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2013: Florida Spring Break Trip 2013: Getting There
2013: Orlando Spring Break Trip: Getting there
For Spring Break 2013 we went to Florida to visit the Amusement Parks and the Beach. Since we wanted to go to Sea World, Disney, and Universal the ticket prices were pricey (you get discounts for multiple days at the same parks, but not across the different parks). So, instead of flying we decided to drive. We started out after school ended on Friday and drove until I was too tired to drive and then I found a hotel that we stayed at.
We purposely took a longer route to Florida so that we could add to the number of States that my son and our exchange student had been to. I used this page to highlight the routes that we took there and back. Although it was crazy we drove all the way back in one day!
The background to this page is a real map that I cut to fit onto the pages. BTW – it is expensive to do this – I had no idea that maps were so expensive! I used a highlighter to mark the “there” and “back” routes.
The pictures on the left hand side of the spread are pictures at the Welcome Centers to each State as we crossed the borders. Unfortunately we couldn’t get some of them since I was driving in rain and the dark and many of them on the way down there were closed.
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Disney Vacation 2008 – Ephemera
Disney Vacation 2008 – Funny Story and Ephemera
So our adventure at Disney World was almost over – but we had one last funny story from the last few minutes we were on the property. If you click on the picture above you should get a bigger version of it and you can zoom in to read what happened. But this Mickey was part of the outcome of the story. Our bags were so full that we had to carry him on to the plane for the trip home!
This set of pages highlights all of the ephemera that we collected on the trip that didn’t make it onto the other pages. I don’t normally do something like this – but my son was so excited about everything that we collected that he didn’t want any of it to be thrown away. The letters in the right hand page above were cut with my Cricut machine and I used the shadow feature to cut a black “shadow” for each of the letters. This very small shadow really helps the letters to stand out on the page.
Disney Vacation 2008 – Ephemera
The left hand page of this spread contains all kinds of things including stickers that we picked up along the way, a Disney stamp on a letter we received, our Disney Photopass, origami from the China Showcase at EPCOT and one of our favorites – a red feather from the Enchanted Tiki Room. Don’t worry we didn’t pull it off of a bird! – during the show some feathers fall from the ceiling and this one fell right into our lap! The right hand page includes digital copies of all of the pictures that we took on the trip as this is a nice way to organize your digital pictures and have backups in case your computer dies. It also includes some fast passes that we never used and the folio with our bill at the end of the vacation.
Disney Vacation 2008 – Ephemera – Park Maps
This is the last page in the album and it is simply extra maps that I picked up from each of the parks. They have no crease marks and are not attached to the paper in anyway. They float freely behind the plastic and are there if we ever want to pull them out and look at them.
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Disney Vacation 2008: EPCOT – Coral Reef Restaurant
Disney Vacation 2008 – EPCOT – Coral Reef Restaurant
On our last night in Disney we went to a fancy restaurant at EPCOT – the Coral Reef. This restaurant is part of The Seas pavilion and has views into the massive aquarium. Part of what is really fun is that if you look carefully you can see people riding “Finding Nemo” on the other side of the aquarium. Our favorite part of this experience was watching all of the fish and turtles swim by while we were there. We had some amazing deserts and even found a “hidden Mickey” which made us very excited.
Disney Tip: Make reservations way in advance – it may be impossible to make a reservation on the day that you are there.
Notice the left hand side of the spread – it includes a “fish guide” that we were given so that we could identify all the fish that we saw.
Disney Vacation 2008 – EPCOT – Coral Reef Restaurant – Open
In this view you can see what the folder looks like open. I carefully cut a slit in the plastic page protector for the folder to slide through so that part of the fish guide is still under plastic. I did this by:
- Placing the background paper inside the plastic protector
- Placing the fish guide on top of the plastic protector where I wanted it to be
- Sliding the fish guide to the right about 1/4 of an inch, so that the fold of the fish guide would overlap the plastic a little on the left side. This keeps the plastic protector from tearing when people are viewing the page.
- Using an Exacto knife to carefully score the plastic.
- Using a pair of sharp pointed scissors to carefully cut along the scored line.
- Putting sticky tabs on the back of the fish guide and sliding it through the cut in the plastic and then pushing down on the plastic and fish guide to secure it in place.
