Paris Love

How quickly the world can change in a few short minutes.  Within an hour (possibly even minutes) of me posting my list of 30 things to do during my 30's list last night, I learned that the world was once again shaken by an act of terrorism.  I found out while scrolling through my Facebook feed.  And the numbers in the reports only continued to rise throughout the night.  Over and over I ask myself why would someone do this.  It causes me great sadness to know deep down that we'll never really have an answer.

I have always had a great love for the city of Paris and for France.  My first exposure to it was probably through a movie with a girl who learned to love a beast.  Beauty and the Beast has always been one of my favorite Disney movies.  I go see the live stage show at Hollywood Studios whenever I can.  It's one of my all time favorites.  I also think the movie is why I decided I wanted to learn French.

In 2002, I traveled to Paris and France with my high school French club during my junior year.  It was the first time I'd ever flown in an airplane.  I fell in love with France and the whole European experience.  I practiced my French.  I loved learning more about the architecture and history.  The Notre Dame Cathedral was stunning.  I went to the top of the Eiffel Tower.  I visited the Louvre and saw the Mona Lisa.  We went on a night river cruise where we passed the Eiffel Tower and a mini version of the Statue of Liberty.  We visited the French Riviera, a perfume factory, an old aqueduct and hilltop villages.  It was an experience that I treasure and always will.

During college, our school held an annual Beaux Arts Ball at the end of the academic year.  In 2007, the ball was Paris themed.  For our table centerpieces, we had tall Eiffel Tower vases filled with gigantic red and black feathers a la Moulin Rouge.  We also had little Eiffel Tower candle holders, one of which I brought home.  The photo backdrop had a six foot tall light up Eiffel Tower display.  At the end of the night, our events club was planning to throw it out but I rescued it.  Eliot and I still have it to this day.  (It's probably going to be on display in our basement!)

In 2009, Eliot and I went to Las Vegas to celebrate his 21st birthday.  We're not big drinkers or gamblers, so we spent the entire trip sightseeing.  One of my favorite experiences was going up into the Eiffel Tower at the Paris hotel in Las Vegas.  Eliot has never been to Europe, but I really enjoyed experiencing a little slice of it with him.

I also have fond memories of Paris at the World Showcase in Epcot.  Eliot and I haven't spent too much time there in recent years, but I always admire the hand painted umbrellas when we walk by.  I love to stop and eat a crêpe as a special treat.  I always take time to admire the Eiffel Tower and to reminisce about my high school trip.

Of course, my fondest memory from World Showcase Paris was our post-wedding reception VIP viewing of IllumiNations.  We had a great time celebrating with our family and friends at the Terrace des Fleurs.  Not only was it a stunning backdrop, but it was especially meaningful to me since I'd been to Paris, France.

Which brings me back full circle.  When I posted my list yesterday, I originally included going to Disneyland Paris on it.  (I took it off because I didn't want to put too many trips in my goals and I already had the cruise and Aulani on it.)  Eliot and I do dream to go to every Disney Park someday.  We want to go to Disneyland Paris and to possibly even participate in a future Paris RunDisney half marathon.  We will go there someday.

Events like last night cement my belief that the world needs something like Disney.  It's a small world after all.  We all need a happy place in this world of uncertainty.  We all need dreams, hope, faith, trust and a little bit of pixie dust.  °o°

KeyCon 2014 Trip: Day #4

Sunday was the first "official" day of KeyCon events.  I got up and put my Olaf outfit on and headed over to Epcot where I'd meet the rest of the Key to the World agents!  We were having a team building activity- a photo scavenger hunt all around the World Showcase!  I love scavenger hunts!  

On the way over, I stopped to take a few pictures of the Food and Wine Festival displays and topiaries.  As I approached the World Showcase, I heard my name.  I turned around to find a group of KTTW management and agents right behind me!  I joined them and we stood in the shade in Great Britain while we waited for the World Showcase to open.  

Eventually, we met up with the entire group and gathered at the American Adventure to be assigned to our teams.  I was on Team Japan with Wanda, Stephanie and Shannon. Go Team Japan!!!  We had so much fun running around the World Showcase for two hours. We had to take pictures of all the Food and Wine Festival signs at the booths.  We also had to take pictures in front of certain landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, a phone booth, and the Totem Pole in Canada.

In addition, we had to act out some of the photos.  Some of my favorites poses were: wearing a warm hat, growling with lion statues, posing with a camel, viking pose with viking statue and holding beer steins.  (Note: The original PDF file of the scavenger hunt can be found to download at CarissaDesigns if you would like to do it for yourself!)

