Road Trip Family

The Lost World

As we’ve been planning a trip to an amusement park, I’ve been thinking about different wild rides that I have been on over the years. And there have been quite a few that have been fun, exhilarating and a little bit scary!

There is a ride at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure in Florida that we originally had no plans to ride. But, it quickly became one of the best rides of that day!

When we visited the park, the Harry Potter area of the park had just opened. Being huge fans of the books and movies, we thought it would be fun to see what this park had to offer.

That was really the main reason we had decided to go to this park. And we figured that since it was a new section and we had heard all these stories about amazingly long lines, we’d only be spending out time in this section of the park.

Surprisingly, though, the lines were not too bad and we found ourselves with some time in the afternoon and early evening to visit the rest of Islands of Adventure.

We ventured over to the Jurassic Park section of the park.

The kids were not familiar with this movie, but seemed to still enjoy the idea of a dinosaur themed area. There was the Pternondan Flyers, a swing type ride for kids to experience a birds’ eye view of the land, there was a playground area, and there was a hands-on science area with cool features such as the area where you can test your DNA to find out what kind of dinosaur you would be or the nursery where you can see a baby velociraptor hatching.

By far, the wildest ride in this part of the park was the Jurassic Park River Adventure. Much like Splash Mountain at Disney World, this water raft ride tells a story as you move down the river and ultimately make a big splash at the end.

For those of us familiar with the movie, it was a very realistic story based on the movie  . The premise of the ride is that you are taking a tour of the newly built – and supposedly safe -  Jurassic Park. And the ride starts off quite peacefully. You see different types of dinosaurs such as a baby Stegosaurus and its mother. But, then your raft is “accidentally” bumped off course and you end up in the restricted section of Jurassic Park. And suddenly, you find yourself trying to flee from the evil velociraptors who have broken loose. Chaos unfolds around you, until you find yourself plunging 85 feet in total darkness to escape a fate at the hands of a terrifying T-rex.

There’s no time for a sigh of relief, though, as you scream down that final plunge into a wall of water!

Pumpkin was not interested in going on this ride at all, so she and Grandma watched from the relative dryness of the viewing area. The rest of us decided to brave the ride, though. While Grandpa, Sweet Pea, My Chandler and I all managed to get extensively splashed, Peanut proved to be the genius of the group and strategically placed herself in the middle of the seat and conveniently ducked down in a way that helped her stay almost completely dry!

In reality, I think she was ducked way down with her eyes closed for most of the ride!

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Start Your Engines

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

With the heat wave hitting the Northeast this past week and seeing recent advertising on television about Christmas in July, I started reminiscing about a trip we took when I was a little girl. I think I was maybe 4 or 5.

It was summertime and it was hot. But, there was a place near Wilmington, NY, in the Adirondack mountains where it was just a little bit colder - magically colder.

It’s called the North Pole and it can be found in Santa’s Workshop, a themed park that actually boasts the address of North Pole, NY.

Our visit must have made quite the impact on me, because even though I was very young, to this day I have very vivid memories of this place.

I remember getting to touch the North Pole, an actual frosty cold pole situated in the center of Santa’s little village.

There was a building where you could see reindeer. Actual reindeer! And each one had their name on their stall. (Are you singing the song right now? I am!)

I remember going to visit the big man himself, jolly old St. Nick. It wasn’t even December! I hadn’t even made my Christmas list, yet! (Although, I am sure I came up with some suggestions for him, anyway!)

I remember there being some rides to go on and sleighs to sit in. I remember it feeling very “Christmas-y” and kind of magical in this little village.

But, the biggest memory for me was my acting debut at Santa’s Workshop. There was a short skit that was being performed at an outdoor stage area in the park and we decided to check it out. My sister and I were given permission to head down towards the gate at the front of the seating area so we could see the show a bit better.

Call it luck, or just being in the right place at the right time, but I was selected by an elf to be a part of the show.

I got invited on stage and was given the honor of sitting next to Mother Goose as she read a story.

Don’t ask me what the show was about. I think I was too mesmerized by this opportunity to be on stage to fully remember what the plot.

But, I do vaguely recall it was a mystery that needed to be solved. I do remember needing to skip around the stage with Red Riding Hood and being shocked when her shoe came off. And I do remember being even more shocked that she just kept right on going and didn’t go back to get it!

