Thursday, May 02, 2013

Trying new things


We did a lot of walking in Disney World, and I haven't gotten any exercise since. I really need to get out there and start some sort of routine! My legs have been cramping up with so much sitting time at the computer.

We only got a double stroller on two days, and I believe they were both Epcot days. Epcot is one of those parks that is a LOT of walking, and attractions are not so close to each other. I was glad we did it, even though it costs like $30, because we were logging about 10-13 miles a day, and that's a lot for little legs that are not at all used to anything even close to those distances.


We went with Grandma Chris to Animal Kingdom. It isn't really my favorite park as it doesn't have a lot of attractions (or so I always thought), but I absolutely love the way it's decorated. The kids love it though - it's like a big, interactive zoo with rides. The really got into collecting stamps on Rafiki's Watch. At each station they'd learn a little about animals or fossils or nature: just the thing little boys like!


 
At one station they had to look for dung and recognize the animal it belonged to (the dung was fake of course, but looked real enough!). They thought that was pretty cool.




 

 
 
The decorations are like Asia and Africa, and the building for example will purposefully look run down, or they'll have a tree full of prayer flags, or a (fake, I assume) electricity transmitter with thousands of electric cables coming out of it and going to all the buildings. Reminds me of the cable situation here in Quito!
 

In each of the parks this time we tried to do at least one new thing. It's amazing but for as many times as we've gone now, we still haven't succeeded in getting to everything that's offered. This time we went to "It's tough to be a bug", a 3-D movie (actually 4-D) that was a little frightneing but not that great, in my opinion. The kids worked up the nerves and they managed. The only scary part is being blasted with air and loud noises, but maybe those things are scarier than monsters and ghosts.

The other thing we did was go see "Finding Nemo: The Musical". I'd heard it was great, and all the promotional material talks about it, but I didn't really think it would be that amazing. But the weather was still cold, our legs was tired, and the show proided 45 minutes or so of sitting indoors, so we went.

Can I just say WOW? A.ma.zing!!!! Probably one of my favorite Disney things ever. It was like a Broadway musical with huge puppets that people danced around the stage, with screens in the background and music and lights and actors coming out through the stage, and bubbles and... Well, wow. Totally worth it. Serious love for that show. The kids loved it too, I think, and I was happy because one of the things on our summer bucket list is to always make it to a play and we never seem to get around to it.


 
 
At Epocot the next day it continued to be cold, but it wasn't as windy and was a little warmer in the sun. We had beautiful skies the whole day.  Here we tried a few new things too. First up was Captain EO, a 3-D movie. Not sure what to expect, I was quite shocked to find out that it was an older movie they'd made with Michael Jackson, and they'd just vamped up the effects a bit. 
 
It was a little sad for Disney. Not worth it at all, almost laughable for how dated and 80s it was, with a storyline that was a bad copy of a Thriller video mixed with Star Wars. 
 
Then we tried the O! Canada movie, and that was pretty cool. You step into a large room, standing only, and the screens fill up all around you. It felt like we were traveling over mountains and cities and prairies and I learned a lot about Canada, too. And an added plus was it was hosted by Martin Short, whichmade it pretty funny at times.

 
 
It's always fun to try a few new things. And can you believe it? We still have things we didn't get around to!