We're Going to Disney World! Pictures

Almost forgot...you can view all the pictures of our Disney World vacation here.

I Touched the Trophy

The Colts are taking the Lombardi Trophy on a 50 city tour. Fortunately, I had the chance last Friday to see AND touch it. I had the morning off for a doctor's appointment and then headed over to the Southport Meijer. I arrived around 8:15 and, to my great delight, found only one person in line. He had been there since 6 a.m. I spent the time playing Tetris on my phone, reading Friday Night Lights, and chatting with some of the three to four thousand people that were eventually in line. We all had our Colts stories to share. An older gentleman who was third in line told us stories back from when he first got season tickets when the Colts first moved here. He could name every Colts QB going back at least 20 years. The manager came out and talked to us around 9 a.m. He told us how excited he was to have his store chosen to be the first to show the trophy. His wife, he explained, was friends with Tony Dungy's wife, but he hadn't seen the trophy yet. Around 10 a.m. Colts employees began setting up tables, putting out posters, and arranging a podium for the trophy. They also put up a giant inflatable trophy (which would look ideal on my lawn, if you're looking for a birthday present for me!). Julie Pursley from WRTV 6 interviewed the guy first in line and had her cameraman start setting up. The trophy finally arrived around 10:45 a.m. Four large gentlemen in dark suits and white gloves carried it in and put in on the podium. Then a glass case was put over it and sealed, although there was a hole in the top so that you could still touch the trophy. The line started moving and we were handed some freebies. I got a Tarik Glenn United Way card, an "I touched the trophy" button, two cool large posters (one with the trophy, the other said "Go Colts," and autographed pictures of Blue and the cheerleaders (which my wife promptly threw out later). They also handed out a special cardboard frame for you trophy picture if you dontated $1 to United Way. Finally, we got up to the trophy. The Meijer manager had assured us that someone from Meijer or the Colts would be there to take pictures. The Colts, apparently nixed that idea. The security guards, some employees, and cheerleaders wouldn't even hold your posters for you let alone take a picture. The guy in front of me and I exchanged cameras to take each other's pictures. I kinda look like I'm gritting my teeth, but you only got one picture and then they quickly ushered you out of there. I stood for the picture and then briefly stuck my hand in and touched the trophy. Julie Pursley grabbed me on the way out and interviewed me for the news. She asked me several questions, but it got editted down to about 2 seconds. So if I sound like an idiot, my comments were definitely out of context. All in all, not a bad experience. The wait wasn't as tortuous as it could of been (I was scared they might make us wait outside) and I have an awesome souvenir picture.

You can find the WRTV 6 broadcast from the Meijer (including my EXCLUSIVE interview by Julie Pursley) here.

You can find all my pictures of the day here.

We're Going to Disney World! MGM

- MGM has long been my favorite park. Lots of great rides, great atmosphere, lots of cool shops.


- Tower of Terror. Probably our favorite ride. The premise is you're in a haunted hotel in the elevator which raises and drops you over and over and over. I love that it's random drops so every ride is different. The "Twilight Zone" theme is great and carried throughout the ride. I also love the doors opening at the top so you could see the park briefly before you plunge.


- Rock 'N Roll Rollercoaster. Inside roller coaster, so of course I enjoyed it. Nothing really distinguishing except for the Aeorsmith soundtrack playing. Why haven't other roller coasters employeed a soundtrack? I loved listening to the music while going through loops.


- Star Tours. It's pretty dated (compared to, say, Mission Space), but it's great fun. I enjoyed this one so much. I believe Rachel's comment was "it's cute." Even better is the store with Star Wars memoribilla. I got a lightsaber key chain, Yoda and Vader Pez dispensers, and a Yoda-Mickey figurine. Sadly I couldn't afford the autographed Carrie Fisher framed pictures. And, yes, I'm 30 years old, married, with a decent job. Shocking, I know.


- Indiana Jones. A stunt show featuring an Indiana Jones theme. Fun to watch. Always enjoyable watching how stunts are done. Lots of humor and fan interaction too.


