El listo Christmaso

No points for figuring out whose list this is.

this bell tree stand or these CymBells
this shirt
this shirt
this shirt or this shirt (all shirts XXL)
this CD
this (or any) 100mm+ bocce set
this (or any) metallophone
this out-of-print book or this out-of-print book
these baseball cards
this class (as well as transportation)
this conference
these etchings
this hunk of wood
this memory
this lap desk
this gaming system (and this game)

This is why we don't go to Disney World in summer

For some variety, the fourth day of our trip was spent at Disney's Hollywood Studios (formerly Disney-MGM Studios). This park really focuses on shows, but it also has two adult thrill rides (including Tower of Terror) and the brand new Toy Story Midway Mania. It turns out, Benji doesn't really like the shows and kept asking all day for the roller coaster and Magic Kingdom.

Unfortunately the only real ride he could go on was also the one with the insanely long line. Toy Story opened earlier this year and has some pretty neat technology so it definitely had the longest line anywhere in the four parks. When we arrived, Fast Passes were all the way out to 4:20 and the line said it was 50 minutes. Now, if we were there during the summer every ride would have one or two hour lines, but we're totally spoiled and balk at 20-30 minute lines. Still, we hopped in to wait it out for the new ride (unfortunately, the wait was actually 80 minutes — I think it broke down while we were in line).

The queue area for Toy Story has a lot of detail and is fun to look at. There are giant toys everywhere and they're actually the toys as they would have appeared years ago. Chutes and Ladders on the ceiling doesn't look like Benji's current edition — very retro. Toward the end of the line is the highlight of the queue — the animatronic Mr. Potato Head. He sings and moves and his eyes blink. He's supposed to be able to take off his own ear, but that apparently wasn't working the day we were there (and I had read earlier that they were having trouble with that part of the technology). The ride itself takes you around to many different stations where you play carnival midway games with 3-D glasses and a shooter. For example, you pop balloons at one station and "throw" rings around the aliens from Toy Story at another. I was surprised at how quickly the car moved from one station to the next, but that made it a bit more of a thrill ride for Benji. With our Fast Passes, we were able to take advantage of a loophole and got Benji on the ride three times total — once by waiting in line, once with Daddy's pass, and once with Mommy's pass.

With the rest of our time at the Studios, Benji spent a long time in the Animation walk through attraction. You see, there were computers to play with there, including his favorite computer coloring book. Daddy and Benji hung out there while Mommy took a ride on Tower of Terror. I thought they might go to the Little Mermaid show, but apparently Benji got angry when Daddy tried to leave the computers.

In the evening we took the boat over to EPCOT for our dinner reservations at Restaurant Marrakesh. The food was pretty good and there was a belly dancer during the meal. Matthew, however, didn't feel very good that evening and didn't really enjoy this restaurant. So, he headed back to the hotel after dinner and Mommy and Benji took a "romantic" stroll around the World Showcase lagoon. He behaved really well and held my hand as we walked in the moonlight. On the other end of the lagoon is the Norway pavilion where we rode the Maelstrom ride. It's not very exciting by my standards, but there's a little hill on the boat ride similar to the little hill in Pirates of the Caribbean and Benji quite enjoyed it. So we rode another time and then stepped out of the ride to be greeted by the fireworks show.



Benji's favorite part of the Toy Story queue was at the very beginning — Candy Land.

Because the lines weren't as long as they would have been, he even got to walk on the game board!


Notice the retro Chutes and Ladders on the ceiling.


Got to have those 3D glasses. Notice the shooting mechanism on the left. This one has you pull a string rather than push a button.





So much detailed theming, even in the loading area.


High fives for Mickey. We eventually met Mickey at all four parks.


Celebrity sighting — WALL-E!





All tuckered out sleeping on the boat ride.


At then end of our evening, Benji was happy to pose with Spaceship Earth all lit up for the night.

Libellés : Benji, vacation

Trick-or-Treat

For the past few weeks, Benji has been getting ready for Halloween, including going to the pumpkin patch with Grandma and Grandpa, learning about pumpkins and spiders in preschool and storytime, and dressing up for preschool. So by the time we hit real Halloween, he was psyched and ready to get dressed in his costume and go get candy.

Mommy was able to get off early from work and the weather was absolutely gorgeous, so Mommy and Benji had some great trick-or-treating time in the late afternoon. He was very polite, saying trick-or-treat and thank you. Whenever someone offered him a choice of candy from the bowl, he considered his choices carefully but I think it was largely because he didn't know what many were. But once Mommy pointed out some favorites (i.e. which ones are chocolate), he quickly identified them at future houses.

Tons of kids were out and Benji got so many compliments on his costume. We saw the neighbor kids several times, but Benji was too slow to keep up with them. He enjoyed practicing his horse galloping and I enjoyed just spending time with my little guy. Even though we dawdled and generally enjoyed ourselves, we still got to visit so many houses (last year we only made it down our block and Benji was more interested in trying to collect landscaping rocks than in collecting candy). On the way back to the house, Benji decided he was done and just sat down on somebody's lawn. Of course we still needed to get back home, so I gave him a piece of candy "for energy" but that strategy backfired on me. He would walk a few steps and then sit down again and ask for another piece of candy.

By the time we got done trick-or-treating and having dinner, we didn't really have enough time to carve our pumpkin before bedtime. So we held off and did the pumpkin on Saturday. Benji was very excited about the whole pumpkin experience. He actually remembered carving the pumpkin from last year and wanted to know where his knife was (recall that last year after we finished carving he brought over his play food plastic knife and "carved" the face himself) so I had to bring it up from the basement for him this year. He was quite upset that his plastic knife didn't work. But after Daddy used the real knife to get things started, Benji finished cutting off the pumpkin top and enjoyed being silly with it. We let Benji draw the face, but he didn't like his first attempt. He's so critical; it was quite a lovely face. But, we cleaned it off and let him try again. His pumpkin face was so adorable! And Daddy carved it faithfully, even trying to capture any wiggles in the lines. What a good Daddy, and what a fun Halloween! I can't wait to see what he remembers next year.


Benji's costume was a cowboy, but if you ask him what he was he answered that he was a horse. Regardless, he loved it.


Whoa, horsey!

Libellés : Benji