Me

My oh my what a wonderful week!

WOW, what an experience. Sharon and I are so lucky that our daughter and son-in-law let us tag along. What a wonderful time we had sharing the magic with our 5 year and 1 year old granddaughter. Every day was a new experience. Joelle has grown up so much in two years. She had no fear of the haunted mansion and was not afraid to try anything. We were blessed with 5 days of beautiful weather, cool mornings and warm afternoons. I was lucky to be with Disney vets. Petie and Chris would take all our Disney pass and run to get "fast passes" for hard to get rides. Petie did an amazing job of researching and planning all the details. I will follow with a blog on Miss Disney, Sharon.

I was amazed when Joelle said she wanted to go into the haunted mansion and Jumbo with Poppy. That made me fell so special. I wanted her to go on Big Thunder Mountain with me but she was not tall enough. Big Thunder Mountain is the only roller coaster ride I like because it isn't a high roller coaster with a lot of quick ups and downs, just a lot a sharp banked curves. I told Joelle that they changed the name to Little Thunder Mountain because I tamed it during my ride. I told her that they might call me on the cell phone if it got out of control again after they found out my grandfather was a mountain railroad engineer. I guess that was OK to tell her that. I was even given the chance to be a hero to Joelle. A guy started and ad hoc game while we were at EPCOT. This guy suddenly appeared on the pathway with some bottles half full of sand and some rubber hoops. He said if you could toss the hoop onto the bottle from about 15 feet, you would win a prize. Joelle was frantically throwing the rings without much luck. So I tried, I used to play washers. On my second try, I got a ringer and won Joelle a Tinker Bell pin, the kind you put on the Disney sashes. When the man said we had our first winner, Joelle looked around and saw it was me. She had the biggest smile.

I was great watching Lil' Lisie Bear on It's a Small World ride. It was amazing watching her as she seem to see everything that was going on. She would look to the right, than to the left and even noticed the action going on toward the ceiling. It is wonderful watching her mind working at full speed.

The Dinners were all special. Joelle still loves the Disney Characters and Disney princesses and got all their autographs. Lil' Lise Bear loved them too. She was dressed as the cutest Tinker Belle you have ever seen. She kept grabbing the noses of the characters. One of the dinners was with Cinderella, Prince Charming, the step-mother and her half sisters. It was really entertaining. When Price Charming came to our table, he knelt and asked Joelle where she was from. For the first time I have ever seen, Joelle was speechless. She finally muttered Houston. Prince Charming had totally charmed Joelle.

There was so much going on every day, I cannot type or spell that much. My summary covered it all. Some of my random observations are:

* at least 99% of the people were pleasant and considerate despite the crowded environment. I have found that crowds usually brings out the worst in people.

* LSU tee shirt, jackets and hats outnumber 2 to 1 ever other school combined. We found out that Louisiana had a school holiday that week for Mardi Gras.

* Worst tee shirt label: "FBI, Armed Followers of Jesus". I thought this was a total contradiction of terms.

* Disney runs a first class operation.

* I saw no evidence of an economic downturn. Every theme park was packed with people spending lots of money.