Vacation Day 4: Animal Kingdom

Ahhh, Animal Kingdom, the home of my all time favorite ride.

You can see in my eyes how excited I am.

Expedition Everest

100% thills the entire time.  It starts out a mellow ride through the canyon, and then you start climbing.  And climbing, and climbing and climbing.  When you reach the top you think it's going to do what most other roller coasters do, send you on a free fall.  But no!  Not Expedition Everest.  Instead you go on a journey through the mountain with ups and downs, and then you come to this:

The end of the track

Now what?  Now you go backwards through the mountain with ups and downs.  I think you almost go upside down at one point.  I'm not sure.  It's pitch black at that point, and I'm having way too much fun to really notice what direction I am going!

Then you get stopped, and the shadow of the Yeti comes out.  He looks angry, and he breaks the track and you start to move again.  It's pitch black, you don't know where you're going.  Then all of a sudden:

You free fall

Then you go around a corner and the ride is done.  Best ride ever.  It is so much fun!  We rode it 5 or 6 times I think.  First we got fast passes for it so we could take our picture together, but the rest of the time we just did single rider.

Animal Kindgom doesn't have a whole lot that I am interested in.  It has other rides that are cool, and A Bug's Life is a cool 3D show that you can see inside the "Tree of Life" and if you walk around the park there is all sorts of wild life.  But the park gets kind of old pretty fast.  At least for me.  I couldn't imagine what it was like before Expedition Everest was built.

There is one other ride that I would consider a "must do" and that is the Kilimanjaro Safari. 

You get in a truck

and drive past lots of animals. 

Very cool!

Last time and this time I was worried about the lion attacking the car.  I don't know why it doesn't.  Maybe they keep it extremely well fed.  But I'm telling you, if it wanted to eat someone, it could, easily.

We left the park around 6:00, which is REALLY early.  Instead of going back to our hotel we went to the Downtown Disney area.  It's basically a bunch of shops.  It's pretty cool.

There was a Lego dragon in the water.  Kind of neat.

And then we went to the Vinylmation store and wasted a bunch of money.

And then we went back to our hotel.

Vacation Day 3: Magic Kingdom

This day also was my birthday.  Happy birthday to me!

The first thing we did was get me a button that said "Happy Birthday Jenn!"  I swear I got no less than 200 "Happy birthdays" said to me.  Usually I don't like the attention, but this day I enjoyed it.

Oh, Magic Kingdom, how I love you.

I'm boarding It's a Small World"

Is it just me, or does "It's a Small World" have a bad rep?  I LIKE that ride!  I love what it represents, and the song does not drive me crazy.  I enjoy listening to it in the different languages.

I like going on the "kid" rides at Magic Kingdom.  You know... Peter Pan, Snow White, Whinney the Pooh.  They are cheesy, and old, but they are classics and you can't miss them.

Oh, and what is up with the Peter Pan line being an hour long on most days?!  Luckily, we rode it early enough in the day that the line wasn't retardedly long.  But seriously, it's not the greatest ride, why wait for an hour to ride it?

Haunted Mansion

I very much enjoy the Haunted Mansion ride.  And now they have a new part of the line where you go through the graveyard.  It's pretty cool.

Near Pinnochio ride



I'll never get over the amazing detail on all of the buildings.

For my birthday we had dinner at Cinderella's Royal Table.  To be honest, it wasn't worth what we paid.  The food was not the greatest, and I felt a little silly meeting the princesses.  But it was fun.

"I hope no one gives you any bad apples for your birthday!" - Snow White

"Did you make a birthday wish?  Wishes do come true!" - Ariel

To Lance: "Protect her from Gaston, alright?" - Belle

I have a picture of us with Cinderella as well, but it was taken by a pro (included with the price of dinner), and it's not scanned into the comp.  Cinderella said about Lance, "I hope you didn't have to use a shoe to find him!"

It was cute.

So there you have it!

Vacation Day 2: Epcot

We decided to go to Epcot first.  Why?  Because it's the most walking of the 5 parks we planned to visit.  Lots and lots of walking.

We had a game plan.  Go to Test Track, get a Fast Pass, to go Maelstrom, ride Maelstrom, then to go Soarin' and get another Fast Pass.

That right there is a lot of walking because all three of those things are on different sides of the park.  But the thing is... if you don't get fast passes early for the popular rides, you may not ride them at all, unless you wait in a line that is 80 minutes long.  I'm not kidding.  More info on this when I talk about Hollywood Studios.

