A Little Girl's Dream Comes True at Disney

Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique -  Where a Little Girl's Dream of being a Princess comes true

Performance in front of the castle

Disney World is a great place to visit for family, young and old as there are an abundance of many different things and activities catering to various age groups, gender and taste.

A proud princess being carried by her king father

One of the neat things we saw at Disney for the past few days was the many little princess  walking around with their moms, dads and grandparents.

There were kids in other costumes such as superman, power ranger etc., but it was overwhelmingly little princess we had the pleasure of encountering especially on the day we visited the Magic Kingdom.

Pretty little princesses abound at Disney

There were many little girls walking around Disney resplendent in their regal princess dresses with their hair pulled up high, some were beautifully done up with light make up, some with sparkles on their faces and  little tiaras on their heads.

We saw a little pretty princess proudly walking around and holding her father‘s hand while another father nearby observed her and then looked back at his own daughter who was dressed in regular kids’ clothes.

I could detect a tiny hint of guilt on this father’s face.

The Castle in Magic Kingdom

Where did all these pretty adorable princess come from? How could other little girls be transformed into little  princesses?





 Out of curiosity, I strolled around the castle in the Magic Kingdom and try to discover that magical place that did such a fine job of turning out little regal people.

The Cinderella Mural on the Castle Wall

I found the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique located on the main floor of the castle. The beautiful medieval castle has been a symbol of Disney World for decades.







As soon as we went into the city gate, we were greeted with huge mosaic tile murals depicting the scenes of some famous fairy tale



Just right beside one of these murals we could see the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique. In the waiting area of the boutique were mothers, with their young daughters

One of the murals on the exterior of the castle wall

around the ages of three to seven years old; grandmas as well were sitting patiently waiting for their turn to have their little girls transformed into fairy tale princesses.










Inside the boutique, ( it looked more like a beauty salon) little girls were sitting on the hairdressers` chairs having their hair combed, braided, styled and worked on to transform them into princesses.

This regal transformation cost between $59.00 -
$ 199.00 depending on the package chosen.

For the $59.00 package, a little girl could get her nails and hair done. For the more expensive priced package, it would be the whole thing including make up, the princess` dress, bracelet, tiara etc.

 Lots of parents and grandparents love to see their little girls transformed into princesses. However, these transformation appointments need to be made well in advance.

 If I have a little granddaughter, I would probably want to see her becoming a princess for a day and have a picture taken with her too!



R.T.
Magic Kingdom, Orlando
March Break, 2013

Magic Kingdom, Orlando, Florida

Welcome to the Magic Kingdom!

This was the last day we were here at Disney World! We have had a fantastic time here in Orlando.

Upon Jonathan`s suggestion, we saved the best for the last for the kids - Magic Kingdom - Where Your Dreams Do Come True -( According to Disney World ).

Today being our last day at Disney, we visited the Magic Kingdom - voted by our kids as their favourite!

Performance on Main Street, Magic Kingdom

We had a long day at the Magic kingdom, first taking the tram from the parking lot to the main entrance from where we took the monorail which sent us to the Magic Kingdom. 

My husband then realized that he had to go back to Howard Johnson where we just checked out to retrieve his forgotten cell phone. He lost a good two hours in the Magic Kingdom theme park from the moment he dropped us off in the parking lot til we met him again at the main entrance.

Getting to the Magic Kingdom  is much more complicated than twenty years go since it has grown so big with many resorts, ferry, docks and so on.

The Princesses singing & dancing in front of the castle

The Magic Kingdom is a place where people of all age group could have fun and enjoy.

Its themes are traditional, just like what we remembered when we first visited the theme park some twenty years ago.

The modern side of the Magic Kingdom

 Now in 2013, Disney has incorporated the modern technologiesto many of its rides and displays. One aspect of the Magic Kingdom which we really enjoyed was experiencing what the Walt Disney engineers/ designers were able to do with the most up to date high tech wizardry in its programs.

 For example at Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor, a live comedy show,  we saw Mike, the one eye green monster and Roz- the fish,  cartoon characters in the movie interacting and carrying on conversations with some members of the live audience. How could cartoon characters appearing in a movie interact with a live audience? This was a question not just the kids kept asking, we adults wondered about that as well!

In the Winnie the Pooh Theatre, we donned the 3 D glasses and watched Mickey’s Philhar Magic  on a gigantic screen.

