Photo of the Week: Walt Disney World

From Walt Disney World, Magic Memories and You!

Changes Coming

I have finally made the decision to make some major changes to this site.  In the next few weeks I will be working on transitioning to a Wordpress site.  Due to the complexities of migrating everything and then resetting up some of the pages, I expect this will take me a few weeks to make it presentable.

My planned launch date is August 1, though I am hoping it will be sooner.

However, I am transferring my domain from one company to another and if that causes issues with the ability to view this site on it's current Blogger platform, then I will launch sooner, even if it's not quite ready.

During this time I will not be creating any new content (though I do have a few rough drafts waiting for the launch), except maybe the Photo of the Week.

See you in a few weeks!

Zion National Park

We finally left Kanab, the location of my falling and cutting my leg going to the POOL!   We were headed to Zion National Park on the way to Las Vegas.  Yes, this park is an easy 1-2 hour drive from Vegas, incase you feel the need to exercise some of sin city out of yourself. 

Unlike Bad Lands, Bryce Canyon and the Grand Canyon, our primary point of visiting Zion National Park was from the floor of the park, not from the top.  While Zion wasn’t quite as beautiful as Bryce Canyon or as grand as the Grand Canyon, the vantage point from the base gave it a different feel. 

Most of the tour group did a hike to a small waterfall, most had planned on going further, but the trail stopped there due to construction so it was the end of the line.  We got some great photos and headed back to the visitors center there for some shopping and snacks.

On the way to the hike I noticed our coach driver and tour manager inspecting one of the tires, it turns out we had developed a leak in one of the tires.  What’s a tour to do when that happens?  Go to the main visitor center so the driver can find the National Park bus driver guys and try to get the tire fixed. 

The only problem with this is that when you’re waiting for your bus to be fixed and you already have seen a nice piece of the park, you don’t really have time to do much more then shop at the bigger store and soak in the experience. Oh, and don’t go to far incase the tire is fixed sooner then you thought. 

As I recall, it took less than an hour and then we were on our way to fabulous Las Vegas!

Photo of the Week: Hawaii

The beach in Kona, Hawaii

Falling Down

To set the scene for this post you need to know that I have a fear of hiking down hill, it’s a fear of falling and breaking my leg in the wilderness.  It’s not necessarily a reasonable fear, but it’s not debilitating either.  After hiking in Bryce Canyon and almost dying (walking uphill) I had taken it easy at the Grand Canyon.

Later that night we did have a good old fashioned BBQ in a local park in Kanab near our hotel.  Hamburgers, chips and smores!  We even got to play on the swing sets and jungle gym.  Sometimes it’s fun to relive your youth.  I survived all that fine.

When we returned to our hotel a bunch of us decided to go to he pool, which was across the street and down the block at another hotel.  As we’re walking I managed to slip on gravel. Turned my ankle and fell to my knee, on GRAVEL.  I cut up my entire left leg from my foot to my knee.  It was gross and it hurt and I didn’t have anything really appropriate to care for it.  I did borrow some band-aids and bacitracin and cleaned it out at the hotel room.  But the irony that I was afraid of falling while hiking, but actually fell walking to the pool was NOT lost on me. 

I have not changed my stance on hiking!

Photo of the Week: Spain

Venitian Towers, Barcelona, Spain

More Holiday Storytellers

In 2011 I had my first Disney World Christmas experience, and one of the treats of the season are the Storytellers Around the World.  In 2011 I saw about half of them and when I returned this past December I saw a few more.  This is a review of the news ones I experienced.  I will give one disclaimer though.  I had gotten sick at the end of this trip and was at my best when I saw some of these.

I did revisit the Los Tres Reyes Magos (Three Kings) in Mexico and La Befana in Italy.  Los Tres Magos seemed to be the same as the year before, still not my favorite, but still very good.  La Befana also seemed good, but not quite as good as I remembered from the year before, but I was feeling pretty sick at that time and I had just seen another really good one that day too.

Germany - Helga
With a name like Helga I expected an older woman, but I was wrong, Helga is a pretty young woman and this was a nice story.  Here we learned about the tradition of Christmas Trees and the first Nutcracker.  Even with German heritage I didn't think this was the best one, but it's a bit more contemporary then many of the others.  I think it did have the best setting though,  at least in terms of atmosphere.

The American Adventure - Hanukkah
This show has the best setting, it's inside.  No dealing with hot or cold or sun in your eyes.  As for the show, it was just ok. The woman was nice and the story had an intimate feel to it.  But, I grew up with a lot of Jews around me and I felt like I knew more about Hanaukkah then I learned here. I suspect if you've had little contact with Jews this would be more interesting.  I did think it was a nice touch that the story teller played with dreidel with the kids after.

France - Pere Noel
Pere Noel tells the story of Christmas in France through a letter from a girl.  It's a sweet story about believing in Pere Noel and santa figures.  But Pere Noel is too skinny!

Canada - Nowell
Nowell is a lumberjack, what?  How can you make all those gifts if your cutting down trees.  Or maybe you need the wood for all those toys?  I don't know. But this was another good story, reminds me a lot of how Christmas in the US, as much as it's the same for many, it can also be quite different depending on your heritage.

Norway - Sigrid and Christmas Gnome, Julenissen
This was my absolute favorite and you can tell the word is out, this story had the largest crowd of all the ones I have seen.  Sigrid tells the story of Julenissen, which she doesn't believe.  Julenissen is a gnome who plays tricks on boys and girls.  And so Julenissen plays tricks on Sigrid, but since she doesn't believe in him she doesn't understand what is going on. It's quite entertaining.

Even though Christmas is 6 months away, it is time to start planning your trips there!

Photo of the Week: Walt Disney World

Epcot during the day at Walt Disney World