C Is For.....Cinderella Castle

I was at a loss already, at the letter "C", as to what to blog about tonight. Luckily, the lovely Miss Lisa is always ready with a suggestion, and this was one of her best. The Cinderella Castle it is!

Christmas lights make the castle even more beautiful at night

The Cinderella Castle is the iconic landmark of Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom Park. Driving under the welcome sign on the way in to Walt Disney World is great and all, but you are not truly "at Disney" until you've looked on the Cinderella Castle. It sits in the center of the parks hub and spoke design, it's the hub, the centerpiece, the landmark visible from any of the lands. It serves as the tunnel entrance to Fantasyland, as a stage for shows, as a backdrop for fireworks and as the home of a restaurant inside. Disney dresses the castle up for the holidays with multi-colored lights, transforming it at night into a huge, ever-changing Christmas decoration. On special occasions, the castle has been transformed by golden characters and even made to look like a giant ice cream cake (something we will never speak of again,. The horror). 

This was some very important anniversary for the Walt Disney Company. No clue any longer what it was. But the castle looked very cool with all the characters from the movies clinging to the outside.

It's a prime example of one of the Imagineers favorite tricks, forced perspective. The castle is built so its uppermost parts are smaller in scale then the parts on ground level. This makes your eye see it as even taller than it really is. It's a neat trick.

John and the Princess

We had a really special magic moment inside the Cinderella Castle on the day we first took our son to the Magic Kingdom, back in 2003. My parents were along on this trip and since it was near our wedding anniversary, they decided to treat us to dinner inside the castle, at what was then King Stefan's Dining Hall. What Sleeping Beauty's dad is doing with a dining hall inside a castle named for Cinderella wasn't clear, but since we'd always wanted to eat in the actual castle, we were all very excited. On our way to the restaurant, we had to pass through what appeared to be a throne room, the huge gilded throne inside being a big hint. As we went to check out the giant throne, who should arrive but Cinderella her royal self! We said hello and she was very polite, but had eyes only for almost 4-year-old John. John was then and still is very taken by blondes, and Cinderella was certainly a beautiful blonde. She walked up to me and took him from my arms and carried him to her throne, where they sat and chatted, in whispers, for a little while. They posed for pictures, she gave him a kiss that left a bright red lipstick lip mark, and we retrieved our son, beaming, to head up for dinner. To this day we have no idea what she said to him, he ain't telling. It was one of the most incredible experiences we have ever had in any Disney park, and we have had some memorable ones.

So, yes, the castle is special to us, as it is to everyone who truly understands the Disney magic. We have several photos of the Cinderella Castle in our living room, reminding us every day of the Most Magical Place On Earth. It's such a part of the magic that just seeing the castle can make my heart skip a beat. I thought it was just me until sitting next to my friend Jen in a movie theater and she poking me and saying, "IT'S THE CASTLE" every time it showed up on the screen before a preview of a Disney produced film. She knew we had just booked our trip and were very excited and what seeing that castle would mean. She gets it. The Cinderella Castle is more than an icon, it's a big part of the tie that bonds all of us Disney Geeks together into one big, happy family. And you don't get any more magical than that.

B Is For.....Boma

Apologies in advance for this being the worst dining review ever. I don't remember exactly what we ate and I have no idea what it cost, but I do know that Boma, the buffet restaurant inside Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge, made a huge impression on my family and we can't wait to go back in September.

The last time we spent a week at Disney, back in late August of 2006, we had taken advantage of the free Disney Dining Plan offer that was current at the time.  When I was planning our dining reservations, or ADRs in Disney speak, I wanted to try some new places, as it had been quite a while since either of us had spent much time at Disney World. Disney's Animal Kingdom was new to us, and so was the Animal Kingdom Lodge. I found Boma and figured it would give us a great excuse to visit the new deluxe resort and maybe try something new, as Boma had an African-influenced menu. As an aside, visiting Disney's resorts is an attraction in itself. All of them have their own theme and charm, from the All-Stars to the high-end deluxe resorts, all are worth checking out. Eating in the resort restaurants gives you a great excuse and opportunity to poke around these places.