Our beloved Donald Duck, Peter Pan, Aladdin swept us away with them in different parts of the world flying into the sky over high mountains, between tall buildings while  the Little Mermaid singing and swimming effortlessly under the ocean playing with various sea creatures.

While the Little Mermaid was dashing through rocks beneath the ocean, we actually got sprayed with water drops in our seats! It was totally unexpected!

Jonathan made sure that his little cousin has a great Disney Experience!

Jonathan, our younger  son who visited Walt  Disney when he was eight years old still remembered the ride inside the Space Mountain.

He had so much fun at the Magic Kingdom that he made sure his young cousins go on the same ride this time as he did when he was a kid at Disney.

Jonathan got the FastPass for us to avoid the long lineup. All of us went on the ride except Aunt Yachi who was afraid of height and sudden drops from high place.

We yelled and screamed our lungs out through the entire ride happening mostly in complete darkness.

Jonathan and his little cousins liked it so much that they were willing to line up for an hour in order to ride it for the second time!


One  ride which our whole family really enjoyed ( yours would too regardless of age or worry of being spinned around and dizzy) was the Pirates of the Caribbeans - Our  group  boarded a ship and we had to defend it from pirate attacks by aiming, turning, positioning and pulling cords on our cannons to fire at enemy ships. We were physical involved and had lots of screaming and yelling with our family members together to fend off our attackers. That was our most favorite game as we got to work together to protect our ship!

R.T.
Magic Kingdom, Orlando, Florida

Flower & Garden Festival at EPCOT, Orlando, Florida

EPCOT Centre, Orlando, Florida



The last time we visited Walt Disney was during the Christmas break in 1989!

It was more than twenty years ago;  our children were young and they totally loved those rides and were mesmerized by the Disney cartoon characters.

We did have a great time as a family; this is why we are returning with the next generation!

However, what I remembered well was the long line ups for rides and exhibits at Disney.

This time we were pleasantly surprised to find that the lines seemed to be much shorter. We were glad to learn that we could get a FastPass to avoid the long waiting time in line which allowed us to jump on more rides than our last visit.

While we were waiting patiently in line, we were either entertained or were engaged in interactive plays sometimes on giant screens.

Who could resist taking a picture with  Goofy and Minnie?

One of the things our family enjoyed seeing, especially me ( a gardener) and the kids loved to have their pictures taken with the sculptures was the Epcot Flower & Garden Festival currently on display. I was glad that we happened to be there to catch this colorful festival.

There were quite a number of floral sculptures made in honor of the
Disney 's famous cartoon characters.

 Kids, people young and old squealed in delight when they first saw these familiar cute adorable characters.

Mike - the One Eye Monster

I wondered how many students will be enrolled at the Monster University next fall?

The Toy Story Floral Sculpture at EPCOT

Besides visiting the Flower & Garden Festival at Epcot, there were many things to see and do and it could have easily taken us another day to visit and see what we really to see. We did a number of rides and the following were really worth the wait:



The Sum of All Thrills - where we designed our own roller coaster ride and rode in it in later in an enclosed cabin with our feet dangling in air and the cabin moved and jerked by a robotic arm vibrated according to the design we put into the roller coaster. This ride was similar to the one we did at Disney Quest but even more exciting as by now we were familiar with the design process.

Lining up at EPCOT to get to our favorite ride - Soarin`

Soarin’ -  We waited for a little while in a long hallway. The lineup was long compared to the other rides we just got on. 

An interactive screen eased the boredom of a long lineup

While we were waiting, we were entertained by large screens on the wall and some games involved audience participation so it made the long waiting time a little bearable.

After about 40 minutes of waiting, we went into a theater and were strapped down in our seats. 

When the ride began, all the seats started to move and the screen in front of us opened up to a huge wide angle -270 degree movie screen. It gave us a real world experience of someone flying a hang glider over mountains, swooping down a river valley and skipping over the sea coast.   As we moved up and down through a moving and ever changing landscape, we felt as if we were riding on the back of these graceful and magnificent flying birds, gliding through fields and farms, hanging cliffs and roaring waves. 

For a few  brief, exhilarating minutes, we felt we are eagles spreading our wings and flying high above all the creatures below! It was great seeing how excited everyone was and the screams of delight from our family as they were enjoying this ride. This was one ride worth waiting for!!!

Another great ride was riding in a simulated rocket ship -  Four of us filed into a simulated space pod and were strapped in our seats. Each one of us was assigned a particular role with different responsibilities: Pilot, commander, navigator and another one. With our hands on the space ship control handle, we took off from earth and blasted into space experiencing the thrill and super speed of space travel. 

