Monday, May 5, 2014

Day 490: Best of the Best

Day 10 of the Disney Photo Challenge: A picture of your favorite ride/attraction. 


Blast from the Past: 



My family has this tradition...every time we go to Disney World, the first and last attraction we go on is Spaceship Earth. Spaceship Earth is the giant golf ball, yes, the one in the picture, and it certainly isn't a thrill ride, not that it makes it any less amazing. This is a slow moving trip to time...which I'm sure, to many, sounds like 14 minutes of torture, but to me, it means something special. 

There's a bit of a backstory here. When I was about 15 months old, my parents took me on my first trip to Disney World. They had been there many times before this, but it was a new experience for me. The only memory I have of this trip is through video taken on the new video camera my dad got at the time (which is now being replaced...end of an era!), but it was apparently different from any other trip. We stayed off resort grounds, and this is the only time I have ever done so, with multiple members of my family (Grandma, Grandpa, etc.)...I got sick, we rode in a limo, many things that I don't remember. 

But something obviously happened on this trip that would change my life forever. I guess you could say it was my parents that sealed my fate, as instead of taking me to the generally visited Magic Kingdom, they took me, for the first time ever in a Disney park, to Epcot. My first attraction: Spaceship Earth. 

Since then, I've been on Spaceship Earth around 125 times...more than even many cast members can think of. In fact, on my last tour at Disney I went on with my dad, we started the tour at Epcot by saying our name, where we are from, and then a fact about ourselves...like if it was our first trip to Disney or something. Here's what I said: "I'm Lizzie, I'm from Seymour, Wisconsin, and I've been on Spaceship Earth over 100 times." Everyone couldn't believe it, and our tour guide asked how many times I'd been to Disney...which I replied "somewhere over 20." No one could believe it...and considering my age, I had everyone else blown away. My dad laughed the whole time. 

And so, that's why Spaceship Earth is my favorite ride...and if you are ever in need of a birthday or Christmas present for me, I collect pretty much everything Spaceship Earth (I've got a Spaceship Earth bank, snow globe, pen, bouncy-ball, wind-up toy, charms, almost all of the spaceship earth pins, and plenty more). Let's just say that if it involves Spaceship Earth, I'll love it. And while we're at it, did you know that you can see Spaceship Earth from Space? And finally, one of my favorite Disney smells is none other than the famous "Rome-burning" smell...if you want to know what the Library of Alexandria burning how many hundreds of years ago smells like...just ask. I'll tell you! Oh, and the triangle pattern...very hard to draw over 1,000 individual triangles to make up a giant sphere. 

Back to the Future:



Yeah, this one hasn't changed AT ALL, and I doubt it ever will.

Spaceship Earth will ALWAYS hold a special place in my heart, although I'm pretty sure that in the two years since I did this photo challenge the last time, the number is closer to 150 than 125. There's just something about Spaceship Earth that I can't quite pinpoint, and if it was instilled as my favorite before I could even remember it being so, then that makes a lot of sense. I guess it's always been that way, at the very top of the list, no matter how many new attractions appear or how many times they change it.

Have a magical day!

(Note: This blog post was written on August 19).

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