Lately Ben has had kind of a Fantasia thing going on. He has a large collection of Sorcerer's Apprentice books, as well as lots and lots of photos of Sorcerer Micky and his Enchanted Brooms. This past Friday when I got him from school, his first words to me were not the usual "Hi, daddy!" No, his first words were a very deliberate "Mickey. Broom." So I pretty much knew right away that we were going to have a Sorcerer's Apprentice weekend. I hand no idea, however, that it would be quite so photographic a weekend. Read on to hear more about it, and see a sampling of the photos that Ben himself took.

I promised Ben before bedtime on Friday that we would go to Disney the next day, and so I was not surprised when he rolled out of bed on Saturday morning, looked me straight in the eye, and said, "Broom!" It occurred to me that he had not seen the giant brooms at the All Star Movies resort since our very first trip to Walt Disney World back in the spring of 2002, so I decided we should stop by there for a visit before going to the Magic Kingdom. We got ourselves organized for the day, Ben made sure that he had his camera with him, and we headed out.

As I entered the Disney property via Western Way, Ben was a little concerned when I turned right instead of left. As we approached the entrance to the All Stars, though, he got pretty interested. These were the resorts that we stayed in on our first to visits to WDW, but I don't believe Ben has been back there since then. Clearly, though, he recognized them. We had no trouble passing through the security gate, and in very quickly we were parked and walking into the hotel lobby. Ben took a quick tour of the gift shop there, and then I led him out into the main courtyard with the giant Mickey pool flanked on either side by the Fantasia buildings. Ben stopped dead in his tracks, and then fumbled for his camera. Right off the bat he took this picture:


All total there are four such giant brooms, plus the giant sorcerer's hat, and Ben stopped to examine each one of them in turn. He walked up to them, touched them, and at one point stretched up to touch one of the huge buckets of water. He was, needless to say, very pleased. Even so, we only stayed a few minutes before heading back to the car to carry on to the Magic Kingdom.

After parking and taking a tram into the Ticket and Transportation Center, Ben's next request was to go to the Fantasia store at the Contemporary. We hopped onto the Resort Monorail, and after making stops at the Polynesian, the Grand Floridian, and the Magic Kingdom, finally we arrived at the Contemporary. Ben was grinning ear to ear as we went down the escalator and walked into the Fantasia store. The thing he likes about that particular shop is the line of Enchanted Brooms on all of the top shelves, Once again he got out his camera and took several pictures.


After admiring all of the brooms there, Ben took me by the hand, exclaimed "Broom!", and then led me on to the escalators down to ground level and the walking path to the Magic Kingdom. He obviously had a next stop in mind, and I was just along for the ride.

Sure enough, once inside the park and onto Main Street, Ben led me to the gift shop with all of the blown glass figures. I wasn't sure why exactly he was interested in that shop, he'd never particularly focused there before, but apparently he had found something new there the last time he went with his mom. Right away his camera came back out, and he took one last set of pictures.


We spent a bit more time at Disney that day, but photographically Ben was completely satisfied at that point. "Mickey. Broom." All in all it was a good day.