the most magical place on earth

Its late Thursday night, actually early Friday morning, and I'm writing this from the floor outside my hotel room in Orlando. My grandmother and sister are asleep in our room, and I'm trying not to wake them up. I brought my laptop because I thought I might need to do work for a couple hours while I was here, but luckily that hasn't been the case, at least not yet.

I arrived Wednesday night, and by the time my dad and sister picked me up at the airport and we drove to WalMart to buy a few simple groceries (so we wouldn't need to eat out as much for meals), it was pretty late by the time I got in. I spent most of today at Downtown Disney and the Magic Kingdom with Katie and Jacob, Katie's boyfriend Vince, and his kids Ally and Cameron.

I'm sure that over the next few days and the myriad of family things I'll be doing, that I'll have a lot to say. For now, though, I'll just say this - the entire Walt Disney empire just blows me away. There is nothing, absolutely nothing on earth like it. I'm amazed by the level of detail at each part of the experience, and just the hugeness of the whole experience, and even the excellence of it. The parade tonight was just amazing, as were the fireworks (what I could see of them, anyway, as we tried hard to get out of the park before the mad rush after the fireworks, and so were each practically dragging a child walking sideways so they could follow us and still see the show at our backs).

The whole thing has really had me wondering about Walt Disney, the man. He's been dead for over 40 years - did he have any idea of the legacy he would leave, or the size of that legacy? What would it be like to have that kind of vision, to have that kind of impact on the world?