But anyway, Epcot was fun.  We did everything there was to do, which is a lot, but I'll only list my favorites.

Test Track:  This ride is way fun.  They take you through the tests they do to cars before they sell them, such as break tests and crash tests.  At one part, after you've done much rigorous testing for breaks, shocks, and heat and cold resistance, they take you to do the crash test.  They line you up with a "wall" and then accelerate you to who knows how fast, but it feels really fast, and then right when you're about to hit the wall it opens and you're speeding outdoors on a race track.  I think you get up to about 60 miles per hour.  It doesn't sound very fast, but it feels fast when you're wearing a pretend seatbelt, and you're not in a real car.  Excellent ride.  Lance and I got Fast Passes for it one time, and then we did the single rider line a few times after that.

Single rider lines are awesome, if you're OK with sitting next to strangers. :-)  It's the fastest line possible.  Faster than Fast Pass!

Living With the Land: This photo obviously didn't turn out.  But it's the only photo we took on this ride.  I really like this one because you get to go through some greenhouses where they grow the food they use in the Disney World resorts.

Have you heard my story about the green beans I had at Animal Kingdom last time we went to Florida?  They were SOOOOO good!

Anyway...  They grow tomatoes on trees.  Yes, trees.  Basically they hold up all of the vines so they're not on the ground.  But it looks like (and they call it) a tree.

Last time we went on this ride they had squash that they were growing in the shape of Mickey Mouse.  So cute!  This time they didn't have that.

The World Showcase:  This is the part that requires the most walking.  There is a lake, which is rather large, and around the lake is located several countries, and you walk through each one.  Each country has its own unique architecture and restaurants.  And usually, the cast members are from the country they are stationed in.  It is very cool!  I love the detail they put into each country.

Here are a few of our favorite buildings:

Mexico

Norway

Italy

America

There are many more countries and buildings but... that's all we took pictures of.  We had lunch in Mexico, dinner in America and dessert in Germany.

Lastly, the fireworks show at Epcot is really cool.  The end.  ☺

Vacation Day 1: Travel to Orlando

We got up at 5:30am so we could make it to the airport on time for our 8am flight. We slept at Lance's parents' house so we wouldn't have to get up even earlier.

It was my first flight in over a year, so I was pretty nervous about taking off.  Taking off is the funnest, but also most scary part to me.  I worry that they won't gain enough speed and we'll come crashing back down shortly after takeoff.  Obviously, that didn't happen.  Also, it's probably rare.  But I always say a little prayer just in case.

Both flights went well that day.  Salt Lake to Denver is the shortest flight ever.  55 minutes?  It's barely time for them to get you your drink and cookie.  I think I listened to two songs on my iPod before they asked us to put things away for landing.

Landing in Orlando was wonderful.  The weather was extremely humid, so I was worried about being way too hot the entire time.  But after raining for about 5 minutes, the humidity went away, and it wasn't humid for the rest of the trip.

Our room was awesome!  From the outside it looked pretty trashy, but we were pleasantly surprised.  We had two entrances.  One in the front and one in the back.  I would describe it as more of an apartment than a hotel room.  If you enter through the front, you go straight into a living room, with a full size couch and two chairs, a TV and a pull down queen size bed. 

The next room is the kitchen.  It had a full size fridge, and also a microwave, stove top, cupboards and kitchen table.  Very nice!  Too bad we didn't bring any dishes! 

The bathroom is next.  It's an average hotel bathroom, pretty small.

The bedroom was nice.  It was very large, larger than our bedroom at home!  There was a vanity area, with a sink and a mirror.  I liked this so I could still get ready if Lance needed the bathroom.  The room had a king size bed, two night stands, and a very small flat screen TV, but a TV nonetheless.  It also had a built in dresser, and a quite large closet.  The bed was very comfortable and they gave us 7 pillows.  I like lots of pillows!

I liked the room very much.  I was very comfortable there.

We went swimming that evening in one of the hotel's three pools, after eating at this cute little place called "Checkers".

It's not every day that you wake up in 40 degree weather, have rain, and then go swimming outdoors.

Lance

He turned 26 yesterday!  I can't believe it.  That's not old, it's just... a lot older than he was when I met him.  Also, I never thought that my husband would be 26 and we would still not have children.  I guess life does that to you sometimes.

I love you, Lance!  Here's to 26 more years of life before you're almost old.  :-)

My co-worker took this picture at our company Christmas party at Tuscany back in December so it's not really current, but I like it a lot.