Eating Crow in Orlando

North America » United States » Florida » Orlando
February 24th 2007

Published: February 25th 2007

Edit Blog Post

Silver Back Cuda

Epcot Fireworks

I know; I know! I’m the curmudgeon who has been lukewarm on Disney! But now I’m eating crow and it’s so nice to be wrong! We had a few days between wearing flip flops at Cocoa Beach and cowboy boots at Ocala and Orlando was too close to avoid. We had a blast. Despite that we visited the cute mouse’s home during President’s Week - which means that ¼ of all American families with children under 12 were checked in at the same destination, all of our fears about crowd issues just didn’t surface. These “Worlds” are ready and staffed and supplied for the onslaught of the stroller brigades. We avoided traffic by taking a free shuttle bus from our RV park to Epcot. Then we took a Disney bus to MGM studios. We saved Fantasmic for another time; and really enjoyed seeing how stuntmen (and women) work at Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular. We also took a train through the “backlot” of what is a real working film and sound studio with a huge and impressive costume shop, set construction shop, props, and very fun demo of a flash flood in a gulch. Our grandchildren would have loved the entertainment based

Minnie on Safari

Minnie is a gal after my own heart. Not one to travel light, even on Safari she even totes along her bathtub.

on the High School Musical movie (the kids were invited to dance with the cheerleaders and basketball players), the “meet & greets with Power Rangers and some of the cars from The Car movie, and of course Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Winner, Tigger, and all of their friends. We caught a Disney bus to take us to Animal Kingdom - which was really impressive, especially Festival of the Lion King (little kids were invited to parade with the colorfully costumed and talented performers at the finale) and the Kilimanjaro Safari. We also took a train through the backlot of the “jungle” and were surprised to discover that the animals that we had seen in the “wild” are actually brought in to their own barns each evening. A large animal operating room with a viewing window was also fascinating. If kids had been with us the parade at Animal Kingdom would have thrilled them --- and since everyone is a child at Disney - we big children loved it too! We bussed back to the transportation center, boarded the monorail just in time to see the Magic Kingdom fireworks from above and then monorailed to Epcot. We enjoyed having dinner at the

Puppet Float - Animal Kingdom Parade

Coral Reef (which we had picked out when the monorail was circling Epcot). The dinner was very good, and enhanced by an entire wall of windows looking into one of the largest inland marine environments (fancy for huge fish tank) in the world. You’ll never guess who was scuba diving in the giant aquarium - yes, Mickey, with his black flippers and special snorkel mask that fit nicely over those signature ears. The Epcot IllumiNations spectacular fireworks display over the Lagoon ended our Disney Day. Our shuttle back to the RV was a little late and we drove around for a good half and hour dropping other people at off-Disney hotels. We chalked the slight inconvenience up to the price - free! It had been a long and lovely day. We left our park at 9am and returned at 11:30pm. And the crow tastes great.

Additional photos below

Photos: 10, Displayed: 10