Boma is located on the bottom floor of the Animal Kingdom Lodge, across a hall from Jiko, the AKL's more upscale dining spot. Not that there is anything low-class or cheesy about Boma. The dining room is bright and open and full of African artwork. It is not a quiet place, but, hey, it's a buffet at a family resort, nobody should be surprised. The buffet itself is not your typical Western Sizzlin' steam table affair. Most of the food was at least finished right there at the buffet table and everything was always full, fresh and hot. I am having trouble remembering exactly what we ate, it was largely nothing we'd had before or since, but it wasn't so exotic as to scare off timid eaters. I do remember wishing I had a bigger stomach because everything was so very delicious.

When we planned this trip coming up in September, we wanted to try as many new places as we could. We did, however, all agree that a return to Boma was essential. I can't wait.

A Is For......Animal Kingdom Lodge

My great friend and fellow Disney freak, the lovely and talented Jen, has begun a "blog challenge" on her own page. She is writing a blog a day, one for each letter of the alphabet. Sounded like a fun idea and a good way to get me in the writing habit, so here I go copy catting right along. Welcome to....

A is for Animal Kingdom Lodge.

It was a pretty crappy year for us, 2009. We decided we needed a little magic in our lives and it had been way too long, three years, since we'd visited Disney, so we determined to get there, one way or another. A week-long trip was out of the question, we just didn't have the money, but after growing up in Pennsylvania, we felt that we were now, in North Carolina, close enough to make a weekend visit to Walt Disney World. Heck, it was only 9 hours away. That's cake for us, we drive all over at the drop of a hat. So, we gathered what money we had and booked two nights at All Star Movies, planning to spend one day in the Magic Kingdom. We were very cost-conscious. This was the year that Disney gave a free day of park admission on your birthday, and we had enough points on our Disney Visa to buy a second pass, so all we needed was our two nights lodging and one park ticket. Very frugal, we thought. Then we got an offer in the mail for discounts on rooms at Disney resorts. The discounts grew as the resort "level" increased. It was something along the lines of 10% off Values, 25% off Moderates and 40% off Deluxe resorts. Frugality flew out the window. When would we have the chance to stay in a Deluxe resort? We who could only afford a two day visit in the first place! We crunched the numbers and convinced each other that we were silly to not take advantage of such a great deal! We are very good at convincing each other to do things we both want to do. So, after the requisite hemming and hawing, Lisa, best wife in the world (and the recipient of the Birthday Free Ticket, by the way), called the Disney reservations line and asked about changing one night of our stay to the Animal Kingdom Lodge. She mentioned the discount notice we'd received in the mail and was told it had expired. Sadness. But Lisa says, it doesn't say here it is expired yet. The reservation lady asked what the discount was, punched a few keys, and told us that no problem, they would honor a 40% discount for one night at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. Hooray! We booked the cheapest room they had, which still at 40% off stands as the most expensive hotel room we have ever paid for, and commenced patting ourselves on the back.

After a fun, and at least to us relatively short, drive down to central Florida, we rolled into the Animal Kingdom Lodge feeling like quite the high rollers. Disney's deluxe resorts are really very cool, very immersive and very, well, deluxe. We had seen the lobby on our last trip when we ate at Boma (which starts with a "B", hmmmm.....) so while we were of course impressed, we weren't surprised. We checked in and got assigned a room as far from the lobby as it was possible to go. We were in the wing to the left as you face the front of the resort, all the way at the end, on the third floor. No problem, we said, we did ask for the cheapest room and we don't mind a walk, and after all, we are only staying one night. From the map, I saw that our room looked out at some open area rather than a parking lot, and beyond that, the new Animal Kingdom Vacation Club Villas. It sure would have been cool to have a "savannah view" room, but with all the animal viewing locations throughout the resort, we didn't think we'd be missing too much. And those rooms were WAY beyond our means.

