The kids had a 3 day weekend (with Friday off) this past week, so we hopped on a plane Thursday night to go to <drum roll, please> Disneyworld!!  (I know this comes as an immense surprise.)  This trip was very different than most of the previous trips that we have made.  The kids really wanted to go to a Disney water park, so, on Friday, we headed to Blizzard Beach.  The weather was perfect for a water park day—it was 80+ degrees with a slight breeze and sunny.  I really love Disney water parks.  They are clean, well-maintained (no rust spots!), and have a variety of activities to appeal to children of all ages.  We had a fabulous time going on most of the rides.  (The only one we didn’t try was Summit Plummit—the free fall nature of the ride did not appeal to the family.)  And, in keeping with how it really is a small world, we bumped into another Sidwell family (a 5^th grade family) in line for one of the rides.

As if the day was not fun enough, we ended it with a dinner at Victoria & Albert’s, the highest rated restaurant in the state of Florida and located in the Grand Floridian hotel in Disneyworld.  (The irony of that always brings me much amusement.)  I will do another blog post later reviewing each dish of the 10 course tasting menu in greater detail, but let’s just say that the meal did not disappoint, even with the high expectations that we had.

Saturday was a day spent in the Magic Kingdom.  It was unexpectedly crowded, especially given how uncrowded Blizzard Beach was the day before.  We did make it on all the rides we had to ride (Peter Pan, Winnie-the-Pooh, Buzz Lightyear, Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, and Space Mountain being perpetual favorites).  There is also a new interactive game called Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which is conceptually similar to the Kim Possible game in Epcot.  The advantage of Sorcerer’s Apprentice is that you collect different spell cards and the degree of difficulty increases as you play, so that the game works well for beginning and experienced players alike.  The disadvantage of the game is that, unlike Kim Possible, the interaction is all software based, as you cast spells and defeat Hades’s corps of villains.  It allows for greater variation, of course, but the special effects are not nearly as impressive as Kim Possible.  But it’s a fun game, and the kids had a blast playing it and can’t wait until they come back to the park to continue playing.  And to continue the small world theme, we bumped into a former colleague of mine from AOL outside the Liberty Tree Tavern, as we were going in for lunch.

We took an afternoon flight back home on Sunday, but before we left, rather than go to the parks, we did an indoor skydiving experience that our daughter has wanted to do for several years.  It’s called iFly, and you “skydive” in a wind tunnel.  It was an amazing experience.  You suit up in a jumpsuit and go into the wind tunnel with an instructor who helps position you so that you’re floating on the 120+ mile winds blowing up into the tunnel, and it feels like a skydiving experience (without the trauma of jumping out of a perfectly functioning plane).  In fact, we had a chance to observe a skydiving group practice its maneuvers in the wind tunnel before our session.  We discovered that it’s a lot more difficult to hold your position than it looks, let alone maneuver to where you want to go.  It was a fantastic experience and a marvelous way to end the weekend.