Day 1598: Hamilton

When I was first debating audition for the Knights on Broadway, I was neck deep in lyrics from the hit musical Hamilton. I'd spent a good portion of the summer making an attempt to learn every last word in My Shot, had a good handle on The Schuyler Sisters, was currently obsessed with Burn and was just beginning to aquatint myself with Guns and Ships, not to mention the numerous other numbers in the show. In fact, My Shot became one of the two songs that got me through auditions, as I distinctly remember listening to it on repeat alongside I Have Confidence from The Sound of Music as I got ready for and headed to callbacks. As we opened our Christmas show, it was My Shot that played in the opening video, Alexander Hamilton that we performed on stage, and Hamilton: An American Musical that provided the basis for the backstory to our show. All in all, one could say that Hamilton provided me with the encouragement to not throw away my own shot, and it brought me right back into the world of Broadway that I'd sort of lost in the years previous. 

So when the idea of surprising Megan with tickets to see the Chicago production just wouldn't leave me alone, I sought out some balcony seats for a performance in May and prepared myself for the long months of waiting ahead. The worst part about waiting though? Not telling Megan. In fact, all of Knights on Broadway knew about the surprise and our director almost let the secret slip at one of our Christmas performances, but somehow I managed to keep things under wraps until Christmas Day, and needless to say, she loved the surprise.

When our chance to be in the room where it happens finally came around, it was absolutely one of the most surreal experiences of my life. In fact, the closest feeling I can compare it to was when we visited Great Sand Sand Dunes National Park last July, when even as we drove away, it still didn't feel real. Seeing a show like Hamilton is an experience in itself, in more ways than one, and something tells me it's not an experience I'll be able to replicate anytime soon. 

First and foremost, Hamilton is an award winning show...one of the biggest actually. It won a near record number of Tony Awards in 2016, and has jumped to the top of the National Stage faster than most shows of its kind (who remembers 1776?!?). Hamilton has gained a dedicated fanbase, has impacted the way our population looks at musicals, and may just be one of the most important musicals of all time. When you see a production like that, it's incredibly inspiring. 

Second, for someone like me, who has a very real personal connection to the show (how many people get to say they've had an opportunity to perform part of the show), it was incredible to see it come to life for real in front of my own eyes. There's something strange about forcing yourself to stop from singing the lyrics because you're so used to performing them (whether that be on the stage or in your car), and when you finally get to see a musical that you've loved for so long and has impacted you so much, the feeling is indescribable. 

Hamilton is a musical for a new generation of Broadway Fans and Musical Lovers alike, and combines so much of what we've learned in the many years of Broadway with the identities of our country and world. It brings what we thought we knew about history into new light, and tells the story of those history overlooks. And above all else, Hamilton has inspired us to not throw away our shot, whatever that chance or opportunity might be. It sort of reminds me of the way Disney has consistently taught us to keep dreaming and moving forward, encouraging us to make the most of every door that opens to us, which is probably why Lin Manuel-Miranda fits in perfectly with Disney Legends we've been adoring for years (check out his work in Moana and the upcoming Mary Poppins Returns). 

If you haven't had a chance to see Hamilton, it's now playing in three cities across the United States - New York, Chicago, and San Francisco - and will soon open a production in London as well as a touring company throughout the country! Tickets aren't necessarily cheap due to popularity, but trust me when I tell you that it's worth every penny...or ten dollar bill, if you get my drift. 

Have a magical day!

Day 1181: Positives and Negatives

There's something to be said about a Disney vacation in comparison to pretty much every other trip. When you combine the pure magic that is Walt Disney World, or any of the Disney Parks around the world really, with your closest family and friends, favorite characters, and world class attractions, it usually turns out pretty great. Yeah, we definitely all have our meltdown moments, and who wouldn't with the heat and crowds that the parks are so well known for, but somewhere along the line, I've found that I rarely remember those low points. 

Something goes wrong on every trip. It doesn't matter where you're going or how many times you've been there - something goes wrong. From there on out, you can try to enjoy the remainder of your trip, and usually that works out rather well, but upon returning home you're left with the bitter distaste of that terrible experience, whatever it may be. For instance, when I went to Colorado years ago, I had the absolute worst day of my life, and it just happened to be my birthday too. I had intense motion sickness on the bus, only made worse by minor altitude sickness, and when we finally got the amusement park we were heading to, security was terrible (we ended up walking back to our bus multiple times) and there wasn't much for me to do in the park anyway. Likewise, when we went to Chicago the following year, the trip was sort of a hot mess, and left most of us feeling like we'd wasted a couple hundred bucks. In either case, I still to this day remember those negative moments of the trip. 

