Remember the pure joy of the holidays when you were a child?

You can experience that joy again – no matter your age – with the seasonal festivities of Walt Disney World Resort in Florida.

All four of Disney’s parks – the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom – undergo magical transformations to celebrate the yuletide season. You might just feel like your Fairy Godmother waved her magic wand and turned you into a kid again…

Start your visit at the Magic Kingdom, where the sight of a Cinderella’s castle aglow takes your breath away. More than 200,000 twinkling lights transform the iconic castle into a glistening ice palace.

Moving about Main Street U.S.A., snowflakes swirl about the glowing lights and giant Christmas tree in Town Square. And what Christmas party would be complete without hot chocolate and cookies? Be sure to help yourself to a rare “freebie” from Disney.

On select evenings at the Magic Kingdom, “kids from 1 to 92” are cordially invited to attend Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party. You’ll be treated to holiday themed shows featuring Disney characters, “Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmastime Parade,” and “Holiday Wishes” fireworks spectacular.

Castle Dreamlights

On to Epcot, where the Lights of Winter, a breathtaking arch of twinkling lights, welcomes you to “Holidays Around the World” at World Showcase. Here the young and “young at heart” can learn about holiday traditions and the many ways Santa (or his counterparts) visit children all over the world.

To celebrate the “reason for the season,” Epcot’s Candlelight Processional features the traditional Christmas story read by a celebrity narrator, and the memorable music of a mass choir and 50-piece live orchestra. You may find the upbeat “Rejoice with Exceeding Great Joy” has replaced the theme from “It’s a Small World” as that tune you just can’t get out of your head.

A few of this year’s narrators include Marlee Matlin, Abigail Breslin, Edward James Olmos, and Monique Coleman.

The star attraction in Disney’s Hollywood Studios is the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights, where the Streets of America glow with millions of dancing lights, animated displays and falling snow. Most of the featured 3-D displays and nearly 4 million dazzling lights are from the home of the Jennings Osborne family from Arkansas. Their display includes twirling carousels, marching toy soldiers, musical angels and Santa and his reindeer moving to the music.

Other not-to-be-missed spots are Disney’s Animal Kingdom featuring “Mickey’s Jingle Jungle Parade” and Downtown Disney, where your dog can have a photo opportunity with Santa!

You won’t just find holiday fare in the parks. Each Disney resort has its own unique holiday appeal. Celebrating its 10th anniversary is the life-sized gingerbread house in the lobby of the Grand Floridian hotel.

December is a great time of year to stay on property. In addition to the mild weather and moderate crowds, Disney offers its lowest rates for on-site rooms during the first three weeks of December.

So if you’re considering a destination holiday, Walt Disney World has something for everyone.

However you celebrate your holidays – at home or away – a little pixie dust is bound to make them that much sweeter.

Amity Hook-Sopko is a freelance writer and long time Disney enthusiast. She just returned home after celebrating the holidays at Walt Disney World with a group of “kids from 3 to 57” – her parents, husband, and two sons.

by Laura Hitchcock  

        “Royal Caribbean International Lines is Number One for entertainment,” says Mary Ann Delaney, their Director of Entertainment, proudly.  It’s been 15 years since Delaney joined the Line, back when they had only five ships.  Now the number has leapt to 21 and Royal Caribbean Productions is a little kingdom unto itself.

          Based in Hollywood, Florida, the immense facility currently has eight shows in rehearsal, Scenic Designers exclusive to Royal Caribbean and the huge challenge of costume designing for casts which change every six months. 

And what casts!  The technically trained singers and dancers, many fresh from Broadway productions, must be qualified to perform all styles of dance.  The skaters in the 11 ice shows must be regional or national champions.  The same level of talent will be sought for the gymnasts, synchronized swimmers and high divers for the new Oasis of the Seas Aqua Theatre.

          Cast members also teach dancing and singing to the kids in Adventure Ocean and a beginner piano class in their Explorers Academy program.

