Day Five - Downtown Disney and other stuff

Yay!

You've made it to the end of our trip! Congratulations! If you're starting here... go to the bottom and work up.

We're to Saturday, day of wrapping up and returning. We headed back over to the Animal Kingdom after packing up the Mach 5 for transport to ride Expedition Everest. We got there and, surprise surprise, it was still closed. Good news though, it was set to open shortly. So we jumped in the standby line behind these people from New Jersey (much like the elves from the Polar Express)... we know this because they stood and talked to us the entire 45 minutes to an hour that we stood there, waiting. But we did get to ride the Everest ride. It was fun! It's a coaster that goes forward, then backward, then forward again. There's a Yeti. Yup, a giant furry animatronic Yeti about midway through. Seriously fun though. There were screamers in front of Mom and Dad (the Jersey people) and behind them (Allie and I). We then high-tailed it out (da da dum) and over to Downtown Disney. We searched for the elusive High School Musical 1 throw, which we still didn't find, but we found the one for the second movie. We also bought some prints from an art store and walked to the opposite end of the park to check out an awesome movie/music store will all hand-signed memoribilia... that none of us could afford. It was really neat though and there was lots of stuff I wanted (in case anybody wanted to know). Lunch/Dinner was at Planet Hollywood, between Judy Garland's dress from the Wizard of Oz and Clint Eastwood's pistol from The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, and the bike Jim Carey rode in The Truman Show. After lunch/dinner (linner or dunch), we started back to Charleston. Dad drove for awhile... then Mom... then Allie. We got lost coming back and ended up making a circle around the South Carolina/Georgia state lines. Not so much fun. Everybody was restless and a little cranky by the time that we got back around 10.45PM last night. Seeing Bandit so excited made it a little better though. So anyway, that's our whole trip. Hope you've enjoyed your tour. Duck on your way. Watch your head, and if don't watch your head, watch your language. Pluto 16-17.

Don't forget to tip your tour guide.

See everyone later!

Whitney

Day Four - MGM

Welcome back.

We're to Day Four - MGM. It was considerably cooler this morning. So we were huddled together for warmth at the tram stop. Just for Casey, we spent the day searching for hidden Mickeys. Total Hidden Mickeys found - zero. Sorry. We rode Tower of Terror, where every seat is now a seat-buckled seat, so you can float before you fall. We went to the Aerosmith coaster, where we waited a long time, but it was fun... I'm a screaming. Once a screamer, always a screamer. Then, just for Allie, we watched the High School Musical show. So, we're standing behind this little bitty line, with millions of small people decked out in High School Musical wear... and Nestor. Nestor was a cast member whose entire position consisted of holding back the crowds of tweens. His only statement was "Try not to run. I don't want to get trampled... like yesterday." Allie plowed over some kids to get a front row seat. It was funny, bodies everywhere. We rode some more rides, then we scoped out some primo seats for the Hollywood Holly-days Parade. Dad popped a squat so we could go shop, where we searched, unsuccessfully, for Allie the elusive High School Musical 1 throw. We watched the parade, which was cute, a bunch of cars all dolled up for Christmas, very vintage. Then we did the Backlot Tour. Dad took one for the team and got wet slightly, because Allie had had the misfortune to manage to get wet on every ride that you could ever possibly get wet on, even if nobody else in the entire ride got wet... Allie did. We ran across the park to hear the Harlem Gospel Choir sing (it was great) for 30 minutes, before heading over to the Phantasmic night show. It was really really cool - think lights, multiple Mickeys, huge set pieces, lots of water, and cartoons. The only bad part was that, because of Allie's genius (MENSA's calling any day), we were there 1 hour and 15 minutes early... so we sat... on aluminum benches... with no backs... After that, we fought the crowd like the mighty salmon, and jetting back across the park to see what was called The Osbourne Spectacle of Dancing Lights. Sidenote: Allie was convinced that Donnie and Marie Osmond were missing Osbournes... we're not sure how she came up with this, but she said it... no lie. The light show was fantastic. There was snow and all the building were COVERED with lights that moved in time to music. It was kindof amazing. I was awed... I think all of us were awed. I've never seen so many lights in my life. We headed for the front of the park, where Allie and Dad were Package Pickup People of the Day (because we'd bought some character sketches and had them sent to the front of the park for pickup). They won a pin and you would have though it was the lottery. More tree pictures and a cold tram ride where we heard Allie's favorite phrase (besides "I got wet") "Cold..." multiple times. Other than that, we were totally in the Christmas spirit because of the lights.... Very wow...

