WDW: Day Two

Our first stop in Orlando has been for many years the Mary Queen of the Universe Shrine. It is a stunning Catholic Mission Church, as opposed to a Parish Church with region over which it has authority, built by and for tourists. The Shrine is simply beautiful and puts you in a tranquil frame of mind after a hectic travel schedule. We normally light candles for the souls of relatives in Purgatory and pray before the Blessed Sacrament. The trip is simply not complete without a stop at each of the stained glass windows. My personal favorite is the depiction of the major Church Councils. This year we also walked the rosary garden, which was beautiful in so many ways. No trip is complete without a visit to the gift shop which has a large collection of wonderful books. I purchased only three this year one on the Mass, another on the development of the Mass from ancient times and finally a new text on Freemasonry and Catholicism by William Whalen. I was going to read "Representing the Republic: Mapping the United States, 1600-1900" by John Rennie Short, but now I suspect I wil be reading the book on the ancient Mass.

After spending a few hours at the Shrine, we went to a nice little outdoor mall to pick up things we had forgotten and hit the discount Disney Store. The girls ran into a few nice things and I picked up a great "Wilderness Lodge Bass Derby" t-shirt for the trip. We had a quick lunch and then went back to Embassy Suites to meet my mother and stepfather, who had just arrived a bit earlier.

Our big plan for this evening was to go to the dinner show: Arabian Nights. My youngest is a total horse fanatic and the show was a little bit of a surprise for her. We bought VIP passes for the whole bunch of us so she could attend the meet-and-greet with the horses. We had seats in the 3rd row, which was just the right distance and height for a kid to really see the show. The food was so-so, which was better than I expected. The show was just incredible. The girls were absolutely entranced the whole time, and I must say that I enjoyed it as well. I would strongly recommend this dinner show to anyone with a horse lover in the family.