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Disney Vacation 2008: EPCOT – China Showcase
Here is an example of creating a double spread on just one of Disney’s EPCOT Showcase countries – China. My son really enjoyed the China showcase and we spent quite a bit of time in this area. The area is beautiful and the stores are filled with some very exotic items – we enjoyed the food! The entertainment in this area includes Chinese Acrobats which fascinated my son.
The technique that I want to highlight on this spread is using a corner cutter to cut into the photographs. Be very careful and deliberate if you are going to do this, because if you make a mistake you ruin the photograph. Also, if you look very closely at the corners of the spread you will notice 4 unique designs. Those are actually the remnant of the cut made to the photographs that I decided to integrate back into the page.
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Disney Vacation 2008: EPCOT – World Showcase
Disney Vacation 2008 – EPCOT – World Showcase
These pages were created from our time in the World Showcase at EPCOT. The world showcase is an interesting place for younger kids. There are few rides and seems to be built mostly for adults. When we went in March 2008 there was not the Kim Possible Adventure that was there when we went in 2010. I have recently heard that the Kim Possible Adventure is being replaced with the Agent P (from Phineas and Ferb) adventure.
Disney Tip: Join the Agent P Adventure when going to the World Showcase at EPCOT – it is an interactive cell phone based adventure (Disney provides the cell phones). Kids receive calls when they enter certain areas and have to solve mysteries in order to make certain things happen in the park. This is a must have feature to make the World showcase exciting for younger children.
I knew that this part of EPCOT would be less thrilling for my 9 year old son, so I let him run that pace. If he found something interesting we stopped to see it and it often gave me a rest as well :). I used “It’s a small world” paper background as we really felt like we were traveling around the world. Instead of creating a spread for each of the countries highlighted in the World Showcase I just put one picture from each pavilion in this spread.
A fun technique that is appropriate on some scrapbook spreads was that I put a thought bubble right onto one of the photographs taken in the French pavilion. I don’t usually do this – but in this picture it perfectly told the story. My son was tired and just wanted to play in the water.
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Disney Vacation 2008: EPCOT – Garden Grill Restaurant
Disney Vacation 2008 – EPCOT – Garden Grill
While we were at EPCOT we ate at the Garden Grill, which is a revolving restaurant inside of “The Land” Pavilion. The food theme is natural and traditional American farm food.
Disney Tip: Some Specialty Restaurants include character visits – which means you can kill two birds with one stone – you get a great meal and your kids get to meet the characters (without standing in long lines) and get their autographs. Make sure that you make reservations way in advance – it may be impossible to make a reservation on the day that you are there.
While we were in this restaurant I actually felt like we had gone back in time a little bit, which is funny as the pavilion is supposed to foods and farming in the future. Therefore, I chose a 60’s theme print that actually reminded me of a plastic picnic table cover that my family had when I was a kid.
This page doesn’t particularly stand out to me but there are two scrapbooking techniques that I want to point out:
- The first is that the Title block on the left hand page is actually a picture that I took at the entrance to the restaurant. This is an easy way to title a page, but also serves as an easy way to remember from your photographs of the names of the places that you are going. I make it a habit to always take pictures of names of places and historical markers so that I can remember the story.
- The second is the journaling block on the right hand page. If you look carefully at the frame around the block you will notice that it is actually a photograph of the painted mural in the restaurant. This is another thing that I do when we are visiting unique places – taking pictures of the “feel” of the location so that I can use those photographs to help recreate the feel on the page – occasionally they actually end up on the page themselves!
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Disney Vacation 2008: EPCOT – The Seas
Disney Vacation 2008 – The Seas
One of my sons favorite rides at EPCOT was The Seas. It is a slow ride through a series of aquariums with life fish, animations, and animatronics.
Disney Tip: Watch the Seagulls at the entrance of The Seas. About every 10 minutes they “come to life” and start moving and saying “mine….mine….mine” just like in the movie Finding Nemo. It is a pretty funny experience.
There are several fun things to point out in the design of this page. First, the background paper – is actually Sponge bob Squarepants paper. I carefully placed the photographs and ephemera to cover over any Sponge bob markings.
On the left hand page you will notice a port hole with a fish in it. This is a laser cut that I purchased at a scrapbook store and then put all of the pieces together myself. The reason that I like these is that you can place the individual pieces exactly how you like them and they are fun to put together. If you look carefully at Dorie on the right hand bottom corner you will notice that she is hiding in some seaweed. Those are left over pieces from the die cut that I thought made it too busy if I had added them in to it.