          Shows range from “Tango Buenos Aires” to “Invitation to the Dance” and include jugglers, comedians and flying shows.

Focus groups are held aboard to ascertain what the audience is looking for in a production.  Talent tops the list, with costumes, scenery and familiar music right behind. The number of shows you can expect to see depends on your itinerary:  seven days or under, two shows; eight-to-ten day cruises, three shows; ten or more days, four different shows.

          Production of a new show begins one year prior to installation by reviewing presentations of new concepts from the in-house creative team Wilson-Dow and outside production companies, as well as interested individuals who have new creative ideas.  The on-site team choose the best concept based on itinerary, age demographic, guests’ country of origin and creativity.  Then a creative team is selected including Producer, Director, Choreographer, Music Arranger for a nine-piece band, Vocal Arranger, Music Director, Costume Designer and Costume Builder.

          If a storm comes up, the cast is prepared.  Women may remove their high heels, acrobatics may be cut.  If the weather’s really bad, a quieter form of entertainment may be substituted but that rarely happens.  Mary Ann Delaney stresses that the safest place to be in a hurricane is at sea where ships can sail around the storm

          In addition to being the biggest, Royal Carribbean International is unique in another respect.  “It’s the only cruise line in the industry that has developed a career path for their singers and dancers,” says Delaney.  Performers can move from on stage to coaching, directing or teaching and even into administration.  “My staff has a total of 136 years of experience with the Royal Caribbean International, not counting their previous entertainment backgrounds,” she laughs.

          With the constantly expanding world of visual effects, professionals from the entertainment industry are continually recruited to make your cruise experience more than just a place to stand by the rail gazing dreamily over the moonlight on the waters. 

            Most major cruise lines present floor shows but the Cunard Line is launching a whole theatre on its new luxury liner, The Queen Victoria, which joins the fleet in December 2007.

            Ever since the miracle and mystery plays in medieval times, England has been growing its theatrical tradition through Shakespeare, Wilde, Shaw, among other brilliant playwrights, to flourish today in the works of Tom Stoppard and Caryl Churchill. 

            The Victoria honors this tradition by designing The Royal Court Theatre, the first at sea.  It’s a three-tiered space whose 19^th-century ambiance includes brocade fabric on the walls, red velvet curtains, and 16 private boxes seating from 2 to 8 guests, furnished with armchairs and cocktail tables.  Individual-sized Veuve Clicquot bottles with sweet or savory treats will be served.  Following the performance, the guests will have an opportunity to meet the cast backstage.

            The first of the ship’s four major theatrical productions is, appropriately, “Victoriana”, a tribute to the Victorian Music Hall, with contemporary choreography and period costumes. Following the performance, guests may attend a Royal Victoriana themed ball in the Queen’s Room.

            Next up is ”Dance Passion”, ranging from the delightful creations of Gene Kelly to the sensuous Argentine Tango and the vibrant energy of Swing and Jive.

            We’re back to the British Isles again for Show #3, Celtic Heartbeat.  In typical Gaelic fashion, it tells a tale.  A young Irishman confronts conflict, humor, sorrow, joy and romance as he searches for his fortune with the help of a beautiful girl, four singer/narrators and a full dance ensemble.

            Lastly, the Cunard reaches for A Stroke of Genius, blending such works of art as Andy Warhol with The Rolling Stones, Edward Hopper with the music of Hoagy Carmichael and the ballerinas immortalized by French impressionist Edgar Degas coming to life on stage.

            In addition, Singers in Concert explores the dynamics between men and women, featuring songs by Burt Bacharach, Billy Joel, James Taylor and others.

            This is a perfect overture to a theatre-lover’s holiday in London, a city rich in the finest plays and performances in the English-speaking world.

       

     If you live in Southern California and want to set sail for a holiday week-end from someplace within driving distance, both Carnival Cruise Lines and Royal Caribbean offer 5-day Baja cruises from Long Beach and 7-day cruises that go as far as Acapulco.       

