Best laid plans...

I had it all planned out - lessons, workbooks, assignments. Schedule. And there is the problem. The teacher has been wholly unable to maintain schedule, on account of his being asleep during class. On account of his dragging his sorry, tired mass back to the hotel each night, barely able to take another step. So I've bagged the whole "homeschool roadtrip" concept, which was ill-conceived to start with. But you already knew that.

Truthfully, there is plenty of educational material in the parks. Rides about energy, communication, environment, conservation, human and plant biology. Most of which is over the kids' heads, but they seem to be soaking it up. One of the shows we watched was the Hall of Presidents. Here they had a "cast member" (disneyspeak for employee) talk for 15 minutes about the voting process, interspersing fun facts about presidential election issues of past and present. Then they had a show featuring 42 life-sized, animatronic dummies - er, presidents - on a stage. They began by introducing them all, in order. This was fun because we'd spent some time reviewing our "Browns Bridge Presidential Acronyms" the night before.

WAJMMQJBHTPZF - pronounced waj-mik-jib-hit-pizf
PIBLJGHGACHCM - pronounced pib-lij-gihug-ach-kim
RTWCHRTEKJNF - pronounced rit-witch-roh-tek-januf
CRBCB - pronounced "Alex, do you mean I have to wait another THREE years for the next consonant?"

It was awesome that we'd been able to list all the presidents correctly before seeing the show.

Anyway, there are many, many cheesy customs here at Disney. Like the term "cast members". And the way all those cast members say "Welcome Home" every time they see you. And the way everything here is called "magical".

On the second night we saw the fireworks display in the Magic Kingdom. Try as I might to come up with a description, only one word came to mind. Magical.