It was hard work pulling off a convincing role as “child who helped solve the mystery.” But, I did it and I was rewarded with a special Santa hat with my name on it.

A hat that I still have to this day!

The hat is still around and so is the workshop. There are still rides and shows with the Mother Goose Players. The reindeer are still there and so is Santa Claus. You can still get Santa hats and cookies.

The park is open during the summer all the way through December.

And if you go, and there’s a mystery to be solved….give me a shout!

On Broadway!

It’s been kind of quiet on the Road Trip blog these last few weeks. Mainly, it’s because I’ve found myself in the middle of what feels like a tornado.

You see, it’s theater season for the Road Trip family.

For some reason – and if you know my family, it’s not an unknown reason – my children have been bitten with a bug. The acting bug. 

It started out small. A preschool nursery rhyme play here. A church pageant there.

But, then grade school happened and – with the help of a local children’s theater company – the plays became bigger and more involved.

 And, like any organization with not a lot of money to spare for the arts, there’s a lot of donations and volunteering from the parents.

And once they discover you can sew a – fairly – straight line, well, let’s just say that my little sewing machine has had quite the workout over the years.

Despite all of the tiring hours and weeks of rehearsals and meetings and organizing, it is nice to see my kids be interested in something that I have had an interest in for years. A love that I definitely inherited from my parents. A love of being on the stage.

And a love of watching plays.

I’ve been reminiscing over these past few weeks about my theater experiences. I've thought back to my earliest memory of theater. I was about 4 or 5 and I saw a dress rehearsal for a local production of "Oklahoma" that my dad was in. I remember being enthralled with Ado Annie as she sang right in front of me about not being a girl who can't say no. I wanted to be up on that stage, too, singing my heart out!

My earliest experience on a stage that I can remember is playing Old Mother Hubbard in my Kindergarten play. I dove into the role with relish, immersing myself into the role of a woman with a dog who found her cupboards were bare and so she had no bone to give to her dog. There was tenderness, there was intense drama, there was mystery!

My first big speaking role was as the ghost of a young child in "Blithe Spirit," a production that my Dad was directing. Of course it was a recording of my voice, but I brought a lot of life to that dead character!

And then there was the first time I saw a show on Broadway. I was in 8^th grade when my family went to New York to see "Big River." Everything is etched with such clarity in my mind  - from the marquis outside to our seats off to the left of the stage, to the spittle flying from Huck Finn’s Pappy’s mouth, to the cute, cute, cute actor who play Tom Sawyer.

Over the years, theater has been a big part in my life. There were usually a couple of musicals thrown into the music mix on our car trips. There were school productions where there was as much drama going on backstage as there was onstage. There were road trips to small town theaters and to big city productions. There have been local productions with hardly any sets and big traveling shows with amazingly big sets.

And now in two weeks, I’ll be able to sit back and enjoy two great productions. We’ll get to see Peanut in a slightly rewritten production of "Narnia" (complete with some familiar tunes from the 1960s). And then the following week Sweet Pea will put on her least favorite color in the world to become a Pink Lady in a very G-rated version of "Grease."

I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!

You've Got a Friend in Me

One of the most rootinest, tootinest rides at Disney World is the new Toy Story Mania in Hollywood Studios. From the moment you enter the queue for the ride until you exit, you become immersed in a world of toys! This interactive game combines carnival games with the loveable characters from the Toy Story movies all wrapped up in a 3D experience.

When you enter the queue, you find yourself in what feels like a life-size toy box.

There’s a huge Candyland game on the wall, tall crayons propped up next to checkers, the monkeys from the Barrel of Monkeys toy strung like garland across the ceiling, human-sized Tinker Toys and Viewmaster reels that are so big that you can view them without the Viewmaster. 

You really feel like a little toy yourself as you wind around the room.

Just before you exit this room to enter the main portion of the attraction, you encounter a 5-foot tall Mr. Potato Head.

This animatronic creation not only moves and talks to guests, but will follow you with his eyes, pick out people from the crowd and talk directly to them and even remove one of his ears. It’s certainly a sight to behold and it had all of us mesmerized!

Finally, you get your 3D glasses and enter the room where you will board these carnival styled vehicles. This room looks like Andy’s room blown up in size. I began to feel like I was one of the toys! Especially when we were waiting for my mom to exit the ride and the girls decided to sit in between the pages of a Golden Book.

