Top 6 of DW: Smile!

            Let's face it.  How can you NOT have a great time at the "world's happiest place?"  Even the grumpiest of grumps will smile when he is there.  And that is what happened to us.  We found ourselves smiling, and laughing, and playing, and having fun spending time with one another.  Our precious little family (minus one sweet baby,of course).

Our Number One Greatest Memory of Disney World:

All the Smiles!

     Take a few minutes to watch all the smiles we had on our trip.  I promise you, it is worth it:

The Darlings Disney Trip from Rebecca Darling on Vimeo.

Top 6 of Disney World

Is It Christmas Here?

Where Am I?

Watch For Those Hidden Mickeys!

What's On Top Of Your Head?

Don't Stick Yourself!

Top 6 of DW: Don't Stick Yourself

            Webster's dictionary defines collection as an accumulation of objects gathered for a study, comparison, or exhibition.  Thanks to my mom for getting me started, I have been "accumulating" Department 56 houses for over 10 years, but I only get to "exhibit" them at Christmas time.  My daughter "accumulates" Webkinz (30+) and they are on "exhibit" in a pile in the corner of her room.  lovely.  And my son "accumulates" garbage that he finds when we go shopping (unbeknownst to his mother) and it is on "exhibit" under his bed.  You must see it.  Really, it is the loveliest collection of price tags, small hangers, and plastic do-dads you have ever seen.
           On our recent trip to Disney we started a new "accumulation".  The trip started innocently enough.  We had always seen people with lanyards covered with pins around their neck and never questioned it.  Until the 3rd day we were there and Sissy sat next to a girl on the bus who explained every one of her pins to her.  That is where the bug hit.
          Sis said she really wanted one and I murmured ok (and gave her the good ole' Mommy-ignore). "Let's go get fast-passes to Toy Story Mania!"  But it was while waiting in line for Aerosmith's Rock-N-Roller Coaster that I relented.  Sort of.
         Sis didn't want to ride.  Ok, it was much more dramatic than that, but (don't flame our parenting skills here) we knew she would LOVE this ride.  All her life we have had to, ahem, force her to try things that we knew she would love to do...and she always did love it.   So of course we were forcing her to try this ride.  And by forcing, I mean bribing (such a dirty little word, isn't it?)  So we bribed our daughter to ride the coaster for a lanyard and 2 pins.  Shame on us.  Like you never bribed your kids. shush.
          It started with 2 little pins and then we bought the "special anniversary pin" for a $1 more.  And then we were on a hunt to get the perfect pin from each park.  Guess which one she picked from Hollywood Studios?

Can ya give us a big pat on our backs for introducing Sis to her favorite ride of the week?

      Soon after Sis started collecting, Brody wanted in on the action.  We didn't have to bribe him to get his though.  That kid is a thrill-seeker.   His favorite pin?

His all-time favorite ride

        After the 5th day we were there, we learned something unique about these pins.  The whole concept was started with trading in mind.  Huh?  I don't want to trade the $$$ pin that took 2 hours for my daughter to pick out.  No way.  Until we got smart.  Sort of.

       Remember those cheap anniversary pins?  We grabbed a handful of those and started trading.  You can trade with anyone who has pins.  But Cast Members (that "employee" in Disney lingo) have pins that are to be traded on purpose.  You can ask any CM to trade with you and unless they have it already, they have to trade you.  Pretty cool huh?

      The las few days we hunted...and I mean hunted... for 1 specific pin.  An "M" for Sissy's name.  And guess where we found it?  The gift shop at our hotel, of course.

the cast member who graciously gave her his "M"

    

        The last day was spent looking for the perfect pins to trade.  Sissy found some great Mickey head pins:

   do you see the tiny mickey heads on them...more "Hidden Mickeys"

         And Brody found some he really liked too:

Mom's Favorite

         So, of course this wound up being an expensive way to commemorate our trip, but we had a blast finding all the right pins.  We happened to get a bit of advice for future reference too.  Before going to the parks, buy some pins on eBay and then you'll have ones to trade with for a fraction of the price.  They were right.  I just found the M pin for $.99.  figures.

       Have you been keeping up?  We have one more Top 6 of Disney World to reveal and plan on doing it Wednesday.  Please come back to see our favorite thing about our trip to Disney World!

Top 6 of DW: What's that on top of your head?

            Are you keeping up with us (or am I boring y'all to tears yet?)?  We just had so much fun on our recent trip to Disney World that I wanted to "talk" about all the unique experiences we had.  To catch up on our adventure, read about our fun visiting several countries in a matter of a few hours, or hunting for all the hidden mickeys, or take a look at all the fabulous Christmas decorations we saw.
            As for now, we are down to number 3 of our Top 6...........

What's that on top of your head??

          If you have visited the World recently, you will notice an overabundance of hats on top of Disneites heads.  I mean there are a lot of hats for sale at all of the parks and resorts.  We had way too much fun trying some on:

Some "traditional" DW hats

and not so traditional:

We found great hats in a few countries we visited.  Can you guess what countries these are from?  If you saw the "Countries" post, this should be easy-peasy.

 Number 1

 Numéro 2

3 عدد 

 Idadi 4

5號

Nummer 6

Número 7

 Not every country had a fun hat to try on, but we did always find an interesting prop or 2 to play with...

