I wouldn’t not generally suggest sending grandmas off alone in the dark in an Uber through a desolate area. It seems they get nervous about this sort of thing. And, while we are at it, apparently so do Uber drivers.
In celebration of my sister Lisa’s 40th birthday, both my sisters and I were driving from Cincinnati to Knoxville, Tennessee to pick up our Mom from the airport and then continuing the hour or so from there to the Mountain Harbor Inn, a lovely resort on Douglas Lake in Tennessee. The problem is that it was Memorial Day Weekend, so, due to the volume of traffic, what should have been a 4-hour drive turned into a 7-hour drive, leaving my mom stranded and waiting for us at a small local airport in which everything was closed by 8pm. We were in phone contact with mom, and as she described the small, empty, closed, airport, we decided to go ahead and call an Uber to get her to the resort where she could at least get to somewhere populated instead of wandering around like the last person in Knoxville for the next two hours. Mom agreed. Now sadly, there have been cases of women getting into an Uber alone and ending up a tragic statistic. We were sending mom into an Uber alone at closed airport at night to take her on a 45-minute drive to an isolated resort.
Safety and Comfort Rating: low.
My sisters and I had decided on a plan – keep Mom on the phone and make sure the Uber driver knows that we are tracking their every move.
However, confidence in our plan dropped a bit when it turned out that the Uber driver, Ammar, did not know where the Mountain Harbor Inn resort was.
Safety and Comfort Rating for Mom dialed down a little bit.
After about 10 minutes of Ammar trying to figure out the location of the resort on his map, I felt a little better. I mean, that’s quite a bit of time commitment and brain power for someone who is just going to turn down a random dark road to kill a grandma. My sister Lisa assumed command for operation “Don’t Let Mom Get Murdered on my Birthday Trip” and relayed our plan via the phone to our mom. Mom was skeptical.
Mom became more skeptical as the driver turned off the highway and onto a random dark road. Lisa went into GPS mapping mode like a steely NASA worker calmly crunching the numbers while watching life support data come back from Apollo 13. She assured mom that the random dark road was indeed on the route to the Inn. My sisters and Mom kept up conversation the entire route, my mom describing all that she could make out along the dark route; no houses to be seen, except for an occasional ramshackle one with what looked like a perpetual yard sale out front. No businesses except for one bar with a blinking Bud Light sign. Ammar, for his part, who apparently did not have grandma murder on his mind, was actually a little nervous about this ride as well. None of the roads en route to the resort looked alive.
Safety and Comfort rating low. For Ammar.
After an hour of driving, Ammar was just as perplexed as my mom by the rough and abandoned surroundings as they arrived at the entrance to the resort which was seemingly closed. Knoxville’s outlying areas are not the big city, folks. The office was locked, not many lights on, no apparent activity nearby, but there was an envelope on the door with the room key in it. Ammar actually offered to stay a minute to make sure she got to her room, probably in disbelief that this woman’s children would send her alone to this remote and seemingly closed Inn.
After another hour or so, my sisters and I arrived to find our mom in a cheerfully lit suite at the charming Mountain Harbor Inn, our mom neither abandoned at an empty airport nor murdered on a rural Tennessee back road after getting into a car with a man she did not know.
About an hour and a half from Orlando is Crystal River; a town that is home to Kings Bay – a spring fed river system that has also been designated a National Wildlife Refuge specifically to protect the manatees that seek its warmer waters in the winter. Florida has over 900 springs and they generally stay at a constant 72 degrees year-round. The manatees get too cold in the Gulf of Mexico when the waters there go below 68 degrees and they come further inland to survive the winter temperatures. They do this over much of Florida, but Crystal River hosts the most West Indian Manatees in the world.
Capitalizing on this migration of the manatees to places further inland, there are a variety of dive shops that will hire out a boat for a fairly reasonable rate (around 50 bucks per person) and the captain will take you to an area in the bay where the manatees congregate. Our captain supplied us with snorkeling gear, wet suits, and hot chocolate for after the swim. It was so peaceful and beautiful, and it was just us and one other boat in the area. My 8-year-old daughter and I shimmied into our wetsuits and stepped down the ladder off the boat into the water. Those of you who have been in a wetsuit before would know that the suit keeps you warm by trapping a layer of water between it and your skin, and it’s your own body temperature that heats up the water inside the suit in order to keep you warm. I had not been in a wetsuit before and did not know this, but as I entered the water, I suddenly understood why there was hot chocolate offered at the end of the swim. 72-degree water is pretty chilly.
Once accustomed to the water, my daughter and I got our snorkels on and headed over to the rope line that marks the area where only manatees may enter. There were more manatees than I could count on the protected side of the rope line. Occasionally a manatee would leave the protected area and swim right underneath us, and in the clear water, the view was outstanding. One particularly big manatee went past us on its way to the nearby Three Sisters Spring, and we were so close we could see the algae flow on its back as it swam. On others we could see the propeller scars from accidents with boats that were going too fast for the poor lumbering creatures to dodge. By “we” could see, I mean really that “I” could see. The 8-year-old was not much into putting her face into the water. Probably a good thing to note BEFORE you pay for a snorkeling experience.
