Sorcerer's Apprentice Topiary

Here is a photo of a garden at Disney's MGM Studios. You can be walking along and there are just beautiful plantings to enhance your Disney experience. Is it any wonder that we love it here?

Tuesday, January 31st, was Oscar Day. We awoke to the announcement of the nominees for this year's Academy Awards. We agreed with the selection, but I would have preferred to have seen King Kong nominated over Brokeback Mountain. Our personal favorite is Crash but all of them were good movies and three of the five were based on real people or events. I just felt that King Kong was the traditional block buster Hollywood type of super entertaining movie. Oh well. Now we have to spend the month trying to find the movies with nominees in the great variety of categories so we can be up to snuff for Awards night.

We headed to MGM mid-morning, starting with an early lunch at the 50's Primetime Diner. We had a wonderful waitress, Aunt Karen, who made our dining experience pleasurable. We took in another performance of Beauty and the Beast, a live musical show, one of my favorites at this park. We then took a ride on the Rock and Roller Coaster, a thrilling coaster ride to rock and roll music-just wild. From there, we went to the Tower of Terror, a runaway elevator that drops you 13 stories, at random intervals. Quite a thrill. We topped off our visit by joining the wee ones at Playhouse Disney live puppet show. That was a bit tame for our taste but the little ones were a joy to watch.

Finally, Mel took pity on me and we headed back to the RV so I could take a nap. Remember, we were doing laundry until 1 a.m. After I rested, we took the Fort Wilderness boat to the Magic Kingdom so we could see the Cinderellabration live music show for the evening performance. So different seeing it with lights on the costumes-just beautiful. We decided to stick around for the fireworks show so we took in The Haunted Mansion, a little eerier at night. It was a slow evening and for a change we were able to ride the Peter Pan ride without waiting for an hour. It is the most popular attraction in the park and always crowded. We topped off our visit with PhilharMagic, the 3-D show. As the show finished, the fireworks show started and we watched them from Fantasyland-just a great show.

As we settled in for the evening, we got a call from daughter Michelle. She had the sad news that her uncle, Bob Marchant, 50, had died an hour before of a massive stroke that he had suffered that morning. Bob was a sweet gentle man, who loved his family and was a wonderful provider and good uncle. Gone too soon. Let our adventure continue!