December 26, 2012: Boxing Day

Boxing Day, 2012. When you try to figure out the twelve days of Christmas, Boxing Day is probably one of them. Boxing Day started out as a day when the leisure class gave their servants a day off with a box of goodies. The day has morphed to a day when you box up old stuff that you have replaced with new stuff at Christmas and give that box of stuff to someone less fortunate. What a perfect plan, clean the old stuff out of your house and make someone happy with, what to someone else, is new stuff. Of course, if you got a Rock’em Sock’em Robots for Christmas, Boxing Day has an entirely different meaning. There are multiple opportunities to give at Walt Disney World. Some people save toiletries at WDW and donate them to Give Kids The World. GKTW also accepts cash donations, so help give some seriously ill child an opportunity to visit the World. At various locations around WDW you can donate money to Wildlife Preservation by purchasing WDW Wildlife Conservancy Badges and supporting different aspects of Disney Wildlife care.

Give Kids The World

 Notice on Allison's Ticket Lanyard: A Disney Wildlife Conservancy Badge.

The Erie Canal opened in 1825 and made New York City a major world port. The canal traversed New York between New York City and Buffalo, allowing passage to what was then the Western Frontier by opening access to the Great Lakes. In 1824, before the canal was completed, a detailed Pocket Guide for the Tourist and Traveler, Along the Line of the Canals, and the Interior Commerce of the State of New York, was published for the benefit of travelers and land speculators—possibly America's first tour guide. Work was completed on October 26, 1825. The event was marked by a statewide "Grand Celebration," culminating in successive cannon shots along the length of the canal and the Hudson, a 90-minute cannonade from Buffalo to New York City. A flotilla of boats, led by Governor Dewitt Clinton aboard the Seneca Chief, sailed from Buffalo to New York City in ten days. Clinton then ceremonially poured Lake Erie water into New York Harbor to mark the "Wedding of the Waters." On its return trip, the Seneca Chief brought a keg of Atlantic Ocean water back to Buffalo to be poured into Lake Erie by Buffalo's Judge Samuel Wilkerson, who would later become mayor.

There are a couple of good ways to memorialize the Erie Canal at WDW, ride the Rivers of America in the Magic Kingdom that memorializes river travel in the USA, particularly travel on the Mississippi River. Another good way is the visit the Fountain of Nations at EPCOT. Just as water from Lake Erie was poured into New York Harbor and water from the Atlantic Ocean was poured into Lake Erie, water from 22 nations was poured into the Fountain of Nations in 1982; a nice symbolic way of noting that Walt Disney World unites the world in the international community of EPCOT.

The Fountain of Nations, which puts on a show every 15 minutes, is behind us.

I am wearing my very cool EPCOT Mexico Pavilion shirt my wife bought me.

Not to be a fashion critic but, Allison is wearing a Dee's Drive-In T-shirt, a local Louisa, KY treasure.

Remember, your best excuse is always: waiting for your dreams to come true.