It was a watershed experience for all of us. Not only was it the vacation I looked forward to sharing with my grand daughter since she was born, it was when we found out the news that Brandi was expecting our 2nd grand baby.
For me the trip was a juggling act between making sure we did everything we wanted to without any long waits, enjoying being at Disney World again, and handling the, sometimes, overwhelming emotion that came along with seeing Aria meet her favorite characters and experience "The World" for the first time. It was busy week that left us all tired, but it was a good kind of tired.
A year later, the memories we made were well worth the effort. You can read the details and see the pictures of our experience in a series posted on my Disney themed blog. The posts were published between the dates of 3/25 and 6/3, 2016. Here's the link: Goofy Guy 909 Blog
This past Monday morning, my daughter-in-law posted a video on Facebook that she took on the morning of our day at the Magic Kingdom. I had either never seen it before or didn't remember seeing it. It's now a real treasure to me. It shows both the initial moments of Aria's first day at Walt Disney World, a once in a lifetime experience, and the MK's opening ceremony at the train station, something that's now gone away.
They are all so precious but to me the quintessential video that captures my grand daughter's wonder and fascination with where she was is this one shot by Paula during our ride on the carousel.
This week is also the 6 month anniversary of my solo birthday trip to "The World" last September. While I did enjoy the trip, I am not anywhere near as sentimental about it as I am the one from March.
While I can say that I've done the "solo trip" so highly recommended by the most devoted Disney World fans, a lot of my 56th birthday trip falls under the "chalk it up to experience."
I decided to do things that didn't turn out as planned, were a lot less rewarding than anticipated, or weren't the best use of my limited time there. Nevertheless, I am glad I did it but it was a once and done thing for me. As far as I'm concerned Walt Disney World, for the most part, is something that needs to be experienced with someone else.
I consider myself totally blessed beyond belief to have been able to go to Walt Disney World 3 times between December 2015 and September 2016.
Because there is always something new happening there I'm ever ready to go back. There are at least 10 changes I could list even since my last visit. There are even more coming this summer; "Pandora: The World of Avatar" being the biggest one.
We probably wont even plan to go back to central Florida until about this time next year. Of course if it just so happens that I get to go back before I'm there.
I will continue to enter contests to win free trips. I've been entering them for the last 10 years and so far I have not come up a winner.
As a matter of fact, today I watched "The View" who are on location at Disney's Animal Kingdom this week. Somebody in their audience is there because they won my prize in the show's WDW vacation giveaway contest.
Don't get the wrong idea, I'm not constantly scheming to find a way to get back to Walt Disney World, but it continues to be one of my passionate interests. I pursue my fandom through everything from listening to podcasts, to reading books about Disney history, to wearing my Goofy themed t-shirts.
If you are a Walt Disney World fan (and I know some of you who read this blog are) let me know what you like about going there. What happened on your last visit? I'd love to share some of your stories in a future post.
As always, I want to thank you for reading my blog. Keep checking back for my next post. I will be sharing with you the story of very unique video I produced over the weekend. See ya soon. God Bless.
No comments:
Post a Comment