Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Day Two

If I were to choose my favorite park out of the Disney World parks, it would have to be the Animal Kingdom. This happens to be the largest out of all the parks, twice as big as Epcot, which is huge in itself. I guess the reason why I liked this park so much was because of all the wild life, really cool shows, and of course, really cool rides!
Right of the bat, we went to the “new ride” in the Animal Kingdom that was just finished not too long ago. It was called Mount Everest. It was an awesome roller coaster ride! You went forward and backwards into dark tunnels in the mountain. And in the mountain was a scary surprise… It was a Yeti! It was awesome.
After going on the Mount Everest ride like 3 or 4 times, we went on a Safari! No, really, they have a live safari… it was awesome! I don’t know how close it was to a real safari, probably not close at all, but it was pretty cool to see all those animals pretty up close and personal. One thing that I remember about the safari was this elephant taking a bath in the water hole that we went by. The safari driver said that he had been doing this for quite a while and had never seen that happen. It was pretty cool.
This day was a bummer for my older brother Brian because like me this was his favorite park, but un-like me, he forgot his SD card for his camera, so he couldn’t take pics. Well, it was kind of my fault because I left it in my laptop when I was getting his pic. Oops. But it all turned out ok, they went back and got some more pics, good ones too.
I mentioned that this park had cool shows, and the two that we saw were really cool. They had a Lion King show, which was amazing, and they also had finding Nemo the musical… it was awesome! The Lion King was not only performed in a unique way, but it also had some pretty amazing singing talent involved. And the acrobats in the show were crazy… made me want to join. In the Nemo play, the singing was also spectacular, but the way they performed was in a puppet like style which was a lot of fun to watch. I think I could even see it again.
Well, there was a lot of things at this park, but that was pretty much the high lights… but this was only day two!






Day one in Orlando

The day had finally come. We all hopped in the van after eating breakfast and were off to a place of wonder and excitement. Well, excitement yes, but wonder… not really. We all new what we were wondering, and that was how much fun we were going to have! We were off to Disney World!
Our first stop out of the many Disney World parks had the most magic out of them all… not because there were magicians or Tinker Bell was real, but because it was in fact called, Magic Kingdom! As we were getting closer, we could feel our excitement building, especially when Melissa, my sister in-law, screamed, “We’re here! We’re actually here!”
After parking getting through security and a fun monorail ride, we were in the park, and we weren’t sure where to start. We quickly checked the map and started walking, and just after a few steps into the park, we saw a familiar sight… familiar in pictures that is…. It was Cinderella’s Castle. It was awesome! After a few dozen pics, we were off again. Our first ride that we encountered was Pirates of the Caribbean, which wasn’t as great as I thought it was going to be. I was really looking forward to this ride too, because it was shut down when I went to Disneyland some years ago. But according to Dad, Mom, Britton and Melissa, it was a lot shorter then it used to be. So it wasn’t as glamorous as I thought it would be.
The day went on and we went on many more rides, such as Splash Mountain, Thunder Mountain, and we even caught the 3 o’ clock parade. The first day was definitely an exciting one, and a really good first day in Disney World, but the second day was better!

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

The Trip that Actually Happened






Well, it looks like it actually happened. Our family, the Holman’s, actually got to go on our family trip to Orlando, Florida. I thought something was going to happen, because last time we had this trip planned, 9/11 happened 6 days before we were supposed to leave. So I figured something would happen… but nothing did. And I was excited about that. I am glad that this trip became a reality. So I thought that I would give everyone some high lights on how our trip went and some good pictures!

The beginning

We all woke up around 6 in the morning on Thursday the 8th of March, 2007. All pretty sleepy because of the lack of sleep from excitement, our ride pulls up right on schedule. Denise Long, our driver, took us to the Portland airport where my mom and dad and little brother and I met up with Brian and Melissa, my brother and sister in-law. Britton, my little brother, relaxed and surfed the web on my laptop while Brian and I took pics and the others waited for our plane to arrive. After a 2 hour plane ride to New Mexico where we switched planes, 4 hours later, we arrived in Orlando, Florida!
Orlando was an interesting place. Or maybe it was just Florida. Not only do we have to go through two toll booths to get on the freeway from the airport, but the drivers there were crazy! Even crazier than Oregonions… no offense Brian and Melissa. But it was nice and warm, that was for sure.
After getting off the plane, we got our van that we had pre-rented and were out of there. We were all starving but wanted to find our place before we went out and ate. When we finally found our place, we weren’t disappointed at all. We had rented a four bedroom home for really cheap and wasn’t sure what to expect, but to our surprise, it was awesome. Four nice rooms with 3 ½ bathrooms, this house came fully loaded with everything you needed. It was a blessing. After getting everything un-packed, we hopped into the van and went to Denny’s where we all thanked the Lord for bringing us there safely and for the food and chowed down!