It’s actually kind of funny that all of this isn’t even the main part of the attraction! When it is your turn, you get into one of these vehicles, pull down the lap bar, grab your string pull shooter attached to the front of the vehicle and get ready to play some carnival style game.

Each game is introduced by some of the Toy Story characters and lasts about 30 seconds each. During this time you try to throw as many virtual pies at targets as possible or pop as many balloons as you can with virtual darts or toss rings over aliens.

The games can bring out the competitiveness in people (like Sweet Pea), but are a lot of fun for every one of all ages. From my parents to Peanut and Pumpkin, everyone had a great time. It’s definitely a ride we’ll visit again!

River Rapids

As I look out on this wintery day and see the rain – yes, rain not snow – coming down, it reminds me of a water ride at Animal Kingdom. The Kali River Rapids, located in the Asia area of Animal Kingdom, is similar to rafting rides at other amusement parks. What makes this different, though, is that it has a story attached to it as is typical of Disney rides.

The story starts as you line up to ride the rapids. You learn that you are going to be taking part of the “Kali Rapids Expedition”, a ride down the Chakranadi River to see the beautiful area. Unfortunately, you learn that there has been illegal logging happening around the area and to be on the lookout for any happenings around you.

 

The ride starts out with just a few little bumps and turns and squirts of waters, but then the waters become choppier and it becomes very evident that you’ve stumbled upon the illegal logging. It's also about this time that you begin to understand why there were people putting their rain ponchos on before they went on this ride. And then you realize that your rain gear is staying nice and dry in the basket of the stroller parked near the entrance to the ride.

 

I’m not sure if this is intentionally planned or not, but it seems that the person in your 12-person raft who most wants to stay dry ends up being the one who gets the most drenched. 

Poor Dad! How about a ride on Mount Everest to dry off?

Memories of a Dog

Fall days have arrived and with it the cold nights. Nights where you put on your favorite pair of fuzzy socks, your warm pajamas and snuggle up under many blankets.

It’s nights like this that remind me of a particular camping trip that I went on with my family. It was the summer after I graduated high school and we were taking one last vacation before I headed off to college. We had decided to visit Acadia National park and spend the week camping with family friends.

This camping trip was a little different for us, because we had a new member of the family joining us for the vacation. His name was Cory and he was an adorable and very young beagle puppy. He had just become a part of our family and it didn’t seem right to leave him behind so soon after getting him. So, we packed up his dog bowl and his leash and brought him along.

Cory became one of the main attractions for us. Whenever we were in town, tourists would stop us to see the adorable pup. Whenever we went for walks, Cory would lead the pack for a few minutes and then need to be carried the rest of the way. Whenever we played near the water, Cory was right there to check it out and play with us. And whenever we ate…well, Cory was a growing puppy who loved to eat, too!

There was one particular morning that Cory gave us all a scare and we thought we’d lost him to the wild before we’d really had him.

Camping in Maine, even in August, can get kind of chilly at night. We all had our sleeping bags to snuggle into to stay warm and we had made a little bed of blankets for Cory between my mom and brother. When morning came, we all woke up to discover that the bed of blankets was empty. And even though Cory was a curious puppy, the tent was zipped up tight, so it didn’t seem likely that he had escaped the tent.

But, he was nowhere to be found inside the tent and when he was called there was no answer or movement.

A few frantic moments later, though, and one more “Cory!”, and Mom’s sleeping bag began to move down near her feet. Slowly that little lump started moving its way up the bag until a sleepy little puppy dog nose poked its way out of the top of the bag.

Cory had managed to wiggle his way down to the bottom of the bag in the middle of the night and found a toasty warm spot to curl up in. Smart dog! He gave us quite a scare that morning, but now years later, we chuckle as we remember that moment.

As I burrow down under my blankets, I think about our Cory and how he burrowed his way into the warmest spot of the sleeping bag. And how he burrowed his way into our hearts for the next 12 years.

Birthday Travels

This was a milestone year for My Chandler and me. Within the last 2 months we have both celebrated the end of one decade and the start of a new one. You would think that this milestone would bother at least one of us, but neither of us has had trouble with turning 40.

Turning 26, on the other hand, was a very difficult age to turn. It was the downhill slide of my twenties!

With birthdays on my mind lately, I’ve been thinking about my past birthdays, some great and some not so great. (We won’t bring up my 20^th birthday when I was stuck cooking hamburgers and hot dogs over a hot fire for 75 kids and staff at an all camp cookout. A huge hot fire. In August. By myself.)