The right hand side picture that has Nemo in it as actually a sticker over a failed picture that I took. One of the aquariums had an animated Nemo swimming in it and talking to us. I tried to take a picture of Nemo – but it just came back black (probably a function of the special effects of the ride), so I stuck a sticker of Nemo over the top of the picture and it turned out perfect.
I used a round corner cutter on all of the photographs to create a bubble effect to gently reference the “underwater” theme of this page.
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Disney Vacation 2008: EPCOT – Test Track
Disney Vacation 2008 – Test Track
When I was planning our Disney World trip I knew that we would want to ride Test Track and I knew that the lines would be long to get on this ride. So my son and I moved as quickly as we could (without running) to get to Test Track as soon as we were allowed to enter the park. We ended up being the first people in line!
Disney Tip: Get to the Park early and go the most popular rides first – that way you won’t have to spend a lot of time later waiting in line.
At the beginning of the ride Disney took two automated pictures which you can purchase after the ride. Fortunately we had Photopass, so I was able to connect those photos to our account which we purchased later when we were at home.
Disney Tip: Photopass – is a card that you can get that is scanned each time a Disney photographer takes your picture. It allows you to order all of your pictures later from home, and to manipulate and add Disney characters to them. Some select rides also allow the automated pictures from the ride to be added to your photopass.
If you look carefully at these pages you will notice that two of the pictures are the official Test Track photos and they came with a caution border. I wanted to continue these theme to the other pictures on this page so I used a think black marker to draw lines on yellow paper to create these frames. I did it freehand and so some a little crooked. If I were to do this again I would use a ruler to make the lines straight.
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Disney Vacation 2008 – Liberty Tree Tavern
Disney Vacation 2008 – Liberty Tree Tavern
We had supper in the Magic Kingdom at the Liberty Tree Tavern right after the parade was over. My son asked me how all of the characters from the parade got to the restaurant so fast. He told me that he thought that they must be following us around the parks. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that there are multiple Mickey Mouses. 😦
The Liberty Tree Tavern serves traditional Colonial American food in a fun atmosphere for both kids and adults.
Disney Tip: Some Specialty Restaurants include character visits – which means you can kill two birds with one stone – you get a great meal and your kids get to meet the characters (without standing in long lines) and get their autographs. Make sure that you make reservations way in advance – it may be impossible to make a reservation on the day that you are there.
My son was so excited that we got to see all the Disney characters as you can see from the smiles in the pictures. I chose a light green print for the background paper as it reminded me of old wall paper and then used a slightly lighter paper for the photograph frames. I also created frames for the autograph and used the same corner cutter for all.
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Disney Vacation 2008 – Magic Kingdom – Disney Parade
Disney Vacation 2008: Disney Parade – 1
Disney Tip: Parades – when you first get to the park look at the park schedule and maps to see when the parades are, and what the parade routes are. The pick a place on the route and be there early. You will see Disney cast members starting to prepare the area, and when you do take a seat on the ground right up front – it is the best way to experience it and to get great pictures.
I created a series of 4 spreads (8 pages in total) from the parade in the Magic Kingdom. Parades are a great way to see all of the characters and I took way too many pictures. Ir order to bring them together for the scrapbook I used one picture of each character and paired it with a 3D sticker from the collection I purchased from eBay.
Above we see a young Walt Disney, Mickey Mouse, Jiminy Cricket and Pinocchio. Notice that I used the same corner cutter on all of the photo borders to tie the two pages together.
Disney Vacation 2008: Disney Parade – 2
Above are Aladdin, the Seven Dwarfs, the Evil Queen and Ursula. I again used the same corner cutter on the frames of these photos as for the previous page. A method of tying the pages together.
Disney Vacation 2008: Disney Parade – 3
Above we meet Baloo, Rafiki, Peter Pan, Cinderella and Prince Charming. You will see that I changed the way that I added frames to these pictures. Instead of formal borders I used Disney papers and off set the photographs on them. While the frame paper is similar I matched the colors to that of the photographs.
Disney Vacation 2008: Disney Parade – 4
If you look carefully at the right hand page on this last spread you will notice round silver dots. These are actually some of my favorite ephemera from the trip – they were shooting out of the top of the towers on this float. After the parade was over my son eagerly collected them from the ground as he felt that they had to go in the scrapbook. On this page we see Belle and the Beast, Ariel, Donald Duck and the Chipmunks, Chip and Dale. I used the same corner cutter on the frames of these photographs to tie the two pages together.
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