We followed one manatee to Three Sisters, which was surrounded by rock outcroppings and we swam around to look at the fish swimming all around. It was at this point that I became completely and utterly distracted by the need to pee. That kind of unrelenting, all-consuming urge to pee that prevents you from noticing you’re swimming above a manatee in a purely clear, white-sand bottomed spring. My daughter was and remains disgusted with me, but I peed right there in spring. I took care of the situation the only way I could, really, and quickly came to the realization that when you pee in a wetsuit, your pee stays IN the wetsuit. So now I was swimming around trapped in my own urine. Warmer, yes, but is pee-induced warmth really that gratifying? I say no.
We made our way back to the boat, swimming through the narrow inlet that lead back and forth from Three Sisters and watching as manatees occasionally passed under us to head back and forth as well. Sadly, when we got back to our boat, we discovered that many more boats had arrived while we were by the spring, and an entire human chain was hovering around the rope line waiting for manatees to leave. Things like this, as well as people harassing the manatees, trying to touch and hitch a ride on them, and the general increase of human activity around the manatee’s safe zone are all issues that have created the controversy that surround the swim-with-a-manatee business.
Based on this information, which I did not know before I went myself, I would not go again, nor recommend it to others. But I can definitely advise you to find a bathroom before getting into a wet suit.
I wasn’t even aware there was this much variety in Santa Mickeys.
On a beautiful Florida winter day, my dad, my daughters, and I went for a day visit to Fort Wilderness. We weren’t staying at the campground, and we weren’t going to any of the parks, but we do like to take advantage of as many free and cheap things to do on Disney property as possible. On this day, we had reserved a golf cart to tool around Fort Wilderness, with the specific intention of driving through the campsite loops once darkness fell in order to see the Christmas lights that the campers put out at their site. I had heard about how the people who stay in RVs and pop ups, and even tent campers put up Christmas lights and displays around their campsites at Christmas and I thought it would be fun to rent the golf cart and check it out.
I had made a reservation for the golf cart months in advance, and if the weather would have been bad, too rainy or too cold, we could have cancelled before 24 hours – but the weather was lovely; partly sunny and 78 degrees. We picked up our cart around 1pm and drove it the length of Fort Wilderness all the way to the end where the restaurants and boat launches are that people take over the to Magic Kingdom. Because I am a cheapskate, we had a packed lunch which we ate on a covered porch while we listened to pleasantly rustic instrumental versions of Christmas songs. The kids ran to the playground while my dad and I lingered on the rocking chairs and enjoyed the music and the weather.
Tri-Circle D Ranch
We walked around and found the Tri-Circle D Ranch where the horses that work on Disney property are housed. These are the horses that pull the trolleys down Main Street, pull the wagons that tour Fort Wilderness and Port Orleans Riverside, and pull the wedding carriages. We learned by talking to one of the cast members that the horses go through an intricate training period – where they work in lower populated areas, such as the wagon rides at Fort Wilderness (for the rookies), and graduate up to Main Street. We walked along the beach, watched the pony rides, checked out the gift shop, and then took the boat shuttle over to the Contemporary Resort where we were able to take the resort loop monorail around to the Polynesian and Grand Floridian hotels to check out their Christmas decorations.
We returned to Fort Wilderness around dusk, loaded into the golf cart, and sped off at 15 miles an hour, eager to see the decorations. I was not prepared for the level of enthusiasm shown by the campers. People had lights dripping off the hoods of their campers, strung up all around the camper roof lines, along paths to their camp sites, Christmas vignettes arranged in the front windshields of their RVs, Mickey lamps with Santa hats, nativity scenes, and more blow-ups than I have ever seen in my life, both Disney and non-Disney themed. Mr. Potato Head, Olaf, Sully, reindeer stalls with each of Santa’s reindeer in them – each moving. Star Wars characters, polar bears, and more Santa Mickey’s than you can imagine. I can’t even begin to list the variety of inflatable décor that we rolled past. It was truly incredible. I’m not familiar with the RV world, but from what I gather, there’s quite a feeling of community and that vibe was clear and present here– and what made this collection of Christmas displays all the more Christmas-y.
The pathway went around the perimeter of the campsite to allow visitors to walk around and see all the lighted displays, and a table of Christmas figurines. The castle was actually a front someone placed around their RV!
This was such a festive and impressive display, that the girls and I repeated the experience on another non-park visit to Florida. This time it was cooler weather, and as the evening temperatures dropped and the breeze on our little golf cart got a bit chillier, we stopped at the Settlement Trading Post, the gift shop and camping supply store in the middle of the campgrounds, and grabbed a hot chocolate to drink as we tooled around.
While looking at this image, mentally add some slightly twangy instrumental Christmas music and a view of Bay Lake.
I highly recommend this experience whether or not you are visiting the parks at Christmas-time. In fact, it might be a great thing to do especially if you’re visiting the parks at Christmas-time. Walt Disney World at Christmas can make a magical time of year even more magical, but it’s also very crowded and it can be easy to get caught up in the crowds and rush. Hanging out at Fort Wilderness might just be the peaceful, casual, festive activity that can relax the family, slow the pace, and help everyone enjoy each other and their time together. I know it is one our family’s favorite Christmas memories!
An hour away from Little Rock is Hot Springs, Arkansas. They have hot springs and also, it’s in Arkansas, so, fittingly named. And cool. It is also historically significant, and charming and lovely.
One of the oldest parks in the National Park system, Hot Springs is named for the over 40 springs that flow through the area carrying mineral rich, 143 degree, 4000 year old water right through the town. It is cooled down enough to drink (but still hot) at public drinking fountains or, as we saw from tourists and locals alike, be carried off in jugs and glass bottles. Because the hot springs are so rich in minerals, the water was believed to be healing, and bath houses were built a century ago to pamper and treat the wealthy yet malaised. Many of these bathhouses still stand, and one, the Buckstaff Bath House, still offers treatments today.
