EPCOT's Retro Tomorrow; Walt Disney World, Lake Buena Vista, FL

EPCOT
1510 North Avenue of the Stars 
Lake Buena Vista, FL

'83 was a good year.  Despite the fact that I was wearing shorts that were too short and I was like 6'4" and not yet in middle school, I thought I looked pretty hip in front of Spaceship Earth the year this futuristic mothership opened.   It's been twenty-eight years and I am not sure how we have both aged.  I think I am little bigger around the middle, and so too is my friend EPCOT.

The foundation of a good day at EPCOT can be divided into food and robots.  Future World is chock full of animatronic, well-dressed characters that blast you to the past and the future.  We started our day with them in the Spaceship Earth Attraction and ended it with some crazy disappearing dragon called Figment (yes, of your imagination) at the Journey into Imagination.  We also stopped in on our buddy Nemo at The Seas.

But it was the food that took the day.  We went 'round the world in less than 80 days, yet managed to eat and drink from at least four continents.  We grabbed our passports in Canada and made our way to a surprisingly delicious lunch in Morocco (even though we missed the belly dancers).  We stopped for a fife and drum parade in the States and made our way over to Germany.  Now, I don't usually think good food when I think of Deutschland, but the beer was solid and the caramel covered pretzels even better.  We finished off our global tour with a ride on a Viking ship in Norway and terracotta warriors in China where we picked up our last passport stamps. We skipped the second DadBreak of a margarita in Mexico. It was a whirlwind tour, but it must be time to head home.

Disneyrific; Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom; Lake Buena Vista, FL

Walt Disney World; Magic Kingdom
4600 North World Drive
Lake Buena Vista, FL


There are the haves and the have nots, the half-fulls and the half-empties, and then there are the Disney and the non-Disney.  Tonight, I saw the light, and I think her name was Tink (check it out on YouTube as she soars from the top of the Cinderella Castle to the roof of a Tomorrowland building).  My wife has always been hardcore Disney, much the way she is hardcore Grrrl punk.  I am not sure how the two mix, but it works for her.  Tonight, I watched Sydney's face light up as he yelled "woaaah" alongside me three hundred times and I left the Dark Side for her sunny side of the street.

After a brief ride over on the ferry we got the party started with what else? a party!  Mickey sure can shake it on Main street.  We hit Tony's (aka Tramp's mack daddy, from Lady and the Tramp  - our fav Disney flick of the moment) for lunch.  Yeah, I made Kami slurp up a spaghetti noodle with me 'til we kissed.  We then hit the Magic Carpets, grabbed a FastPass for Big Thunder Mountain for 4:30PM and headed for Fantasyland.   Between a nap for Liji, we still managed four turns on Prince Charming's Carousel, It's a Small World (check out how it's changed on this YouTube clip), Dumbo , the Mad Tea Party and hooked the boys up with embroidered Mickey ears.  The highlight of the afternoon was Sydney and I taking off for our FastPass date at Thunder Mountain (my fav ride from when I was a kid).  That kid loves a mean roller coaster!

You would think by 5:30PM we would be toast.  That's when auntie Dee pulled out the big guns.  Dinner with Winnie and co. at the Crystal Palace.  Perhaps it was the surprisingly decent buffet, but I swear Kam has never hugged me as hard as she squeezed that giant Eyore.  The highlight of the whole day though was the Main Street Electric Parade.  Lij sat speechless for 30 minutes as every character we introduced him to in the last six months passed by in flashing neon.  He didn't make it for the final act, but Sydney loved his first fireworks at the Wishes Nighttime Spectacular.  That my friend, was not false advertising. 

The OBX Beach Experience; Nags Head Beach, Nags Head, OBX, NC

Nags Head Beach

3335 South Virginia Dare Trail

The Outer Banks

Nags Head, NC 

We are beach snobs.  We devour beaches like we do zoos.  We should be beach connoisseurs for the National Academy of Beach Assessors.  We drove over fourteen hours to join our friends Brian and Kaci and their three kiddos Ainslee, Chase and Lyla down on the Outer Banks.  And we studied this beach hard!  Six straight days at any beach is a record for us.  We didn’t even cheat on it with other more beautiful or rustic beaches like we usually do.  We couldn’t resist, it was so pretty and fun.

Boarding.  Our four-year old son learned how to boogie, wake and surf.  Clearly he is more coordinated than either of his parents.  Despite the jellyfish and beantown-like water temps this kid twisted and twirled, spun and dove through two and three foot waves for hours a day.  He was fearless.  Seven-year olds watched him in awe.  Blame it on the perfect four-year older waves.  Well, I noticed it didn’t help those other kids.

