Introduction to the Animal Kingdom

I hope you like watching the DVD you just opened! Animal Kingdom is out favorite park out of the four. It is so pretty and you forget sometimes that you are even in Florida! You feel like you are in Asia, Africa, or at a dinosaur excavation site. 

There are more than 1000 animals contained in six “lands”. We will learn more about these lands over the next few days.

The Oasis

Discovery Island

DinoLand, U.S.A.

Camp Minnie-Mickey

Africa

Asia

The habitats that the animals live in are all natural looking, meaning they are in “cages” that don’t look like cages. For example, you will notice that there is only a flimsy bamboo fence separating you and a huge gorilla. However, that bamboo is actually metal rods sunk into concrete. That gorilla isn’t going anywhere! 

Tomorrow we will learn more about the different lands of Animal Kingdom. In the meantime, enjoy watching the DVD!

PhotoPass

We will be taking advantage of a program called “PhotoPass” when we are at Disney World.  

Disney World has photographers set up around the parks and they will take pictures of you. These pictures are called “PhotoPass”.

We will have our cameras as well, but the PhotoPass pictures are great because they have the best locations throughout the park. Look at this picture of Hayden in front of the castle. Isn’t is cute?

The photographers will give us a little plastic card. We will use that card to look at the  pictures online and add cool borders and effects. You can even add the signatures of the characters we meet! How cool is that?

After our trip, Disney will send us a CD of all the pictures so you can put them in an album. 

Be prepared for TONS of pictures! On our last trip, we took over a thousand pictures, so get your smiles ready!

Our Hotel: Wilderness Lodge Villas!

We are staying at a place called the Wilderness Lodge! It is decorated as if we are staying in the woods during the “olden days”, when pioneers came west. The rooms have a bed for your parents and a couch that converts to a bed (that’s where you will be sleeping). 

Here is a video of our room! 

In the room we will also have a fridge, a microwave, a bathroom and TV, etc. We will even have a patio or balcony!

When you walk into the resort, we will see a beautiful lobby with a large stone fireplace. There is even a stream running through the entry way!

Once you are outside, you will find the first of two swimming pools. The larger one is called Silver Creek Pool and has a water slide! Next to the pool is a geyser called "Fire Rock" that sprays water into the air every hour.

We will be staying in the smaller building, off to the side of the main building with the large pool and cool lobby. Sure, it is a little disappointing, but the good news is that the small building has its very own private pool called "Hidden Springs"! There is no slide here, but it may be less crowded. 

The other good thing about the smaller building is that it is close to the buses. Since we won’t have a car, we are going to ride the buses to the different places we need to be. We will also ride boats and take the monorail, which is a train that runs on an elevated track. 

I hope you are as excited about the hotel as we are!

Flying and the Magical Express!

It takes three days to drive to Florida. Do you want to spend three days in a car? I didn’t think so! That is why we are going to fly!

We are leaving early in the morning on Saturday and coming back the following Saturday night. We will have six full days in the parks, including an afternoon in the Magic Kingdom (the day we get there) and a morning in Animal Kingdom (the day we leave).

You will leave Taylor Friday afternoon (after school) and spend Friday night at our house. We will leave the house for the airport early in the morning. Once at the airport, we will give the airline workers some of our larger suitcases. We will take any small suitcases with us on the plane.

Carol, here is the information about baggage:

1 Carry On per person-- 14 x 9 x 22, up to 40 pounds

1 Personal Item per person-- Purse, LapTop Bag, backpack with toys

1 Checked Bag per person-- less than 62 inches (height + width + length), less than 50 pounds

(We may run into issues with the vacuum packed clothes increasing the weight of the suitcases to exceed 50 pounds. As such, you may need to distribute vacuum packed clothes between the checked suitcases and carry-on bags). 

After we give them our luggage, we will go to the “gate” (the place where the plane is parked). We will have to go through security to get to the gate. At the security checkpoint they x-ray our bags and scan us for weapons. We don’t want any bad guys on the plane with us! =)

Once we board the plane, we will have a short flight to Dallas, Texas. Once we get to Dallas, we will get off the plane, use the restroom, and hop on another plane. This is the plane that will take us to Florida!

Once we are in the Florida airport, we will walk across the building to the Magical Express bus stop. The Magical Express will take us to our hotel! The drive is 30-40 minutes long, so they keep us entertained by showing us a video that talks about all the fun things you can do at Disney World.  

The last day of our trip we will board the Magical Express around 3:00 in the afternoon so it can takes us back to the Florida airport. We will then check our bags, go through security, and hop on a plane to Atlanta. 

In Atlanta, we will use the restroom, and get on the plane for Phoenix! We will land in Phoenix around midnight, so you will probably stay the night at our house and go home the next morning. 

Tomorrow you will learn about our hotel, so stay tuned!

Shopping!