Day Tres - EPCOT

Velkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome, Come on In!

Welcome back. If you are joining this in progress, start at the bottom and work up. We're on Day Three, our day at Epcot. Allie was not feeling well and, frankly, we were tired. Epcot seemed like a logical choice being as it was Thursday and we hadn't been there yet. We ate Chick-Fil-A (again) and headed to the park. I forgot to mention that we can remember where we parked everyday (Tues - Dinosaur 27, Wed - Pluto 17 {ask Allie to sing you the song}, Thur - Journey 5 {Don't stop believing and the Mach 5}, Fri - Film 26 {I will be 25.5 when I finish my degree in Film, Sat - Dinosaur 31 {December has 31 days}). Yes, we are weird, we know. Just don't question it. Back to Epcot. We first got a sneak peek on the newly rennovated Spaceship Earth; think touchscreens and more smoothly moving characters. We quickly discovered that this was like the day for breakdowns. We went to Test Track... and it broke down. So we went over to Mission: Space. Dad also wasn't feeling fantastic, but we decided to go ORANGE, which is more rigorous, shaky and spinny, than GREEN, which was lighter and fluffier. For those who don't know, Mission: Space is supposed to simulate a space shuttle taking off, landing, and during a mission. Allie was the Engineer (who put us into HyperSleep), Mom was the Navigator (who cut on the rocket booster for the second leg of our journey), Dad was the Commander (we're not sure what he did), and I was the Pilot (who almost wrecked the ship). It wasn't that bad; the Gs on takeoff were fun, but, needless to say, didn't do anything for Allie's stomach. The Bradshaw Team Cheer is now "ORANGE!" We decided to do something a little lighter, so we went to ride the Ellen Degeneres ride about energy. While we were there, we were caught in code 101 - we're not sure what this means, but there were running cast members and we all had to evacuate the ride. (That's two rides down, if you're counting.) We went to ride an Imagination ride with Figment (who is awesome) and posed for an awesomely groovy picture (in which Dad looks a little manic). The Seas with Nemo was relatively uneventful, but we saw a dolphin and found Nemo. Then we went Soarin', where we waited 1 hour and 50 minutes, playing dumb games with the crowd on giant screens every 20 minutes or so. We also discovered that Allie is Swedish ("MY name IS YLva. I'm FROM YORba LINda.") and Dad irritated the cast members. We trekked back over to Test Track, where we waited about 1 hour and a half. The only eventful was that Allie's hair came completely undone from her hair ribbon. After eating, we went to a Candlelight Processional with a huge mass choir and a guy Battlestar Galactica. Mom was seriously impressed because Disney actually did, both here and at MGM, a program was totally Christian... and beautiful. Sidenote: the choir members dropped like flies; it became a game of counting them as they fell. Mom had never walked around the back of Epcot through the countries, so we went there. We bought hot chocolate from a Chinese place (we didn't get it either) and went to Italy. We tromped over to Norway (near Allie's country of origin) and rode the Maelstrom (it sounds a lot more exciting than it was), but it's fun to say. Allie burnt her mouth on the hot chocolate (sad). We then popped a squat on the sidewalk near the lake to watch the fireworks, which were, well, underwhelming. However, it was funny watching Dad try to take pictures of the fireworks, which mostly came out looking like smoke. Lots of laughs. Afterwards, we walked around the entire world, much to Allie's chagrin and complaining, because it was all lit up. We also continued the whole tree tradition and took more tree pictures. We went back to the hotel and went to bed, semi-exhausted. Please hang on for more!

Day Two - Magic Kingdom

Welcome back!