   Carnival looks out for travelers in every category.  There’s a Singles Welcome Aboard introductory party on every cruise and lots of options for the littlest travelers, starting with Camp Carnival activities from 9:00-10:00 AM every day.  The crafts at Christmas include decorations created by the kids to hang from the Christmas trees that are found in public spaces throughout the ship.  Some of them are even featured in the special musical revues which have holiday themes and sets with faux oversized fireplaces.  

           The Christmas revue ranges from a Rock ‘n’ Roll Medley featuring Holly Jolly Christmas to Silent Night and traditional Christmas carols.  The seasonal costumes and special dance numbers are family-friendly.Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa at sea.  Even without a chimney in your stateroom, he’ll find the littlest travelers on Christmas morning.       Diners will find the traditional turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Pecan pie leads the dessert selection.            Guests can join the carolers who stroll throughout the ship singing contemporary holiday songs as well as the familiar classics.  Perennial holiday movies such as “The Polar Express” are shown on in-stateroom television.

Royal Caribbean ships are bedecked with miles of garlands and lights.  They offer parties and Christmas cookie decorating for children, gifts in every cabin and celebrity entertainment.  On Christmas Eve, the Captain tells those who care the most how Santa finds us in an interview on your in-cabin TV.  On Christmas Eve, Midnight Mass is available, as well as “’Twas The Night Before Christmas” reading and caroling for all. Santa arrives on Christmas Day.  There’s an Egg Nog Party for grown-ups, a special holiday show, Morning religious service and a Special Christmas Day ice-skating session.

New Year’s Eve on both lines offers everything you ever wanted in a party.  Champagne, dancing, countdown by the Captain, Times Square on a huge TV suspended about the deck and a unique blast from the Ship’s Horn to greet the New Year.

Whether you choose to take your family on a Christmas cruise or adventure by yourself to experience a gala New Year’s Eve party at sea, you’ll find color, entertainment, congeniality and fresh sea air on your holiday at sea.

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Unique and magical, Venice looks like a fantasy of antique palazzos, fountain-centered courtyards and canals arched with graceful bridges. Its air of unreality gives a heightened twist to the passions, quirks and violence which haunt the narrow streets of “La Serenissima”.

` The many books about Venice include “A History of Venice” by John Julius Norwich, an English nobleman, whose delightful book is actually a comprehensive history of the Venetian Republic which was ended by Napoleon in 1797. Partner it with another classic, Luigi Borzini’s “The Italians” which does for Italy what Sean O’Faolain’s “The Irish” does for Ireland.

“Desiring Italy: Women Writers Celebrate a Country and a Culture” has a delicious Venetian section ranging from Mary Shelley to Muriel Spark and including a mouth-watering and informative excerpt from Marcella Hazan’s “Classic Italian Cookbook”.

Novelists are inspired by the city to depths and twists which give these books a flavor all their own. Consider Henry James’ “The Wings of the Dove” which deals with three people whose dreams of love reveal new prisms as their desires come within reach and change at the moment of fulfillment. Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice” releases the repressed love of a lifetime on the brink of death. In Ian McEwen’s “The Comfort of Strangers” a couple find the adventure they seek in Venice becomes one that appeals to their dark side. In “Serenissima”, the irrepressible Erica Jong takes a fictional romp through the Venice Film Festival where, in real life, she once served on the Festival jury. Ironically, it’s the only one of these four books that hasn’t been made into a film.

Mystery writers find equal range in the floating city. Three wonderful series have distinctive heroes. They are the late Michael Dibdin’s Aurelio Zen of Criminalpol who returns to his native Venice in “Dead Lagoon”; Edward Sklepowich’s erudite literary biographer Urbino McIntyre (“The Last Gondola”) and Donna Leon’s family man, Commissario Guido Brunetti, first seen in “Death at La Fenice”.

