Back from Orlando

Well, we're home from Disney World. It was 5 days of fun and complete over-stimulation. It was a great trip with my parents, my brother, sister-in-law, niece, and nephew. It was great seeing my brother and his family as we hadn't seen them in a couple of years. Walt Disney World (WDW) is like nothing I've ever seen before. It's HUGE. There are 4 traditional amusement parks, 2 water parks, plus "Downtown Disney." The kid in me was tickled by all the rides, the colors, the "glitz" of the whole place. The grown up side of me was awed by the smoothness with which the entire "World," as they call it, operates and the attention to minute detail everywhere you look... this goes even down all the way to the individual rooms. One evening when coming back to the hotel after a long day of playing in the parks, my niece came home to see that the housekeepers had been looking after her "babies" making sure they had a nice place to stay along with everyone else.

Another thing I was amazed by is the amount of time we spent in the parks. Each day we were in the parks anywhere from 10 to 14 hours. More often than not, we would close the parks down each night and be on one of the last buses back to the hotel at night. At the end of every day, the kids would fall asleep on the way back to the hotel and we would all have horribly swollen and aching feet, but the next day we'd all happily get up and do it all over again. It was great fun to be a kid and ride all the rides. WDW has some pretty spectacular rides, again with meticulous attention to detail - even the lines you wait in to get up to the ride are filled with all kinds of interesting features that pertain to the ride you're about to get on. It makes even standing in lines more bearable.
It was great to be able to go to Florida and enjoy the balmy weather (in the 80's every day) in December. It was also great to be able to spend time with my family. OK, so riding all the rides and seeing all the sights wasn't too bad either.