Monday, December 7, 2009

Disney, Day 5

On Thursday, the boys and I went to Animal Kingdom. We didn't think we'd be spending the whole day there, but we did. Turns out that place is so much more than just a Zoo. It's lush and green and really quite an escape from the other concrete jungles. And both the kids LOVED it!



We arrived and went to the Finding Nemo the musical, though we had an hour to wait. We waited. During our wait, Daddy grabbed Fastpasses for the Safari, and then there was still enough time to take Chris to meet Pooh, Tigger, and Eeyore! They were all bedecked for their Christmas Vacation too!



Finding Nemo the Musical was worth the wait, it was like a Broadway show packed into half an hour. The characters were great, they went right along with the movie, and the costuming was amazing. Being there so early, we got awesome seats, we were right along the aisle that ran down the middle, and the characters often walked right passed us. At one point Bruce the shark got his nose down within 3 feet of us, and Chris started to flip out, but he was gone just as quickly, and after he was a safe distance away, Chris was fine. At the end, Marlin came down and dipped his fish down about 2 feet away, and he smiled right at Chris. Chris thought that was the coolest thing ever. Chris said he was saying goodbye, and now Marlin is his favorite character. (Prior, he never even knew Marlin's name, he called all clownfish Nemo.) I wouldn't be surprised if they lengthened this show and put it on Broadway. I'd go see it.



From there we zipped down to the Safari, which was cool, it's a rather bumpy ride through a zoological park. Not entirely natural, the lions are kept away from the deer, but there isn't much between us and the animals, but we kept moving.



The boys enjoyed the ride. Chris got to see some animals we don't have at our local zoo, like crocodiles and hippos.



Sam just enjoyed being in the Jungle.



From there we grabbed some lunch before continuing on to see the Festival of the Lion King show. Eric and I had seen it before, but it was different with Chris, who is really a big fan of that movie. He really enjoyed getting to see Timone and Pumbaa. I bet he really would've flipped for their autographs. It proved too much stimulation for Sam who screamed his head off the last 15 minutes of the show, luckily, since we were right in the middle of the finale, no one noticed. Sam conked out shortly thereafter, which prompted Eric to get a wild idea.




What if we didn't go home for naps...what if we stayed in animal kingdom through naptime, until they closed at 6, then went back to the hotel and got to bed early since Friday, our last day was going to be a long one with no naps. It sounded tempting, the not napping, staying at Animal Kingdom a little longer, so as to go to bed early. While we thought about it, Chris got a Pirate Mickey tattoo, and we snacked on Mickey ice creams. Feeling sufficiently refreshed, we decided to gave it a go.



We headed over to the other side of the park, and visited the Tree of Life, and saw the Bug show, It's hard to be a bug. Chris got scared at the appearance of a bad bug, we sat close to the door just in case we had to make a run for it, but once the bad bug was gone, Chris calmed down quickly and enjoyed the show. From there we took a walk and scoped out seats right along the rope for Mickey's Jingle Jungle Parade. Chris LOVED that. There were some characters from Lion King, Jungle Book, as well as Mickey and his crew in it, that was pretty cool. Afterwards, we headed to Dinoland, and rode the Triceratop ride, that was pretty much the same as Dumbo but on Triceratops instead. Chris liked it. We figured on that note, we'd head out. It was 5.
Upon deeper thought, we thought we'd "Pop" over to Hollywood Studios to Meet Buzz. Chris had been asking to Meet Buzz since he'd seen them giving autographs the day before. So we did. We figured, we'd meet Buzz, see if we could find Mater and Lightning and maybe see these pretty Christmas lights that were rumored to line the back lot. When we picked up the time chart, we found we had 10 minutes to get to Mater and Lightning McQueen before they closed. Eric got there and was the second person from the end of the line before the closed it. So the boys got their time with the Cars. As we were waiting, we noticed a crowd gathering down the street, it was for the Christmas Lights. Turns out it wasn't just a pretty decoration thing that the gal on the bus had mentioned to me, it was the "Osbourne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights". 5 million lights. These people had all these on their house, carousels, trees, a rotating globe, and Disney put it all on 2 streets that met at a corner. It was beautiful. I snapped a couple photos, and we moved on to Meet Buzz and Woody (Or Buddy and Wooz as I had miscalled them in my exhausted state, and found it so funny we kept calling them that.) We waited about half an hour to see them, but they had little spots along the way to take photos while we wait. Pretty cute. Sam was really digging Buzz, and Chris wouldn't let go of Woody's hand...perhaps costume ideas for next year?



As we left there, and proceded to head back to the hotel, once again we walked down the pretty street of lights. Not avoiding the crowds. But there was a photopass person there, and I wanted to get my picture taken, thought the pros could do it better than I, and as Eric pointed out, might make a nice Christmas photo. So we stood in line. As the person in front of us, went and stood in front of the photographer, ALL THE LIGHTS WENT OUT. It was kind of spooky. They came on and told us about how the Osborne's had all these on their house, and how they'd prgrammed it to music. We were standing in the center of the square when they started blasting Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Carol of the Bells, and the Lights flashed in front of us, all around us. It was Powerful. Words don't do it justice. And here we were in the center of it. It was Awesome. If you go down at Christmas time, you have Got to see this light show.



Yeah, that was a good note to end on our last night, so then we went back to the hotel, stopped for some food at the hotel 'cafeteria' (another word that doesn't do it justice), and went to bed. Eric wanted to be in early, we were eating at 9, but in bed by 10 which by vacation standards actually was early. We were going to bed most nights about 11:30 and the boys were up every day at 6:30. We're getting more caught up on sleep now that we're home more than when we were on vacation.

1 comments:

SuperSillyAunt said...

I absolutely love these stories! I don't want it to end and I'm just reading. I can't imagine the great time you four had as a family!