Because Venice is such a visually beautiful city, I’m going to recommend “Eyewitness Guide to Travel: Venice and the Veneto.” This beautiful series is the best at what it does, show more than tell. It has maps not only by block and by district, but also by building. Before you enter a historic palazzo or museum, you’ll know exactly where everything is. For those who want more words, you’ll find them in John Ruskin’s 19th century classic “The Stones of Venice”, Mary McCarthy’s 1963 “Venice Observed” and the updated “The World of Venice” by travel writer Jan Morris who, as James Morris, climbed Mt. Everest with Sir Edward Hillary.

New York, home town of my heart, has been serenaded as “the city that never sleeps” which might make it a hard place to read in. But there’s always the plane, train, or reading aloud to whoever’s driving the car, plus the special pleasure of revisiting in print and a vast range of books about New York City.

New York women have been uniquely celebrated long before Candace Bushnell’s delicious “Sex and the City”, a book before it was an HBO series, made them a household word.

Henry James’ “Washington Square”, also staged and filmed as “The Heiress” by Ruth and Augustus Goetz, takes us back to the 19^th century where Catherine Sloper, the plain daugther of a wealthy widowed doctor who mourns her beautiful mother, is obsessed for life by Morris Townsend whose passion is pegged to the rise and fall of her fortune. One of James’ psychological masterpieces, it’s just as haunting today.

James’ friend Edith Wharton turns the Cinderella story on its head in “The House of Mirth” where Lily Bart, a New Yorker as proud as she is well born, learns how the other half live in this unforgettable book.

Betty Smith’s “A Tree Grows In Brooklyn” is a wonderful look at the coming of age of Francey Nolan who escaped into books and the lives of the fascinating denizens of her borough at the turn of the century. Later on, Tom Wolfe’s “Bonfire of the Vanities” dissects extended political corruption with wry complexity. All four of these books have been made into films.

New York’s Bohemian Age was spawned in Greenwich Village in the 1920s, and chronicled over the next three decades by such wise and witty literary ladies as Dawn Powell, Dorothy Parker and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Of Powell’s many novels, “A Time To Be Born” follows a small town girl who came to the city to mend her broken heart and make her fortune, abetted by a couple modeled on Henry and Clare Booth Luce.

Though not successful in her lifetime, Powell’s reputation has blossomed under the nurturing of such fans as Gore Vidal, whose “American Chronicles” also provide unique views of New York. The first, “Burr”, is a satiric portrait of an early Governor of New York State, the fascinating amoral Aaron Burr, who killed Alexander Hamilton in one of our history’s most famous duels and came close to seceding a hunk of the country with himself as King.

Dorothy Parker’s best known short story is “Big Blonde” but she’s unforgettable in other fields, such as her dramatic criticism for Vanity Fair (“Katherine Hepburn ran the gamut of emotions from A to B.”) and her poetry. Some call it merely verse but it sticks with you like memories of first love, lost love, and all the lovers in between.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, considered a more serious poet, is a premiere American practitioner of that vanished form, the sonnet. From the passions of her early years, she morphed into philosophy, as in this line from Sonnet XVIII of “The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems”.

“So subtly is the fume of life designed,

To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind”

The sidewalks of New York will never look the same after dipping into Paul Auster’s “New York Trilogy”, a literate post-modern exploration of mystery stories about mystery.

Category mystery fans love Ed McBain’s “87^th Precinct” series. Under the name Evan Hunter, he also wrote the classic “Blackboard Jungle”, based on his high school teaching days.

New York lends itself to fantasy, notably in Mark Helprin’s “Winter’s Tale” where magical realism invades New York at the turn of the century and Jack Finney’s “Time and Again”, a page-turner using reincarnation to revive history.

And last but indispensable, Knopf’s literate guide book which is much more than just “where is it?” The cover is a great conversation piece while having cocktails at the Top of the Sixes.

