There are so many pictures of this one that I had to put them in the gallery below. Basically The Osbourne Spectacle of Dancing Lights is a Christmas festival in which they put a ton of lights on part of Disney’s Hollywood Studios that are synchronized to special music. They serve alcohol and holiday themed drinks like Hot Chocolate and Egg Nog. (All delicious.)

It’s pretty amazing:

After the lights we went to eat Christmas Eve dinner at the Sci Fi Dine In which happens to be one of our favorite restaurants because you get to watch 1950s Sci Fi clips while you eat at tables that are built to look like cars. The place is decorated to make it look like you are outside. :D

The Sci Fi Dine In is home of the Picnic Burger which I call A FIASCO ON A BUN! It’s got a burger, grilled hot dog, sauerkraut, sauteed onions, mustard, and ketchup; served with fries or cucumber salad. :D It’s one of Harknell’s favorites. :D You can find more details about that here.

Victory!

Check out more of our photos below:

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We didn’t play around. Not one bit.

We checked into Art of Animation on Sunday morning and jetted immediately to Epcot when we got to try various holiday food from around the world and listen to holiday storytellers.

We HAD to see the Monkey King (who actually is partially an inspiration for Assmunky over at my soon to be relaunched comic.)

Helga from Epcot Germany told the story of Clara and the Nutcracker as well as the origins of many Christmas traditions:

Tipsy Ducks in Love, a Christmas only drink recommended to me by the folks over at Party Through the Parks:

Curry buns and Tipsy Ducks in Love:

After being able to drink the Gluehwein (hot, spiced red wine) at Busch Gardens Williamsburg Christmas Town with no problem, I tried the Gluehwein at Epcot. Unfortunately it caused a minor food sensitivity reaction. :( I wish I could figure out the pattern of the beer and wine sensitivity I have so that I could easily identify which are bad for me!

Oh well! Everything else was awesome!

School Bread and Troll Horn from Epcot Norway:

Epcot is my fav park for Christmas! We did not get a chance to do the new Test Track. I will try that one in May. I DID get my MOST EXCELLENT MOUSE EARS. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit:

Monday (Christmas Eve) we did Animal Kingdom and tried the new Kilimanjaro Safari ride. Breakfast of champions?

I say the ride is “new” because they have now completely removed a storyline about poaching and added more animal viewings. Longtime readers will note that I hate when storyline is removed from any ride, but in this case it was an improvement.

Why?

Kilamanjaro Safari debuted when Animal Kingdom first opened with a rather gruesome (even for me) storyline involving a mother elephant and baby elephant suffering from poachers that originally ended with mother elephant getting killed and the baby surviving. You’d see a normal safari-style ride that would be interrupted by a chase scene (involving guns) and interactions that led you to think you were supposed to be trying to help save the animals. Unfortunately you are too late and only the baby survives.

This reminds me of those traumatic, unedited German fairy tales my parents would tell me. Yikes!

I don’t think anyone wants to go on a family vacation to see a story in which Mom dies. Also Disney World is a destination for many terminally ill kids and adults. I can see why they removed it and I actually wonder how this ever got produced.

“Ain’t no one got time for [this]!” or so the meme goes:

But I digress. Again.

The gruesome version of the storyline was short-lived, but an edited version of the story was in place up until a few months ago. It totally removed the mother elephant and you just chased off poachers. At the end you’d see the happy baby elephant in the jeep that you had saved. A lot of the original effects involving a car chase and guns were either not working, removed, or disabled.To be honest after seeing it once it seemed tired and it didn’t flow very well with the ride.

This is a case where removing something was a good idea for Disney. The resulting safari is the best I have ever seen it. We got to see more animals than we ever had before. Look how close this girafe got to us!

We also felt that other effects (like the tipping bridge) were jacked up to be more noticeable. It was really on point, and our safari guide, Frankie did an excellent job!

One of the highlights of the trip was petting the fuzzy Kune Kune Pigs in the petting zoo! They are from New Zealand!

Next we did the Osbourne Lights at Disney’s Hollywood Studios that night…

Continuing my previous post. Those of you considering driving 2000 miles to Florida for Christmas need to know a few things.

1. This is difficult, foolhardy, insane, and should only be attempted by professionals probably maybe.

Driving to Disney World on Christmas Week is not for the faint of heart or the first time Disney World traveler. If you don’t know the parks pretty well, know how to use Fastpass, and/or have a wizened guide with you I advise you to go when the park crowds are lighter so that you can enjoy everything slowly. If this is your once in a lifetime trip I also advise you to go when the crowds are lighter so that you can ride everything at an unhurried pace. During Christmas Week you will probably only ride the rides you can Fastpass because the lines will range from 1 hour to 3 hours each. Even though Disney handled the crowds so well that I was shocked, the crowds will still be very high.

If you don’t even know what Fastpass is or how to use it then no. Just no. Don’t do Christmas Week. Driving to Disney for Christmas Week is like playing the video game on Hard Mode.

If you are frequent Disney traveler, this is for you. No other time of year can you see the parks running on all engines with decorations, entertainment, and seasonal food that is this awesome. If you are a nutcase and this is your 2nd or 3rd time going this year like us

WELCOME ABOARD TO THE CRAZY TRAIN TOOT TOOT THIS TRIP IS FOR YOU! TOOTY TOOT TOOT!

I have to say that this was probably one of the best trips we ever did!

2. This drive is LONG. VERY VERY LONG.

It will take you at least 2 days to reach Orlando if you live as far away as New Jersey. The map says 11.5 hours till Savannah. It took about 15 hours of near nonstop driving between 2 people just to get to Savannah, GA which is 4 hours away from Orlando due to holiday traffic adding 3ish hours to the trip. SHEESH. If you can make it as far as Savannah I highly recommend the Hilton Garden Inn.