There were two choices for this ride - the Green Team which was milder in speed and the Orange Team which allowed you to experience the G-force and more physical motions. Our group chose the Green Team as one of our members was prone to motion sickness. But we still had fun and had a tiny little taste of the speed and sensation of what a real astronaut might have experienced blasting into space from earth!

R.T.
EPCOT Centre, Orlando, Florida

Disney Quest - Where Kids,Teens & Adults All Had Fun!

It is not easy to decide what and where to visit first once when you are at the Walt Disney World, Orlando, Florida.

We have two nephews, A. and T., aged 12 and 10 years old. They have never been to Disney World.

 Which ride should we go on next

We remembered vividly how excited our kids were when we went to Disney more than twenty years ago.  Knowing that the children would really enjoy all  Walt Disney has to offer at their age, we have planned a family vacation with them this year.

What boys would not enjoy a visit to Disney Quest? A place dedicated to all kinds of current video games as well as games going back to a couple of decades ago, and a place where you can play them to your heart's content until your fingers are numb and can feel no more! For $49.00 a day, it is not a bad place to start our Disney adventure!

There were many rides which the boys enjoyed such as the bumper car ride that was different from the regular bumper cars. In this ride, the bumper cars sucked up something like cannon balls into the car every time we drove our cars over them. After we loaded up our ammunition, we could fire them at other bumper cars to make them spin around when hit. That was really fun except it took us to play it a coupe of times before we got the hang of it. We liked it and it was more fun than the regular bumper car ride.

Other ride we really like was the  Cyber Space Mountain - We could design our own dream roller coaster ride on a pre-programmed computer screen.

With an electronic ruler on the screen, we could determine how high the roller coaster would climb and drop, how fast the roller coaster would run and the number of twists and turns, loops it would do. If we wanted, we could have put in as many loops as our stomach could stand and make the roller coaster go as fast as it could. After we designed this roller coaster, we went into the Space Mountain Lab and rode the virtual roller coaster we had just finished designing.  While we were riding this virtual roller coaster experiencing everything we incorporated in our design and screaming our lungs out, the whole experience was being taped and played on a screen outside the lab so that our friends could see our screaming faces!! And if we wish we could purchase the tape for a souvenir.

We got to try many other games too.  If you only have a half day or a late start of the day at Disney, Disney Quest will surely make the kids happy. Instead of spending $89.00 on a day pass per person for the major attractions at Disney, we spent $49.00 at Disney Quest and had a relaxing start of our adventure at Disney.

The best part about Disney Quest - It has lots of comfortable seats where moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas could sit, rest, sip coffee, have a bite or two and relax while the kids could have fun playing their games!

R.T.
Disney Quest, Orlando, Florida 
  

Florida, Here We Come!

After a week of facilitating and presenting to over a hundred of education leaders from overseas, I am more than ready for a holiday!

Heading south during March is a Canadian tradition!

The March Break exodus from the cold Canadian winter to a sunny warm place has been a long tradition  for many Canadians for years. The Toronto Pearson Airport is an extremely busy place comes the Friday before March Break. We are no exception to this Canadian tradition and always look forward to leaving the cold climate behind and enjoy some sunshine in sunny Florida ourselves!

Trying to avoid the mad rush at the Toronto airport, we purposely left a couple days later than everybody and boarded a West Jet flight and headed down south. After a brief stop at the New York Airport, we caught the connecting flight and arrived in Orlando, Florida, after almost a whole day of travelling.

Florida is our destination for this March Break holiday

What a nice feeling when we could just shed our heavy winter jackets, stroll outside with sweaters and shorts, smell the fresh air intoxicated with lush palms and other exotic tropical fragrant flowers and soak in the warm welcoming Floridian sunshine!

Our group has to stay in two separate hotels since everything has been booked up at one of the hotels.

My husband did all the planning of our great getaway!

    My husband and I are staying at the Howard       Johnson not far from the International Drive while Andrew's family is staying at the resort.

What makes us really happy is that our younger son is also joining us on this trip and he will be arriving at 11:45pm.

After we pick up the 7- people van from Enterprise, sign in the hotel, and enjoy a satisfying buffet dinner, we would be heading back to the Orlando Airport ( where we arrived a few hours earlier) to pick up our son.

We have not had a family vacation together with our  sons for a long time. Though E. cannot join us on this holiday, we have invited another family with young children to come and join us.