You two need to make sure that you save as much money as you can before we go because there are so many places to shop at Disney World!  

There is a huge shopping complex, kind of like a mall, called Downtown Disney.

There are also stores within the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom as well— you won’t have a problem finding a place to spend your money!

Here are some of the great places to shop at Downtown Disney:

Disney’s Days of Christmas—a store that only sells Christmas items! You may want to save your money for a special Christmas tree ornament. 

Disney’s Design a Tee—you can create a custom t-shirt or Mickey mouse ears at this place.

Goofy’s Candy Company—here you can create your own candy treat. Do you want marshmallows covered in caramel, chocolate and Oreo cookies? Or would you like pretzel sticks dipped in white chocolate and Reese’s Pieces? 

World of Disney—the largest Disney store in the world with over 12 rooms! Pretty much everything sold in the parks is sold here as well. 

Mickey’s Mart—Everything in this store is under $10! 

Tren-D—a place for stylish Disney clothing. This store is great! Paula really likes the shirts here. 

 Be sure to save your money these next couple of months so you have plenty to spend!

Movies to Watch!

In order to gear up for Disney World, you have to do some homework! You have to watch Disney movies!

Here is a list of movies that relate to rides and shows within the parks.

· Swiss Family Robinson

· Aladdin

· Pirates of the Caribbean

· The Lion King

· Peter Pan

· Cinderella

· The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

· Snow White

· Fantasia

· The Little Mermaid

· Dumbo

· The Sword in the Stone

· The Aristocats

· The Princess and the Frog

· Alice in Wonderland

· Toy Story 1, 2 or 3

· Monster's Inc.

· Lilo and Stitch

· Finding Nemo

· Jungle Book

· Mulan

· Sleeping Beauty

· A Bug's Life

· Any Muppet Movie

· Any Indiana Jones Movie

Have fun watching and let me know what you think of the movies you watch for the first time!

Four Parks, One World!

I want to give you girls some information about Disney World. Disney World is a HUGE!

Disney World has 4 theme parks and 18 different hotels! I will be telling you about our hotel in a few days—but I will tell you this, there is not just one pool, there are two!

Today I will tell you about four different parks the and a couple places we won’t be going.

Let’s get the bad news out of the way, shall we? Disney World has two water parks with water slides, pools, and other fun things. We won’t be visiting the water parks on this trip because it costs too much money.

However, there are four other parks that we will visit!

The first park is called the Magic Kingdom. It’s “icon”, or park symbol, is “Cinderella Castle”! The rides and shows here feature many of the cartoon characters you know and love. There are seven lands in the Magic Kingdom—Main Street, U.S.A., Adventureland, Frontierland, Liberty Square, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland and Mickey’s Toontown.

Epcot’s park icon is a big silver ball called “Spaceship Earth”. There are two “worlds” here. Future World and World Showcase. Future World has rides and shows that focus on science and human creativity. World Showcase presents buildings, culture and social heritages from 11 different countries (Mexico, Norway, China, Germany, Italy, United States, Japan, Morocco, France, United Kingdom and Canada).

Hollywood Studios has a “Sorcerer’s Hat” as its park symbol. Have you seen Fantasia? If not, you may want to watch it! This park focuses on the movies and television. You can learn about how television shows and movies are made. There are also several shows and rides based on different movies and TV shows.

Animal Kingdom’s icon is the “Tree of Life”. The focus of this park is animals! It has animal exhibits like a zoo, but it also has rides, shows and other live entertainment experiences. You can even go on an African Safari and walk trails to see animals like tigers, gorillas, fruit bats and naked mole rats! My favorite show, Finding Nemo: The Musical, is in Animal Kingdom. You will love the show!

 I hope you like your gift for today—it is a CD of music from the four different parks!

Welcome!

Welcome to the website dedicated to our trip! Each day something new will be posted here. We will be learning all about Walt Disney World (WDW) and everything there is to see and do!

Each day when you get home from school or church and finish any chores, you can remove a link from the countdown chain.

Let's talk about the countdown chain for a minute. When you are taking off the links, be careful! Each day has a fun Disney fact on the back and you don’t want to rip through the words!

Additionally, watch out for the links with the black Mickey heads. When find a link with a black Mickey head, ask your mom about a possible “gift” for that day. There may be something waiting just for you!

After you take care of the countdown chain for that day, ask your mom if she can help you use her computer. You can then get on the internet and read the next post. Don’t bother her if she doesn’t have time to do this though—just patiently wait until she does have time.

I know how much you girls like typing, so you are welcome tell me what you think about the post for that day (if your mom says you can, of course). Here is what you need to do:

Click “Comment” below the post
Type your thoughts in the box on the upper right
Type the letters you see in the “word verification” box
Click the circle by name/URL
Type your name
Click publish.

Let’s practice right now! Leave a comment about the trip. Are you excited? What are you most excited for?