3. The food.

If you don’t like fried or carby foods and need good coffee, you should really pack food and canned or bottled coffee to bring with you. Trust me. This at Cook Out in South Carolina was our best option on the road. There are no Starbucks like there are up north, so you can’t even get regular crappy coffee:

As much as I like a crazy meal like this every once in awhile I don’t particularly care for it when I have to sit in a chair for over 10 hours that day. Next time I will try out Steve’s Original PaleoKits. (Thanks to SaggyZ for writing me to tell me about them.)

4. The Christmas Traffic.

I-95 is only 2 lanes from much of the trip in NC, SC, and GA. This makes it pretty terrible. During Christmas it was worse. When it turns back into 3 lanes south of Savannah it picks up, but that is not the largest share of the trip. I would drive to Orlando again, but probably not at Christmas. Like I said above this provided us with an additional 3 hours on the road that we could have done without. (Note that I didn’t say we wouldn’t go to Orlando for Christmas again, I’d by lying to you if I said we weren’t planning our Christmas 2013 trip already.)

So, how did the trip go?

The first day (Saturday) was a 4AM wake up to go from NJ – Savannah, Ga. As I mentioned before due to traffic we had total standstills in the MD/VA/NC areas and it took almost 15 hours to get to GA.

Whoever had the idea of making I-95 2 lanes only should probably be slapped in the face with my feet. Because of the bad delays I was unable to see Savannah, Georgia beyond checking into our hotel and sleeping. Oh well, maybe next time. (I hear there are some Haunted Houses in GA…)

By the time we got to our destination, it was pretty much like this:

The next morning we were up at 4AM again. Yep, we felt like we just came out of a washer and dryer set on “PUMMEL THEM” mode OMG:

We BOMBED IT to Orlando to check in at Disney’s Art of Animation resort in about 4 hours. On the way I saw the most BREATHTAKING sunrise I have ever seen IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. Because it was 30 degrees the night before and this day was warming up to about 70ish a delicate fog was emanating off of every body of water as the golden-red sun began to light up. This picture does not do it justice.

I also learned that in Florida you can have a sparkling rainbow INSIDE A CLOUD. Again, this picture does not do it justice. In real life it was glittering and bright inside the cloud:

After 20 hours on the road, you have NO IDEA how welcome this sight was:

Art of Animation had this tree out to welcome us and there actually was a wandering musician playing Christmas music:

We stayed in The Little Mermaid wing at Art of Animation, which was AWESOME because this was my favorite movie when I was little – right at the age when I wanted to go to Florida so badly but had to deal with awful things instead.

The shower curtain pulled back to reveal Ariel’s little cave! Ha!

Well played, Harknell. Well played.

I highly recommend AoA resort. It’s like a Value tier resort but BETTER in every way except for the pathways. For some reason the paths try to funnel you to go through the center of the resort every time. You could clearly see where people were cutting through the grass and leaving crushed grass behind to get to the parking lot or main building faster. At every other value resort you can get from the staircase to the parking lot with no problem. This was the only issue we had at AoA.

The food is far better than every other Value resort on property. Made from scratch American and Indian food awaits you – also real cappuccinos and hand made lemonade as opposed to the fountain stuff everywhere else. I come here to eat even when I am not staying here. The prices are really good for what you get here when compared with other offerings on Disney property.

I’ll write more later as this post is getting long!

And so I emerge on the other end of a 2000 mile road trip from New Jersey to Florida and back. Every time I travel I learn so much about people whom I otherwise may not have ever had the opportunity to meet.

Many of you guys are probably reading from the southern states of America. (I say this specifically in this way so as not to confuse my European readers with the South American continent.) I was born in NYC but raised in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is a great place that has the fortune to have the good parts of being in the north coupled with a bit of Midwestern and Southern friendliness. When I moved to New Jersey, I was immediately struck with how fast and brisk people seemed to be here. It took me a few years to get the hang of life. It’s not that people are mean in New Jersey, it’s that they are just super busy and probably have a long commute each day.

Different states in America seem to be more like different countries as far as interpersonal culture is concerned. We all share the same basic things, but how we act in our day to day lives is so very different. I actually altered how I blog after traveling south for the first time in 2008. I realized that some ways of speaking that are totally normal here in New Jersey might be far more shocking that I intend it to be in a different geographic location. We swear like sailors up here and it’s all good. Just a tiny bit of that when traveling south might get the entire room staring at me. (It’s happened.)

When looking over a menu in a restaurant in South Carolina, Kentucky, or Tennessee: “Holy shit that burger looks fuckin’ amazing!”

*Entire room turns to stare*

“Uhhh….”

For the first 28 years of my life, I was unable to travel at all because I couldn’t afford it. I sat by in college while everyone went on Spring Break while I was struggling to find enough money just to eat while paying my own way through. Other students shunned me because I couldn’t afford to do anything. It’s only recent that I can travel.

I never gave up. If there is one thing I’ve learned in life is that you only lose when you give up.

Staying positive and working hard has proven to work – I feel very lucky that I can now do this. It’s taken time but working hard and being nice to others seems to work. Harknell’s present to me this year was a trip to see the Christmas festivities at Disney World – something I never thought I’d ever see. I’ve talked about this in detail before. Holding back the tears of joy on this trip was hard to an epic degree because being there symbolizes far more than a corny theme park – it symbolizes achievement on a level deeper than most things.

I’m a corny, simpleminded idiot. So what? I don’t care.

Stay tuned for the next part in this blog series: OniHaunts Christmas 2012 Pt. 2: 4 things everyone should know about driving 2000 miles to Disney World on Christmas Week

Thanks to Scott from The Scarehouse in Pittsburgh for pointing this out.