- Beauty and Beast: Live Onstage. A 30 minute live action Beauty and the Beast. Basically they rearrange the story a little and take out everything that's not a song. Not too bad a presentation for taking a 90 minute show down to a third of the time. Rachel loves Beauty and the Beast, so she was really excited to see this.


- Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater. Our one "nice" dinner at Disney World. There's a movie screen at the front of the restaurant showing trailers from old horror movies. The tables are made to look like 50's era cars and the waitresses are on roller skates and wearing 50's era clothes. The environment was great. The food left something wanting though. We expected diner/drive-in type food, and instead got steak and pasta dishes. The food wasn't terrible, but not what you expect to eat while sitting in a parked car watching a horror movie.

We're Going to Disney World! Epcot

- The night before we visited EPCOT, I read in our travel book that people joked EPCOT should stand for "Every Person Comes Out Tired." After the day, I wholeheartedly agreed. There's a lot of walking, and very few rides.

- Mission Space. This must be the most controversial Disney ride ever. There is a list a mile long with warnings about people with motion sickness not riding. There is even a barf bad in front of your seat when you get in. Personally, I didn't see what the fuss was about. This was one of my favorite rides, and I found it much less disorienting than a lot of roller coasters I've been on. You go in and watch a taped pre-show hosted by Gary Sinise (someone hollered out "Lt. Dan!" when Sinise apppeared). You go into a "box" (space craft) with seats and space shuttle looking controls in front of you. You're closed up and the space craft tilts up. You can feel "gravity" pressing against you as you go through take-off and cruise through space. Most realistic (as far as I know) flight simulation I've been on.

- Soarin'. Underrated ride that I hadn't heard much about even in the travel books or on the internet. You basically watch an IMAX movie with one catch: you're lifted off the floor and placed in the middle of the movie. The ride comes complete with wind blowing in your face as you fly through San Francisco. The line was a mile long even with FastPass, but I definitely enjoyed this one.

- Test Track. Another interminable line, but a pretty good ride. We went on this several times. You're placed in a "car and put through typical crash test dummy tests: hitting a wall (not really), tight turns, high-speed turns. Great ride, but a little too short for me. Luckily, we got to ride this several times.

- World Showcase. Eh, whatever. It's neat to see all the cultures and Rachel enjoyed the Maelstrom ride, but that's about it. Oh, except the food. Between the two of us, we had brownies, egg rolls, pretzels, chicken, fries, coffee, and probably several other things I've forgot. I've got some friends and family that could easily gain 50 pounds a day here.

We're Going to Disney World! Magic Kingdom

- Thanks to the greatness that is the Hopper Pass. We spent part of three days at the Magic Kingdom (MK). Monday we were only at the MK. Wednesday we headed back there to see Tony Dungy and Dominic Rhodes in the "I'm Going to Disney World!" parade (more on all the Colts in another post). Thursday we returned to ride the rides again.


- Our first day at MK, we arrived very early. The parking lot was bare when we pulled in leading me to think we were about to have a Griswald vacation moment. We stood in line and browsed the outside-the-gates gift shop when a lady asked us if we would mind taking a survey. We had fifteen minutes to kill, so we went. This got us inside the MK early and after the survey we could go down Main Street (the shops were open, but no rides were running). This pretty much put us at Tomorrowland when the park opened and we got to be one of the first of the day on Space Mountain.

- Space Mountain. I hadn't been to MK since I was 7 or 8 and had never rode Space Mountain. I've always been leery of roller coasters, but indoor roller coasters (like Flight of Fear at King's Island) seemed to appeal to me. Great ride. Loved riding in the dark and the ride was long enough you felt like you were getting your money's worth (relatively speaking). We rode this at least a half-dozen times.


- FastPass. Can't say enough about this, mainly because I can't stand waiting in lines. This was helpful to us, but would be essential during the summer with kids. Basically you can get a time to come back to the ride later in the day and by-pass most of the line. I'm so spoiled by this that I may not be able to visit King's Island again.