"Our" giraffe

We walked into the room and fell in love with the decor. Everything was very African, of course, but it was Disney African! Lisa was already having a very magical birthday weekend. We opened the drapes to our balcony to check out the view and what do we see, but a giraffe! A real giraffe, wandering about just outside our room! It was so cool, to have the "cheap seats" and still have an animal to look at. Looking out, I also noticed a low building surrounded by a high fence. Some kind of maintenance shed, I thought, placed where the higher paying guests wouldn't have to see it. No problem, I don't mind a maintenance building at all. We wallowed in the coolness of our room for a while, then off we went to the pool. The pool at the Animal Kingdom Lodge is huge. It has several hot tubs and a bar. It has a platform from which one can view giraffes and gazelles and gnus and flamingos and such.  Aren't those people who are paying for those "savannah view" rooms silly, we thought, look how much we, in the cheap room, can see right at the pool! We decided after swimming and then dinner and then more swimming that we all very much needed Ghirardelli milkshakes, so off we went to Downtown Disney for the first Stites Family Midnight Milkshakes. After our treats, we bussed it back to our resort, hiked to our room and settled in for a night's sleep with dreams of a day at the Magic Kingdom dancing before our eyes.

Gnus and something else :-)

The next morning, at first light, before the alarm goes off, we hear an awful racket outside.  Some sort of bird is making a horrible sound, like half belch and half retch, and it is LOUD. We laugh it off as some strange Florida thing and start moving around, as we are intent on making rope drop. While Lisa and John hit the bathroom and wipe the sleep away, I decide to take a peak outside and see what the day looks like. Maybe "our" giraffe will still be there. I pull back the drape, open the door and slide outside. And I am struck completely speechless. If you know me, you know how unlikely that is, but this did it. There, right outside our room, was what I figured had to be the resort's entire collection of critters. There were herds of gazelle and gnus and other hoofed things I didn't recognize. There were ostriches wandering all over. The bird that woke us up turned out to be even more beautiful than its song was ugly. And "our" giraffe had found a bunch of friends, and they were happily munching away on trees RIGHT THERE!!!!! I gathered myself after a minute and told Lisa and John  to come here, RIGHT NOW! They sort of wandered over to see what crazy dad was up to and then saw for themselves and were struck as speechless as myself. Let me tell you, three dumb-struck Stiteses is not something that happens. Ever. But this did it. We couldn't move. We kept seeing new animals. There was no noise except for the ones the animals made, so we heard them snort and snuff and we heard to sound of ostrich toenails on sidewalk, something I didn't expect but will never ever forget.

Ostrich toes on the sidewalk

The critter buffet

We figured out after a bit of watching that the building wasn't a maintenance shed after all, it was the breakfast house for all these animals. The giraffes eventually went over and tried sticking their heads over the fence to snack. We saw a person emerge every so often and open a gate for a herd of some creature and then let them out to replace them with another herd of a different creature. It was fascinating. And we were in the cheapest room in the resort. I have to wonder what the people on the savannah side saw that morning. I sort of believe all their "view" was belly up to the buffet a short stone's throw from me and the family.

The giraffes hoping for a meal

We missed rope drop. And didn't regret it one tiny bit.

Mickey's Toontown Fair Memories (and pictures!)

One of the things we are most looking forward to on our upcoming trip to Disney World is experiencing the parts of the new Fantasyland expansion that will be open. I've been having a ball reading all the reports and looking at pictures and watching videos of the section that opened a couple weeks ago, and by the time we arrive I believe the water play area will have been opened as well as the second Dumbo ride. But all this excitement over the new additions has made me remember the old Mickey's Toontown Fair that had to be torn down to make way. I'll not lie and say it was ever one of my favorite parts of the Magic Kingdom, I'm a sentimentalist and it was just too new for me, but we certainly enjoyed visiting Mickey's house and Minnie's house and their gardens and I particularly liked Donald's boat. I thought it would be fun to share some of the pictures I found of our last two trips to the Magic Kingdom, when Toontown was still bustling.

