I always think of April as the time for new beginnings, with all the flowers and trees blooming and baby birds starting to chirp away, so this shot we captured on Tom Sawyer’s Island at Disneyland last April is a perfect April calendar shot for me

Thanks to Deb at Focused on the Magic for hosting another great Disney Wordless Wednesday Blog Hop! Make sure to click through to see posts from all the other “hoppers” this week.

One of our favorite holiday traditions each year is to visit Zoolights at the Denver Zoo. I know there are several zoos around the country who do something similiar, but for those of you who have never heard of it, Zoolights is a nighttime event where you walk around the zoo to see the holiday lights that have been put up around the park. In Denver, there are also 150 animated animal light sculptures set up around the park – my kids have their favorites that they look for every year. We always go during the annual University of Colorado alumni event that is held as a special “preview” day before it’s officially open to the public. Typically crowds are a little bit less, snacks like hot chocolate and pretzels are “free” (included in the discounted price) and CU usually does a clothing or food drive as part of the event, so it’s a good way to give back to the community while enjoying some holiday cheer at the same time!

Luckily, there was hot chocolate along the way and it wasn’t as cold as we expected, so it turned out to be a pretty good night. The newly fallen snow made for some neat pictures this year and despite my kids’ expressions in the picture below, we had a really great time!

For those of you in Denver, if you haven’t been to Zoolights yet, I highly recommend it. The animal light sculptures are always a big hit for my kids and they typically have a few of the animal houses, like the giraffe, elephant and rhino houses open, so you can get your “real” animal fix too! Zoolights at the Denver Zoo is open every night between now and January 1st, and you can purchase tickets online at www.denverzoo.org. Oh, and if you want to take pictures of the lights, I HIGHLY recommend a tripod so you don’t get blurry pictures. We did not have one, and while we got a few decent shots, most of them were very blurry. You would think we would learn to heed our own advice by now, but we still haven’t replaced the tripod we had years ago…maybe a good present for Santa to bring us this year!

Have any of you been to Zoolights at the Denver Zoo or anywhere else that does something similar? What did you think?

While many of you may already know that Harper Goff used his childhood hometown of Ft. Collins, CO as inspiration for some of the building designs on Main Street in Disneyland, did you know that Colorado has another connection to Walt Disney and the Disney Company?

I didn’t either, until I had the pleasure of attending D23′s Destination D at Walt Disney World this year. Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the opening of Walt Disney World, Destination D explored the history of “Project Florida” and how Walt Disney World was championed by Roy O. Disney after Walt’s passing.

My newfound trivia was discovered during a session by Walt Disney Archives founder, Dave Smith. As Dave walked through some of the early discussions about the park, he put this image up on the screen and it made me sit up a little straighter and take notice.

For anyone who grew up in Denver and the surrounding areas during the 70s and 80s (like me!) this was an instantly recognizable icon of awesomeness. This was Celebrity Sports Center. The indoor “theme park” in Denver where every little kid begged to have their birthday party. A mix of bowling alley, arcade and water park all rolled into one, it was one of my favorite places to visit when I was young. But, what did it have to do with Walt Disney World?

Turns out that Walt Disney was one of the original group of “Hollywood celebrity” investors who started the project in the late 1950s. This group not only included Walt and his brother Roy, but also famous folks like Jack Benny, Art Linkletter, George Burns and Burl Ives, hence the “Celebrity” part of the name. The project was very successful, and Roy continued to invest in the center even after Walt’s passing in 1966. According to Dave, it appears that Celebrity was even used as a training ground for some of the management team that eventually went to work at Walt Disney World during the early years.

The Disney connection to Celebrity Sports Center ended in the late 1970s as the company moved on to other projects but the center stayed open and remained quite popular through the 1980s. Unfortunately, it finally closed in 1994 and shortly thereafter was bulldozed to make way for a shopping center.

I have very, very fond memories of my visits to Celebrity Sports Center – from my first experience on a “scary” water slide to my killer streak at the Skee-Ball machine. Now knowing the history behind it, I guess it doesn’t surprise me at all that I loved it so much – it was my very own Colorado-based version of a Disney theme park!

During my research for this post, I came across a fabulous article about Celebrity and the Disney connection on BuckFifty.org, a site that’s chock full of interesting Denver history and trivia, that’s well worth a visit. Check it out when you have some time to spend!