Dream Vacay at Disney World, Orlando, Florida, USA: INTRO, MAGIC KINGDOM

WHY DISNEY?

After posting about the theme park Sea World at San Antonio, thought it may be good to follow up with our Disney park experience. So here goes...

There is a tendency for adults to look down on Disney theme parks and movies. The expression “disnefied” in snobbish circles refers to fake, over the top, commercial kitsch. Disney resorts are supposedly meant for only kids and adults who are not mature enough to handle the real world.

We have traveled the world and do possess the aesthetics, sophistication and refined taste [even if we say so ourselves! Ha, Ha!] to enjoy high brow art and culture all over.

We had also fell in line with the cynical view of Disney for quite a while. But doubts kept creeping in and we decided to give Disney a whirl!! WOW!! We did have a great time!!

 Goofy and Donald Duck above...

 The general ambience is LOVELY as you can see. The specifics are beyond AMAZING!
Look at the fountains below... not your run of the mill stuff. The jumping fountain looks like a water hose, the last fountain moves in reverse, from bottom to top, instead of the other way around!! 

Even the gift shops were so inviting!! Again, these are not your typical kitsch, are they?? Not just the products but the whole decor!!

The whole park set up gets revised and redone periodically, so these posts are just a record of our experience at that point in time. May be the general guidelines we used can be put to use any time!

LOGISTICS:

Disney World, located in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, near Orlando, is the most popular theme park resort in the world.

We visited Walt Disney World's four theme parks: The  Magic Kingdom, Epcot,  Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom in 8 days. Entry ticket for 1 day is around 89$ [2011 prrices]... however, as we add more days, the price comes down, for 8 days we paid around $290 per ticket—that amounts to $35 per day—quite a nice discount. [2020: Disney World, a single-day ticket costs around $114-$199 for adults, however, this can vary slightly since Disney uses dynamic pricing. Single-day tickets to Disneyland Resort are now about $117 for adults, . For both parks, the per-day cost decreases as you add more days to a multi-day ticket]

Also each park needs 2 full days to cover all shows, rides, so our time was just right. We spent just 1 day at Hollywood studios though and spent the extra day at Magic Kingdom

Disney World over Disneyland:

Disney World covers 43 square miles of land. Disneyland is just 500 acres —  51 Disneylands can fit inside Disney World.

Inside those 500 acres, Disneyland hosts two distinct parks: Disney California Adventure Park and Disneyland Park. Disney World hosts four main parks: Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

With its larger size and 2 additional theme parks, Disney World has nearly 50 rides while Disneyland has about 25 

Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty Castle is 77 feet tall, while Disney World’s Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom is more than double that height at 189 feet tall  

Disneyland comes with just three hotels: the Disneyland Hotel, Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel and Spa, and Disney’s Paradise Pier Hotel.

Disney World has more than 25 different hotels stretched across its landscape. That includes everything from budget hotels like Disney’s Animation Resort to deluxe options like the Animal Kingdom Lodge, as well as deluxe villas like those at Disney's Polynesian Villas & Bungalows. 

So our choice was clear!

WHEN TO GO? WHERE TO STAY? 

ALL STAR MUSIC RESORT, DISNEY WORLD:

Since we stayed at a Disney resort on the property, we had the advantage of magic hours—extra hours in the morning or night ... more than other ticket holders coming from outside. So after fireworks, when other visitors left, we stayed on .. park was open till 1.30 in the night.

Disney buses arrive at regular intervals to the bus stops at the front of all resorts and take us directly to the theme parks... our grouch was that our room was almost half a mile from the entrance of our resort and the bus dropped us almost a km from the entrance of the parks... the more expensive resorts (starting $500/night, costliest villa is $2000/night!) have the nearest stops to the entrance....

Ours was a value room at $95/night which becomes $180, the next week... timing is important to avoid crowds as well as getting fleeced. The official website lists room rates by season. Our choice was the 2nd least crowded part of the year.

Early December is definitely the best time  to visit these theme parks—lovely weather and comparatively less crowds. AVOID SCHOOL HOLIDAYS!!

 Our research told us Disney World in Orlando , Florida is better than Disney Land California. So we opted for that... both are almost equidistant from Houston!!

Disney World here covers an area over 27,000 acres ...

.

It also has two of the world's three most popular water parks,

Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach,—we felt December was a little too cold to visit them. 

Two shopping and entertainment districts, Downtown Disney and Disney's Boardwalk are also there—but we did not even have the time to go there and collect our free gift.

