Saturday, February 24, 2007

MGM-Disney Back-lot Tour.

One the the many things we did on our day at MGM was to go on the back-lot tour. I, along with 3 other dads got "volunteered" to participate. I am not normally good with names, but I think I still recall my "costar's" names: L to R. Jim, Brian, me and Chris. We put on blue waterproof outfits which looked navyish and ran around on a PT-boat set while being filmed. Then technicians spliced together all the film with some stock footage and the result is the clip shown below: Jim was the guy who got flooded in the engine room, Brian was at the con and Chris & I were the comic-relief deck hands. As an aside: As a former Marine, I did feel a little uncomfortable all got-up in Navy uniform.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Beauty And The Beast

After the Tower of Terror, we fastpassed the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster and then went to the stage show for BATB. The costumes were bright colors: Belle, was pretty: There were lots of dance numbers: The show was a nice break from running around and the girls loved it. dbp

MGM-Disney: Our First Park

My wife & I came to Disney World once before. 10 years ago, before we had any children, we came and just stayed overnight. The same day we drove over from my parent's house (on the West coast of Florida) we went to MGM and then the next day to the Magic Kingdom and Epcot. Maybe this is why it just seemed natural to go to MGM first. When we first came in to the park, the High School Musical float was just starting out. It really set the mood for the day. (Our girls are huge fans of it and the music is really catchy) We went straight to the Tower of Terror and did that first--even 5 year old Jemma! Poor Jemma had her head buried in my side even before the elevator began plunging down and rocketing up. dbp

Thursday, February 22, 2007

We tell the girls that they will be staying at Disney for a few days

We wanted to avoid the endless questions which would result from our children if they knew that the main part of our trip would be at Disney World. We just told them that we were going to Florida to visit grandparents, they were sufficiently thrilled by that, so we did not elaborate. Now we are in Orlando, the kids still don't know what is up and we are rapidly approaching the Wilderness Lodge. We didn't want to tell them while driving since we needed to take some reaction shots, so we truthfully told them that we should have lunch before continuing on. Once we got to the hotel I had all the girls get a table at the restaurant there while I checked-in. I must say that the lobby is a bit imposing... Here: Surenna does not believe I am serious when I ask if they would like to stay in this place for a couple of days. Not all the girls were so hard to convince as the cynical Surenna. Happy Dahlia! Jemma is delighted!

Monday, February 19, 2007

We depart cold MA for sunny FL

We took this trip one week before the school vacation in order to avoid crowds. The long line at the AirTran counter gave us less than 30 minutes to clear security and board our plane. A nice result of the delay was that we got bumped up to business class! I think what happened is that the airline didn't have adjacent seats in tourist class and all of our children are young, so they gave us the only seats left which were by each other. After we got through security, we rushed to the gate and were the last ones on-board the plane. We took-off and flew through sunny skies direct to Orlando.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

High School Musical

Before the show, such anticipation... The girls all danced--Jemma ignores the crowd and dances with # 23.