This week is one of the nuttiest for us as of late.

On Tuesday we flew up to Orlando to meet up with Regina's father and some other family to spend a few days at Disney World. We had a 6:00 AM flight arriving at MCO around 6:35 AM. Twenty minutes earlier than expected. Cool!...sortof.

Regina's father had driven from Illinois along with a few others and met us at the airport where we then drove back to the Walt Disney World Dolphin hotel. Nicely there was a room available as soon as we got there at 7:45 AM or so. Pretty nice considering normally the checkin is in the afternoon.

We met back up around 9 to head off to Disney's Hollywood Studios park. They've changed the name from MGM due to the number of studios Disney owns now. It was nice to go see the park during the day since the only other time I'd been there was the Wednesday night party for Lotusphere.

I'd say the favorite attraction of the day was the "Lights, Motors, Action" stunt show. Some very trick specialty cars and bikes doing some pretty killer stunts. Add in the fact that it rained pretty heavily right before the show (and during part of it) and it's even more interesting.

Disney's also creating a new American Idol interactive show, so Jordan Sparks was there filming a video for that project. Kinda neat to watch how that went down. It's possible some of us in the crowd are in the video since they shot it in an open area of the park with visitors all around.

About midday, Regina's brother Adam arrived at the park having dropped off the moving truck containing Regina's grandmother's household items at the Dolphin. More on that later.

I mentioned it rained...well it rained twice, heavily. Ponchos are your friend. Luckily Wednesday would be better.

At the end of the day was the Fantasmic show, which features a story of Mickey fighting all of the evil characters of Disney. Lights, video, music, lasers flames, fireworks....good stuff. I won't say more you have to see it for yourself. One thing though, I've never seen video projected onto water vapor before. Neat stuff.

On Wednesday we went to Disney's Animal Kingdom. Again this is a park I've been to before, but only via Lotusphere and only at night. The Lotusphere experience there was less than entirely positive since it rained all night and the animals weren't out so there wasn't as much to see.

This time though we had the chance to see the various safari tours and attractions where we saw all of Animal Kingdom's creatures. It's pretty amazing how they get all of that into the park. When you're on the safari ride it really doesn't look like you're at the park because you can't see anything but that ride's landscape. Of course the Lions were sleeping...but the Tigers on the walking tour were up and active.

It was Regina's father Harold's birthday, so Regina got him a "Today's my birthday" pin to wear around the park. He was then greeted by many of the park staff wishing him a happy birthday. Embarrasment day for him. ;-)

We finished off the day with dinner at the Rainforest Cafe at the park. All in all a nice couple of days at Disney. But this was just the beginning!