Dapper Day Fall 2014 Walt Disney World

On September 27, 2014 I attended one of my favorite events that takes place at the Walt Disney World Resort over the calendar year, Dapper Day. This year, as last year, it took place at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and most of the events happened in the afternoon. It was literally one of the best days I have ever had in that park, and I love that park a lot.

I started off with a few pictures on the main street leading up to the Sorcerer’s hat where I was confused for a citizen of Hollywood Character performer, which basically made my whole day and some photos with the Dapper Day photographer who I bumped into pretty much right away. Then I had lunch with two amazing friends at the Fifties Primetime Cafe, which was the perfect setting for more photos and the food was incredible. I had the pot roast with a chocolate milkshake. Our waitress was our “babysitter” and the family next to use was amazing and shared their dessert credits with us so I had a Coke float as well. It was so good and the interaction with the cast members there was so much fun. After lunch we made our way over to Star Tours where I got to be the Rebel Spy, for the first time ever!! Second Magical Moment of the day! Then we headed to Sunset Blvd to take some pictures with the Dapper backgrounds there and we had some amazing Photopass cast members and we met up with the Dapper Avenger Squad (who looked literally so amazing!)

Then we headed off to the Magic of Disney Animation to meet Minnie Mouse and take some more photos. We did what we do best and made friends with the girl in line behind us and she’s in our photos 🙂 Then we went to the Disneybound Meet up at 3 in front of the Great Movie Ride for a HUGE group photo. This is always a fun meet up because there are so many people who share similar interests, love of Disney, old Hollywood and vintage fashion. I always meet amazing people and get great pictures at this one.

The next meet up was the Dapper Day meet up at the Studio Backlot Tour for one last ride on its last day of operation, again amazing photos. I love that ride and wish that it wasn’t closing but it was nice to ride it for the last time with lots of other people who loved it too and loved the backstage aspect of Hollywood. What was truly special was that the automated narrator actually wasn’t working in the beginning so the cast member stepped up and spoke the spiel from memory for the people on the tour. Once the voice over kicked back in it was back to normal. For those who don’t know, the Studio Backlot Tour used to always have a live cast member tour guide so to have one for half of my last tour on the ride was quite special, it was half of the old attraction and half a ride as it was with the automated narrator. 

The biggest meet up of the day was the Dapper Day Meet up at the Great Movie Ride. Everyone who wants to gets in line together to ride the Great Movie Ride together to really get the Old Hollywood mood. I was lucky enough to be asked to ride in the car that the Dapper Day folks would be photographing, which was awesome to share with my friend Carolyn. As always, lovely conversation with the people in line behind us, who were also cast members (a lot of the people at Dapper Day are). Again…lots of photos.

My last meet up of the day was with Magical Ribbons, a really talented bow maker that I met on Tumblr and have met in the parks a few times! She’s one of the sweetest people ever and it’s always nice to see her! We sat around a table and chatted for a bit and saw the Frozen Fireworks. After that I headed home after a VERY successful Dapper Day! I had a truly amazing time and took well over 500 pictures. If I saw any of you that day, feel free to comment and share your pictures!

Historic Windermere- Ellie Project Adventure 1

Not that long ago, I took my first trip under what I’m calling the Ellie Project (Description here). I went to the historic section of a town called Windermere in the Orlando, FL area. I had driven through the area many times getting to the mall or getting to the museum in Orlando. I loved driving through the area because it always kind of looked like time had left it behind. The cars always seemed a bit out of place as did the music that was playing in my car. I decided to go to Windermere pretty much on a whim one day after I completed my new hire paperwork for my new job. However, the video got corrupted and is gone, I do have a little bit. This area is seriously a gem in its own right. It contains a beautiful memorial to 9/11 created by a local Eagle Scout in memory of the many countries that lost citizens in the 9/11 attacks on New York City. There is a tile dedicated to each country that lost their people. 

Windermere also has a historic library, a preserved school building a beautiful library and the original town hall. I took pictures of all of it and spent a fair amount of time just walking around. I managed to acquire an Orange County Library card which makes me a Floridian I guess. I hope you enjoy the pictures and can feel the same amount of history surrounding the area as I did. I love historic towns and hope to visit lots more of them! All of the photos are published in the gallery called My Digital Adventure Book. Adventure is out there, off we go! 

