 I've never been a fan of water I cannot see below. When I was 5 years old, I took the typicacal swim lesson at the YMCA and back in those olden days in the 60's, they favored the "sink or swim" way of teaching, where the adult brought the small child into the 12 feet deep and dropped them to let them naturally come to the surface. Well I sunk like a stone. Thankfully I came up, but traumatized. Needless to say, I had nightmares about it into my adulthood and while I have gotten over it and love to swim (in water I can see the bottom of), lakes, rivers, and oceans, still give me a feeling of vertigo. Florida and the Disney area is helping me to face that fear head on, and do it in a really wonderful way. Especially over at the Saratoga Springs Resort. One of the main attractions to being in this area for us, was the ability to walk in interesting places any time we wanted to, and to see beautiful, interesting things.around us. We saw Saratoga Springs as we rode the Sassagoula Riverboat one day from Downtown Disney and thought it looked just so wonderful and colorful. So we went to see it. We started to walk and turned a corner and there it was. The bridge. Ok, it was beautiful and your first thought is, "this is Disney so it is well constructed". When I saw it, however, there was this little part of my mind that went back to being 5 years old and I wasn't sure I wanted to walk across this. If there is one thing I have learned in my travels through life, it is that life is meant to be lived and fear might make you miss something you don't want to miss. So we went forth onto the bridge. The amazing thing about this bridge is that when you walk on it, you are going downhill toward what feels like walking at water level. You really aren't that low, as you can see when you look at it from the side, but the sensation is definitely going down. At night, the sensation is even stronger because you can't tell the height of the water easily. We got to the center of the bridge with water all around us and the really cool thing for me, is that although I had that small sensation of fear from my past, it was so beautiful around us, and that feeling completely knocked out the bad feeling. Our daughter was a little cautious for sure! The feeling on this bridge is one of just cleansing your soul. When you are on it and you look around at the peaceful surroundings and you hear the sound of the fountain and you see the lights and the colors of the buildings and the trees, it is truly a wonderful experience. I know that all of our trips to Disney in our past, were always too short for our liking and the thought of doing anything besides power hitting the parks and seeing as much as we could in the short time we had, was priority. I'm sure we are not that different from others in that way, but as you can see from this, there are so many hidden treasures all over the "World" that are not about the parks. Truly a bridge over wonderful waters!    Your ad here
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 My 50th birthday became the first birthday celebration in our family after moving to Mickeyland and there was only one place I wanted to spend it! We had a lovely day at the Magic Kingdom complete with lunch at Liberty Tree Tavern and a ride on the Liberty Belle Ferry Boat. Amazingly, after many decades of coming here since I was 9 in 1972, I had never been on that boat. It was truly a treat! The whole day was a treat, but at the end of the night hilarity ensued as we tried to get a candle lit for the couple pieces of cake we got to seal my Disney birthday with the traditional song. We bought the 2 wonderful cakes from the new Starbucks location on Main street. I guess I should not call it new, but rather the Main Street Bakery that has been there forever and now carries the Starbuck's sign on it. The only problem was that, although, they could give us a candle, they could not provide any matches or lighters to get it lit. I can totally understand that you would not want to supply the guests with anything pyrotechnic! LOL! So we figured we'd just ask around for a lighter once we got settled. So we tried to find a seat to do this and our timing happened to coincide with the beginning of the Main Street Electrical Parade so seating was in short supply. We made it to tomorrowland Terrace which was closed, but tables were available and many people were there. I began my quest for a small flame. Unfortunately, no one had anything we could use, so at first I thought we'd just do it without the candle, but that seemed wrong to me, especially for the first family birthday here. So I thought about asking a cast member. They were having their ice cream party across the way, so I asked there. If there is one thing about Disney that never changes and that I love so much, it is the amazing desire that all cast members have to go over the top and above and beyond to help and to make your visit more spectacular than you can ever imagine. This ended up being no different! The gentleman told us to sit tight and he would find something to get the tiny candle lit. So back he comes with this silver thing that looks like a gun. I held out my candle and he kicks it into gear and this blue flame comes out the front. It is clear that this is one of those jobbies they use to carmelize toppings on food quickly. I had this immediate image in my mind like a "Road Runner" cartoon of the candle melted in my hand and all of us with smoking hair! With that image fresh in my mind, I said while laughing hard, "you know what...I am going to hand you the candle to light it! Next a man with a lighter to the rescue! He comes up and says, "this might work better". We were all laughing and asked the cast member to show us the flame again, because it was just so hilarious! Of course having "Happy Birthday" sung to me on my 50th, during the Electrical Parade music, was a hard perk to compete with! What a wonderful place where people try so hard to make sure you are having the best time possible! |
Sherri and crewWe lost everything and had to start over again, but we decided to do it with magic and style here in the most magical place on earth. We were scared to death. The destroyed economy made my "vanilla frosting" biz fall apart. You might ask what a vanilla frosting biz is. It is one defined as something people would love to do and should do bc it helps their kids to have a better future, but when the basics became hard to afford, the frosting was not attainable. We tried to use credit cards as a temporary fix to keep the only thing I knew how to do and had trained for my whole life floating, but the overhead was unsustainable and then the credit cards also became that way and so we fell. Lost it all. The house, the office, our lifestyle, which in retrospect now, we realize that although we were always happy together, we had gotten used to an unhealthy and boring lifestyle. That was all about to change thanks to our fall and amazing silver linings. The fall felt like I was letting go. Couldn't control anything anymore so I allowed myself, although terrified, to truly fall and see where G-d, life and fate wanted me/us to go. I allowed fate to see us through! I prayed a lot everyday that this fate would be a happy one. Archives
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Who doesn't love pics of Disney, other Fla parks and Central Florida especially when they have cool effects?! If you love special effects, you will love my site! My Disney, Universal, Seaworld and Central Florida photography/art is an obsession for me, but there has been little time to follow up on sharing it all. Not complaining! I am excited to share with you some amazing effects pics, videos, GIF animations, panoramas and collages . You'll also find my most beautiful pics/videos as I come across them. I am just getting started but I have a ton to share. Something new as often as I can post it. Your favorite memories as well as mine of being in the happiest place on earth (which for us is Florida parks, Florida nature as well as Disney) . Whether you loved your Florida/Disney vaca or just need to see some moving pix and pix that move you of Florida sunshine to brighten your mood, it will all be here. All will be free to see on my site anytime but I am also going to make some of my artwork available for sale for people to be able to have for their own collections or to print fx pix and panoramics for their walls or screens. My logo does meed to stay on the bottom of each GIF/effects pic/movie when sold and creative credit is still mine but I am thrilled to share with you and have you share with others.
Remember that I can make a work of art out of any picture you see on this site as long as it doesn't violate copyright laws.
Contact me to talk about it.
Contact me to talk about it.
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Copyright © 2013 All pictures on this site were taken with my camera and are solely my property. I have no problem with people sharing the page and using the pictures as long as they are referred to as my pictures and the property of lovinwdwandfla.com, wdwnooks and Dr. Sherri Singer. None of these photos are professionally done by Disney cast members. I am not a representative or an affiliate of the Disney company in any way and this is a private website. I would love to have you as another partner.