We finished the scavenger hunt in Mexico and Jeff bought a margarita for anyone who wanted one.  (At that point, I was so hot, sweaty and dehydrated that I passed.)  We hung out and cooled off for a bit inside.  When we finally split up, I went back to Pop Century to relax.  I'd been planning to go swimming in the pool at Pop Century and this was the perfect chance.  I was in the 1980's section so I was right next to the computer pool.  The pool wasn't that busy.  There was even enough room for me to do a few laps back and forth.  I mostly leaned against the side and enjoyed the sunny day and the cool water.  I brought Eeyore along in his swim trunks for a photo op.  

When I finished swimming, I took another shower and saw that I still had plenty of time before I had to leave for Ohana.  I worked a little more on the top secret KeyCon project and took progress photos so I could show Jeff and Heather at dinner.

I made my way to the Magic Kingdom bus waiting area.  I looked up a minute later and my Team Japan teammate Stephanie and her husband Patrick were also waiting for the bus.  They had dinner reservations for Ohana too!  It was nice to have someone to talk to on the way over.  Poor Patrick… Stephanie and I chatted pretty much the entire bus ride and monorail ride over to the Polynesian.  I'm incredibly grateful they were also going to Ohana since I had absolutely no idea where I was going.

When we arrived at Ohana, I wished Stephanie and Patrick a good dinner and I met the rest of the Key to the World crew over by the bar.  The girls had gotten some Lapu Lapu drinks and sat at the bar while we waited to be seated.  We took a few photos and I made sure to show Jeff and Heather the top secret project.  I was thrilled when I saw their expressions!  A few minutes later, we were heading in to be seated.  Heather and Jeff made reservations for their families to eat together at one table and for the "KeyCon singles" to have another one.  It was nice of them to make sure those of us who traveled alone still felt included.  We had a lot of fun!

I was really excited to eat at Ohana.  I'd heard awesome reviews and I was not disappointed.  I was even more ecstatic when I opened the menu and saw the Blue Glow-tini.  I had seen pictures of the glowing drinks online and I swore I'd find a way to order one this trip!  It was so yummy.  The meal was absolutely amazing.  I can't even begin to tell you how good it was.  (I'm dying to go back in January but I know Eliot and Jeremy won't go for it.  I'm debating kidnapping my parents, Nana and Papa though…) The lettuce wraps were so good.  Then they came out with the pork, and the steak, and the shrimp.  My taste buds were in overload.  It was especially delightful since I hadn't had a hardy meal the entire trip.

However, the best part of the entire meal was definitely the company.  Wanda, Linda, Tara, Ryan, Greg and I had a blast.  We were laughing so hard.  The waiter had fun with us too.  Linda asked him for corn on the cob, and he told her he'd have it by "next Wednesday."  The only corn she would be getting was the baby corn in the noodles. Then, our waiter told us a few silly jokes about Disney characters.  One was "what do you say to Simba to get him to move faster?"  "Mufasa."  We laughed pretty hard at those.  Finally, we enjoyed our bread pudding with the banana carmel sauce for dessert while watching Wishes off in the distance.

The most memorable part of the evening was the car ride home.  Linda drove to Walt Disney World so she had her SUV and offered to take Wanda and Tara back to Boardwalk, me to Pop Century and finally ending up at Port Orleans where she, Ryan and Greg were all staying.  We all agreed and thanked her.  I volunteered to sit in the back of her SUV, where there wasn't room for you to put your legs.  It took me a few minutes to get in, but once I was in there, I was ok.  (Or so I thought.)

Getting out… now that's another story.  My legs got cramped up and my right knee was locked up.  (It's nothing new; it happens often when you've had knee surgery.)  When we got to Boardwalk and dropped Wanda and Tara off, I planned to move to the back seat so I could easily hop out of the car at Pop.  Needless to say, it was incredibly entertaining and someone should have video taped it.  There were no doors in the back and I got myself (very) stuck on the way over her back seats.  Everyone got quite a chuckle when I stated "I'm 30 darn it!  Heck, I'm not even 30 yet!"  Eventually, I (not very gracefully) extricated myself from her car and landed on the pavement at Boardwalk.  Of course, I had to make fun of myself to lighten the moment and I declared "And she sticks the landing!"  (I should note that this in no way is a reaction from the drink I had earlier in the night.  This display of sheer grace would be the reason my mother calls me Gracie Lou.)

After a lot of laughs and bidding Wanda and Tara goodnight, Linda took me back to Pop Century and I went to finish the secret project.  When they were finished and I was happy with the result, I headed to bed to get some rest before our official KeyCon meeting!!!  °o°

WDW Frozen Experiences

Do you like Frozen?  

I absolutely love it!  In fact, it might just be my new favorite Disney movie!  

