Saturday—Disney’s Hollywood Studios

Saturday was sunny but chilly. Florida is having unusually cold weather but at least the sun is out.

We left early for Disney's Hollywood Studios and arrived at the gate just at opening time. This park has only a few rides but two great live shows--one about filming Indiana Jones stunts and the other about filming car chases. We saw both. The shows, especially the car chase show, held very large audiences and they packed them in. It was really fascinating. For example they revealed that they had three versions of one of the cars--one where it appeared to drive backwards, the body was actually on the chassis backwards with the driver looking out the back window to drive. Another car had the driver mounted outside the car on one side hidden from view so that it looked like no one was driving the car.

The display that I took the most from though was the walk through displays of memorabilia and information about Walt Disney's life. This display ended with a short film about Disney. I'd never really thought much about Disney before this. Like most people I think I took him and his creations for granted. But seeing his life as a whole made me appreciate much more what he actually achieved. That he lived much of his life in debt and suffered a nervous breakdown because of this also gave me pause.

We pretty much covered the whole park except for the backlot tour. Paul and Jade went on the Rock n Roller coaster and Paul tackled the Tower of Terror on his own. Jarrah and Jade went on the Toy Story Mania ride together-the first time they've done this.

At each park we've gone to I've noticed how common it is to see adoptive families as well as inter-racial families. I've been pointing these families out to Jade as I've seen them but they're now so old hat that she's bored when I do so so I've mainly stopped bothering. As well as families with Asian children I've seen families with black children--I presume mainly African American or mixed race American kids. At a guess I would say that I've seen a dozen or more families formed by adoption each day. It is all so common and normal that even I have to cause myself to notice. In a way I'm thinking that this is one of the quiet social movements of this generation which is going to have a profound impact on the future.