While we did not partake of a bath, we did tour the Fordyce Bathhouse, which used to be operational, but now doubles as a museum and as the Hot Springs National Park Visitor Center. It’s a beautiful building with elaborate marble work and stained glass– everywhere, it seems, except in the women’s baths (rather telling for the times) where the free tour starts. The tour walked us through the elaborate multi-station bathing procedure and took us bottom to top through the bathhouse, including stops at the elegantly beautiful third floor parlor, and wood-paneled gym – left for exhibition the way it was used in the heyday of the Fordyce; throwing sticks and wooden weights and gymnastics equipment. The tour was a very interesting glimpse into the scientific and medical thought of the time, as well as a visible model of the inequality between men and women.
Part of the men’s bath, complete with stained glass, marble, and statuary. The gym from the time period. Part of the women’s bath, complete with plain white tables.
After our tour, we wandered around the main street of the town, Central Avenue, going in and out of various unique shops, buying some mediocre fudge, and stopping for our packed lunch by a fountain. The town was delightfully picturesque, with shops and cafes set right up against the Ouachita Mountains, and it had many fountains that we would drink from and be amazed at the hot spring water each time. Each. Time. We are easily amazed. Actually, it was just me that was still amazed. The thrill was over for the rest of the family by the third fountain.
One of the first few times at a fountain. I can tell because there is still a smile.
After a couple hours in the town of Hot Springs, we drove up the switchbacks to the nearby Hot Springs Mountain to see the view from the observatory and to do a little hiking. The view was great – trees and gently folded mountains as far as the eye could see for 360 degrees. The hike was dull – and we aborted after 20 minutes or so on the trail that didn’t afford any views and was only marginally pretty in comparison to our hike the day before at Petite Jean State Park. While we are easily amazed, we are also careful in our consideration of the pay-off to effort ratio.
View from the observatory on Hot Springs Mountain.
The travel time from our hotel in Conway, Arkansas to Hot Springs was 3 hours round trip, but it was a day well spent. A little history, a little nature, and a Dasani bottle full of really hot spring water – that may or may not have halted the cold I felt coming on, just saying…
My older daughter and I are fangirls over the Harry Potter universe (and also zombies, but that’s a post for another day) and during a visit to Orlando, she and I made sure to get over to Universal Studios Orlando to see The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. You have to have park tickets for both Universal Studios AND Islands of Adventure in order to see all of the Harry Potter attractions (grumble), but we paid that premium and for us, it was well worth the money. We spent 9 of the 12 hours the park was open entirely in The Wizarding World. We marveled at window décor, we stared at the ceilings in the stores, we read the handbills on shop fronts. We spent a significant amount of time looking at wands in a shop that could have been straight out of the books and movies – rather the point, actually. We sat on the stairs by Gringotts and watched magical signs change, the dragon breathe fire, and the hustle and bustle of people in Diagon Alley. We did spells with the interactive wands and generally took advantage of everything the Wizarding World had to offer. Including Fishy Green Ale.
Butter Beer is the go-to flavor experience of choice among
visitors to the Wizarding World. You can
get it in soda form, you can get it warm, frozen, as ice-cream, as custard, and
as fudge. But, if you look around, past
all the hoards with their Butter Beers, you’ll see a couple of brave souls holding
a cup of green liquid with blue popping bubbles in the bottom, and that is Fishy
Green Ale.
Not a great picture of Fishy Green Ale, but you get the idea; a milky, mint green cold drink with blueberry popping bubbles.
The drink is described as being minty with a hint of
cinnamon with blueberry juice filled bubbles that pop and release the juice in
your mouth when you bite down on them. I
was perplexed by the flavor profile.
Mint and cinnamon? But I promise
you, it’s not strongly mint, and I wouldn’t have guessed cinnamon. And of course, who can resist topping off a
milky mint/cinnamon drink with a pop of blueberry surprise in your mouth? We couldn’t, that’s who. But this is definitely a drink it took us a
while to decide if we liked. The evolution went a little like this:
Ugh, what?
Hmm. Let me try that
again.
Is that really mint?
Gross!
Okay, maybe not that bad actually.
Come on, Rowling, who would even think this up?
Let me try that again…
Is that…blueberry? I don’t think I like this, but I’m not sure.
I kinda like this.
I have a set of pictures featuring my daughter’s face as she
struggled to process this drink, but as she is a private person and doesn’t
like her picture everywhere, I have drawn a recreation below.
I would almost definitely recommend you try the Fishy Green Ale. Maybe not. You might like it. You probably will.
The dragon above Gringotts that breathes fire at random intervals in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
I
have had the good fortune to go to New York City and watch the Macy’s
Thanksgiving Day Parade on two different occasions. Both extremely cold occasions – in fact, the
two coldest occasions in the last 18 years, but, still. Every so many years my birthday falls on
Thanksgiving Day, and seeing the parade in person was something I had always
wanted to do.
The first time, it was 2002, and 19 degrees. This was my first time seeing the parade live and one of my first visits to New York City so my mom and I wanted to get to the parade line early to get a front row seat. By 6am we were bundled up and at our spot along the parade route and waited there in the frigid darkness until the sun came up – on the opposite side of the street. Being on the shady side of the street doesn’t help warm you up, by the way. And in fact, really just makes you have bitter feelings towards those on the sunny side. The parade starts in Columbus Circle at 9am, so…
In the ensuing THREE HOURS of wait time, my mom and I:
Realized
that those heating pads you put in your gloves and shoes don’t really work all
that well at those temperatures.
