Our Disney Christmas Weekend

Life has been crazy lately and we have spent every available second trying to get ready for Christmas next week. Next week!! In fact, we haven't bought a single gift for each other yet :(. Anyway, last minute shopping is what Christmas Eves are for so we didn't let a small detail like that get in the way of our Disney plans for this weekend...

On Friday night we started out at Disney's Hollywood (formerly 'MGM') Studios for their annual Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights. No it's not anything to do with Ozzy and family. This display is a bit more wholesome and one of the most popular Disney attractions during the Holiday season. It features an expansion of the private Christmas light collection started by Jennings Osborne in 1986. Apparently he displayed over 3 million lights at his home for 35 days each year until 1993. Turns out his neighbors weren't exactly impressed with the amount of visitors who came from all over the place to block their roadways each Christmas season and the family was eventually shut down by a Supreme Court order. I know, Bah Humbug, right? Anyway, that's when Disney stepped in to save the day (I feel sure that the liklihood of massive amounts of extra guests at their park had nothing to do with it;)) and expanded the collection to over 5 million lights! They are on display from 6pm-8pm each night from November through January at Disney's Hollywood Studios and if our experience is anything to go by, expect it to be absolutely packed! I had also just heard about 'Hidden Mickeys.' Evidently Disney imagineers have been hiding images of Mickey all over the place for years now. In fact, there's a massive one in the layout of Disney Hollywood Studios itself when viewed from space! A lot of the image is obscured by recent construction but here's how it looked originally:

Pretty cool. Here's a website all about Hidden Mickeys if you're into that kind of thing...click here!). Anyway, we had heard that there are over 40 Hidden Mickeys in the Osborne lights themselves so we decided to see if we could find any for ourselves!

The lights are totally gorgeous...

And there are Hidden Mickeys everywhere!!!

Every seven minutes the lights 'dance...we loved it! Check out Mya discovering a Hidden Mickey in the first clip:)...

In the morning we met up again at Epcot. It was a perfect day for a theme park :)

Mike and I left Maddy in Mexico with the Simards and rushed back to get ready for my first Christmas party as a Disney cast member :). This is the kind of traffic you can get caught in on our street if you're not careful...

The party was at the House of Blues where we met...aaaahh...

And the live band was awesome :)

After the party we headed back to Epcot. Here's Mike at one of my favorite Disney spots - the Epcot ball...

So excited to be here!

Had to grab a beer at the Rose & Crown in England...

Epcot fireworks are just the best :)

The grand finale...