In November of 2009, we hit Toontown after dark, which was kind of fun in itself. This is the welcome sign on the way into Mickey's Toontown Fair from Fantasyland.

It being November, Disney had it's Christmas decorations up, and Toontown got the treatment! Here is Minnie's house all decked out in Christmas lights. Those are some BIG bulbs, huh?

And inside, we were lucky enough to see Mickey's very own Christmas tree! It appears Mickey has gone the artificial tree route.

Minnie had these family photos on display. I'm not sure if it was her living room or bedroom. 

Wearing my new Goofy shirt, I just HAD to have a picture in front of Mickey's painting of Goofy's Barnstorming. We see here what the water tower outside looked like before Goofy's unconventional landing. And if you look close, you'll see I'm wearing my button proclaiming me as "That Guy" from the Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor. It was a good day.

Mickey's meet and greet was in the Expo Tent in Toontown. November was a great time to visit, we had almost zero wait for anything, including this face time with The Mouse.

And here we see the unfortunate results of Goofy's barnstorming. This was taken on a trip in August of 2006. Obviously, it was daylight that time :-)

Minnie Mouse's house. I love the attention to detail here, and throughout Toontown in fact. Minnie's mailbox still makes me smile.

This isn't the best view of Mickey's house, but it IS a good view of my son. There are so many Mickey's around this house, like the one on the fence post, that they hardly qualify as "hidden."

I am now and always have been a HUGE Donald Duck fan. You can have your Mickey and Minnie house all day, for my money, give me the Miss Daisy, Donald's boat!

Of course Donald's front yard is a water play area. That's because Donald is way cool. John here doesn't believe water is coming.

Sure enough, it was!

Here is Mickey's back door. See what I mean about the Not-So-Hidden Mickeys?

Mickey's garden featured some unusually shaped cacti. They look strangely familiar....

Now that Toontown is no longer, I'm wishing I took more photos while it was around. All the pictures of the new train station look spectacular, but I'd love to have a few of the old one for my personal comparison.

I'm very excited about the new Fantasyland expansion, to see this new piece of Disney magic, especially as the part that has opened is circus-themed and I love the circus with a passion. I wasn't so attached to the old Toontown that I'll mourn it's passing (it's not like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride or anything!), but it is fun to look back before looking forward.

Disney Is Hiring Heroes

Haters beware, this post is going to be so pro-Disney, even pro-Walt Disney Company corporate, that you may just want to bail out now.

Disney has done something that hits me at home and makes me not just happy, but proud to be dropping thousands of dollars their way this summer. Today, Disney announced the Heroes Work Here initiative. Here's a short piece of the blog post from Disney explaining what the initiative entails,

Disney will:

• Provide at least 1,000 jobs, career opportunities for returning U.S. veterans over the next three years.
• Support military families, veterans transitioning into civilian life.
• Launch a national public awareness campaign to encourage job opportunities for veterans.

The logo alone almost brought tears to my eyes. Disney, built upon the story of imaginary heroes defeating imaginary villains, is recognizing real true-life heroes and the value they can bring. I'm thrilled at the way they go about explaining this, not as some welfare, let's all be kind to the poor dears, affirmative action program, but as a logical and smart business practice. Veterans are trained leaders, they know how to do the most with the least and they tend to have a strong work ethic. They have character, having volunteered for a duty that could very well have killed them or left them maimed for life. These are people you want working for you, and as a bonus for the Disney Company, they allow it to boast of having not only imaginary heroes like Prince Charming and Flynn Ryder greeting their guests, but real ones, ones the children can see are just like their fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers. The value in that is unmeasurable.

My father is a Vietnam Vet. He came home to a country that acted ashamed of him. There were no parades. The movies made about him portrayed him as a psycho at best and a monster at worst. His fellow vets were spit on and called baby-killer. My mom told me my dad was a hero, but it took decades for the country and the culture to even grudgingly admit that he deserved some thanks. The toll that takes on a man, even one as strong as my dad, is hard for us who've not had to experience it to understand.