Called
my aunt who lives on Long Island to inquire as to the temperature (no smart
phones yet). The answer didn’t make us
feel better. The temperature had
actually dropped a degree.
Found that it’s difficult to eat crackers while also trying to keep as much as your face covered as possible.
Found
some abandoned mail crates to sit on, and feeling like true New Yorkers, commandeered
government property for our relative comfort.
Did
not use a bathroom.
Discussed
various ways to pronounce Duane Reade – a drug store that was across the street
from us (I’m not going to tell you. See,
you probably spent a short amount of time considering it yourself just now).
Sat
really really close together.
Wondered just how dang long it takes for a parade to get from Columbus Circle to the street we were on (this I will tell you. Answer, 20 minutes).
Called
my aunt again to inquire as to the temperature.
It still did not make us feel better.
The author, trying to subsist on a cracker while waiting for the parade. The warmest way to eat it was to snake my arm out of me sleeve and up the length of my coat to my mouth. A shot of the Yellow Wiggle getting ready to actually perform for the crowd!
During the Parade itself, we discovered that:
Street
crews come and swivel the traffic lights out of the path of the parade (who
knew!)
The
people on the streets watching the parade don’t get to see many performances
that people who watch on TV see. While
the parade is stopped so that the performer on whatever float is in front of
Macy’s at the time can do their number for the television audience, some of the
performers on the floats waiting in line just look around at the shivering
parade crowd.
The
Wiggles went ahead and performed for us.
They were troopers.
The skimpy outfits that the dancers wear on camera are not the same outfits they wear along the parade route – at least on a cold day. The dancers for each band were actually wearing warm-up suits as they passed us, but when we saw them on TV, they had taken off the warm-up suits and were performing in their costumes. Imaging how cold the dancers were while marching the parade route always stressed me out as a child.
There
are people who run into the intersections before each balloon passes and use a
wind meter to check to see if the intersection is too windy for the balloon to
pass through at height.
It
is much cooler than I expected to see those famous star-shaped Macy’s balloons
bobbing down the street as the official start of the parade nears your location.
That
how cold it is doesn’t matter once you’ve started watching such an iconic
parade for the first time, live.
That
it doesn’t matter how iconic the parade is, you will never forget how cold you
were.
Some iconic floats from the 2002 parade.
The second time I saw the parade was in 2013. I was eager to share the experience with my daughters, who, it turns out, don’t really care. My birthday was on Thanksgiving again, and my mom and I decided to go to the parade again. She rented us a room as a birthday gift, a once-in-a-lifetime splurge at the Park Lane Hotel, in a 15th floor room that overlooked Central Park. It was so New York Cool. We could survey the entire length of the park, see the zoo, the pond, the skating rink, and the pathways.
On the night before Thanksgiving, we rode the subway down to where the balloons were laid out, battened down, and being inflated. If you ever get the chance to go to the Macy’s Parade, don’t miss the opportunity to go to Central Park to see the balloons the night before. We got to stand before the giant balloons as they were slowly coming to life, watch little kids exclaim as they saw characters they recognized, smile as we saw old standards from past parades, and wonder what the heck other partially-inflated balloons even were.
So, back to the hotel and up early in the morning to head out to get a spot for the parade. Not quite as early as the time I went in 2002, and that was a mistake. It was very cold and I didn’t want to have the girls wait out in it too long before the parade started, so my mom and I split up; she would go downstairs and find a spot, we would eat breakfast in the room and come down about 30 minutes later. We would meet her on the corner of 6th and 42nd street, just a block from the hotel. Great. I head out with the girls and get to the corner, and don’t see her. A phone call – where are you? Across the street and diagonal from us. Across barricaded streets. You see, you can be at any one of four different corners at 6th and 42nd – almost a fatal flaw in our plan. In an alarmingly short amount of time, the crowd on the sidewalks had swelled to a crushing volume and it took us a long time to fight our way back up the way we came, to a police blockade where pleas to cross were met with a sardonic NYPD cop answer: “Do you KNOW what day it is?”. Point taken. But we did manage to get across and over to where my mom was. Which was out of the sun and under scaffolding on this 25-degree morning. It seems colder out of the sun when its 25 degrees. We waited for about an hour, talking with people around us as the kids got increasingly whiny in the cold. But, then those iconic Macy star balloons came around the corner onto – 42nd street, and they perked up. Then a float passed us and a band. Macy’s employees dressed as clowns came by, another balloon, the turkey float, and by then my kids were done with the whole experience. My youngest, crying, tiny in a large crowd, me trying to hold her and her bulky coat at an uncomfortable angle so she could see, her little feet cold, snot frozen under her nose from crying, and completely unimpressed, was not making for an enjoyable parade watching experience. I forced the kids to stay until the Snoopy balloon, and then headed back to the hotel. My teen was cranky about the whole affair, but our exchange student from Japan had never had this experience before, and so my mom stood with her while I herded the girls back to the hotel room where we turned the parade on the TV. But the cool thing was, if you smushed your forehead against the window of the Park Lane, and looked down and to the left, you could see the parade below you, and hear strains of music from the high school bands. And if you looked further off to the left, out towards the middle of Central Park, you could see the parade line in the distance – so we could totally see Big Bird Balloon coming, and then watch on TV when he got his glamor shot.
