Disney Pictures

As promised, I now present pictures from our recent trip to Disney World. The first half comes from day one, when we visited Disney’s Magic Kingdom. The second half is from day two, when we visited Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Melanie already posted most of these on her blog, but I’ll be filling in a few more details about the trip as I discuss the photos, so hopefully that’s worth something.

Edison and Peter were both pretty excited about riding a shuttle. At first, Edison thought we were joking about taking a shuttle, because he was thinking of a space shuttle. When we explained that it was like a bus, he became very excited about it. As we talked about whether to shuttle or not, Edison was a strong advocate for the position that we should indeed take the shuttle. He won.

You’ll also notice in the above picture that Edison and Peter are wearing jackets. Yes, it was rather chilly on that first day, at least in the morning and evening. We wore the jackets for at least a few hours, I think, before it became too warm.

This is the one and only photo I’ll share that was taken from inside the Magic Kingdom park. The others that we took within the park are near duplicates of this one, so there isn’t anything else worth sharing. If you’ve seen Melanie’s blog, note that this photo is slightly different from the one she shared. Peter’s face is obscured in this one, which isn’t cute, but I feel the photo has strengths that the one Melanie shared did not. For instance, notice the man just behind Edison’s left shoulder. He has provided us with photographic proof that Creegan’s bowels are working just fine nowadays.

This is Eddie and Peter, having just departed the monorail (still visible on the left side of the photo) after our return to Epcot. We had to wait just outside of Epcot for our return shuttle to the hotel. With plenty of time to spare, we hung around and snapped some pictures. The sun was setting and turned the sky into a lovely shade of purple, not quite captured by this photo, but close. Edison and Peter both loved the “big ball.” I myself thought the ball looked a lot cooler in real life than it ever has in photos. It’s a lot sleeker than you’d think—very shiny and metallic.

My date to Disney World. She’s married and has kids, but hey, so do I. As you can see, Creegan eventually passed out from his own stench. We probably should have taken diapers to Orlando, but we knew any time spent changing diapers meant less time on rides. I think we made the right choice. You can change diapers any day of the week, but you can’t always ride Aladdin’s magic carpets, am I right?

For being such a spirited pirate, Eddie was deathly afraid of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and refused to let us go on it. We tried to stuff him into a rentable locker so the rest of us could go on the ride, but he didn’t quite fit. What a killjoy. Fortunately, as we waited for the shuttle back to our hotel after our first day at Disney World, the woman working in the nearby “Bus Information” booth found our boys charming, called them over, and gave them both a free pirate hat. So, we did have some pirate-oriented fun for the day. And, as a bonus, I’m thinking that if Edison and Peter grow up and pirate Disney movies for a living, we’ll only have Disney to blame. I can just imagine Eddie and Peter’s defense lawyer whipping out these pirate hats as exhibit A. Oh, the egg on the Disney executives’ faces! Why, Daisy Duck herself couldn’t poop out that much egg in a lifetime!

Here begins day two, with this picture being snapped at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. More specifically, it was taken aboard the Kilimanjaro Safaris ride, about 20 seconds before the ride came to an end. I like the blurred background, showing just how wild a ride it was. (Well, mildly wild, at least for a few seconds, here and there.) We were seated directly behind the driver of the jeep, which gave us the advantage of having a nearly unobstructed view out the front windshield, as well as to our sides. I don’t know if being up front and seeing so well in front of us made it better or worse for Peter, who was a bit scared on this ride. It could get quite bumpy, and sometimes we did go kind of fast. I’m fairly certain this is the only ride that Peter asked to get off of, and he did so repeatedly. Poor guy. All in all, he handled it quite well, considering how much he wanted to be done with it. I think he may have cried for a few seconds at some point, but otherwise, he was just tense. Brave little fella.

Just as Sleeping Beauty’s Castle is the center of the Magic Kingdom, the Tree of Life is the center of Animal Kingdom. You probably cannot tell from this photograph alone just how impressive this fake tree is. It’s 50 feet wide and 14 stories tall, with animals intricately carved all around the trunk. (You might want to click on the picture and view it at a larger size in order to better appreciate it.) This photo was taken from almost directly beneath the tree, so you don’t see the details nearly as well as you could otherwise. The It’s Tough to be a Bug! 3-D movie that concluded our visit to Animal Kingdom is shown in a theater located underneath the tree, purposely designed to feel as though you are inside the root of the tree (like you yourself are a bug). I snapped this picture just after watching the movie.

I snapped this photo less than one minute after taking the previous picture. It was getting dark quickly at this point, so it’s rather difficult to see that the Tree of Life is right behind the three kids that suddenly stuck their faces in front of my camera as I was taking pictures. I basically had to lie down on the ground to get this shot. The effort doesn’t show, so I have to mention it. Why? Because I think I deserve recognition whenever I do anything that requires more than sitting, standing, or walking, that’s why.

Show’s over! Thanks for watching!