Ellie Project: An Explaination

Hi fellow lovers of all things Disney, travel and adventure! I am starting something called the Ellie Project. For those of you familiar with the film Up from Disney and Pixar, Ellie is the wife of Carl, the “grumpy old man” from the movie. Unfortunately she passes away before she gets to realize her dream of traveling the world and going to the tropical heaven of Paradise Falls. I, like Ellie, have a real passion for travel and adventure and like Ellie, I’m on a super tight budget. For now, while finances are still tight, I will be taking little adventures around the Orlando area, but eventually I want to move on to bigger and better adventures! I will be keeping the photos on a Digital Adventure Book (Ellie had a book called My Adventure Book) and I will post little stories and blog posts about my adventures in the Orlando area. I will also be vlogging about them and posting the videos on my Youtube channel (there is a link to subscribe here).

A lot of things have inspired me to start going on little adventures and trying to travel more. Some are related to Disney and some aren’t. Some are phrases like “Put on your Sunday clothes, there’s lots of world out there” which is from a song called Put on Your Sunday Clothes and featured in Wall-e. I also love the movie Brave, so the line “I will rise, I will fly, chase the wind and touch the sky” is really resonant for this! Another one is “There’s a great big beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day” and the whole song from the Carousel of Progress. It reminds me how much Walt loved progress but at the same time had a lot of respect for the past. I have every intention of going to lots of historical towns, since I majored in history and history is my passion. I am also constantly inspired by Walt’s love for travel and learning about the past and dreaming about the future. He was always inspired by travel and sought to bring that inspiration into his films and his parks, I really would love to see the places he saw. I also really want to just walk in his footsteps a bit, go to Marceline and Chicago and Disneyland (as much as I love Disney, I have only been to one Disney park and that’s WDW). I want to see the world that lies outside of the USA and even the small piece of the world that lies within the US borders. I have traveled abroad before and loved every minute of it and would give anything to travel abroad again. I am also constantly inspired by the places portrayed in the Disney parks and films. They always take their viewers on journeys to places far away and possibly nonexistent, except in our imaginations, but those imaginary places were inspired by real places. I want to explore the Scotland of Brave, the Paris of Hunchback of Notre Dame and Ratatouille, and the New Orleans of Princess and the Frog.

My last source of inspiration is a professor I had in college. He was the head of my theatre department. His name was Mark Hallen and unfortunately he recently passed away. He taught me a lot of the amazing lessons I learned in my 4 years in college. He was always allowing our imaginations to take us wherever we wanted them to in the Actors Lab class and he encouraged safe but boundless creativity. He always said “off we go” before we embarked on a fantastic theatrical adventure. He allowed characters and casts to travel to the deep South for a production of Twelfth Night and to New England for Our Town as well as the Middle East and the US for a production of My Soldiers. He spent a lot of time traveling abroad and every class with Mark was an adventure and a treasure. He encouraged adventure and play in a way unlike anyone I have ever encountered before. I think he and Walt Disney would have actually gotten along quite well (or they would have butt heads and hated each other haha). Ironically enough, Mark really loved the movie Wall-e and we talked about Disney quite a lot, even if it was just him making light of how much I love it. I spent a lot of time with Mark and it was clear from the time we spent together that his travels and his respect for both the past and the “here and now” made him the person that all of his students knew and loved. He is probably one of my biggest inspirations in life. He is the reason I respect stories and art and theatre the way that I do and constantly am finding new ways to make and create outside of and within the realm of theatre.

A lot of my trips and adventures will hopefully lead to so incredibly photography and amazing stories. I intend to also use them as research trips for several writing endeavors that I have begun. Well, that’s a pretty decent summary of what I am calling the Ellie Project, inspired by so many different things and people. If you would like to keep up with the Ellie Project, I will be hashtaging it #EllieProject #OffWeGo on Twitter, so follow me there and on Instagram for more informal shots. I will also post a lot about it on here and on my Tumblr (but less so there except for photos). It may take a bit of reworking to get the blog formatted to accommodate the page but stick with me. If you would like to donate to make the adventures a bit more exciting or far away, feel free to click the donate button on my home page, however due to my work schedule, it may be a bit before I can get enough time off to go anywhere too far away, hence the exploration of the amazing places in my own back yard, including the touristy and not so touristy places around Orlando, FL. Adventure is out there, I’m off to find it and I would love you to join me, Off we go and keep sifting through shelves.

My beautiful desk…

So, of all the things I am proud of in this world, my job, my theatrical performances, my grades and my writing…this is one of my favorite accomplishments. I managed to acquire a Harry Potter themed desk for my bedroom (unfortunately, it is in my Philadelphia home and not my Orlando one) and have put all of my Harry Potter items together on it and made it look like it was taken from the Gryffindor common room. Enjoy and let me know what you think!