This week my family took an amazing vacation in which many dreams actually did come true. We flew down to Florida on Tuesday afternoon and arrived at the condo we were renting just in time for a swim and a 7 o'clock showing of Bedtime Stories in the little theater they had. Here's most of us kids laughing our heads off sometime after the show:
On Wednesday we had dreams coming true right and left as we spent the day at Disney's Magic Kingdom park. The first dream to come true was that since we each either did a day of service, or my mom did it for us, our tickets to Disney World were FREE!
Megan and I did a little tango at the Swiss Family Robinson tree house. Just after tangoing we heard Hannah Montana music blasting through the park and ran to see what it was. Naturally we were hoping that Miley had decided to do a free concert at Disney, but don't worry, it was something much better...
A DANCE PARTY!!! Yes, that's right. We were dancing it up in the streets with some real live Disney characters, Woody in particular.
Best moment of my life? Up to that moment, yes.
Here we are prepping to enter the haunted mansion, which I found to be surprisingly un-scary, since the last time I remember going I think I wet myself.
Splash Mountain. Words cannot express my love for this ride. All I will say is that I think I went on it four times in the course of the day.
We ate delicious Mickey-shaped ice cream while waiting for the parade to come by.
I think Megan and I were more excited by the parade than Emily way. Let's just say we each high fived a mouse from Cinderella. Greg's dreams came true when Belle made eye contact with him and waved...twice.
In the late afternoon some of the fam went back to swim, but not us women, we toughed it out for the full 12 hour day.
We found Don Quixote on It's A Small World.
This rocket ride, probably aimed at toddlers, was surprisingly thrilling and even a bit chilling as the rocket tipped as you went up and it felt like you might fall out.
Again, the love of my life, Splash Mountain.
The rest of the family came back in time for the fireworks show in which a real live Tinkerbell flew out of the castle. In that moment I found my lifelong calling. One day you'll be at Disney World and I will come flying out of the castle.
I figured life couldn't get any better after Wednesday, but that was before I experienced Thursday. On Thursday we went to Discover Cove where my dreams continued to come true. Here we are just after arriving, but before we have been equipped with our snorkeling gear:
Just the normal Discovery Cove experience was enough to blow my mind, but wait, Kate Gosselin was there with her 8 children in tow filming for her TV show. Be sure to watch it as I am probably featured in the episode.
In addition to a snorkeling area with fish and giant manta rays, they had an area where you could pet stingrays or whatever kind of ray they were.
You can see from my face that it is a slightly scarier experience than one might think, at least in my opinion. Every once an a while several of them will approach you at once and they seem very foreboding.
At one o'clock another dream came true. We got to swim with a dolphin! Here I am kissing Coral, my new dolphin friend:
And Here I am giving her a hug. She seems to be loving it.
And here I am riding Rascal, my other dolphin friend. Best moment of my life to this point? Yes.
Megan and I are slowly working down a list of things that Mary-Kate and Ashley have done in their movies. Here we are pictured with their signature facial expressions because we accomplished another of their tasks on this trip: swimming with dolphins.
On Friday we went to Sea world. Here we are with Shamu:
I love killer whales!
This is the leafy sea dragon. One day when I have an aquarium I will get one.
This ride is called the Manta. You ride it hanging stomach down going head first around loops and corkscrews and over water. It's probably the coolest roller coaster I've ever been on.
We ended the trip with a stop at at tacky souvenir shop before hitting up Downtown Disney and catching our flight home.
In summary, if you were wondering if my dreams have ever come true, the answer is yes. But don't worry, I now have several new dreams: become a killer whale/dolphin trainer and be Tinkerbell at the nighttime fireworks show at Disney World.
Next we hit of the Met for the Picasso exhibit, which displayed all of the Picasso pieces owned by the Met for the first time ever. They had paintings from each of the different periods in Picasso's career, but they also had tons of prints, most of which I had never seen before.
After the Picasso exhibit we checked out some of the other sculptures and paintings in the museum.
It was a cold rainy day, so we stayed at the museum until it closed and then went straight to the theater to pick up our tickets for Our Town.
After getting the tickets we had some time to kill, so we went to a nearby cafe and got hot chocolate and sandwiches.
Both my mom and I had read the play Our Town years ago, but had never seen it performed live. It was an amazing production that everyone should see. I would venture to say that it was the best play I have ever seen.
Here's the cast, in costume and on the stage. It was a very intimate setting with the seating around and on three sides of the stage. The man who played the stage manager, Michael Shannon, is pictured in the front below. You may recognize him from the movie Pearl Harbor. He and the rest of the cast all did an amazing job in each of their roles. It was as close to perfect as I could imagine.
The next day we hit up Times Square to get our tickets to West Side Story and check out some of the sights.
At Toys R Us I met some new friends:
We went to one of our favorite restaurants in Times Square for lunch and shared a pizza and Caesar salad.
Then we went straight to the theater to see West Side Story, which was another great play, though very different from Our Town.
On our way back to the hotel we passed through Rockefeller Center.
It was an excellent trip.
