What a weekend last weekend was! Our original plan was to be at Magic Kingdom Thursday-Saturday for the taping of the Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade. We had received tickets for all 3 day through Walt Disney World. Aaron, my oldest could only join us for Saturday because it is a week before finals at SCF and he needed to be at class. We decided to bring Jordan’s best friend Kyle with us, since we had 5 tickets. 
Thursday went as planned and I have already shared the basics of that day here.. We saw Yanni Voices and Kris Allen perform and Nick Cannon stood right next to me while he was taping his introduction for Yanni Voices. Nick Cannon is co-hosting this year’s parade with Kelly Ripa.
Once we had put in our 4 hours as audience members we hit the park. It was a beautiful day and the lines were short. We were able to ride 14 rides between 1:30-6:00pm! We ate lunch at Cosmic Ray’s and in the evening we introduced Kyle to the delicacy that is the Dole Whip. 
We were even able to see Cinderella’s Holiday Wish and see the castle beautifully lit with twinkling lights. 
Friday morning we were supposed to check-in at the Magic Kingdom by 7am! We were to learn choreography to be part of the opening number. Well it was pouring out and the temps were going down. We stood under the awnings on Main Street USA until the parade organizers decided what to do. 
They moved all of us to Cosmic Ray’s to wait for a decision. Billy Flannigan, the CM in charge of keeping the volunteers informed and entertained, finally told us the day’s taping had been postponed until Sunday morning! Billy also informed us that they would be recording Celine Dion’s songs in the lobby of the Grand Floridian at 11:30am and if we brought our audience tickets, we would get preferred spots in the audience. Then, at about 9:30am we were released into the park.
Ouch, Sunday’s aren’t good for us. All of us are involved in leadership at our church; Ron is the A/V director, I am a worship singer, Aaron is our worship drummer and Jordan is the A/V director for children’s church, so it is hard for all of us to miss the service. We start making phone calls to church, family and friends then we sprinkled some pixie dust and voila! We were staying through Sunday! We rode a few rides and then hopped on the monorail over to the Grand Floridian.
Unfortunately, people were being let into the Grand Floridian lobby without tickets and we ended up on the 5th floor balcony overlooking the stage. It was very impressive that in less than 3 hours Disney had built and decorated a stage, moved cameras, sound systems and personnel to the lobby from the Magic Kingdom. We waited 2 hours for Celine to come out and sing her first number. We stayed for 3 takes and then headed out. Ron was able to get a good picture as we were leaving. 
We spent Friday afternoon relaxing at the hotel and Friday evening we went to Downtown Disney for a few hours. While we were out I got an e-mail stating that Saturday’s recording had been canceled and everything was moved to Sunday. Yikes! This meant changing more plans and making plans for Saturday since no taping meant no park tickets for that day.
Everything worked out and Saturday we had a relaxing family day at Ikea and the Festival Bay Mall in Orlando. We ordered in pizza for dinner and went to bed early because Sunday was going to be another l-o-n-g day.
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