Walt Disney World

Chad and I had another Florida tourist experience this weekend. Neither of us had ever been to Walt Disney World and Chad purchased tickets for us for our anniversary. We spent Friday at Epcot and Saturday at Magic Kingdom.

One of our favorite things at Epcot was the Soarin' ride. A co-worker told em to get fast passes for this ride as soon as we got to the park. We saved a lot of time that way. The ride makes you feel as if you're on a hang glider over California. It was great! The attention to detail and all of the special effects are amazing.

We also enjoyed visiting the various country attractions. Here we both are at Norway:

I didn't realize just how exhausting Disney World would be. I had plans to stay at Epcot until at least 9:30 p.m. to watch the fireworks. But, by 5:00 p.m., we were both exhausted and it was all we could do to get back to our hotel and take a nap before dinner.

After a good night's rest, we managed to gather the energy for day 2 - the Magic Kingdom.

We needed every bit of energy we could get. When we arrived at the Magic Kingdom, we discovered that they were filming the Christmas Day parade on Saturday. People were lined up everywhere and just to get into the park we had to walk through a random employee parking lot. It really took away a lot of the "magic."

It wasn't really a parade either. It was a series of performances that they would do over and over and over again until they felt they had enough footage of everything. We saw Regis and Kelly and Joey (one of the Backstreet Boys) and heard Miley Cyrus sing. It wasn't as cool as it sounds. There were tons of people there and everything was crowded.

One of the disadvantages of always doing these adventures by ourselves is that we very rarely get pictures together. I wanted to make sure we got at least a couple before leaving the park.

A couple of random Disney observations ... there are strollers everywhere, the American public (of all ages) is really obese, the attention to detail on all of the attractions is amazing, the foreigners that visit have to think Americans are all fat and lazy.

It was a great experience. We're going to return in the spring and hit some of the other parks with our remaining two days. I don't see how anyone could possibly do four days in a row of visiting the parks!

P.S. A special thanks to our Mizzou friend Greg Chase who works at the parks for helping make our stay at the Pop Century Resort so great!