Glad you stuck around. I suddenly realized that these are being posted in reverse order... kinda sucks. So if you need to start at the bottom and work your way up, that would probably be best, but whatever. Anyway. Tuesday night, Madre and Padre gave Allie and I tickets to go to Cirque du Soleil to see their production in Florida, a show called La Nouba. It was, needless to say, amazing, awe-inspiring, and unable to be put into words. I've never seen anything like it. The entire show was just phemonenal. Wednesday, we all got up early. Dad got breakfast again (The Golden Arches!), and we were off to the Magic Kingdom. A monorail ride later, we wound up in the Happiest Place on Earth. We rode just about everything and were there from almost the time the park opened at 9AM until after the fireworks at 10.30PM. Feet were seriously protesting by the end of the day. But the fireworks... stunning... Everything was decorated for Christmas and all kinds of Christmas music, very festive. And small people everywhere. So in the middle of the day, we had this really great idea... there are two groups of characters we can get our pictures taken with - one of three princesses (Aurora, Belle, and Cinderella) and one of three costumed characters (Minnie, Pluto, and Goofy). We first get in the princess line, because, hey, Cinderella's there, and she's my favorite. Allie goes, "But the Minnie line is shorter. Let's go to that one, because we don't think that Belle is in the princess one and I wanted to see her." So we switch lines, much to my disappointment. We got behind the Demon Spawn, a kid probably 16 months old, who kept crying and running off and crying and breakin' free, and not in a good way. So, an hour and 20 minutes later, we get through the freakin' line, where we're in there like 5 minutes, maybe - get the pictures and get out. While we were standing in line, Allie proceeded to lead us in a demented game of I-Spy, which was convinced would bring us out of our funk. THEN we got in the other line because, surprise, surprise, Belle was in the princess line (20 minutes). We then went straight to see Mickey, who only took 30 minutes. Lots of standing in line. And Allie keeping trying to bring back I-Spy. We ate and went to Tomorrowland, where we rode the Buzz Lightyear ride - I got a perfect score 'cause we got stopped at one point and just racked up points like mad (999,999 points). I won! Overall, an awesome day. Please hang on for more pictures and more of the tour!

Day One at Disney - Animal Kingdom

Welcome to Bradshaw Disney Tours. My name is Whitney and I'll be your tour guide. Seriously, I figured the easiest way to do this is to do it in parts, and since the stupid blog will only let me upload five pictures at a time, we will go slow. So, on Day One, otherwise known as 18th of December, we were pretty much exhausted. Between the whole travelling thing and the graduation thing, we were beat. AND... Mom kinda/sorta broke her foot, so walking was LOADS of fun. I started out driving from Charleston in what we have affectionately known as the Mach 5 (co-piloted by Speed Racer, DAD, and Trixie, Allie), renamed such because Dad was a speed demon on the way to graduation and Allie was quite a driver once we got to Disney. We got to Kissimmee at about 2.45AM on Tuesday (boo) and pretty much went straight to bed. So we get out of the car to go into the hotel and we are loaded for bear, right. It's chilly and we are trying to get to our room because its early and we need sleep. Here we trundle, bogged with luggage and all that stands between us and our room is a stretch of sidewalk. Unfortunately, this sidewalk is surrounded by sprinklers for the grass on both sides... all of which are currently on. So, yup, we ran through the sprinklers, trying in vain to dodge the water. It was bad. We were wet. Everything was wet. Anyway, Dad was great and got up earlier than we did and went to get our tickets and breakfast (Chick-fil-a). We got up relatively early on Tuesday and took off for the Animal Kingdom. It was pretty cool, lots of animals, ya know. We rode a Jungle Safari ride, where we were supposed to be gone two weeks... were really only gone maybe 20 minutes, and saved a baby elephant, which wasn't real. We also learned Swahili - JAMBO! So, while we were there, a guy died on the Expedition Everest ride... bummer, right? And we didn't get to ride it... almost a bigger bummer. Anyway, never fear. We went back on Saturday and rode it. We hiked for freakin' days to get to the top. And we met up with the fearsome Yeti. No worries though, we didn't lose any of our party. On a serious note, we saw this show, the Festival of the Lion King, in Camp Minnie-Mickey, and it was AWESOME! We were the mighty warthog, ask politely and you may get to see the face. Totally worth the Tuesday trip. Sidenote: if you want any of the pics, click on them and you can save them. There are lots more pictures, just let me know if you want them. Enjoy the pictures and stick around for the continuing tour...

Graduation pics are here!

Yay! On 17th of December, I graduated from the University of South Carolina in Columbia, as everyone reading this already knows. The whole family's pretty excited about it, but I think I'm probably the most ecstatic about not having to go back to school for awhile. Frankly, I could use a break. Thanks to everybody who sent cards or gave gifts or just told me congratulations. Everything meant so much to me. You all have no idea. Everybody wanted to see pics from the event, so here ya go.

Welcome!

Hiya!
So, if you're here, you're probably looking for stuff about the Bradshaws... Right? Right? Well guess what? You've come to the right place. It's coming. We've got so many pictures to post on here, it's ridiculous. Believe me. Or believe us. Just get ready... for Coming Up Bradshaw.