There was Excellent service by the resort.... they had sent tags for our checked in baggage, we put them on, so we did not wait to collect them at the Orlando airport but directly boarded the free shuttle (Disney's Magical Express) and reached our resort—ALL STAR MUSIC.

 We left our hand baggage at the checkin desk and took the shuttle to Magic Kingdom...And yes, we did start our vacation on Monday... flights were remarkably cheaper than weekend prices!

DAY 1, Monday, DEC 5, 2011:  Magic Kingdom:

This is the oldest and most popular park of the complex; in fact, with over 17 million visitors annually, it's the most-visited single theme park in the world.

Cinderella castle, the focal point of magic kingdom.. 

Cinderella Castle sits at the end of Main Street USA—-it is the 1st thing we see from the entrance.. it is the hub of commercial activity with little girls paying to be decked as Cinderellas... you need reservations for dinner at the restaurant at the top floor of the castle...here's a video...

1st impression was unfavorable though. Things appeared tacky and crowded... 

thankfully, we started falling in love with the 'magic' soon. Above is Walt Disney surveying his kingdom.

There are music /dance performances in the dais at the front of the Cindrella castle every hour.

Of course the highlight is the ever changing lights of the castle when dusk settles in and the fireworks here. Before the fireworks they have a laser show with music projecting colorful images on the castle.. even our pics can be shown if we have asked the Disney photographers to take free pics of us.

The atmosphere starts building up with the characteristic gateway, each place has music suiting its theme as well. This area reminds us of Victorian-era tales of exotic adventure in far-off locales. 

The environment evokes the jungles of deepest Africa, of the type explored by David Livingstone and H.M. Stanley in the late 19th century.

We started off with a tame ride—The Magic Carpets of Aladdin. We guided our carpet up and down with the lever as it was spinning round  we did not notice the spitting camels...

IMAGINEERING is the term used for the innovative engineering involved in all the Disney rides and animatronic shows... very apt..

Cinderella castle is the landmark we can see from any part of magic kingdom...

all parks have a tall landmark with which we can orient ourselves—cindrella castle is that landmark for magic kingdom....

Swiss family Robinson tree house....the tree house is quite well built and true to description in the book.

 All details from the book faithfully reproduced...
Here's the video:

Mad tea party.. The Mad Hatter and the March Hare invite us for a spin in a giant teacup.

we can spin our teacup around its center axis at whatever speed we like, but that's not the only thing that'll be moving; each group of five cups also spins around a common axis, and then the whole shebang rotates around a giant teapot. 1st time we just sat in the cup and enjoyed the ride... we noticed others rotating the central dial and we did that on our 2nd visit and made the cup spin more and had much better fun... one of the best rides...

Here are screen grabs from other rides.

After Galactic ride...

 Space mountain...

After Test track...

Here's the Honey drawing when waiting for Winnie the Pooh ride...

 Here's the video

This is from the all time favorite, It's a small world ride...we rode this 3 times 

End of a very happy day!! Will upload more videos here after testing if the current ones load and work

Report on our days at EPCOT is here:

https://adventuretrav.blogspot.com/2020/05/dream-vacay-at-disney-world-orlando.html

Fun in San Antonio, Texas, USA, Part 2 Natural Bridge Caverns, McNay museum

DEC 29, Sunday, 2013: San Antonio Natural Bridge Caverns and McNay Museum: 

The Natural Bridge Caverns are the largest  commercial caverns in  Texas. The caverns are 33 miles from San Antonio.

We had breakfast, checked out of our hotel. We had gone to McNay museum 1st but it opened only at 12, so we came here. Logistically it would have been better for us to cover the museum 1st as it's in the city and then drive here before proceeding on to Houston.

After seeing these caves, we had to double back into the city covering 20 miles to the museum and then drive back this way again in the evening...on our way back to houston.

Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch is a drive-through wildlife safari park.

When we saw this sign we contemplated going to the safari and went to that entrance... but there was a queue and we did not know if it was a horse ride safari. so we reversed and went per our original plan of visiting the caves.

Later when we did our research, we found that the wild life ranch is also quite beautiful —we can drive through in our own car and it has lots of animals—baby twin giraffes, llamas, zebra, wildebeasts, ostritch, kangaroo etc in 400 acres of land.

The Natural Bridge caverns were discovered in 1960, by students, exploring just over a mile of passage. Subsequent explorations revealed 2 more miles

Mrs. Clara Wuest (the landowner) decided that she would fund development after she could not get govt funding.