Snoopy as seen from under the scaffolding.
It
was a little disappointing to be so close to the parade and not watch it live,
but on the other hand, I was watching it from a vantage point most people don’t
ever have – from above as it made its way past the Museum of Natural History with
a view of Central Park. So that was kind
of cool. My kids don’t remember this,
they tend to not remember most of the times they’ve caused some kind of big
glitch in an expensive plan, but I do have pictures, and some great memories of
my own. If you’re a fan of the Macy’s
Thanksgiving Day Parade, and ever get the chance to see it live, definitely do
it! Just dress warm, be prepared to
wait, and don’t ask the NYPD stupid questions.
My mom, my two daughters and I went on our first Disney cruise this last June – the first time on a cruise ever for me and my girls – and I have many favorite things about my experience on the Disney Dream. I will have several entries about my cruise here at some point, but for now, let me tell you about one of those favorite things: Kid’s clubs!
I love my children.
Which includes my youngest daughter.
But let me tell you that one of the highlights about my recent Disney
cruise was the fact that I got some time without her. That sounds awful, and is the kind of sentence
that, if she reads it now, would make her sad. So I won’t show this to
her. But her future self is totally
going to get it.
When we first boarded the ship, we did what most newbies did, and toured it. One of the first things we checked out was the kid’s clubs. Here’s the thing; the Disney cruise line has excellent kid’s clubs. One of them, Edge, is just for ages 11-14 and my social little girl took to it immediately. I mean, don’t get me wrong, we did plenty of family stuff; meals together, Castaway Cay, shows, hanging out on the deck, the Aquaduck, and the pool, but it was also very nice to be able to hang out in the kid-free zone of the ship and just relax as only adults without little kids present can. Quietly.
In preparation for our cruise experience, I had YouTubed the Disney Dream and knew that there was a kids club for ages 3-12 called the Oceaneer’s Lab that looked ultra-themed and really cool and it was where I figured my 11-year-old would like to hang out when she wanted to do kid’s stuff. It has directed activities such as building race cars, making cookies, a science station, and a detective mystery to solve. There are also movies, navigation simulators, video games, an animation studio, a craft studio, and all kinds of kids to play with. There’s security, too, kids cannot check themselves in or out on their own and there are several cast members manning the ingress and egress gates of the club. Everyone has to register to be able to go to the club, and all the information pops up on a screen for the cast member to see – your stateroom number, allergies, and any other pertinent information. Right next door is the Oceaneer’s Club. Also designed for ages 3-12, this area has several specifically themed play rooms; Andy’s room, Pixie Hollow, and a Millennium Falcon room. There’s a magical interactive play floor, and more directed activities here as well; A Jedi training experience, story time, and Playtime with Mickey – where Mickey and pals will play games and puzzles with the kids.
The hours of these clubs?
9 am to m-i-d-n-i-g-h-t. This
means you have free babysitting – where the kids will have a ball – at almost
any time of day, during the entire length of your cruise. The great thing is the Disney cruise can be
as family-friendly as you want it to be; if you want someplace for your child
to play for an hour, for the length of a quiet dinner, at night while you go to
the silent disco, or while you tour Nassau, you can be (almost) assured that
your child will have fun. I say “almost”
because I did witness a pretty sad sight one day as I was passing by the Oceaneer’s
Club; a small boy, no more than five, who had been crying up in the area by the
gates where the cast members monitor who is being signed in and out. I happened by during what must have been a
shift change and one cast member was explaining to the other that the child had
been there since 9am (it was 3 when I passed by), and had been upset for the
whole time, and his parents had not come for him. My heart broke for the little guy. While I certainly did enjoy my child-free moments
on the cruise, this was just a very long time to leave a sad little boy and not
come back for him.
There is, by the way, It’s a Small World Nursery, for kids
ages 6 months to 3 years. This service
is one that you need to reserve ahead of time and does charge for its services,
but a very nominal fee.
There are clubs for the older kids, as well – Edge (ages
11-14), and Vibe (ages 14 – 17), on different areas of the ship from where the
younger kid’s clubs are. And while the Oceaneer Club and the Oceaneer Lab were
so cool, Edge is where my daughter was drawn to. It’s a bit lighter on the theming, one might
say “more mature” if one was eleven, but just like the younger kid’s clubs, Edge
has both organized and independent activities to choose from. My daughter participated in a dance
competition, trivia, and learned how to draw a Disney character. There was always a movie playing, plus video
games, foosball, dodgeball, and other activities such as a pirate challenge and
improv. My daughter’s favorite
thing? Meeting and hanging out with
other kids. For this club, unlike the
clubs for the younger kids, parents do not sign kids in and out. The kids can
come and go as they please. This meant
that if a kid got hungry, they simply walked down one flight of stairs and went
to the buffet, or the ice-cream machine or the drink station, or – who are we
kidding, the ice-cream machine. This
lack of signing in and out is also what made me wary of this service at first.
