Wishes And Pixie Dust

Follow the journey of a Wisconsin family of 4 who relocated to the Walt Disney World area in July 2011

Author Archives: Disney Mark


by 1 Comment

New Feature Coming

We have had many requests for information that is more specific to areas that people can move to; quite a few of recent as many out there look to follow their dreams to move to FL.  Now, Jen and I have been looking to do this for a while but we had a challenge.  Do we just drive through cities and towns and report back what we see?  We felt this would leave you short on actual info as you’d ‘see’ the area but not ‘experience’ it.  So, we’ve reached out to many of our local friends and asked if they’d like to provide a short piece for us based on their personal experiences.  How is the shopping?  How are the schools?  How is the traffic?  How are the people and local conveniences?  We know this is what we’d like to have had and now we’re looking to bring it to you.  Watch for these pieces to be posted over the coming weeks and if you have a personal story you’d like to share, please let us know.

Mark and Jen


by 6 Comments

Our Adventures With Belle

Yesterday we were chosen, as attendees of a randomly chosen showing of Philharmagic, to be part of an experience in visiting the new Enchanted Tales with Belle attraction which is in testing at the New Fantasyland prior to soft openings for pass-holders in November.

Follow along with our journey.

You enter the attraction through a queue that winds through the garden of Maurice’s Cottage.  This brings you into the living room where you see a fireplace, stacks of books, a painting of a young Belle with her mother and many other well-themed pieces.  This leads to Maurice’s Workshop.  Here a CM talks about Maurice and gives the story behind each of the pieces on display.  This room also holds the Magic Mirror given to Maurice by the Prince so that he can visit Belle whenever he wants.  The video below doesn’t do this amazing (and very magical) piece of art justice.   As the CM leads us in asking the mirror to take us to the day that Belle and the Beast fell in love, the mirror comes to life.  It sparkles and glows while scenes of the countryside flash by inside; all while growing and growing.  Finally the mirror opens into a doorway into the Beast’s Castle and we are invited inside.

We are then brought into the Wardrobe’s room where everyone is offered a role to play in the story of how Belle met the Beast.  Children get offered the main roles, but adults can ask for a role as well.  As a note, only those who take a role in the story will get their picture taken with Belle.  This may change as we were told that much of what we saw may change before it opens.  Catie was chose to be Footstool (the master’s loyal ‘dog’) and Ben was chosen to be the jumping Pepper shaker.

Lumiere then calls us into the Beast’s Library where we will all surprise Belle and then help her re-enact the story of the day she met the Beast.  The children and adults taking roles help re-enact the story and then march around the library.  Once this is done, all of those who will meet Belle are introduced to her, photos are taken and each gets a special bookmark.

We are led out of the library and into a foyer filled with wall hangings telling the story.  Here we were given a special Photopass card containing all the pictures taken during our visit.

This was a wonderful experience and will be well worth visiting every time you visit the new Fantasyland when it opens in December.  This was magical for the children and the adults and went far beyond any expectation we have ever had with any character meet.  4 big thumbs up from all the Viteks on this new attraction!

~Jen and Mark


by 2 Comments

Happy First Floridaversary!

Today marks one year since we arrived in our new home here in Florida.  We’ve been putting together a few photos into a video retrospective for a few months and have it ready today for anyone to view and (hopefully) enjoy.

This move started out as a dream 6 years ago after our first family visit to WDW together, with a plan to move in the summer of 2014. As the dream grew, we started our blog 2 1/2 years ago as a way to look back on what we did and what we overcame in pursuit of the dream.  Along the way we’ve met many wonderful people, many of whom have also made their dream of living in Florida and near Disney come true.  We thank each and every one of you for your support, your advice and (most importantly to us) your friendship.  A year and a half ago after dinner with our friends Craig and Amy we had a long talk and decided that our plans should move up and we decided on making the jump in July, 2011.  Here it is a year later and our dream is a wonderful reality.

Now, please enjoy our little video.


by 2 Comments

Meets With Friends

A few days ago a FB Disney friend let me know that they had seen a comment on FB about Jen and I being ‘stand offish’ about meeting people when they visit Disney. I wanted to clear things up a bit. For those who don’t know, our youngest son Ben is autistic. For us this makes meeting people a little more difficult as part of Ben’s autism is that he struggles when he needs to ‘wait’. This is especially hard for him at his favourite place…Disney. So, we do often have to keep our meets shorter than we’d like and sometimes have to miss meets, like Lou Mongello‘s Meets of the Month, on short notice; or leave them very quickly. It also makes it harder to plan meets on a short notice as we can never tell what level Ben’s autism will be at on any given day. And we always do our best to explain why.

We do love meeting our new friends and the time we do get to spend with you all, no matter how short it may be.  So, we hope you’ll understand and keep our full situation in mind if we do have to cut a meet short or cancel one; if we do it’s only for Ben’s sake.

Mark and Jen.