With Disney, on the other hand, things are a bit different. My trips sort of start to muddle together, but I certainly don't remember the downsides of most of the trips, other than maybe the more recent ones. And in any case, they don't really define the trip, at least not the way those other memories defined the other trips. Bad things definitely do happen - I've gotten sick at Disney before, had arguments with family members, and so on and so forth - but I just don't seem to recall many of them. So why is it that anytime I travel somewhere else I remember those struggles, but I don't with Disney? 

Could it be a subconscious effort to make Disney consistently the ideal vacation destination? Or rather, an effort to make sure Disney is never tarnished in my mind, regardless of the bad things that might happen? Maybe the good moments just outweigh any less than favorable memories? Or maybe, because it is Disney, the magic just turns everything around? It's sort of hard to say, but it is an interesting debate, and no matter what, really we should be focusing on the good moments anyway, like seeing the Rocky Mountains for the first time or hanging out in a giant hotel room in Chicago with my friends. Those are the memories worth focusing on anyway. 

Have a magical day!

Day 1137: The Wonderful Wizard

You may not know this, but The Wizard of Oz was easily one of my favorite movies as a kid. I remember the days of watching it constantly, and one of the earliest presents I remember was a VHS copy of the film all my own. Granted, my love of The Wizard of Oz hasn't really continued, at least not in the force it had when I was three, and it also happened to instill a terrible fear of thunderstorms and tornadoes in me. Still, when I found out my high school theater program was doing a production of the musical version of The Wizard of Oz, I was pretty excited. It's not a terribly complicated musical, and I loved their production of it...which I apparently have no pictures to prove I went.

The musical version, if you don't know much about it, is a bit different from the film or the book, although personally I still think the movie is the way to go if you really want to experience The Wizard of Oz. As you can probably imagine, the musical features a couple additional musical numbers, including The Jitterbug, which does its job of getting stuck in your head for what seems like forever.

It's also funny though because in the matter of two months I'll see four different musicals: I saw CHICAGO here at SNC, Newsies on tour, now The Wizard of Oz at my high school, and finally I'll be heading to see The Little Mermaid at another local high school in March. Talk about a lot of music, right?

Have a magical day!

Day 460: Treasures

You may be wondering what I was doing in Chicago this weekend, aside from visiting my Godfather. Well the answer is pretty simple: Treasures of the Walt Disney Archives.

Back in 2011 when I went to the D23 Expo, we did see the Treasures exhibit, but when we heard that it was coming to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, we instantly started talking about going to see it there. Or at least I did. After a long while we finally picked a weekend and were able to go.

Now, the exhibit is absolutely beautiful. If you follow me on Instagram you probably got spammed with my pictures of everything they had there, but I was just so excited. It's not every day you get to be surrounded by Disney when you're so far away from home, right? If you don't follow me on Instagram, here's a recap:

We had an interesting conversation after we left the museum, about if we could take one artifact from the exhibit what would it be. Like, any one thing that you could own. Answers varied in my family, but I finally came up with debating between The Original Cast Member Badge created for Walt Disney (seen below) or the Bird Cage Walt bought in New Orleans that went on to inspire the Tiki Room and Audio Animatronics in General. I also thought of the Mary Poppins props and stuff from The Haunted Mansion, but it's just so hard to pick one thing!

The Exhibit still runs through early May, so if you haven't seen it already and are in the area, GO SEE IT! It was absolutely wonderful and I am very thankful I got to travel to Chicago to visit and see it. I can't wait for D23 next year where I'll hopefully be able to see more, because really, I'm never going to see enough. 

Have a magical day!

(Note: This blog post was written on April 8 due to travel).

Day 459: On the Road

My family tends to travel a lot. That may have already been obvious by the simple fact of how often I've been to Walt Disney World, but either way we do like to go to places closer to home too. My Godfather actually lives in Chicago, which is about a four hour drive from us, and we've visited him a ton of times throughout my life. A little closer, about two and a half hours away, is Milwaukee, where we love to go to the museums and such. We've been other places too, all over the state, and sometimes out of Wisconsin.