You see, I am a bone fide worst-case-scenario worrier. I don’t have a stomach ache; its most definitely a tumor. My kids aren’t just out of my sight for a minute; they’re definitely kidnapped. So for me to let my 11-year-old go back and forth to Edge on her own is a testament to how secure I felt once I got familiar with how things worked on the ship. A fantastic feature, and the one that put me most at ease, was the set of Wave phones that are located in the stateroom. I have a cell phone, but my daughter doesn’t. And you don’t get great cell service on board anyway. But the Wave phones are a courtesy service that is designed to help parties communicate on the ship despite spotty cell service. At first, I just saw it as expensive tech on our desk in the stateroom and told my kid to leave it alone. But she insisted with a confidence in technology that only those under age 25 have, and we gave the phones a try. It was great! I could contact her from anywhere on board. She could phone me when she got to the club and phone me when she was hungry and going down for food (ice-cream). I could phone her when it was time to meet up again for dinner or a show. Or just to see her and tell her I love her (in case she reads this before adulthood).
The option of a kid’s club made our cruise so relaxing. My youngest daughter’s love of Edge allowed my
mom and I some time to just hang out together on the forward deck or to go to
the spa – and it also allowed for my older daughter to have some time with just
her and her grandma. So, while the
Disney Dream is a wonderful family experience, the kids club help you to customize
what that experience looks like and gives everyone a little of what they want!
I always look forward to when the Renaissance Festival opens up here in southwestern Ohio, and am always surprised at how many people I meet who have never been. This saddens me a little because this festival is such a treasure, I wish more people would experience it. Then I go, and I am really glad more people don’t attend! I don’t think they would fit! The Renaissance Festival weekends are packed to the gills. And there are probably people walking around with gills. People there are walking around with everything! So what do you need to know to fully enjoy the Renaissance Festival?
ARRIVE EARLY
The Ren Fest opens at 10:30 am. If you arrive at 10:38, you will already be
waiting in a line that extends ONTO the highway from the exit. We arrived at 10:38. I mean it, if you don’t arrive first thing in
the morning when the festival opens, be prepared to wait in a seriously long
line. You could be waiting over an hour
just to inch your way off the highway, up the ramp, and down the road that gets
you to the entrance. Parking is efficient
(and still only $3.00 at the time of this posting!) and once you’ve parked, you’re
ready to enter this fantasy world, unless you didn’t…
BUY YOUR TICKETS IN ADVANCE
There are usually discounted Renaissance Festival tickets online, and some weekends have even more discounts; Labor Day weekend is usually discounted, this year Time Traveler’s Weekend was discounted, and the Halloween Tricks or Treats weekend is free for kids 12 and under (plus they get to trick or treat). If you don’t get tickets in advance, you can still get discount coupons at local stores, like Kroger, but you will have to wait in the ticket window line. And in the line to enter the fair. But once you’re in, grab a map and schedule and be prepared to …
SEE CLEAVAGE (and costumes)
You don’t have to dress up to enjoy the fair; most people don’t, actually. Personally, sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t, but dressing up for me and my family is pretty low key and simple. However. There are a multitude of people who are high-key into dressing up (Renaissance cosplay?). They look like they stepped out of the actual Renaissance with costumes elaborately made; detailed, beaded, embroidered, and show stopping. There are also people who dress up like they just floated out of a fairy tale; wings and horns and mystical tiaras and antlers draped in glass prisms. There are people dressed as barbarians, elves, gypsies, pirates (there’s a whole pirate-themed weekend, by the way), Scotsmen, knights, pretty much everything you can imagine. We saw children dressed as dragons, kings and queens, Disney princesses, fairies, knights, and wizards – everyone gets in on the act. Dress-up is not reserved for any particular age group. My favorite was seeing the groups of elderly women all dressed up together, or the older couples. You can make a day of just costume-watching. And everyone I asked for a picture happily obliged. But, be aware, you will definitely see cleavage. Popping up out of corsets everywhere. Some people dress in Renaissance garb in the same spirit as the Halloween Nurse version of an actual nurse. Men as well as women (see picture below for evidence). So, if you have little kids with you, be aware that the fair can be full on…
A sampling of various costumes we saw at the Fest!
BOOZY AND BAWDY
Alcohol is all over the fair, and there are many people swigging from leather mugs and proclaiming vaguely sexual things in what they think is a British accent. Most of it is easy to avoid, however. If you’re a family with young kids and want to reduce the amount of bawdy innuendo your little ones are exposed to, avoid the larger crowds of younger festival goers in revealing and/or hyper-masculine costumes. There are also some shows to watch that are for a more adult crowd, but generally, its easy to identify which shows those are. If a show involves water or mud, or lots of cleavage, avoid it with the little kids. But there are a great many shows that are very entertaining for families, and most of those involve…
JUGGLING AND JOUSTING
