Wrap up and good bye

Sorry I didn't post yesterday. I was dog tired. Walking around the world will do that to you.

Yesterday we spent the day at Epcot. We saw the best 3-D movie--Honey, I Shrunk the Audience. The floor shook, things came flying at us and to top it all off, a dog sneezed on us and we all got sprayed. Could've done without that, but overall it was very cool.

Our favorite ride of all was Soarin'. It wasn't anything that jerked you around, but you would swear that you were really flying. Cool air in your face, flying through citrus groves really smells like citrus, and flying through the forest smells like pine. It was by far, the best ride.

Then, we took a trip around the world. We had a fabulous lunch in France and enjoyed, well, Danish in Norway. Here's us goofing around on Morocco:





Then, today, we visited Animal Kingdom. It was our favorite park overall. We rode Everest, went on safari and cruised through the jungle.



And we met someone very famous:



It was a great trip. We hate to leave, it seems like our vacation just got started. See you soon!

Disney--our first glimpse

After checking in to our first hotel (we're moving somewhere way cheaper this morning), we headed to Downtown Disney for a quick sandwich.

After we ate, we caught the shuttle to The Swan hotel, then we got the water ferry to Disney Studios. If we could have taken a bedouin caravan, our day would have been complete.

My top priority at Disney Studios was seeing the Muppets. The Muppets are from my generation. They're a group of monsters I can understand. I'm dreadfully out of the loop on princesses and High School Musical.

So Muppets 3-D it was. And it was cool. Nothing like the 3-D stuff we're used to. These things were in our face. Fozzie played a prank on us and squirted water from a flower on his lapel. And you know what? We got sprinkled!

Statler and Waldorf, of course, were in the balcony the entire time heckling the Muppets. Sweetums made a live appearance. It was completely cool.



After that, we just wandered around. If something looked interesting, we went in--if we could stand to wait in line. We managed to see the Chronicles of Narnia show, which was alright. I'm a literary sort and have read the entire series, so this was fun for me. Tim liked the swords.

Speaking of Tim, the conference where he's presenting is in the hotel. It's for geotechs (dirt and rocks). Since the rock hounds like to drill, this is the hands-on part of the conference:


A real barn-burner, huh?

Anyway, we're off to the Magic Kingdom today. Wish us luck!

We're goin' to Disney World!

We're fast approaching the day of jubliee--the day we take a vacation for the first time in a while and head to the unknown world of Disney.

We're both really looking forward to this. Tim has to present at a conference about rocks or dirt or something, but that's only for 90 minutes on Thursday. The rest of the time, we'll just have fun.

So, stay tuned. We'll travel blog March 18-22. You'll get all the gritty, gory details of how these two childless people handled the flight to family vacation land and our adventures to the happiest place on earth. It'll be the first time in a long time we're not skipping time zones, too, so some of our posts might actually be coherant. But probably not.

Follow my flight just scroll down to the lower left corner and check out the Flight Status area. I'm on flight 801 to Orlando. You might not even need a computer. Just look south into the sky. If you see something very white reflecting sunlight, it's probably my tanless skin having an atomic reaction to the sun.

We hope you have as much fun traveling with us as we do writing this blog!

A short jaunt to the happiest place on Earth

Tim is still working on his Ph.D. in civil engineering. Because of his studious nature, we were fortunate enough to go to Hawaii last year.

Well, the hits just keep comin.'

He's presenting at a conference in Orlando next month. Neither of us was too excited about the travel possibilities here until he called to make reservations at the resort and was asked if he wanted a view of the castle.

That's when things got interesting.

After a little more research, it turns out, Tim only needs to be at the conference for 90 minutes total. Basically, he gives his presentation and leaves. So, I decided I can wait around 90 minutes for him to finish up, then hit the theme parks.

Neither of us has ever aspired to go to Disney World. It's not as if we swore we'd never go there, it just wasn't on the radar. But when a nearly free trip presents itself...

So, we're going to give it a shot. The park passes are reasonably priced, with the military discount Tim gets with his work ID. And, there's supposed to be a big spring flower celebration at Epcot while we're there. So, I'm excited about that.

We're using our Holiday Inn points we accrued with our credit card. Tim's airfare is paid by Wayne State.

For a spur-of-the-moment trip, we're doing this pretty economically.

So, Internet. Have any tips?