Germany

        

Italy

and the American Experience....what's wrong with a nice cowboy hat?

Top 6 of DW 2009-Watch for those Hidden Mickeys!

              Onward with our countdown.............Number 4!  Hidden Mickeys!  Say What?

The Disney official history goes like this: Hidden Mickeys started in the late 1980’s in Epcot as an inside joke among the Imagineers. Hiding Mickey around WDW was just plain fun! However, Jim Hill (jimhillmedia.com) believes in this "unofficial history": Hidden Mickeys were born as the Imagineers were designing Epcot in the late 1970's and early 1980's. At that time, Disney management felt that the characters belonged in the Magic Kingdom only. The Imagineers disagreed and began slipping Mickeys into Epcot! I suspect that Mickey Mouse designs that were previously in place in WDW (and Disneyland) also became known as Hidden Mickeys. Because of the popularity of HM’s, Imagineers are encouraged to place them in new construction.

     There are tons of "hidden Mickeys" to be found all over Disney World and the kids and I had a ton of fun trying to find them.  One evening we were too tired to head back to the parks, so we decided to take the hidden mickey tour that our resort, Wilderness Lodge, created.  We were tasked to find 12 different hidden mickeys on property and they ranged from the lobby to the rooms to the restaurant to the pool.  We spent 2 hours finding hidden mickeys.  Some were easy:

          But many were pretty hard, like the one on the ceiling of the bar on the horse's rear.  Huh?  Don't ask- we had to get help from the bartender on that one!  As difficult as it was, the kids and I had so much fun doing it.  And the last couple of days were dedicated to finding mickeys everywhere.  Some were easy, like on the drains all over the world, others were hard to see, like the 3 plates in the Haunted Mansion set up to look like Mickey's head.  The obvious ones are not considered "hidden", but my kids didn't care. See if you can see some of the mickeys in the following pictures:

        There are websites & books dedicated to the art of finding the hidden mickeys.  What I found is that if I was too busy trying to find a mickey on a ride, I didn't get to relax and enjoy the ride so much. So I stopped.  The hunt, while fun, would be something we can save for a later trip- when the kids are older....much older.

Top 6 of DW 2009-Where Am I?

China? Yes!  France? Oui! Morocco? Uh huh. Mexico? Si!  

        As we count down our top favorite things at Disney World, we come to number 5....the number of countries we visited in one day!!  I can now officially say that we enjoyed a beer in England and a margarita in Mexico all in the same day.  Played with drums in Zimbabwe, watched trains in Germany, and spun plates in China....all in the same day.  Yes, we walked 10,000 miles, but it was worth it.

         One of my favorite parks of the trip was Epcot.  Not only were there fantastic rides (Soarin and Mission Space were our favs!), but we took a long walk around the World Showcase and were able to see 12 countries in less than 3 hours.  And the best part about it?  All the countries were celebrating Christmas in their traditional ways, so we leaned a little along the way!

Canada

O Canada

England

France

Morocco

Japan

Italy

Germany

China

Norway

Mexico

9 countries in 2 minutes from Rebecca Darling on Vimeo.

Top 6 of DW 2009-Is it Christmas here?

There is so much to love about Disney World- from the amazing sites (Cindy's castle is breathtaking no matter what time of day you see it!) to the characters (Mickey will always be my favorite!) to the amazing service you receive (the "cast members" are all so helpful & friendly!). But I wanted to narrow it down to the top things we enjoyed the most about our trip- not just the fun rides, awesome meals, and fun things to see- but the memory-making events that made our trip so very special. And lucky for you, we were able to narrow it down to six. So, let's get started.

One thing we had heard about going to DW at Christmas time was the amazing Christmas decorations- in fact, we watched a show on HGTV that showed how preparations for the Christmas season at Disney begins in May. Every park had an amazing Christmas tree. Each resort that we visited was completely decked out. So despite being in sunny Orlando, we were able to sorta feel like it was Christmas.

So in my Top 6 things we loved about WDW this year......(drum roll please).......the Holly Jolly, It's-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like-Christmas decorations.

The Christmas Tree at the Magic Kingdom

On the MK tree, there were these giant strands of popcorn, bigger than my son's head....

Adorable decorations at the Crystal Palace in the MK. All of this was made out of flowers.

Animal Kingdom's tree- all animals of course

The Wilderness Lodge's tree, where we stayed

The kids showing their true colors of the trip...no, they were perfect angels and got along beautifully (cough, cough)

The garland was made out of poinsettias on this tree at Epcot

The tree at The Grand Floridian - all Victorian

This is a life size Gingerbread house that has a store in the back to buy gingerbread shingles. The house was amazing.

These poinsettia balls took over 20 poinsettia plants to make!

A Gingerbread tree at the Contemporary Hotel. Can you see the "hidden Mickey" on it?

And one of my favorite trees...a monorail one!

One of the highlights of the trip was watching the Osborne Family Lights at Hollywood Studios. A family man out of Little Rock, Arkansas started putting up dancing lights each year that began to grow and grow, much to the annoyance of his neighbors. Disney took notice and asked if they could host the dancing lights at their parks. It was by far one of our favorite "shows" of the trip. Here's a clip:

Osborne Family Lights from Rebecca Darling on Vimeo.