(1) Vocal Majority won the world championship again on Friday, July 6 -- the group's 13th gold medal and my second. There's a lot I could say about the experience, but I'll sum it up in these four words: winning does not suck.
Here's one of the songs from our performance:
(2) We spend several hours on Saturday the 7th recording a video of A Million Dreams with Voctave. Dang, but they're good. No word yet on when the video will be released, but I'll try to remember to post it here.
(3) Since VM won the gold, we performed again at the Convention Center on Saturday evening. This was one of the rare downsides of winning, since I really wanted to see the hour-long show that came before we went on -- it featured Return2Zero (a/k/a "Four for a Dollar" from the B&tB preshow at the Studios), the Humdingers (a/k/a the Dapper Dans -- Disney can be so proprietary about their group names!), and Voctave. We had to settle for listening to the last half of Voctave's set from backstage.
On the plus side, since we did get to perform right after Voctave, and had our joint arrangement of A Million Dreams ready to go, we got to surprise the audience by bringing Voctave back out to perform with us live. Likely the only time we'll ever get to perform the song together for a live audience!
(4) After all the competitions were over and we were singing just for fun (which went well into the wee hours of Sunday morning), we (my wife, my parents and I) headed to WDW for a few hours. We knew going into this trip that we would not have the energy for the parks -- contests and conventions are incredibly draining -- but my parents had never been at all so I wanted to introduce them to our favorite vacation destination. We had lunch at Whispering Canyon Cafe since I knew they'd love the Wilderness Lodge, then we rented a pontoon boat and I drove them around Bay Lake and Seven Seas Lagoon for a while. I also drive our rental SUV around the World (a first for me; I'd never driven on-property before) and played tour guide. Great fun.
My dad, who turned 81 this year, had the best line when I took he and my mom to the Guest Services desk at Wilderness Lodge to get a "1st Visit" button. He gestured to me and my wife and said, "They waited to take us (to WDW) until we were old enough to appreciate it."
All in all, a phenomenal trip -- great family time, phenomenal experiences shared with my VM brothers, lots of camaraderie and excellent music at the convention, and another nice, shiny piece of hardware to enjoy.
