Adventure In The Great Wide Somewhere

In Honor of Throwback Thursday, here's a look at our reading list for the past year... Fun Fact: Kylee loves history. Read Aloud Books Core B Leading Little Ones to God Usborne Book of Peoples of the World Missionary Stories with the Millers Usborne Book of Houses and Homes Charlotte's Web Favorite Poems of Childhood Homer Price Archeologists Dig for Clues Usborne Book of World History A Child's History of the World From Akebu to Zapotec Little Pear Usborne Time Traveler  Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle Owls in the Family Henry Huggins Tut's Mummy: Lost...And Found The Year of Miss Agnes Understood Betsy Greek Myths The Greek News  Mountain Born It Could Be Worse George Muller The Wheel on the School Gooney Bird Greene The Great Wall of China Roman Diary Mr. Popper's Penguins Detectives in Togas The Case of the Gasping Garbage Science Books The Usborne World of Animals Night Animals The Usborne Book of Science Activities Volume 1 See Ho...

As Walt Disney said, "If you can dream it, you can do it!" So let's get dreaming!  In no particular order, here is the Ultimate Disney Fan Bucket List. Disneyland Take a walk in Walt's shoes and visit the original Disney park. Dapper Days. Skip down Main Street. Make a wish at Snow White's Wishing Well. Get your name on a pair of Mickey Ears. Buy a Mickey balloon. Dine at Club 33. Eat a Mickey Bar during the three o'clock parade. Ride the Mad Tea Party at night. Tour Walt's apartment. Dole Whip during fireworks. World of Color, Fantasmic! and Fireworks! Walt Disney World Character dining with the princesses. Ride on every form of Disney transportation. (Bus, boat, ferry, monorail, tea cup, pirate ship and railroad train.) Flag Retreat Ceremony. Snack all the way around the World Showcase during the Epcot Food and Wine Festival or the Flower and Garden Festival. Four parks one world challenge! (Photo in front of all four park ic...

Welcome Wordless Wednesday Blog Hoppers! This Wordless Wednesday is brought to you by my favorite Disney royalty, Mademoiselle Minnie Mouse! Mademoiselle Minnie Mouse Thank you to  Focused on the Magic  for hosting! To see what it's like to live as Disney royalty on the Disney Wonder or the Disney Fantasy check out my trip reports . 

What is a Port Arrival Time? Isn't that when I board the ship? Can I show up  earlier or later? Don't let a few little questions make you miss the boat, so to speak.  Disney Cruise shuttle waiting at the Orlando International Airport What is a Port Arrival Time? If all 3,000 some odd passengers who are on a cruise together arrive at Port Canaveral at the same time, the terminal becomes rather packed. In order to try to spread out arrivals on embarkation day, the port arrival time, a kind of reservation of sorts was born.  If guests arrive spread out over a few hours on embarkation morning and early afternoon, these reserved time windows allow guests to experience shorter wait times and flow through check-in and boarding smoothly. How do I get a Port Arrival Time? When you are completing your online check-in process, you can select a port arrival time. Usual port arrival times span 10:00am to 3:30 pm on the half hour with some variation based on home...

After what passes for alone time on a two kid, one parent trip to Walt Disney World... Ahem. We headed off toward Frontierland for our "afternoon break." Rather than heading straight for Space Mountain like the kids suggested for their rest time, we headed toward the Liberty Belle Riverboat for a lazy afternoon cruise around the Rivers of America. Very relaxing. Between a brief nap on the bench and a long time staring at the paddle wheel, we soon found ourselves on another form of river going vessel, the Becky Thatcher raft to Tom Sawyer island. Fort Langhorn was a big hit. Running in and out of caverns, over barrel bridges and under escape passages and firing rifles at Fort Langhorn and generally whooping it up? Yeah. That's how my kids rest. Watching the Liberty Belle paddle by. Chris and Kylee needed a nice cool snack to cool off from all of the spelunking. That will do quite nicely! Feeling refreshed after their first Dole Whips, off we...

