Can my child handle Expedition Everest?

I came across this question on a forum and thought I'd share my experience. I have 3 kids - 2 girls and a boy. My girls are 15 months apart followed by my son who is 3 years younger. On our first trip where the girls were tall enough to ride nearly all the rides, I wanted to encourage them to ride as many rides as possible but I didn't want to force them to ride anything. Neither of them were what I would call "thrill seekers." Neither of them had ever ridden a roller coaster before and they were both nervous about the thrill rides. My wife and I both love thrill rides and played them up.

I adopted a strategy of working from least adventurous rides to more adventurous as the trip progressed. The first "roller coaster" we did was Goofy's barn stormer. Once they realized they could live through that, we did Pirates of the Carribean. Then we did Big Thunder Mountain followed by Splash Mountain. By then end of the two weeks they were brave enough to ride Rockin' Roller Coaster and Tower of Terror.

By starting with the easy rides it not only gave them the confidence they needed to try something a little scarier it helped my judge whether they could handle something a little harder. For instance, on our last trip down my son, who was 4 at the time went on Splash Mountain. He was basically petrified after the drop. I could tell that was his limit. Two day later he was begging me to let him go on ToT, but I could tell from the way he had stopped breathing for about a minute and half on Splash Mountain that ToT was going to be a bad experience for him at this point. So we decided to wait for a while.

Would you like to see what Disney World looked like in 1971?

Thanks to the wonder of YouTube you can. I came across this promo that Disney did for the park when it first opened. My first trip wasn't until 1974 and I was only 7 years old then so my memories of it are mainly centered around being terrified by Space Mountain!

So if you don't remember the swan boats (like me) or if you miss the old Tiki Room or you pine away for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Mickey Mouse Revue or the Hall of Presidents (before they ruined it) then enjoy this trip down memory lane...

Mickey Clouds

This is way too cool! Of course, when I first saw the headline I was thinking real cloud sized clouds, but this is still pretty nifty.

Francisco Guerra, a special-effects entrepreneur in Alabama, has created a system that creates clouds up to 4 feet across and can float up to 30 miles away. Flogos, as they are named, will be used next month by the Walt Disney Company to send Mickey shaped clouds into the air over Walt Disney World. The clouds are made up of water, special soap and helium so will not harm the environment.

Why doesn't Disney publish live wait times like Universal Studios?

Universal Studios provides real-time updated wait times for all their rides via the web at http://66.77.171.132/MobileWeb/. This allows guests to use their cell phones with web access to check wait times while in the park. In addition, it would allow some nifty data collection/prediction of crowd levels for all those ultra-planners out there. I can't think this would be all that difficult to pull off from a technical standpoint since Pal Mickey seems to know this information. So either they haven't thought of it, they don't see the value in it, or they don't want to give that data away. Seems like a cheap way to vastly improve customer service to me, much easier than the the Nintento DS solution they have been reportedly testing, anyway.

Twitter + Diseny = Twisney

If you can't be at Disney World and you can withstand the envy of seeing how much fun other people are having who are there, then Twisney might just be for you. It's sort of like Twitter
, the social networking site, that lets users enter short "what am I doing at the moment quotes; however, it goes a little further because it adds a mapping mashup and the ability to upload a picture from your mobile phone. It's not real-time, but the "play" mode gives kind of feeling of what's going on by replaying entries from the time frame you specify.

How to take pictures of yourself

Are you the designated photographer in your family? Do you feel like you view your entire trip through the view finder of your camera? When you look through your vacation album do you notice a distinct lack of you? If so, then you need to know about Disney's PhotoPass service.

With PhotoPass, Disney photographers will take your picture. They will give you a id card with a 16 digit number on it that allow you to retrieve your photos later on. The id's are small dog-tag like and come on a slikeyesque braclet so they are easy to keep with you even in the water parks. The photographers are stationed all over the parks especially in the "Kodak spots." You will rarely have to wait for a photographer. The nice thing is you can get your whole party in the picture. They will even take a picture with your personal camera! Sometimes they will even add some special magic like putting Tinkerbell, Stictch or Tigger in your picture with you.

When you are all done, you get all the images on a CD. And you own the pictures. This is very important. Unlike wedding pictures or many school pictures taken by professional photographers, you can make copies, put them on web sites or do what ever you want. These are just like you took them yourself.

Most of the people I've asked have said they get well over 100 pictures and that the photographs were so much better than anything they could take. Many said they got over 300 pictures using this service. Only a couple felt like they didn't get enough pictures to make it worth the cost. So what is the cost? Well, it currently is $129.00 but, if you pre-purchase the CD it's only $99.00. So if get 100-300 pictures it's not a bad deal. If you only get 25-50 pictures then it's not such a great deal.

Here are some tips if you use PhotoPass:

• Write down your PhotoPass id(s) or take a picture of them
• Write your initals on your PhotoPass id so you know the photographer gives you back your id
• If you pre-order the CD, save the e-mail. You'll need it when you get back.
• Your photos are only kept for 30 days, so order your CD as soon as you get back from your trip!
• Pictures from rides such as Splash Mountain, Tower of Terror, etc. are not available on PhotoPass (the only exception that I know of to this is Test Track)

For more information and to pre-order your PhotoPass CD to to http://www.disneyphotopass.com/

Free Disney World Maps

If you need a map for your next trip to Disney world, whether it's one of the parks or one of the resorts head on over to wdwinfo and check out the nice collection of printable maps they have.

You can also get some nice customized printed maps mailed to you from Disney. These are on parchment style paper and are pretty nice. Just go to this site to create your maps. These maps are more for collectible sake than getting around the parks, though.

Affordable On-Site Accomodations for More than Four?

Having lived in the Orlando area in the past, our family usually stays off-site when we visit Disney. However, on our last trip we decided to take advantage of the free dining offer that Disney offers in the fall. Since we have 3 kids we cannot stay in the typical Disney room which seems to assume a family of 4.

If you use the Disney web site to look for rooms you won't turn up one option that is available to you as a larger family and that is the value resort suites. There are only about 200 of these suites so they book up fast and they actually cost more than getting two rooms in the value suites. So why would you bother? Well, you get a queen bed (which you don't get in the other rooms in a value resort or at Port Orleans, Riverside in the rooms that accommodate 5 for that matter). You also get a kitchenette of sorts. And you get a connected, but separate room so the kids can go to bed earlier than the adults.

So what does all that cost? About $169-$259 depending on the season.

In the end we decided to save the money and stay at the moderate Port Orleans, Riverside which has rooms which sleep 5. It only has full beds which would be a problem if you have 5 large people. Our kids are still small so, that's not a problem. I'm big (6' tall and 230 lbs) but didn't find the smallish bed uncomfortable. With the money we saved, we treated the kids to a night at the Sandcastle Kids Club while my wife and I had dinner without the kids at Chefs de France. We felt the upscale resort and the night out was worth the loss of space, given the limited amount of time we were actually in the room.

Of course, after all was said and done, we really felt like we will go back to staying off site. But that's another story...

For more on the value resort suites:
http://www.mousesavers.com/allstarmusicsuites.html
http://www.wdwinfo.com/wdwinfo/resorts/asm-suite-review.html