Our Disney Trip – First The Bad News #DisneySMMoms

I’m a big believer in giving bad news before good news. Whenever anyone tells me "I’ve got good news and bad news", I always ask to hear the bad news first. My reasoning is that you should get the bad news out of the way so that you can better focus on the good news. With that in mind, I’m going to tell a few "bad news" stories about our Disney World trip. Once these are out of the way, I’ll better be able to focus on all of the fun times we had. Please don’t take the following stories to indicate that our trip was horrible. These are just the four "bad news" stories that I need to get out of the way so I can tell the "good news" stories later on.

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Project New Me: Week #6 or Post Disney Weigh In #newme

Weight: 197.5 lbs (up 0.5 pounds)

Average Hours of Sleep: N/A

Total Workout Time: N/A (though I walked a TON at Disney World)

Total Calories Burned: N/A (again, though, I walked a ton at Disney World)

As other posts of mine said, we spent the past week at Disney World. The food there is so good that I decided from the start that I wouldn’t count calories at all. I gave myself a week off from thinking about weight loss and freely ate cheesecakes, pizzas, ice cream, Tonga Toast* and other things that should have packed on the pounds. And yet, the scale only rose by the smallest of amounts (half a pound). Why? Well, when one sees Disney World, one walks. A lot! B had a pedometer on and I believe she said it was something in the order of 15,000 steps a day on average. Since 2,000 steps roughly equals a mile (this can vary based on stride length but let’s rely on this figure for the moment), this means we walked about 7.5 miles per day. No wonder my feet were so tired at the end of each day! Also, no wonder that I was able to burn off all of that fattening food. If you’re walking 7 or more miles every single day, you probably can eat whatever you want without packing on the pounds. Let’s call this the “Disney Diet.”

Of course, I couldn’t stay on the Disney Diet forever. For one thing, I need to earn money. Until I figure out a way to get Disney to pay me to wander around their parks riding rides, taking photos, and blogging about it all, I need to go to my 9-5 (ok, 8 – 4:30) job. Now, if anyone at Disney is willing to pay me my current salary to be a “professional Disney guest”, I’d be more than willing to take them up on the offer!

Getting back to my weight loss, I actually expected to gain up to 5 pounds so I’m in a very good position. I have 15 weeks to go and just over 10 pounds to lose. I’m not going to rest on my laurels** but I’m feeling pretty confident right now.

* To everyone who’s never heard of or tried Tonga Toast, boy are you missing a treat! It’s a thick piece of sourdough bread stuffed with bananas, dipped in a milk/egg/vanilla mixture, fried and topped with cinnamon and sugar. Not healthy by any stretch but oh-so-good. I plan on attempting a healthy version at one point.

** I was going to make a Laurel and Hardy gag here, but “resting on my hardy” just sounded too risque. Of course, now I’ve gone and made the gag anyway!

Aloha Friday: Character Hunting #DisneySMMoms

During our Disney trip, last year, we got NHL an autograph book. He had fun getting many character signatures. When we headed back this year, we took the autograph book with us. We went wild with signatures. I believe we got somewhere around 23 new characters to sign his book. Here are photos of some of the new characters (in no particular order):

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My Aloha Friday question to you is: Have you gotten Disney character autographs? If so, whose?


Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha Friday by Kailani at An Island Life

Aloha #25

Gorilla of my Nightmares #DisneySMMoms

Before DisneySMMoms, we were already at Disney World enjoying some of the parks. While at Animal Kingdom, on the first day, we found the gorilla exhibit. The gorillas are separated from the humans by a big moat. This is, of course, to protect us from them and vice versa. The moat didn’t quite seem wide enough, though, thanks to this guy

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He started charging the crowd, stopping just before the moat drop. Yes, I knew I was safe, but I still jumped back. Then, I swear he glared at me. Look at his eyes!

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Wouldn’t that scare you even with a moat?

Our Week In Disney World – Part 11 – Winding Down Disney

Alas, all good things must come to an end and so we found ourselves on our last day at Disney World. After a quick breakfast at Pop Century, we headed back to the Magic Kingdom for the last time. The boys quickly found Pluto and took their picture with him. JSL, though wanting to hold my hand, wasn’t completely terrified of the character anymore. Progress!

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After this, we went on the Winnie the Pooh ride that we intended to go on the previous day. Both NHL and JSL liked seeing Pooh, Tigger and company through the various stories.

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Next, B went to get us boarding passes for our flight the next day while I took the boys on Dumbo. Before she left, I realized something. I left my cell phone at the hotel room! I said we’d meet back near Dumbo. She mentioned that there was a playground right near and the boys could go on that. Then she left.

NHL and JSL loved the Dumbo ride. We were able to see the park pretty well from high up. After we landed, I took a photo of the boys by a Dumbo topiary and then in an animal cage.

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Seeing a line to meet Ariel and knowing he hadn’t gotten her autograph, NHL asked to get on line. We waited while I watched for B. As we neared Ariel, I finally saw her. NHL suddenly proclaimed that he didn’t want to wait on line. No amount of coaxing could convince him and he bolted from the line. All that waiting had been for naught!

We made our way over to Pirates of the Carribean where JSL repeated his Haunted Mansion performance. He was frightened of the ride and fell asleep on my shoulder! Poor little guy. Oh, also around this time I found my cell phone. It was hidden in the bottom of my pocket the whole time! Troublesome little device.

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After a quick lunch at The Pinocchio Village Haus restaurant, we headed for Splash Mountain. NHL and I went on the ride where we learned all about Brer Rabbit and his attempts to avoid Brer Fox and Brer Bear. After we went on, B child swapped with me so NHL could go on a second time. See them in the back?

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Since JSL was up, we headed back to Toontown so NHL and JSL could see Mickey and Minnie’s houses. We waited in the judges tent to get a photo with Mickey, but got tired of waiting in the heat, realized how late it was and decided to leave.

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We did have time for one more ride, so we all piled into the Teacups and took those for a whirl. After our quick spin, we spotted the White Rabbit with a tiny line. As we got on line, we were told that we were the last ones. Not only was that a stroke of luck, but JSL didn’t even demand to hold my hand this time. I was actually able to walk all the way out of the shot! Huzzah!

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We made our way out of the Magic Kingdom from shop to shop (avoiding a parade in progress) and hopped on the Monorail to Epcot. Once there, we made our way past some topiaries (surprise surprise) to Le Cellier.

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While we waited for our food, JSL proved that he can be quite the Camera Clown.

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Then we ate our food. Notice my dessert. Chocolate moose! YUM!

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As we wandered around Epcot, we stumbled upon a treasure. A place to get your picture taken with Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Donald and Goofy. Not only this, but it was indoors (and thus air conditioned) and had TVs playing old Disney cartoons. Score! Waiting on this line was a breeze and soon we had the photos we so desired. NHL even ran up to hug Goofy. The boys were quite happy.

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And with that, we bid Epcot adieu. We got on the bus back to Pop Century. We weren’t completely finished, however. Our dining plan still had 4 snacks on it and we couldn’t let those go to waste. So we bought 2 Mickey Ice Cream Bars for the boys to eat right there and 2 Mickey marshmallow crispy bars for them to eat when we got home.

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And thus our Disney time wound down to a close.

The next day, we took a relatively uneventful (except for some frightening turbulence as we landed) flight home and let the boys tear into their Mickey marshmallow crispy bars.

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