- Pirates of the Caribbean. This ride was closed at the start of the day, but we tried again later when it was up and riding. Turns out that rides are closed for a reason. We got stuck for about 20 minutes at the seen where the pirates scream "We wants the redhead! We wants the redhead!"). Great, classic ride, but not so great a ride to be stuck on.

- The weather was cool, overcast, and occasionally marred by rain showers. The Floridian residents apparently thought this was the end of the world. The temperature was in the mid-40s to mid-50s that day, but we saw Disney employees in winter coats, stocking caps, and gloves. Considering it was -20 or something back home, we counted ourselves fortunate to be in 50 degree weather. The weather worked out well for us. It kept the crowds away and that led to short lines everywhere. We did have to miss out on Splash Mountain and had to wear sweatshirts and jackets, but that's a small price to pay.

- Pirate Ears. Rachel said she'd never had the traditional mouse ears, so we were planning on getting her some. Instead, we went with the nontraditional mouse ears: Pirate headbands with ears on them. It seemed like a good idea at the time. They were actually fun, I just wished I would have taken them off for some of the pictures.

We're Going to Disney World! Downtown Disney/Shopping

- Sunday and Friday were the two non-travel days that we didn't have tickets for Disney. We spent most of them shopping, although we did devote Sunday night to the Colts (more on that in another post).

- Downtown Disney is a Disney collector's dream and also, surprisingly, a great place for adults. The first store was "World of Disney" which has EVERYTHING you could ever want with mouse ears on it or related to Disney. Need a Beauty and the Beast snow globe (my wife did!)? They've got it. Need a Pirates of the Caribbean handband with Goofy ears hanging down? They've got that too. Need a Mickey Mouse tea set? Yeah, that's there. Not sure how you would make it out of here with kids. The main attraction for kids (apart from the approximately 10,000,000 stuffed animals) was the "Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique" where you're little princess could get outfitted and hairstyled like a Disney princess. It was like Libby Lou on steroids. It's neat idea if your little girl is a princess fan, but I believe you have to take out a 3rd mortgage to pay for it.


- Great stuff for adults to do. We at a Wolfgang Puck's Express for lunch. Great quick and reasonably priced (for Disney) food. There was also an ESPN Studio Store (where an employee assured us the Colts would lose Sunday night), Virgin Mega Store, Planet Hollywood Store, Cirque De Soleil shows and lots of nightclubs (not that we were there; we're so old we were in bed by 9-10 p.m. even on vacation.



- Orlando/Kissimmee also have a multitude a outlet malls. The Disney outlet stores had cheap (again, by Disney standards) last-season merchandise. The store makes you wanted to buy everything because it was so much cheaper than anything you've seen all week. However, you soon noticed that most of the clothing was odd sizes (smalls or triple XLs) or the collectibles were with characters you didn't want. We ended up not buying much here. Probably the only place we could say that!

- Rachel also found an Old Navy outlet. I thought Old Navy was basically an outlet store, so I was surprised to find they have a store selling stuff cheaper. Leave it too my wife to find great deals on t-shirts even on vacation.

We're Going to Disney World! Travel/Orlando/Kissimmee

Rachel and I escaped the snow and cold for a week to hang out in Orlando. Our main goal was Disney World and we spent the majority of our time there. Rachel's brother and sister-in-law got us a great deal on a condo, so we were able to relax there for the week. The condo had a kitchenette so we could stock up on food which probably saved us a ton of money, especially for breakfast. It's been a few weeks since we got back, so I'll just list some thoughts as the come to me. I'm sure I should try to organize my thoughts in paragraphs and colorful descriptions, but this in the Internet age, so you get a list.