Who wouldn't love an upgrade? Moving from an interior stateroom to a verandah or from a verandah to a concierge suite doesn't have to be only a Dream.  Live the dream. Upgrading is easier than you think! The question, of course, is when and how exactly to score an upgrade. Before the Sail Date There are two ways to score an upgrade in advance of packing your bags. 1.) Pixie Dust! Imagine logging in to your reservation one day and the stateroom number doesn't match your memories. You go to look up if they've moved you down the hall to an identical porthole room. No, the room is up a deck and seems to be a verandah stateroom. That can't be right. That's not what you paid for so you call up Disney Cruise Line only to find out "Surprise!" they've sprinkled pixie dust on your stateroom and you will be enjoying ocean breezes from the privacy of your very own verandah at no additional cost. More often you will shift staterooms to one withi...

Just like any Disney fan would know that watching Cinderella at home before your trip makes that first glimpse of Cinderella Castle in Magic Kingdom that much more breathtaking, there are a several movies that will enhance your experience of the Disney Wonder. My list is below. Castaways please add on your own in the comments! Popcorn? Definitely!  Films I love to watch before my Disney Wonder cruise: Peter Pan Aside from pirate night, did you know Tinker Bell is the Disney Wonder's godmother? Peter stars in Disney Dreams and his pirate ship is moored in the Oceaneer Club as an indoor playground as well. T he Little Mermaid Triton's, the elevator mural and the lobby statue of Ariel aside, the music and character appearances around the ship and in the musicals more than justify another trip Under the Sea.  What would be on Ariel's Netflix queue? Splash? Probably. I bet The Secret of Roan Inish is on Ariel's top five as well. ...

I love that I received an open ended box for my party as it left us free to embrace any part of our #DisneySide. We invited a couple of our friends and all their kids over for a nice easy-going movie night featuring one of my new favorites, Big Hero 6.  Vague? Yes. But it got the point across.  I sometimes think that the nearest films, Big Hero 6 and Wreck It Ralph, get overlooked in the Frozen Fever. So much overlooked, that even my DVC friends hadn't seen Big Hero 6. They all agreed to come in their favorite #DisneySide shirts and ears. Fast forward to the 21st of February and all of the part decorations, plates and homemade Spinach Artichoke Hum-mouse and salsa were set.  It's party time! Hum-mouse, Salsa, Chips, Disney Quotes Match-Ups and Crosswords! As the first guests arrived, we broke out the Pin-the-Grin on Mickey. The boy who won got Mickey stickers and pencils courtesy of the @Home box. As the girls arrived, my daughter and the other pr...

So back in January, I squealed and danced around the living room on account of a very  pixie dusted email . Five days before our Three Mousekateers trip, our FedEx driver dropped by a very magical package that continued the dancing. There may have been an impromptu dance number associated with the box magically appearing on my door step. Now what on earth was hiding in this lovely box?   Nail polish, and sprinkles and coupons. Oh my! 1. #DisneySide , 2. #DisneySide , 3. #DisneySide , 4. #DisneySide , 5. #DisneySide , 6. #DisneySide , 7. #DisneySide , 8. #DisneySide , 9. #DisneySide , 10. #DisneySide , 11. #DisneySide , 12. #DisneySide , 13. #DisneySide  What's in the 2015 #DisneySide @Home Celebration box??? 1. #DisneySide , 2. #DisneySide , 3. #DisneySide , 4. #DisneySide , 5. #DisneySide , 6. #DisneySide , 7. #DisneySide , 8. #DisneySide , 9. #DisneySide , 10. #DisneySide , 11. #DisneySide , 12. #DisneySide , 13. #DisneySide Honestly, that's only a...

Welcome Wordless Wednesday Blog Hoppers! This Wordless Wednesday is brought to you by an unforgettable moment! Unplanned. Unposed. Unforgettable! Thank you to  Focused on the Magic  for hosting!

After circling around the back side of Cinderella Castle, Chris broke out the map and off we went to hunt down our first portal on our Sorcerer's of the Magic Kingdom adventure.  Impressively beautiful, any day of the year. After several portals, they really began to get the hang of the game. Sorcerer's of the Magic Kingdom is a cute, multilevel and very addictive card game where you quest around one of the lands at the titular Magic Kingdom park helping defeat various Disney villains and eventually Hades. It can be played near endlessly as you collect different cards each day you enter the park. Did I mention it's addictive? My kiddos happily forgot about all of the rest of the most magical place on earth in hopes of rescuing Aurora's good fairies.  Busy fighting the Mistress of All Evil Until I remembered our Seven Dwarfs Mine Train FastPass+ window. Trotting through the FastPass queue, we went straight to the front of the line. Being a party of thr...