We are really looking forward to spending some fun and quality time together with our family at Disney and other parts of Florida!

R.T. Orlando, Florida

How to Prepare for Winter Driving in a Cold Country like Canada

Our older son now lives and works in the U.S. However he does come home every Christmas for the holidays and a couple of other times for other special occasions.

He was coming home this weekend for a special annual high school reunion  party with his friends. This reunion party is a tradition among his high school group male buddies and it has been going on for years.
My son comes home from New York every year in the middle of winter for this event. So it must be quite a special time for them! I asked my son what they did at this party, to which he replied, laughing mischievously,

 " All the guys' stuff like smoking cigar, eating, playing cards, spitting etc."

Since my son would fly in Toronto on Friday evening and immediately driving up to the cottage for his guys' party, I have been paying special attention to the weather since last week. Winter driving in Canada can be treacherous depending on the weather and road conditions.

Talking about weather is a daily topic in our lives as we are keenly aware of the impact rain, freezing rain, snow, ice, blizzard, storm, temperature, wind chill etc can have on the driving conditions. Driving in bright daylight can be difficult if there is a heavy snow fall or in a white out condition. However, driving in the night is even more difficult and dangerous because the temperature can drop and plunge down between ten to twenty degrees from day to night.

Each year, there are inevitably Canadians get stuck in traffic accidents on the highway or remote area during the cold winter days. Many are lucky enough to come out unscathed while at times some lost their lives under these unfortunate circumstances.  Being well prepared for winter driving is crucial for driver and passenger safety. The weather condition can change quickly and temperature could plummet which can drastically affect the driving condition. Therefore, it is imperative that there are emergency supplies in the vehicle if one is driving out of town or traveling for a long distance.

Since, E. would not have time to stop in Toronto long enough to prepare for his winter driving, I made sure  he has the following supplies in case of an emergency:

- Things to keep warm - a warm blanket, warm clothing, gloves, hat
-  Food - water, juice boxes, chocolate, cookies, high energy food bars
-  Safety - flash light, candles and a box of matches, orange safety vest, box of salt to melt ice, air compressor,and some tool in a tool box

I thank God that His has sent angels to protect us in our travels. Even though we have never  used these emergency supplies for the past many years, we still need to do our part and be well prepared for winter driving in Canada.

R.T.
Toronto

Getting my Writing done in My Crazy World

My younger son came home for this week. He wanted to get away from all the distractions in his own apartment in downtown Toronto so that he could have some peace and quiet for a little while. He was as good as his words, leaving his laptop behind and bringing himself only to our house.

Due to the cold weather and the long months we have to stay indoors, Canadians tend to furnish their homes with all sorts of toys and entertainment gadgets so that we could stay indoor comfortably and be entertained.
For those who can afford it,  we love to surround ourselves with 52 inch screen TV sets, video game machines, karaoke singing machines, exercising bikes, rowing machines ( though we rarely use them!) sauna, hot tubs ( though we may only use them a few times a year) etc. We have made our homes so comfortable and self sufficient that we just want to stay there, relax and enjoy ourselves.

I have the same relaxing attitude when I am home. I also find my own house too distracting as well. I can be puttering around all day in our home without getting anything accomplished. Turing on the T.V set, I would  be relaxing on the couch, sipping my tea and watching a bit of news, or I can cook up something over the stove in the kitchen, or I could re-arrange the cushions and furniture in the living room, watering the plants and deadheading them or trying on my clothes and tidying up the closets. There are so many things to keep me busy at home that I could hardly find time to write or do anything.

When I really want to write, post a blog or something, I find that I am much more efficient and productive if I work away from home. Finding a cafe close by, be it a Second Cup, Starbucks, Tim Hortons or McDonald's, I plunk my laptop down, purchase a coffee grande and start pecking on the keyboard. This is the only way I could get my writing done, away from my quiet comfortable house and seated in a restaurant or cafe with many people and activities around me!

Occasionally, I would like to get away from it all: obligations, commitments, daily chores and distractions.
Through my research, I found a couple of places.

1.  Queen of Apostle in Mississauga - www.qoa.ca, This renewal centre is about 40 minutes drive from Toronto. A calm and quiet place for people who wish to get away for a day or two to reflect and mediate in a natural beautiful setting.

2.   Marylake Monastery - 905-833-5368
 
At times when I need to get away without going too far, I will book myself and maybe my husband into this place to refocus my energy and reflect on the priorities in life.

R.T.
Toronto