon weekend earlier in January and with the cost of that trip there was no way we could splurge on Club Level but if we really scrimped we could do Beach Club with the family (plus a good deal as Annual Passholders).  So we told the kids that we weren’t going to be able to use the Club Level snack room / lounge (the Stone Harbour Club) but we would have the pool and be super close to Epcot.  They were very happy that we were going to be able to use the big pool at Storm Along Bay and weren’t concerned about the snack room.

When we arrived though we were escorted up to the Club Level for check in – we had apparently been upgraded up to Club Level again!  We were extremely surprised and very grateful as we knew the snack room would actually let us save some money on breakfasts and the ambience on the Club Level is just fantastic.  We were told our room was on the 2nd level (which was a surprise as the Club Level is on the 5th floor but we figured we just given a normal room and access to the Club Level – we were fine with that) so we grabbed the kids and wandered over.  After walking what seemed like miles we got to our room – very far from the snack room but extremely close to the walk way to Epcot – we were happy with the trade off.

We walked into the room and were stunned to find that we had actually been upgraded to a 2 bedroom suite – there was a room with 2 queen beds for the kids, a living room and wet bar area and a separate bathroom for the “master” king bedroom.  The kids’ room had views of the quiet pool as did a balcony off of the living room and although the king bedroom did not have a balcony it had many windows facing south to catch the sun and provide a view of the Boardwalk area.  It was a fantastic view both during the day and at night.  You can see here for a complete trip report for that trip and more pictures for the room specifically here and here.

This picture reminds me of how great the room felt and how magical Disney made the trip this time – we had such a good time being able to walk to Epcot in under 5 minutes and it is hard to put a dollar value on how much more time we had in the parks just from that.

Beach Club 2 bedroom suite view to Boardwalk
Beach Club 2 bedroom suite view to Boardwalk
Beach Club 2 bedroom suite view of path to Epcot
Beach Club 2 bedroom suite view of path to Epcot