There were so many fun things we did and saw this trip that involved Frozen.  I wanted to do a separate post about our Frozen experiences while at Walt Disney World.  I have a ton of photos and I didn't want to overload my recap posts with Frozen pictures! But I also didn't want to hold out on you guys either!  So if you like Frozen, you'll love this post!

The first thing that we saw Frozen in was "Celebrate the Magic" at the Magic Kingdom. Celebrate the Magic is a projection show that is shown with Cinderella Castle as the projection "screen".  It is set to music and it's amazing!

Here's the full effect of the show with the entire Cinderella Castle projection:

Frozen segment in Celebrate the Magic Castle Show featuring "Let It Go" (Video Credit: Attractions Magazine)

If you'd like to see a video with a closer view of the projections, check out this video by The Dis.  And here are all of my pictures from the show!

It starts with the castle lit up as if it were Arendelle.

Elsa appears in a spotlight singing "Let it Go". 

Then there are swirls of snowflakes all over the castle.  This was so coo!

Elsa continues to sing and there are flashbacks to her and Anna when they were kids.  

We get a quick glimpse of Olaf with the girls and Anna giggling.

The scene changes back to Elsa singing with a bunch of trees covered in snow swirling around the base of Cinderella Castle.

Elsa begins her transformation into her blue ice dress.

We see more swirling snowflakes before Elsa's magic appears to transform Cinderella into a shimmering purple, pink and blue ice palace.  The colors were incredible.

Elsa comes out fully transformed and snowflakes begin to appear all over the castle.

It was beautiful so I took as many pictures as I could!

The snowflakes swirled away.

Then Elsa walked across the front of the castle.

The Celebrate the Magic Frozen segment ended with "the cold never bothered me anyway" and Elsa shutting the castle door just like in the movie!  Then the snow magically disappeared and the next segment of the show started!

It was so good!  I'm so happy that we got this front row view last minute!  We didn't mean to but it really worked out!  I also didn't think that they'd still have this portion since I'd heard that it was an addition for the holidays!  I hope they keep it!  It's beautiful!!!

The next Frozen adventure we had was at Hollywood Studios when we went to the Animation Building.  I always love seeing the drawings in the Magic of Disney Animation. One of my first Disney memories was watching the animators drawing in a room filled with Disney toys and figures.  I was mesmerized by it.  I think that's the moment when I knew that I wanted to so something creative with my life.

We walked through the section of the Animation Building with paintings and sketches of cities, towns, jungles, and the castles.  Afterwards, we headed to the other side.  I wanted to watch the animators for a few minutes.  When we arrived, we noticed the room next to the animators had a ton of Frozen displays.  

There was an awesome board with Elsa in her coronation dress on the far wall.  We also could see one of Kristoff on the same wall.  On the side tables, there were some Olaf sketches!  There was also a pin board with all sorts of drawings on the side wall.  But it was so hard to see them from the angle we were at.  It was even harder to get pictures due to the reflections from the lights and glass!

At this point, I really started to get my hopes up.  The last time Eliot and I were at Disney, we saw the artwork from Wreck it Ralph in the Production Gallery. The trip prior to that, we got to see artwork from Tangled.  The drawings in the room below us were awesome, but I was really hoping to see more art from Frozen up close!

I was not disappointed when we entered into the Production Gallery and "bam!" there was a picture of Anna, Kristoff and Olaf right in front of me!  Woo-hoo!!!

There were three display cases.  The one closest to the entrance had concept art of the trolls, Kristoff, Sven and Olaf!

The case to the left of the first was filled with artwork of the different backgrounds and the scenery in Frozen.  You could see the mountains, snow, Arendelle, the village, and the ice castle that Elsa creates.

Finally, the last case next to the entrance to the show had concept artwork of Anna and Elsa! (Ok, so there were also a few pictures of Hans... but I'm still mad at him!  Ha!)

I was so excited to see all of the artwork!  I waited until everyone cleared the room for the show and then I dove into taking as many pictures as I possibly could!  And because I love you guys, I'm going to share them with you!

Here are close-ups of the case with Kristoff, Sven and Olaf!

I love the drawing of Olaf with all of the sand snowmen in summer!

Oaken's store was actually full at one point!

Here are sketches of the trolls and their home.

Arendelle and the surrounding mountains are covered in snow.

Here you can see a few drawings of Elsa's ice palace.

Here's the real fun!  I love character development!  Here are the many faces of Elsa. And how awesome are her shoes?!?!  I want a pair!

Anna's character development.  They even did a study of how her traveling cloak moved.

More pictures of Elsa as well as a few of Anna and Elsa when they're just kids.

Concept art of Elsa in her room with her powers taking over the room.