There are some standout shows that are perfect for a family, and they’re consistently great every time that I’ve seen them –just about any of the headliners fit the bill. Among them is the Full Armored Joust. If you have not seen knights in full armor thundering at each other on horseback with a lance, this is the show for you. Arrive early, though, seats fill up quickly at this show – which is offered multiple times a day – and people cheer on their chosen knight and get to see some pre-joust gaming and some explanation of what’s happening. We’ve also always enjoyed the Swordsmen; two long-in-the-tooth guys in tights with sword and comedy skills that are pretty family-friendly and always clever and funny. Theirs is a must-see show for us. The Kamikaze Fireflies were new to us this year (there’s so many things to do that we have not seen all the shows there are on offer!), and were funny and skilled and engaging. They’ve traveled the world, been on America’s Got Talent, perform on cruises and at colleges, and were pretty cool about the grass near their stage catching on fire during their act. There are also smaller acts around the fest that you can catch without arriving early for seats. We saw a juggler, Arie Arie, who, while not the most skilled juggler I have ever seen, had great rapport with the audience and was fully entertaining. And also had a small fire incident. But mostly you can count on not catching fire during your time at the Renaissance Festival. The Mud Show is highly popular, but a little adolescent for my tastes. All of these entertainers ask for tips for their performances, so if you’d like to tip, be sure to bring some singles and fives. Besides the shows, though, there is also…
The Swordsmen, Kamikaze Fireflies, and Arie Arie
SHOPPING
And plenty of it. There are over 150 shops that are run by artisans and craftsmen with some impressive skills. Several shops have areas where you can watch some items being made, or even participate (for a fee). These shops are all along the perimeter and center portion of the festival grounds, which is immersive, by the way, this is not just some tents and stages that have been set up; the festival buildings and grounds are a permanent installation and the shops are themed as well. We spend a great deal of time just checking out the handiwork and imagination of the items offered for sale. There are sword markers, painters, jewelry makers, clothiers, hat makers, leather workers, ceramic artists, glass blowers, and so much more. Some of shop keepers (shoppe?) also participate in a sweet little barter system that young kids can have their own special fun with. I haven’t seen it advertised, but we did it with my children when they were younger and I saw other little kids doing it on our recent visit. A child can bring some little token items with them – such as beads, or little plastic toys, or something else little and interesting – and they can go up to a shopkeeper and ask to trade. The shop keeper usually has some other kind of little trinket and the kids can swap out their item for another. It’s a really sweet little activity for the younger members of the family. And when you want a break from shopping, you can…
FEAST
Feast on smoked turkey legs, steak on a stake, bread bowls full of soup or beef stew (or mac and cheese – one of few vegetarian options), fish and chips, falafel, haggis, bangers, giant pretzels, brats, fajitas, kettle corn, cheesecake on a stick (I do not recommend), apple dumplings, baklava, Cornish pastys and so much more, along with ciders, ale, sodas, and cocktails. There are a lot of choices, so there’s really something for almost anyone. Lines get long, and can move slow, though, so I would recommend eating at off times or during big shows – like one of the jousts. And if all the shows, shopping, costume watching, and feasting isn’t enough for you, there’s always…
The turkey leg and the bread bowls were our food choices this year.
GAMES
Low tech games and activities for the whole family – all at an additional cost, though. There’s archery, of course, and skill games which let you try your hand at throwing every kind of sharp implement you can think of; there’s ax throwing, knife throwing, star throwing, a Jacob’s ladder, ring toss, and other games as well and human-powered rides. There is a big slide, a merry-go-round, and giant swings – all of which are turned or pushed by human force. Not YOUR human force. Usually its a guy dressed as a barbarian. There is also a booth where you can actually throw real tomotoes at a live person who taunts and insults you. I never pay for that, but I do enjoy watching it! Tired of games and want to relax? Well then…
A sampling of the low-tech Renaissance Festival games and activities.
THERE’S MUSIC
All over the place. There are bagpipers, Irish music groups, dulcimer players, a water glass player, minstrel groups, bands of women singers, bands of pirate singers, again, something for almost everyone. You can sit at a pub and enjoy a musical performance at your leisure, check out a scheduled act at one of the stages, or you can happen upon a dulcimer player under a tree. So, in the words of Inigo Montoya…
LET ME EXPLAIN…NO, THERE IS TOO MUCH, LET ME SUM UP
You and your family can easily spend the entire day at the
Ohio Renaissance Festival – from open to close (10:30am – 6pm). There is such a variety of things to do and
see and experience, it is well worth the cost for a full day’s entertainment (this
year it was $68.00 for my family of 4, with Kroger discount). We look forward to the Ohio Renaissance Festival
every year and every year is is worthwhile and memorable! Go if you get a chance – just not on the same
day that we go. Crowds, you know.
So, in
planning our trip into Arkansas, I was really expecting not to like it. After all, it’s Arkansas. But upon arriving, I found it to be Arkansas! It was one really pretty state. Our first stop was, of course a rest stop.
Graffiti covered and complete with bars on the vending machines, it was a no
frills, we-have-a-crime-issue, move-along, type of rest stop (hey Arkansans,
not the best intro to your state). But our second stop was the Clinton
Presidential Library. I have no particular
desire to ever visit a presidential library, but on this trip each person got
to pick a site to visit, and this is what my husband chose. If you knew my husband, you would know this
is confusing. You might have read in the
another Arkansas post that my husband thought the Little Rock Nine was legit a
baseball team…
Nonetheless, we arrived in the lobby of the William J Clinton Presidential Library and Museum, a sleek and modern mix of metal and marble, which helped to echo the loud thwack and subsequent traumatic crying behind me. I knew that it could only be my kids because Everyone Else’s Kids were all standing about introspectively considering the Clinton Presidency. One of mine, however, managed to trip over her sister’s foot and land on her thigh. How is it even possible to land on one’s thigh?
It was this
fall that dictated the rest of our exploration through the museum. The audible gasp that carried through the
atrium from the second floor as my daughter fell belonged to an exhibit guide
that rushed down to examine Charlotte’s leg.
He felt it gravely necessary that we ice down her thigh and escorted us
to the lower level of the building to sit outside Café 42 (clever) where we
waited for the ice delivery. Possibly
from the actual Arctic. It took a long
time.