I remember when the first Gulf War started, my dad was glued to the TV until all hours of the night. I thought he was upset about the country getting involved in another war, and he was, but not for the reason I assumed. My dad said he was worried that if we got into another war, the men and women would be treated by the country on their return the way he was treated. He didn't want to see that happen to anyone else.

That never happened, the Gulf War vets were welcomed home as heroes and we have treated all our vets in the conflicts that followed the same way. Sure there are the throw-back anti-war folks, but even they haven't in large part attacked the vets. Good. We learned. But to see a company as huge as Disney, as much an integral part of our American cultural identity as Disney is, embrace veterans as valuable contributors to civilian society really made me proud.

Are you seeing this, Dad? I know it'll make you happy. And thanks to ALL the heroes, but especially mine.

Disney Dinner, At Home!!!!

What's better than a night of Disney Parks behind the scenes shows on the TV? That would be sharing the fun with friends and turning it into a Disney food feast, of course! The food at Disney is one of our favorite parts of the experience, and it's fun and surprisingly easy to try duplicating some of Disney's dishes at home. Chip and Co. have recipes on their site and Disney cookbooks aren't hard to find. Our cookbook is almost 20 years old, so it has recipes from restaurants that no longer exist, which is kind of cool, really. Our feast included treats from Ohana, the Yachtsman Steakhouse, Le Cellier, the old Top of the World and a couple classic treats from the parks.

Jen's Ohana Wings and my own Onion-Cheese Soup

We started out with what my son has declared "the BEST chicken wings ever. Seriously. Ever"  and onion-cheese soup. The wings Jen made are part of the Ohana family-style dinner and are truly delicious. The soup was my contribution and came from our old Gourmet Mickey Cookbook attributed to the Yachtsman Steakhouse at the Yacht Club Resort. I've had neither dish at the actual Disney location, but Jen says the wings pretty much nailed it. The soup may or may not be exactly like Disney's, but it was really good.

Poutine = Heaven

After devouring the wings and soup around the campfire, we moved inside for Jen's Poutine, a wonderful potato dish from the Canada Pavilion's Le Cellier restaurant. Poutine is basically baked potato wedges topped with caramelized onion and cheese, then covered with a red wine reduction sauce. While that may sound good, words can't describe the deliciousness of this dish. The reduction alone is good enough to eat with a spoon.

Lisa's Mickey Treats-on-a-stick!

For dessert, my lovely bride Lisa provided a classic Disney Parks treat, the Mickey Head Rice Crispy Treat! What could be better than a rice crispy treat that looks like Mickey, on a stick, with ears dipped in dark chocolate? Nothing. Period. For post-dessert TV watching treats we had Dole Whips! Both straight up and in a float, these things are hard to replicate exactly without a soft-serve machine, but ours were awesome and topped off a spectacular night.

Monorail Yellow

Disney also offers some fun and unique cocktails. The beverage I chose to accompany our meal may or may not be offered somewhere on the Disney property today, I don't know. It's the Monorail Yellow cocktail from the old Top of the World restaurant, the place that used to be at the top of the Contemporary resort. Top of the World has been replaced by the California Grill, but we brought the Monorail Yellow back for an encore. The original is a frozen concoction, but I turned it into a martini because I didn't want to bother getting out a blender. It worked nicely.


Trying to re-create some of your favorite Disney cuisine is fun and, thanks to the interwebs, not really hard. If you want to try for yourself, you can start searching either Chip and Co.'s recipe page or the Disney Family web site's recipe pages 

Pin Codes and Disney Visa and Free Dining, OH MY!!

OK, so, it seems like ancient history to me now, but I figured out the pin code thing with the help of my Disney bud. It turned out to be a package discount when you booked a room and ticket combo including both the Park Hopper and Water Parks and More options. We weren't interested in the water park option, and the discount wasn't enough to lure us away from our planned stay at a Fort Wilderness campsite. Even though we weren't using it, I was still thrilled to have received an elusive Pin Code just the same.