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         Jorge Luis Borges’s fiction, like the tango which he celebrated and analyzed, exerted an influence far beyond the borders of his native land.

            African-American Tony-winning playwright August Wilson told me Borges was his role model. Wilson, a high school drop-out, was an autodidact whose education came from libraries and those who compare his plays with the magical realism of Borges can see the influence and how Wilson made it his own.

            A good introduction to Borges is “The Aleph and Other Stories” which are colored by supernatural and philosophical tones.  The collection also contains vignettes about personal ideology and literary imagination.

            To see how an Argentine novelist maintains the Borges influence, try Tomas Eloy Martinez’s “The Tango Singer”.  It’s not only a study of tango but a tour of Buenos Aires’ traumatic past and provocative present.

            Linda Valenzuela, one of Argentina’s most widely translated writers, uses magical realism to interpret the repressive character of masculine culture.  Apart from magical but reeking with realism is her short story “Tango”, which grows out of male/female customs on the dance floor.

            Argentine literature has proved infinitely translatable to the screen. Manuel Puig’s “The Kiss of the Spider Woman”, a contemporary horror story about Peron’s repressive prison, was made into a film and a musical.   Julio Cortazar’s short fiction includes “Blow-Up”, the mysterious story immortalized by the Antonioni film.

            When you want to turn from magical realism to just the facts, look for Rodrigo Fresson’s “The History of Argentina”, an international best-seller.

            Award-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguru, born in Nagasaki, Japan, raised since age six in England, became an international success with “Remains of the Day”, which became a film starring Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson and Christopher Reeve.  Set in England, its themes of class structure and the melancholy waning of empire are equally Japanese.

            Reverting to books about Japan, Ishiguro’s first two novels are set in his homeland.   “An Artist of the Floating World” examines Japanese attitudes towards World War II through the eyes of a former artist and his son, who blames the father and his generation for the horrors generated by the Atomic Bomb.  Although Ishiguro’s work is set in many countries, his latest novel “Never Let Me Go”, a haunting science fiction novel, is set in the world of the future and it’s unforgettable.  Japanese writers have always mined the ghost story genre and now are gleefully leading the pack in horror films (“The Ring”).  Other worlds are close to the surface of the Japanese psyche.

              Natsuo Karino is the woman who tops Japan’s gothic fiction best-seller list, most recently with “Grotesque”, a scathing allegory about the subjection of Japanese women and their secret lives.  Several of her books have been made into films

.            In “My Year of Meats”, Ruth Ozeki writes about a Japanese-American woman crossing the Unites States to film America for the Japanese and, in Tokyo, the difficult life for women personified by the Japanese wife of the show’s advertising executive.            

          Yukio Mishima’s dramatic suicide (performing the act of seppuku (hari-kiri) with a samurai sword) wrote finis to a brilliant career.  His stunning body of work includes “The Temple of the Golden Pavilion” which uses the burning of a national treasure, carefully spared by American bombers in World War II, by a disfigured crazed Japanese man as a departure point for an examination of identity and the importance of beauty and art.  “The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea” was made into a film starring Kris Kristoffersen.Director Paul Schrader created a notable cinematic tribute in “Mishima:  A Life in Four Chapters”, a fictionalized account of four segments in Mishima’s life, of which three parallel his novels “The Temple of the Golden Pavilian”, “Kyoko’s House” and “Runaway Horses, while the fourth depicts his last day.A fascinating oddity is “Mishima’s Sword”, Christopher Ross’s 2006 account of his encounters and experiences while searching for the legendary samurai sword Mishima used to kill himself.    Burning is also the theme of Australian novelist Shirley Hazzard’s “The Great Fire”,  winner of The National Book Award, which focuses on the love affair of an Englishman and an Australian girl in the traumatized late 1940s after World War II.  Ruth Benedict’s classic “The Chrysanthem and the Sword” is an anthropologist’s account of Japanese history and culture. 