The site is still owned and operated by the family.

During excavation, arrowheads and spearheads dating from 5,000 BC were found. Also, just inside the entrance, a jawbone and femur of a species of black bear that became extinct over 8,000 years ago were discovered.

Work on lights and trails continued until opening day, July 3, 1964.

This is the natural stone bridge at the start of the caverns...forming an arch in the entrance.

The caverns get their name from this natural limestone slab bridge which continues all above the caves..for 65 feet.

 The bridge was left suspended when a sinkhole collapsed below it. This is bridge above the cave entrance and our guide...

The caverns look like an amphitheater. They feature  unique geological formations—stalagmites, stalactites.

The halls inside are named imaginatively.

This is St Mary's—as the students who discovered the caves were from St Mary's.

Other halls are named Pluto's anteroom, Castle of the white giants, Sherwood forest, King's throne etc.

The caverns are still very active and growing. Due to the porosity of the limestone, rainwater travels downwards through the rock, dissolves out calcite, a weak mineral. The water with dissolved calcite enters the caverns where it flows flows and drips constantly  causing the formations to retain a waxy luster. The temperature inside the cave is 21° C [70° F] year-round and humidity is 99%; the deepest part of the public tour is 211 feet below the surface.

These formations are stalagmites, stalactites, and flowstones collectively called Speleothems. They are composed of calcium carbonate in the form of calcite or aragonite, or calcium sulphate in the form of gypsum.

 Rainwater in the soil zone reacts with soil CO2 to create weakly acidic water via the reaction:

H2O + CO2 → H2CO3

As the lower pH water travels through the calcium carbonate bedrock from the surface to the cave ceiling, it dissolves the bedrock via the reaction:

CaCO3 + H2CO3 → Ca2+ + 2HCO3–

When the solution reaches a cave, degassing due to lower cave pCO2 drives precipitation of CaCO3:

Ca2+ + 2HCO3- → CaCO3 + H2O + CO2

Over time the accumulation of these precipitates forms these shapes..

The ramps and walkways inside the caves are done very well.

Some people on the tour were quite offensive—a .......[ethnicity/nationality deleted ] guy touched the formations repeatedly and posed with his hand on one... we had been repeatedly told not to touch as the growth will stop ... it takes 100 years for the calcite to grow one inch.

Also another guy [same ethnicity/nationality as above] let his child press the water spout and waste water for fun FOR SEVERAL MINUTES at the drinking water fountain at the end of the trail.

We have seen poor behavior from the same ethnicity on several occasions... SAD...

Indians grow up with the strong sense of Karma or retribution for bad behavior; they have a belief that wasting water/resources will lead to draining of wealth/health and don't usually allow such behavior by kids/family. May be this kind of values is not the case with the ethnicity we observed. Wish every one had a sense of basic ethics and don't damage public/private property!

Emerald lake... there was a small green lake here.

After the initial part, we lingered behind and enjoyed the sights in solitude.

It was an excellent 3/4 mile guided tour lasting 45 minutes. we had been charged $20 pp.

This is the canopy with ziplines; separate tickets for these activities... lots of local families were having fun.

 The stonebridge we saw at the entrance continues just over this wall.

This is the natural stonebridge—the caverns exist below. There are several trails on the ranch which can be explored.

 Antler chandelier in the visitor center restaurant.

 Gift shop—porcelain night lamps for $30 and of course, semi precious gems available for purchase.

Here are fossils of an extinct bear—more than 8000 years old and stone fossils dating to 5000 BC.

Unpretentious xmas tree—loved the fact they did not use light bulbs to decorate any natural tree; there are only some old fashioned lanterns.

 Dinosaur egg!!

Dinosaur cub and mom. 

 Kids climb all over dinosaur mom Grendel—-the Grendel canyon in the cavern is named after her.

We had lunch in the picnic area—puris, tomato relish, rice, yogurt/milk, juice, tortilla chips, grapes, clementines, chocolates... quite an elaborate list all made and packed from home. made the rice in the hotel room.

We drove on to McNay art museum, on Sundays they are open only from 12—5. so we had to go to the caverns first before looping back here

McNay was an American painter and art teacher who inherited a substantial oil fortune upon the death of her father. These grounds and the house were hers— so the museum is named after her, and has been expanded to include galleries of medieval and Renaissance artwork and a larger collection of 20th-century European and American modernist work.

