Welcome to those of you joining me from The CanaDisney Blog and those of you just hopping aboard. I am the
3rd stop on our Magical Blogorail.
3rd stop on our Magical Blogorail.
Hello! Today’s topic is an important one for me! Try as I might, I haven’t found a way yet to go to Walt Disney World every day of the year yet! I haven’t given up trying, but until that day arrives, it is essential that we incorporate ways that we can celebrate Disney at home!
I think that we do a good job at exploring the various ways that we can celebrate Disney at home. Here are my top five ways that we do that, I’ll list them first then elaborate on each of them below. These are not in any particular order.
- Reliving previous Disney trips at the dinner table.
- Blogging about our favorite parts of the trip.
- Ordering Disney’s Customized Maps.
- Planning our next Disney trip.
- Exploring Walt Disney World via Google Earth.
Reliving previous Disney trips at the dinner table.
This one seems like it is probably self explanatory, but one thing that I love to do is to talk about our favorite things about Walt Disney World. Often this includes talking about our favorite rides and shows, what we think of the changes they are making at the parks, hypothetical questions, such as “If you could spend the night in the Magic Kingdom, where would you sleep?” and things like that. For the record, Sophie would sleep in Cinderella Castle, I would sleep in the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse, and Cindy would sleep in The Haunted Mansion!
Blogging about our favorite parts of the trip.
I know that this seems like a dumb thing to write, but it’s true. I’m a blogger now. When I first started My Dreams of Disney, I did it to document the memories that I and we had from our past Disney trips. Since that start, though, it’s been incredible to see all the ways that our blog has expanded, including explorations of the Magic Kingdom, Epcot’s World Showcase, and even a Disney Planning Resources section. One of my favorite things is to talk about some of the things that we have pinpointed as capturing the essence of what makes Disney our favorite place to visit. In essence, the things that makes Disney, Disney.
Ordering Disney’s Customized Maps.
Did you know that you can order customized maps of the Walt Disney World parks for free? These special maps are printed in your choice of two styles, the Classic style is our favorite, but you can also choose the Characters style. The maps are printed on thicker paper, it feels almost like parchment paper, and they are a great keepsake to have, and are loaded with all of your favorite things about Walt Disney World. Best of all, these maps are free, you can order them every six months, and you don’t even need to be planning a vacation to be able to order them! All you need is a DisneyWorld.com account. Rumor also has it that if you order customized maps, it makes it more likely that you might get one of the mysterious pin codes!
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| The Customized Map of Magic Kingdom in the Classic style. |
Planning our next Disney trip.
I am the resident Disney planner in our family, and if you were to ask my wife Cindy, she would tell you that I spend more time planning our trip than I do at work! This isn’t true, by the way, but I guess it must seem that way sometimes. To me, planning our trips is a great deal of fun! Looking at the resorts, deciding where we want to stay, looking ahead to find out when school is out, counting down to our resort reservation dates, and on and on and on. There is just something truly magical when I plan our trips, and I look forward to it every year! If you have been asked to be the Disney planner for your family, there are two things I want you to remember when planning a trip:
- Always get input from everyone that is going to be going on your Disney vacation! Remember, it’s everyone’s vacation!
- Communication, Communication, Communication! The more communication you have, the better the planning will be, and the happier everyone will be as well!
Exploring Walt Disney World via Google Earth
Google Earth is an incredible free software program that you can download for your Mac of PC or even Linux system. For those that don’t know much about Google Earth, I urge you to try it out. However, the really cool thing about Google Earth is that there is a layer that you can turn on that will show you many of the highlights of Walt Disney World, and even take you right on down to street level to navigate the park. Take a look at this image for a glimpse of what I’m talking about!
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| Partners Statue with Cinderella Castle in the background. Wish I was there! |
These are but a few of the ways that we incorporate Disney in our home. There are probably a dozen more I can get into, but won’t this time. Maybe I’ll make the rest of them into a series! How do you celebrate Disney in your home?
Thank you for joining me today. Your next stop on the Magical Blogorail Loop is A World View.
Here is the map of our Magical Blogorail should you happen to have to make a stop along the way and want to reboard:
1st Stop ~ Disney Donna Kay
2nd Stop ~ The CanaDisney Blog
3rd Stop ~ My Dreams of Disney
4th Stop ~ A World View
Final Stop ~ Growing Up Disney
I had never thought about exploring WDW using Google Earth, what a fabulous idea!! As a matter of fact all of your ideas are FABULOUS!! Thanks for sharing them with us.
Thank you Donna! Go check out Google Earth, it's a really great experience “walking” through the parks with no crowds!
I tried to “walk” around the Magic Kingdom on Google Earth while we were living in Cuba, but the internet was so slow I gave up. I completely forgot about it and need to go check it out again now that we live in the states again! Thanks for the reminder! We got a customized map of the Magic Kingdom (classic style), too, but haven't found it since the movie so… looks like I'll be ordering some more soon! :) They really are very nice. Great post!
Glad I could help Crystal and Bryan! I would have thought that you had that already, as tech-savvy as you two are! Enjoy!
Thanks Christina! I love the customized maps, and hopefully your Google Earth will work for you now!
Well it looks like we're off to download Google Earth, thanks for the tip Mike! :)
I love the dinner table reliving of vacation trips – add photos and videos and it's almost like being there. Plus a great way to plan for the next vacation. Thank you.
We always talk about Disney at dinner too. And my husband is always on Google Earth looking at the Disney property. He's obsessed with the backstage areas. :)