           For a recent chronicle, consult  “A History of Japan” by R.H.P. Mason and J.G. Craiger, a thorough and readable contemporary classic that covers history, religion, culture and arts. 

      I begin with Ireland because the stories I heard as a child of mixed ancestry about my Irish forebears were the most intriguing.  With books and theatre in my blood, I felt attuned to a literary culture that’s one of the richest in the English-speaking world.   You can learn how that came about in “How The Irish Saved Civilization” by Thomas Cahill.  In Irish monasteries, monks used their island refuge to preserve history and literature ravaged by the warrior hordes cutting a swathe across Europe in the Middle Ages.  Cahill does their history proud in this fascinating book.  

        The psychology of the Irish people is nowhere better dissected than in Sean O’Faolain’s classic, “The Irish”.

            A good guidebook is a must.  Fodor’s, Eye Witness Travel, Rough Guide all have their pros, cons and fans, but I’m never without The Cadogan Guide.  This series is written by native writers and includes details, local lore and legends missing in other series.

Contemporary Irish novelists include John Banville who won the 2005 prestigious Mann-Booker prize for his absorbing novel “The Sea”, in which a widower turns to childhood memories as a coping mechanism.  The scope of another Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle ranges from the comedy of his Barrytown Trilogy (“The Commitments”, “The Snapper” and “The Van”, all filmed) to his latest novel, “Paula Spencer” about a women who overcame her attachment to an abusive husband.  William Trevor’s “Fools of Fortune” (also a film with Julie Christie) is an intense and evocative novel set in one of Ireland’s “Big Houses” between the civil strife-torn years of 1918-1983.

And let’s not leave out the ladies.  Edna O’Brien, now 77, began in her 20s with “The Country Girls”, a trilogy about the lives of young Irish women which was banned in Ireland then, and has chronicled her broken heart and bleeding country ever since, most recently in “The Light of the Evening” (2006).  Here a dying mother and her estranged daughter, whose novels are notorious, meet on the last lap of their life together.

Journalist Nuala O’Faolain has written a wonderful semi-autobiographical novel, “My Dream of You”, in which her heroine’s search for love and self-worth leads with humor through pain to a place where past and future can meet.  Marian Keyes is the irrespressible Irish chick lit goddess, whose books (“Sushi for Beginners” “Anybody Out There?”)  capture the conflicts and passions of contemporary young Irish women.

Into each trip pure escapism must fall and I indulge it with a little mystery, perhaps a historical from Peter Tremayne’s wonderful Sister Fidelma series, whose sleuth is a 7^th century dalaigh (lawyer) of the Breton Court.  Or a fast-paced contemporary from  Ken Bruen, whose Jack Taylor series (“The Dramatist”) set in Galway on Ireland’s Gaelic west coast,.features an ex-cop who can’t keep away from crime and the bottle.   

           James Joyce’s classic “Ulysses”, a glorious tintinnabulation of wordplay, follows  Leopold Bloom through a long day’s journey into a scatological Dublin night.  It’s neither a quick nor an easy read but it’s the fascinating place where Joyce breaks conventional forms and then remolds them.  Here you’ll meet Buck Mulligan, based on Joyce’s then friend, Oliver St. John Gogarty, a surgeon, Irish senator and writer (“As I Was Going Down Sackville Street”).

Buck Mulligan severed Gogarty’s camaraderie with Joyce but he maintained his friendship with poet William Butler Yeats who honeymooned at Gogarty’s Renvyle House (now a hotel) and held a séance there. 

As to the works of Mr. Yeats, my suggestion is to give the Collected Poems a perennial place at your bedside.  Those who dip into them find images that linger long after a voyage ends.  His philosophy echoes in lines from his poem “A Prayer for Old Age”.

“God guard me from those thoughts men think

In the mind alone;

He that sings a lasting song

Thinks in a marrow-bone”