Elijah got into the wave act too.  Our little daredevil rode his daddy like Seabiscuit through the surf.  But his mojo was the sand.  The gentle slope was home to a million shells and millions more ghost crabs darting in and out of their holes all morning and evening.  Nags Head was that perfect balance of heat, sand and waves.  Even for dads.

Taking Flight on the Outer Banks: The Wright Brothers National Memorial, Kill Devil Hills, NC

Wright Brothers National Memorial 

Wright Memorial

Kill Devil Hills, NC

It was just about Sydney’s age that I began the wonderful pilgrimage every month via good ole Eastern airlines from Hanover, NH to my dad’s new home in New Jersey.  A four-year old flying solo?  Terrifying you say?  Oh no, it was the 70’s and I got first class treatment without the regs.  Tours of the cockpit on every flight.  Super, attentive flight attendants who who’d rarely met a kid of divorce.  I fell in love with planes. I was determined to get my pilots license by fourteen.

The boys have flown a lot.  Check out their recent jaunt to Rome or their semi-annual pilgrimages to Miami. I had hoped Sydney might catch the bug.  What better place to go viral than Kitty Hawk.  I tried with my poor physics skills (a D on my first test in high school = no more physics, ever, not MC squared) to explain how they created flight.  The museum does a decent job, for rocket scientists.  We spent a long time reenacting the first, second, third and fourth flights as he ran the distance between the markers.

The highlight of the day was by far the park ranger program.  Every park we go to they get more and more kid-friendly these days.  This one was kite flying, no joke!  And voila, Sydney asked all the right questions about flight.  Even Liji was able to figure out how to put a man on the moon that day.  Perhaps my boys will fare better in physics than either I did or those crazy Wright Brothers.

History Alive; Colonial Williamsburg, Williamsburg, VA

Colonial Williamsburg

427 Franklin Street

Williamsburg, VA

As a history teacher, I love reenactments.  In fact, my friends and I got a grant one summer just to trail the civil war throughout the south.  We didn't get in one reenactment!  Perhaps it was my early experiences with Plimoth Plantation.  Maybe it was 7th grade when we got to reenact the trial of the Boston Massacre.  I got to be the lead bad guy, how cool. I think we may wait a little on that one for the boys though. In the meantime, we eased them in with Lexington and Concord this winter.   We were ready for the show.

I had always planned a trip to Colonial Williamsburg, but just never hooked east from Richmond.  On our trip south to North Carolina, the chance presented itself.  Sure it was 95 and humid as all get out, but we were ready.   We slid past the plantation (boy is slavery tough to explain) and started toward the shady gardens by the Governor's palace.  The kids loved the run through the intricately carved bushes.

We were pouring sweat and desperate for lunch (daddy, lunch!  Daddy, Lunch!)  Our options were the Tavern and…. The Tavern, so we picked Chowning's.  I wasn’t sure how we would introduce terms such as grog and wenches to our young kiddos.  Thankfully besides the dress and the décor we were given the choice of modern conveniences such as turkey sandwich and bbq pork sandwich.  But, the highlight of the trip was the reenactment.  FINALLY!  Sydney literally chased the pied pipers down the street as they paraded from the beautifully restored brick capitol building to the end of town.  Hot, sticky and a bit over their heads?  Perhaps.  An educational destination for their teen years sandwiched betwixt a stop at Water Country and Busch Gardens down the road?  For sure.

Sliding Glass Doors for Great Apes: The Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago, IL

Sliding Glass Doors for Great Apes
The Lincoln Park Zoo
2200 N. Cannon Drive
Chicago, IL

Reasons to venture:

• We are picky about our zoos and this was clean, up close and personal and had plenty of opps for well-fed animals to get out and run around.
• The carousel of endangered species was old-timey and faaaaassssst.
• Did I mention it's free?
• Throw in a trip cross town for the kielbasa of your life at Jim's Original. The kids will down the Chicago style hot dogs (hold the hot peppers for your kids) and the tasty fries.

Best Zoo in the U.S.?

Guest Blog: Panning for Gold under the Midnite Sun, Alaska

Guest Blogger: astillman
(my uncle Arnie dadventures with my cuzins to the tundra)
Panning for Gold under the Midnite Sun, Alaska

Reasons to venture:

• Bald eagles on every street corner, puffins, whales and seals on the Kenai penisula.
  
• Denali National park has tremendous views, wildlife and ambitious hikes up America's largest peak.
• Watch global warming live from the north pole as the glaciers calve off Valdez.
  

On a scale of 1-5 how much do you like bears, I mean big bears?