Last, but not least, Hans.  (Wait, last and probably least: least liked.  Anyways...) Here's Hans during his duet with Anna.

Finally, before we left the Production Gallery, Eliot and I took pictures with the poster of Anna, Kristoff and Olaf!  We love Olaf and couldn't pass up the chance!

The artwork was incredible!  I'm so glad that we got to see it while we were there!  But our biggest Frozen experience was still yet to come!

Photo Source: Pinterest (Original Pin here.)

As most of you know, I worked really hard on making myself a custom Elsa ear hat before we left for our trip!  (For those of you who don't know, I will be opening an Etsy shop for them very soon!)  My big goal this trip was to get a picture with Anna and Elsa while wearing my ear hat!

I also teased that I had another project that I was desperately trying to finish before we left. That didn't end up working out.  And although I brought my glue gun and supplies to Florida, I still never finished the last one!  (I'm hoping to finish it later this week!)  In the meantime, here's a behind the scenes look at Anna! 

Eliot and I knew that meeting Elsa and Anna was going to be quite an adventure.  What we didn't realize was how long we were going to wait to meet them!  We were hoping to get there right at 11:00 am when the character spot opened.  When we arrived at the Norway Pavilion Friday morning, it was apparent that everyone else had the exact same idea we did.  By the time we got over to Anna and Elsa, the line was already backed up to a 1:00 pm greeting time.  We finally decided to stay after realized that we'd probably be waiting that long no matter when we got there.

While we waited in line, we realized that Anna was the only one greeting guests.  I started to question staying in line.  We were told that Elsa would be there by 1:00 or maybe even 2:00. The cast members didn't seem to have an exact time.  We were in the 1:00 window, and I was debating letting people cut us if Elsa wasn't going to be there.  I really wanted a picture with her and my Elsa ear hat!  

Thankfully, as we got closer to the doors, someone spotted Elsa!  The sign outside the door was changed to both "Elsa and Anna" and I was thrilled that we were going to see both of them!  It was so going to be worth the 2+ hours standing in line!

Eliot and I got to enter the room while the family in front of us met Anna and Elsa. The little boy and girl had the cutest Olaf t-shirts on and the girls loved them.  The kids were so cute!  Anna and Elsa really took the time to interact with them too.

Before I knew it, it was our turn!  I started to walk over to them and Anna spotted my ear hat and proclaimed, "aww... wow!"  I then told her that I didn't have the time to finish the design for her hat and that I was really sorry!

She said, "no, it's ok.  It's just that I'm really impressed."  She then showed my hat to Elsa.  "Elsa look!"

Elsa loved it.  She asked me how long it took me to make it.  I told her it took a few hours. She showed me her snowflake cape and said that she made it herself, except for this one snowflake towards the front.  Anna made that one for her.

Anna replied "Yeah, it took me about 2 hours to make it too."  Then she looked back at my hat, "If I made your hat, it'd probably take me 2 months!"  I had to laugh.

I told Elsa that she's been visiting us a lot this winter in Maine.  She replied "I don't think I did that.  Although, I also don't remember freezing my entire kingdom either!"

We posed for a few photos together.  Then Eliot joined us and Elsa asked me, "shall we show our ice powers?"  So she and I posed using our magical ice powers.  (Yup, I totally tried to copy what she was doing.)

The girls were very nice and made everyone feel special.  Everyone had a good amount of time with them, especially after waiting so long in line to meet them.  The girls fit their personalities well and their outfits were amazing too.  Elsa draped her cape around a few times and the snowflakes sparkling on her cape were beautiful.

It was definitely worth the 2 hour wait!  My only regret is not having my Anna hat done so I could get pictures with both hats.  (Maybe next time!)  I was also pretty pumped at how many people asking me where they could buy my Elsa ear hat!  They thought Disney made it!  Yippee!!  I was so proud to tell them that I made it myself.  I also had a ton of cast members compliment it, which I consider the ultimate compliment!

Frozen is definitely the hot ticket at the parks right now.  There are rumors swirling around about Disney turning Maelstrom into a Frozen ride.  Disney has recently confirmed that they're going to eventually bring Frozen to Broadway.  There's even rumors of a movie sequel!  One thing is for sure, you can't find Frozen items anywhere in the parks!  I found one pin that I bought, and the only other Frozen merchandise I saw were a few books and a light up snowflake wand in the Emporium at the Magic Kingdom. It appears that they had a Frozen inspired display, but everything sells out as soon as it's put out according to cast members and guests alike.  

Photo Source: Disney

Hopefully with the movie's popularity, there will be many more Frozen experiences to come to the parks for guests to enjoy!  In the meantime, I hope that you enjoyed our Frozen experience at Walt Disney World!  °o°