So it should be no surprise to you that we have a distinct few songs we tend to listen to on these long drives. In fact, when we drove down to Milwaukee to catch our flight to Orlando a few weeks ago, we had a similar playlist of songs...all of which were Disney of course. I figured I would share a couple of my personal favorites.

Once Upon A Time

Now, I only put this on the list because it tends to be what I listen to when everyone else is asleep. I LOVE to listen to music while I'm driving, even if it's just really quietly in the background. And since I have the music of both Season 1 and 2 on my phone, I might as well use it! Actually, considering that lately it's become my reading playlist too, I think I got my money's worth out of it. The music by Mark Isham is beautiful, and in case you were wondering, my favorite tracks are as follow: Cinderella (S1), The Road to True Love (S1), The Clock Moves (S1 - This is my absolute favorite!), True Love (S2),We Are Both (S2), The Duelists (S2), Tallahassee (S2), and The Adventure Begins (S2).

The Muppets

It seems to me that one of my Brother's favorite CDs is the soundtrack from The Muppets. I'm talking the newer Muppets movie from a few years ago. Granted, with the awesome songs in that movie how could you not love it? Although I do get a little irritated when he continuously plays "The Answer is No" over and over and over and over and over....

Star Wars

Or any John Williams music really. Indy most certainly falls into this category too. I think our favorite time to play any Star Wars song is when we're driving on this one road near home, and if we time it just right and we're in The Falcon (that's my car, remember?), then it's basically like I'm Han Solo because my brother will be playing "The Asteroid Field" which is what I call "Han Solo is the best Pilot ever" song. It's a good time, and did we escape the Empire? You bet we did.

Disney/Pixar Greatest

My brother also likes to play this game (have you figured out who's generally in charge of the music yet?) where we have to guess what movie the song is from, and his favorite CD to do this with is the Disney/Pixar Greatest CD. It has tracks from most of the Pixar movies (obviously not the newest ones) and he'll just go through them and be like "WHAT MOVIE!?!" and then we have to figure it out and he gets angry when we get it wrong. Although at this point we've played it so many times it's hard to get it wrong.

Disney In General

When we did drive down to Chicago this weekend, we happened to listen to a playlist of Disney. I have it for when I'm at home doing chores or something and feel like singing. So I'll put it on and it has the classic Disney songs on it. Ok, not all of them, but a bunch of them, and I'll just go around the house singing these songs while I work. They have always said that it goes faster when you're having fun, right?

In the end, I guess it kind of changes depending on where we're going, but overall I think the general theme for us is Disney music. But really, that shouldn't surprise you at this point. I do write a blog about Disney in my everyday life, don't I?

Have a magical day!

(Note: This blog post was written on April 8 due to Travel).

Day 373: Road Trip!

Today marks the day, the first one in a long time, that my parents went to Walt Disney World without my brother and I. They went a few times when I was younger, just by themselves, but since then we've pretty much always gone together. I guess we just got to be that age where it's hard for us to be anywhere but home if they were to go and us stay, but we were too young to stay by ourselves. So then you have to get someone to stay with us and watch us and everything, but that's another story. 

Now though, I'm 18, and since my brother is 14, and I'm home from college and can drive, it just made sense and it was easy enough for us to stay home while they went on a vacation by themselves. Doesn't mean that I'm happy about it, but I do get the house somewhat to myself for a week and a half, so that works for me I suppose. 

But as you know, Wisconsin is cold. Like REALLY cold. And in Green Bay, the airport they were originally supposed to fly out of, flights were grounded. Meaning that they had no way of getting to Chicago, where their connecting flight was still flying to Orlando. They intended to drive to Chicago and leave the van there, but when my brother earned another snow day because the school buses weren't working, we set out along with them and then made the wonderful four hour drive back home. 

I'll admit, I was super tired. With maybe three hours of interrupted sleep that night it was pretty interesting driving all that way. It's ok though, I just kept upbeat music on and stopped for Starbucks at one point, just to keep myself going. And then when we did get home I took a nap. A well earned nap if I do say so myself. 

And that's what I did on this lovely day. I drove my parents to Chicago so they could go to Disney World. And then they sent me this picture: 

Yeah. There's that. They leave for a cruise on Saturday though, so then maybe I won't be quite so jealous. As much as I love Captain Hook, I absolutely hate boats. Hence the reason I am currently here in freezing Wisconsin instead of Florida. 

Have a magical day!