Because my birthday is right in the middle of August, we are usually traveling some place or another. One year, we had a birthday picnic lunch at a rest stop! Seriously. Another time, my family was at a campground camping with a bunch of families from our church.

 
And as I have mentioned in a previous post, there was the time I got to spend my birthday dinner with Mickey Mouse. For someone who loves Disney as much as I do, how can you possibly top that?

 
But, I did. Five years ago, I got to make the most special trip on my birthday.

I traveled home from the hospital with the newest member of our family, Pumpkin. What a great birthday present!

 

 

Car Rentals

Here’s a tip if you are traveling by plane and need to rent vehicles.

Last fall, we planned a trip to Walt Disney World for our family of five and my parents. After booking our plane tickets, we started discussing our transportation once we arrived in Florida since we were staying offsite. I started researching different rental companies for a big enough van for all of us, thinking that we would split the cost with my parents.

I was finding decent rates and was just about to reserve, when I had a thought. What would the cost of two regular sized four-door sedans be to rent vs. a minivan? So, I checked out the rates and discovered that it would cost all of us less than if we went in on a minivan together.

 

So, after talking to everyone involved, we opted to rent two smaller vehicles. It turned out to be a great idea, too. It cost us less and it gave us two vehicles to get around, so we were able to split up into groups and go in different directions at times.

Depending on current deals, special promotions and coupons you might have, there might be a better deal when renting vehicles. But, you should definitely check out different combinations of vehicles when looking at rentals.

Follow That Bird

I have always been a fan of Sesame Street. Always. I just love those Jim Henson puppets and Gordon and Susan and Maria and Louis and Mr. Looper….I mean Mr. Hooper.

And Sesame Street plays a part in many of my family memories. Singing along with Sesame Street albums, acting out a Sesame Street Christmas pageant with my youth group, using the time frame of Sesame Street to measure trips.

One of my favorite memories including Sesame Street involves haystacks.

Back when I was younger, Sesame Street hit the big screen in a full-length movie called “Follow That Bird”. In the film, a social worker forces Big Bird to go live with a family of birds because she feels he that is what he needs. But, his family on Sesame Street feel differently and when Big Bird runs away from his new family, the Sesame Street clan leaves “the hood” to find him and bring him back to where he should be, back on Sesame Street.

There is a scene in this movie in which Big Bird, thinking the social worker had found him, hides in a haystack in the middle of a field. And while the social worker is looking the other way, Big Bird moves the haystack across the field and gets away.

I’m not sure how it started. Maybe it was an attempt to entertain the younger children in the car. Whatever the case may be, whenever we passed a farm field with haystacks, my parents would tell us to look through the haystacks and see if we could find Big Bird. Of course we never did, but it was entertaining and kept us busy.

What’s really funny is that even now, at age 40, I still find myself searching haystacks whenever we pass a field. 

And I still haven’t found Big Bird!

Crash Test Dummies

Take a left at the big musical water fountain at EPCOT and you’ll come across one of our favorite rides at EPCOT, Test Track. This fun thrill ride starts you out in a welcome center where you can see different tests that have been performed on cars and car parts.  In typical Disney fashion, everything is done in just a way to create an atmosphere around you and to immerse you into a story.

This is evident in the next phase of the attraction. You enter a “briefing” room where one of the head testers (via a video) informs you and the others in the room that you will all get the opportunity to participate in some tests that cars are put through. In other words, all guests get to take on the role of crash test dummy!

You then exit another door and line up for the next part of Test Track – the ride portion. It’s best to buckle up for this portion, because it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Literally a bumpy ride.

And a cold ride. And a hot ride, and a jerky ride and a fast ride.

The car you are in takes you up a hill, down a hill, around sharp curves and over bumpy roads. You go through a heat chamber and a cold chamber. And then there’s the moment near the end where it looks like you are careening straight towards a wall, a barrier, ready to meet your end like a real crash test dummy. But at the last second, the wall opens up and your car speeds onto a track that curves around the building.

And of course when the ride comes to its eventual stop, you are deposited where all Disney rides deposit their guests – the gift shop. I definitely recommend stopping by the photo area on the way out, though, to check out the photo taken during your ride. It’s fun to see the expressions on everyone’s faces!