Marion the owner of this house was born in Ohio. A year after her birth, the family moved to El Dorado, Kansas, where her parents purchased a large tract of pasture land. This land had substantial oil reserves, and made the family wealthy. Marion attended the University of Kansas and the Art Institute of Chicago. Marion married her first husband, railway manager Don McNay, in 1917. The marriage only lasted 10 months, ending with Don's death from influenza.

Although Marion went on to marry (and divorce) four more times, she eventually reverted to using the name McNay for the remainder of her life.

In 1926, after the death of her father, Marion moved to San Antonio with her mother and married Dr. Donald Atkinson. On his property, she  constructed this Spanish Mediterranean style mansion (she designed some of the tilework and ceiling stencils herself) 

 This is the facade of the house. This 24-room Spanish Colonial Revival-style mansion sits on 23 acres that are landscaped with fountains, broad lawns and a Japanese-inspired garden and fishpond.

The grounds are worth strolling around and are free. only the museum is ticketed at $15 — student discount $5.

Placement of this Crucifix seems a little disrespectful, left corner of pic above.


Lovely lion fountain creating a small stream running to the middle pond. In the background is Renoir's famous Washerwoman statue

 Renoir started to make sculpture only late in his life. Because his hands were crippled with arthritis, 'The Washerwoman' was modelled under Renoir's direction by the young sculptor Richard Guino. Renoir supplied drawings for Guino to translate into sculpture, and several smaller intermediate studies of 'The Washerwoman' were made. It was originally intended as one half of a pair of large figures with the subjects 'Fire' and 'Water', to be symbolised by a blacksmith and a washerwoman respectively. However, relations between Renoir and Guino became strained, and the project was never completed.Renoir's washerwoman—1917. The figure personifies water.

 The young sculptor has not done justice.

 Man on fire—bronze..

 Sleeping girl and sheep—bronze..

  Marion collected artwork.  She collected French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works of art, early 20th-century modernists including Picasso, Matisse, and Chagall. She also bought a number of Southwestern santos and retablos.

She also commissioned artwork—like the one on the wall here or the one below this— can't see any artistic merit.

 This sculpture seems a case of " Emperor's clothes"

This statue named Victoria was commissioned by McNay. Philip Grausman’s monumental head,

soaring 14 feet high cast in stainless steel.parking and exit is just near this sculpture.

 Again, definitely not to our tastes!

The house was lovely continuing the Spanish flavor with tiles.

On Marion's death, caused by pneumonia in 1950, she willed her fortune, her art collection, and her home to a trust to convert her home into a modern art museum. It has been expanded to include galleries of medieval and Renaissance artwork and a larger collection of 20th-century European and American modernist work.

The museum focuses primarily on 19th- and 20th-century European and American art by such artists as Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Georgia O'Keeffe, Diego Rivera, Mary Cassatt, and Edward Hopper.

The collection today consists of over 14,000 objects and is one of the finest collections of Contemporary Art and Sculpture in the Southwestern United States.

Abraham Lincoln —Bronze

Don quixote—bronze.

There was a period costume exhibition

 details of a gown.

This is underpinning—what goes under the fabulous gowns to make a pretty silhoutte.

There were quite  few edgy, quirky? Grotesque?pieces.
Bookcase here—not real but a painting...

The title is "all those embarrassing books"books stacked such that titles can't be seen. Then how do you pick one for reading??

Cheeto sculpture... 

Medusa lamp.

Now for some religious stuff

St Paul—wood. 1500s.

St George and the dragon—wood. 1500s.

St Martin and the beggar—wood—1500s. One of the most familiar Christian saints (316AD).  St Martin is best known for using his military sword to cut his cloak in two, to give half to a beggar clad only in rags in the depth of winter.

As he was born in what is now  Hungary, spent his childhood in  Italy, and lived his adult life in France, he is considered a spiritual bridge across Europe.

We found the main street named San Martin in Argentina in many places we visited—Ushuaia, Calafate, Chalten and Bariloche.

Stained glass 

 Stained glass Madonna and child.

Jesus by El Greco, the Spanish painter.

Writing desk and bookcase made of walnut wood.

 Wood panels—French—1500s...

Claude Monet's water lilies... our favorite painter

 Impressionist painting by the French painter Boudin  1824 –1898; he was one of the first French landscape painters.

We wound up our San Antonio visit here at 4.30 and drove back to Houston ending a short but sweet vacation.

The next post is a report on our Disney World vacation:

https://adventuretrav.blogspot.com/2020/04/dream-vacay-at-disney-world-orlando.html