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Probably one of my favorite rides from Disney’s Animal Kingdom was Everest. A lot of the trill of this ride takes place in the dark as you’re hurtling backward through the mountain, so much of this video is just screaming in the dark. The track actually shifts behind you several times as the coaster changes direction, so you’re traveling a different route backward, then again as the coaster goes forward again. Quite possibly my favorite roller coaster of all time. Watch out…, Yeti – straight ahead!

Here are all my ladies on their first day of school – I’ve got a kindergartener, a 1st grader and a 4th grade teacher. Pretty good lookin’ bunch, don’t you think?

Hold on to your hats – or in my case, my camera – as we go 13 stories up, then get dropped over and over again at Disney MGM Studios’ Tower of Terror. This ride is pretty awesome, especially the first time you ride it when your elevator car moves forward, out of the elevator shaft and into the starry room…, wasn’t expecting that! Disney’s great at making your long waits in line almost part of the ride, and this ride’s no exception. The old hotel you’re in is completely believable – cobwebs and all – and even the ride attendants get into the act. At lot of this video is complete darkness, but the screams are fun. Hang on!

So this first ride I’m going to take you on is called Test Track. One of the Epcot rides, this puts you in the driver’s seat of a car as it’s put through it’s paces in a testing facility – sort of like a being a living crash test dummy. Buckle up!

So…, is anyone still watching the Olympics now that gymnastics and Michael Phelps are finished? We’re done, and with that I feel as though I owe it to anyone reading this blog to take a step back and tell you a little bit about our trip to Disney.

Despite the insane heat and humidity (I started sweating as soon as we left the hotel room…, at 8am) we had a great time. Our girls were amazing – from their first plane ride, to the hotel room, to waiting for hours in line in the heat for rides, and even at dinner at the end of each very long day…, they couldn’t have behaved any better. They were probably more patient than I was some of the time.

Some people thought we were crazy for going for as long as we did – 7 days – but it really wasn’t until the 3rd day that we figured things out and hit our stride, so I’m glad we went for the entire week. Once we realized that by splitting up – there were 8 adults and 2 children – we could get to more things that we were each individually interested in, everyone was much happier. Patty and I focused on taking the girls on just the rides they wanted to go on, which was great (although I was able to get on most of the rides I wanted to go on too, but more on that later). Quinn really started to come out of her shell on this trip regarding the types of rides she was brave enough to go on. She really turned into a little roller-coaster lover. Poor Grace, however, couldn’t go on a lot of the rides because she didn’t meet the height requirement, but once we discovered how much she loved meeting the characters and getting their autographs, I’m not sure she really cared. We waited in some VERY long lines to get a hug and a signature from some of these people.

One of my favorite things was the resort we stayed at. We were in Riverside/Port Orleans, which is a Disney-owned resort. Complete with pools with water slides, dining halls and beautiful grounds, we might have all been happy without ever leaving the hotel. The girls LOVED the pools…, it might have been one of their favorite parts of the whole trip. At the end of the day, when we were all tired and sweaty, we would head back to the resort for a quick dip in the pool before dinner. It was very refreshing and really re-energized you for the last few hours of the day.

As the week went on, one of the things we looked forward to was returning to the room after being at the parks because our maid began folding our towels into little animals and arranging the girls’ stuffed animals into poses on the bed or window ledge. It was very cute. When we checked-out on our last day, I arranged all her towel animals on a table holding a sign that said “Thank You!” along with her tip. I hope she appreciated it as much as we appreciated her creativity.

I could go on and on about all the details of what we did each day, but I won’t. Just know that we all had a fantastic time. The girls are already asking when we’re going back. Believe it or not, but this was really the first time I’ve ever gone on a vacation like this too. As a kid, my family would visit relatives in Buffalo, NY for a week each summer – which sometimes included a trip to an upstate theme park – but plane rides and hotel rooms were never part of it (not to take away from our visits to Lake Erie…, we loved the visit and the 10-hour car ride with three kids rolling around in the back of a Toyota Corolla was great). My wife is trying to talk me into renting a house in Cape Cod next summer, and she just might be able to do it.

So here are a few photos from the trip (click on any one to get to a slide show of images). Oh…, and I mentioned that I was able to get on most of the rides I wanted to go on too. Well, I brought along my new Flip Mino camera and recorded a few of them from start to finish. Over the next week, I’ll post the videos so you can experience Test Track, Tower of Terror and Everest (my personal favorite) too!

Michael Phelps winning 8 gold medals at the Beijing Olympics was pretty impressive, sure. But hey…, I accomplished the same thing 20 years ago at the 1988 Empire State Games in Syracuse, NY.

OK, so maybe the Empire State Games aren’t as big a deal as the Olympics, but for a kid entering his senior year of high school, it was pretty exciting. It was also my first taste of celebrity (if you can call it that) – people at the Games were recognizing me on the street and I made appearances on a couple of Syracuse news stations and the local Long Island station where I grew up.  I had to dig deep into the archives to find this one folks, but here’s a clip from a newcast that News 12 Long Island did about me almost 20 years ago to the day.

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