Star Wars Weekend

Star Wars Weekend is upon us! Star Wars Weekend is an annual event held at Disney's Hollywood Studios where fans get to celebrate the Star Wars Saga and the animated series, The Clone Wars. During selected weekends, they have limited edition pins, artwork, collectibles, and apparel for the guests to purchase to be part of the unique event. There are also exclusive photo opportunities with Star Wars characters all around the park (with some lines being 40 minutes long).

Last month, I took advantage of an opportunity to be an extra on a Star Wars Weekend promotional shoot. At the 0:08 second mark of the video below, you can see the side profile of my body as I'm eagerly waiting in line to get an autograph with Ashley Eckstein, the voice of Ahsoka Tano from The Clone Wars. Check it out!

Can you tell I was excited?

The Disney characters were dressed up in Star Wars gear. Too adorable. However, I didn't understand why Goofy was in his underwear, but then again, he's a "goofy" kind of guy, isn't he?

Just like when Han Solo was frozen in carbonite, for the first time, guests were able to "carbon freeze" themselves onto a three-dimensional figurine exclusively made for the Disney Parks. I got to go backstage a little bit and see how it all worked out. 

The prisoner chamber where guests wait to get carbon freezed. A picture is taken of their head and it's transformed into a figurine.

Posters and examples of the carbon freeze product. 

End product of the carbon freeze merchandise. Because it takes about 10+ hours to make for each figurine, it has to be mailed to the guest's house.

Life-size model of the Carbon Freeze experience. 

For some reason, I found it very amusing for the Storm Troopers randomly roaming around the Streets of America. I took this candid picture to show just how normal they looked walking around. That guy had no idea what was coming behind him.

A character from The Clone Wars. She told me not to smile so I agreed to pout with her. But as you can tell, I couldn't help myself myself in the end.

Another cool thing they offered this year was exclusive Star Tours name tags with your name in Aurabesh, language/writing system that the Star Wars characters used. 

We went on Star Tours ride just because it was Star Wars Weekend. It only seemed right.

Donald Duck is cleverly designed as Darth Maul.

I had a fun time hunting around for the characters to get their pictures, but shopping was probably my favorite. If you do have the time, I would highly recommend you check out Star Wars Weekend at Disney's Hollywood Studios. There are only several more weekends left: May 25-27, June 1-3 & 8-10. For more information, click here.

I'm thinking of buying this R2-D2 gear. What do you think? Thanks for reading!

Great American Pie Festival

I meant to upload these pictures awhile ago but I had been doing a lot of busy errands that I had almost forgotten about them. On Sunday, April 29, I had the greatest pleasure to attend the Great American Pie Festival 2012 in Celebration, FL! Apparently, it is held annually by the National Pie Council and there are a lot of fun activities to do like... eating pies! I couldn't believe there was an all-you-can-eat pie buffet for $10. Nom!

The entrance before we entered the festival.

The buffet had a huge abundance of cherry pies.

Hmm... boxed up pies to take home?

I believe this was apple pie. Delish!

I couldn't help myself. I wanted a cutie pie too.

My only disappointment was that they didn't have banana cream pie. I heard they had plenty of it the day before but they ran out the next day. At least my stomach still had a pie-ful of food.

Puerto Rico

This past weekend, I had the lovely opportunity to celebrate my lovely girl's, Katie, 21st birthday in Puerto Rico. Why Puerto Rico? I wanted to do a small getaway for awhile and there was a really sweet deal - $300 for airfare and hotel. Plus, I'm in Florida... I mind as well take advantage of this opportunity.

Puerto Rico is a commonwealth, which makes it part of the United States. So getting around the area wasn't too bad. Many people there already knew how to speak English and were very friendly. I was still able to use my US dollars and the AT&T phone service still worked!

Anyways, I'll let the pictures tell the story about my trip. :)

Katie turned 21 at midnight! Happy birthday!

I'm so glad Paola came with us on the trip. She was the only Spanish-speaking person aka our translator.

The next day we went to Old San Juan. It was quite the hike.

Beautiful old Spanish architecture.

Only in the Caribbean you can get this beautiful view. Wow.

Castillo de San Cristobal was one of the fortresses built to protect land-based attacks in San Juan.

Entrance of Castillo el San Felipe del Morro aka Morro Castle/Fort Morro. It was designed primarily to guard the entrance of San Juan bay from enemies. Puerto Rico was a rich port island that served as an entry way into the Caribbean. The Spanish used these fortresses to defend their territories from their enemies at sea. Morro Castle had survived several European attacks from Britain and France.

Back of Morro Castle. Again, a gorgeous view.

Close up view of how you would shoot a ship at sea. Lol.

Tower overlooking the sea. 

Afterwards, we started exploring the streets of Old San Juan.

Puerto Rican food was delicious!

Some more shots of Old San Juan.

So apparently, this is where the first pina colada was created. ;)

Overall, it was a fantastic trip. There were some setbacks to where I couldn't enjoy it fully but I still had fun. The people, food, and culture definitely made the experience worthwhile. I think I picked up on a few Spanish words too. :) Sadly, I feel my moments here in Florida diminishing. I think about the future and wonder where it will take me. I guess I have to play everything by the moment. And I can't always plan everything. Just have to let it flow. ~

Thanks for reading!