By the time
we got back to the main level, the tour had already moved 20 minutes ahead of
us, so we took two uninterested children through a series of displays of the
events of a presidency they could not relate to, which made it all the more
difficult for us adults to linger over the displays. We eventually passed the tour group and
discovered that the guide was fairly dry, so we were just as well off going at
our own, slightly quicker pace. On the
upper level – and the kids were so very excited that there was an upper level –
there was a large display of White House china, and gifts that have been given
to the US by visiting dignitaries over the years. But the best thing, in my
opinion, was the recreation of the Oval Office as it was during Bill Clinton’s
time. The room was roped off, but we
were able to stand in the doorway and the guide posted there gave us
information on various artifacts in the room.
The guide happened to be the very man that came rushing down to our aid
after The Fall Heard ‘Round the Atrium, and he took some time to discuss the
fact that it was during Clinton’s term that it became common for government
officials to carry coins or tokens specific to their position. This was common in the military before this
time, but during the Clinton era, other government groups received tokens that
were used, in part, to identify themselves as belonging to certain groups. Our guide held out a token from his pocket
and instructed us not to touch, but we followed his purposeful point to read,
“secret service”. He smiled at us then,
and it was sweet to think of this man as perhaps a former secret service agent,
now being working in the Clinton Library in his older years.
We left,
then, and this is where those of you who bribe your children for good behavior
have some leverage. The gift shop is not
in the Library proper, but about a half mile away via golf cart-like
shuttle. The gift shop is in a cute
little revitalized area of Little Rock that borders the Arkansas River, and
that area includes many little shops and restaurants – and a park. A cool park where kids can climb down into
what looks like sewer pipes and pop up in another part of the park to climb a
rope jungle gym or play in a splash fountain or climb a rock wall. It looked so much like sewer grates in fact, that
my husband yelled at the kids for going down them. It looks so much like sewer piping and is so
hard to keep track of your children, that kids will love it. Perhaps even enough to hang in there during
your tour of the William J Clinton Presidential Library and Museum.
I love to take trips to historical places and one long weekend, we took a family trip to Boston to see the sites made famous by the early American revolutionaries; the site of the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party Museum, Paul Revere’s grave, and the church that held the lanterns famous in the “one if by land, two if by sea” quote from the poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride” by Henry Longfellow. We figured that an historical trip like this through early American history would not be complete without a visit to the town of Plymouth, which was about two hours away.
Our first stop was Plymouth
Rock, THE Plymouth Rock. Except it turns out it might not actually be THE
Plymouth Rock. The signs say as much. In fact, it would have been better to
have the sign proclaim in plainer language:
“This is the site where the
pilgrims stepped off the boat, except that it might not be, actually, but
here’s this big rock that we think may have been the rock they stepped on, or
not. But we’ve built this incongruous Romanesque pillar canopy over it, just in
case, so enjoy”.
Nearby is the Mayflower II,
a detailed replica of the original, amazing for its smallness. My family
marveled at how 102 people crammed onto that ship to cross the Atlantic; no
toilets, no kitchen, and a steering system which consisted of not a wheel like
we see in pirate movies, but a hole in the deck for the captain to holler down
instructions to the people controlling the rudder. Utterly unbelievable, and
definitely worth the experience. I never really grasped how small and
rudimentary a ship it was that these people sailed on for over two months.
Being on the ship itself plus information from the helpful signage and the
interpreters on board really put into perspective how those people lived while
they traveled. My kids did not like my new Mayflower-inspired responses to
every complaint they made in the car from that point forward; “Sorry you don’t
like that granola bar. Want a dry cracker and scurvy?”.
An hour’s drive away is
Plimoth Plantation, a replica of the first pilgrim settlement. And just because
you may be as curious as I was about the spelling of P-l-i-m-o-t-h, the
Plantation (another term for colony) was spelled the way the Governor William
Bradford spelled it, as there was no spelling rules in early English language;
people just spelled words the way they sounded. The detail here was impressive.
Citizens of Plimoth were thatching roofs, mud-daubing walls, harvesting,
socializing, sharing a meal, knitting, and each and every one of the
re-enactors was completely in character, talking to any tourist as though they
were actually from 1627. Each actor takes on the persona of an actual colonist
and will take their time with you, as they did my extremely chatty
no-man-is-a-stranger younger daughter. They will also leave you to explore on
your own, as was appreciated by my you-repulse-me-so-stand-away older daughter,
and my I-will-appreciate-you-but-from-afar husband. You can explore at your
leisure and see as much of colonial life as you like. Talking to the colonists
is key; they will answer as much as you ask. In contrast to the Mayflower,
Plimoth Plantation surprised me with its vastness. There was so much detail present
in each and every structure and such knowledgeable role-players – it really was
a living history experience.
There was also a Wampanoag
settlement on the same site, to show the life of the people who were here
before the pilgrims. The people here were not re-enactors, but actual Native
people who were there to share their culture and history. We sat inside a
bark-covered long house speaking to a Native woman about the furs lining the
seating area inside for quite a while. There is no rush to move out as others
move in or sense of a time limit.
Overall, the day-trip we
took to Plymouth was well worth the drive. Plymouth Rock and the Mayflower II
were within walking distance of each other and located in a picturesque New
England feeling town, complete with beautiful homes and churches on hills. We
visited both sites and had a nice seafood dinner on the deck of a local
restaurant overlooking the harbor, all worth the drive itself. Add in Plimoth
Plantation, and the trip was an extraordinary living history experience. I am
so glad I was able to give this non-textbook, living version of history to my
daughters.
Fifty State Family 