- I've flown only a few times since 9/11, so I'm continually amazed at the security. I don't trust checking luggage so usually I would pack all my toiletries and a change of clothes or two in my carry-on back. Thanks to the idiots who tried to sneak liquid explosives on a plane, I can no longer do this. All liquids, creams, gels, what-have-you must be in a plastic bag. Since we ended up packing most of our toiletries in the check luggage, our plastic bag was two cold tablets, chap stick, and hand moisturizer. These items had to be removed from our bag and x-rayed. There are people dying from cancer and lack of food, but our government spends money to x-ray chap stick. I think this is a definite miss allocation of resources.

- Another security thought: I really hate taking off my shoes. I'm trying to balance my coat, backpack, ticket, and our plact baggie of illicit chap stick, but yet I still must balance on one foot at a time and remove my shoes so they too can be x-rayed.

- Inside the terminal was a newspaper/chap stick (pre-screened I assume)/candy/book store. I noticed one thing they were selling were books that you could buy, read on your flight, and then return for all but a small deposit. At first I thought this was a great idea. Thinking about it though, the store was inside the security checkpoint. So to return the book you either had to hope your return flight was to the say gate where you bought the book or wait until your next flight. Guess it's not such a great idea after all.


- Our rental car was a Dodge Caliber. It was a great price through Thrify and having a car was much better than waiting on taxis and buses. However, as an extended test drive of the Caliber, it was lacking. The Caliber is like a mini-station wagon that looked unimpressive and got terrible gas mileage (I calculated it got about 17 miles per gallon.). The worst thing was the terrible blind spots. The roof sloped back from the front seats with windows along the side which got increasingly smaller. I couldn't see a think out of these small windows; it was like driving a van with no windows. Not recommended.


- The hotel/condo we stayed at was Calypso Cay. We checked in with an extremely enthusiastic desk clerk so heartily recommended several events the property was offering. The room was great. It had a living room with TV, DVD player and CD. There was a separate bedroom and a fairly good sized bathroom complete with a jacuzzi tub (read: oval bath tub with water jets). The best part was the kitchenette. We were able to have breakfast there and keep snacks and drinks for the evenings. The only draw back of the condo was the odd color scheme (it was advertised as "Caribbean Theme," which apparently means "pastel colored") and the thin walls through which we could hear our neighbors rearrange their furniture constantly. Oh, also valuable was a computer terminal (you logged on to a server, no CPU was in the room) where you could access the Internet. Especially since the Colts were in the Super Bowl and Indiana was getting hit by sub-sub-freezing temperatures, the internet really helped us keep in touch with the outside world.

- We took a trip to the Kissimmee Wal-Mart that night to stock up on snacks. The place was packed and everyone seemed in a hurry. I've never had more people bump into me in a supermarket (all without saying "excuse me"). Also, Florida OJ, cheap; milk, expensive. Indiana must be making a fortune exporting milk to Florida. Maybe we should broker a deal where we trade milk for OJ

- We dined at the Cracker Barrel near our hotel. It was 7 p.m. on a Saturday night, so I was worried the place would be swamped (as it would be at home). Nope. Nada people in there. We were seated immediately and the food came quickly. Our guess were that the residents eat early (read into that what you will) and all the tourist were still at Disney.

Back Again

As you can see, I haven't been keeping up with my blog. Here are the reasons: I was on vacation for a week, had a cold ever since, the Colts won the Super Bowl, 10+ inches of snow and ice covered my house, and I've actually had work to do at work (shocking, I know!). Now things are winding down, so I'm back to posting updates. I'll try to get Disney World pictures and pictures and thoughts on the Colts up in the next few days.

Awesome Tony Dungy Video

My friend David found this great testimony from Tony Dungy. Have a look and listen.

Lovie speaks on Faith

Great quotes from Lovie Smith at Media Day:

"My relationship, first, is with Jesus Christ and he is the center of my life. I try to live a Christian life. I would like for guys to know my faith based on what they see on a day-to-day basis. I had a chance to see that on a daily basis with Tony Dungy. I had a chance to see Tony through a lot of storms and he has been the same guy all the way. This is also an opportunity for us to acknowledge our belief in Jesus Christ, which we do, and hopefully more people will come around to him based on that."