Fast forward a couple weeks, to last Thursday. The same Disney buddy who helped me figure out the pin codes, fellow Disney Geek Jen Iapalucci, sends me a text early in the morning asking if we have a Disney Visa. We do, I say. Well, she says, it seems a Free Dining offer is being extended to cardholders and it covers exactly the time we plan to be at the Dis! This was the deal I was hoping and waiting for! Free Dining is sort of the Holy Grail of Disney discounts. It can save a family a huge amount of money, or allow them to stay at a resort they otherwise couldn't afford. The Dining Plan is a bit complicated and it isn't for everyone (I'll talk about it more in a future post), but when it's free I think you'd be a fool to pass it up. My momma didn't raise no fool, so we were on board!

I'd been having reservations about staying in a tent for a seven-night trip. My son and I have camped quite a bit, but my wife, not so much. I was worried she'd be uncomfortable or something would flood in a Florida thunderstorm, or blow over. I just wanted our trip to be as stress-free as possible and I worried that I was tempting fate a little too much. I'd decided that if I could find a Free Dining deal, I'd move our reservation to a Moderate resort. I had done the homework on the Disney reservation site and found that with Free Dining, a room at a Moderate would be about $100 less than staying at the campground and paying for the dining plan. I was torn between wanting to give my son the Disney camping experience and wanting to be SURE everything would be stress-free all week. I was waiting for a sign. And Jen gave it to me.

Our minds were made up that we would stay at one of the Moderate resorts now, but which one? We'd stayed at Coronado Springs the last time we spent a week at Disney and loved the place. The last trip we made, we stayed at Port Orleans French Quarter, and loved that as well. We looked at the French Quarter's sister resort, the next door Port Orleans Riverside, and found it to be nice, but not our style. The only Moderate we haven't seen is the Caribbean Beach Resort, but Jen stayed there a couple times and gave it a thumbs up.

Caribbean Beach Resort's Pool

I found out that the Disney Visa offer would be extended to the general public on Monday (today), so I figured we'd think it over and call for a reservation Saturday morning. Well, we didn't need much thought. We all pretty much agreed that Port Orleans French Quarter's pool was a little small, so that left a choice between the Caribbean Beach Resort and Coronado Springs. The CBR pool looked pretty awesome and since we are a family that loves trying new things, we were all happy trying out the Caribbean Beach Resort this time around.

That was decided Thursday evening, which turned out to be a good thing. Friday morning the Disney fan pages on Face Book started reporting that rooms for the Visa Free Dining deal were going fast. I was sent into a near panic. I feared my "sign from above" deal being ripped from my fingers. Luckily, I have some flexibility as to work hours and this is our very slowest time, so I got home at lunchtime and called the Disney Reservation line, with fingers firmly crossed.

After a short hold time, a very friendly woman came on the line and asked me a few questions. She was able to bring up all the info I'd put in the Disney website and seemed very happy with how many times I'd been to Disney World in my 40+ years and especially how many times we'd visited in the last 5 or 6. I have no idea if this helped me get the room I wanted or not, but after a few minutes we were booked into the resort of our choice in the room type we wanted for the dates we wanted and for about $150 less than we had planned to spend camping. Others seemed to be having trouble, but perhaps they wanted different resorts or room preferences, who knows? The important part, for me anyway, is that now our Disney vacation is a reality, booked and reserved and deposit paid and accepted.

All this has just reinforced my belief in the Disney Magic. As Jen said when she was telling me about the deal, it's like they put it out JUST FOR ME!! And it's made it more obvious that Disney Magic is even better when shared. Our family are all believers in the Magic of the Mouse. Finding another family who shares that with us just multiplies the happy. Jen helped bring the magic home for us, and that's magical in itself. She's the best sort of friend and we are lucky and blessed to have her and her whole family in our lives.

Now, it's time to sort out dinner reservations!!!!!