Well, two in a row! I am doing well here. Okay, on to Wednesday. Wednesday was a really nice day because we were able to sleep in until 7 AM, as none of the parks had early magic hours that day. We didn't have to leave our room until 8 AM to be to the Animal Kingdom by 9.
Now, I had never been to the Animal Kingdom before. That made things difficult. It was hard to guess at what fastpasses to choose, or how far away things might be-and that will become glaringly obvious.
When we walked in, we chose to go on the Kilimanjaro Safari first, for two reasons. Number one, it can take a significant period of time. Number two, it seemed like the most important thing to see at the Animal Kingdom would be animals.
I will confess here, I'm not much of a zoo person. Oh, we dutifully go to the zoo every year, and we even usually go out to the Wilds every year as well. And animals are super cute and vital to our lives as humans and I know that. But-I'm just not a person who loves, loves, loves looking at animals. And that is an important caveat about a lot of this particular theme park.
Kilimanjaro Safari is a lot like a much shorter ride through the Wilds. Take that as you will. We had to stand in line for about 15 minutes to get on, first thing in the day. Then it lasts about 20 minutes. It lets you out at the Pangani Forest Exploration Trail, so we walked through it. At this point, the girls picked up a Junior Ranger program thing, which sounded cool in theory, but ended up taking so much time that we had to put them away. This would be where knowing your kids interest in this would be helpful-are they really into animals and learning about their habitats? Then by all means, do this. If not, it turns into a huge time suck-and with fastpasses, we just did not have time to devote to much of it.
Then we made another ill thought out decision. We chose to go over to Rafiki's Planet Watch. This was a huge mistake. In the first place, we had a fastpass at 10:45 AM, and it was a little after 10 when we got to the train station to go over. Then we had to wait for the train-which took a long time because they only have the one train-and then riding over took 10 more minutes. Once there, we just had to hurry and see the vets working on a monkey (which was a shame, because Betsy loves watching things like that) and then hurry back to catch the train again. We then had to book it to the Finding Nemo show, which was where we had a fastpass for seating. In this summer, a fastpass for seating is probably a good thing. In October, when no one is there, it is unnecessary. So we hurried for basically no reason, and anyone who knows my husband, knows that nerves were frayed at this point.
That said, Finding Nemo is super cute and not to be missed. Then Betsy and I rode Expedition Everest (again, we had a fastpass) and it was really a lot of fun. We went and got a regular fastpass for about a half hour later for the Kali River Rapids, so we decided to go ahead and eat our lunch. We had counter service at Yak and Yeti, which we enjoyed (my kids really like Asian food a lot). We then got in the fastpass line for Kali River Rapids. This was the first (and last) time that we had to stand in a line, even with a fastpass. It took about 15 minutes for us to get through the line. Nick and Betsy got fairly wet, but Felicity and I did not.
At this point, we were late for our fastpass for the Lion King. And we were fairly far away. (I should also point out, we had on flipflops-never recommended for the amount of walking one has to do at Disney World, however, necessary when riding Kali River Rapids to keep from having wet socks and shoes all day.) So, Nick is lugging around the backpack with our tennis shoes, and he's all wet, and we have quite a hike, and he is wearing flipflops. So it's not too shocking that he got mad, insisted that he needed to change his shoes, and proceeded to do just that. And Betsy did the same. Felicity and I hoofed it to the Lion King-missing the time for our fastpass, but going in anyway-and then I spent the next half hour, while watching an amazing, not to be missed show, worried that Nick and Betsy were missing it. They weren't of course, they were a few rows behind us. But it marked a low point for us.
We then took a break to change our shoes, do some pin trading (yes, I will be writing a whole blog about pin trading soon), and calm down. We made our way over to the Dinosaur ride, which was fun (even Felicity liked it, and she was scared of a lot of things). Then Betsy and I rode the Primeval Whirl and the girls and I rode the Triceritop Spin. All good fun.
We trekked back toward Asia for Flights of Wonder, which was a cute show about birds. Then we stepped outside and got great seats for the parade, which is right along that route. Then we trekked back toward the entrance and watched the short 3D film, It's Tough to be a Bug, which scared Betsy silly. (She is overall pretty freaked out by spiders, I should say.)
The Animal Kingdom closes at 5 PM, so we drove over to Epcot for the remainder of the night. We spent the evening in the World Showcase. We rode Mexico and Norway's rides, and watched Chinese acrobats. We saw the American Adventure program, which in my opinion is one of the best things at Disney World.
But the best part of our night was that the Food and Wine Festival was going on. Oh. My. Goodness. If you get the chance, go. Everything is really reasonably priced for Disney, meaning around $5 for most food. But the kicker was that we could use our snack credits for some selections. You get a snack credit a day, and we would never have used all of them in a week if not for this.
First, we got some Chinese food, because we all love Chinese food. We also got some lemonade with snack credit. Then we got ravioli from Italy-I am telling you, it was the *best* ravioli I have ever had. Italy also has this staircase near the lagoon, and I walked over it and was surprised to find no one sitting on the other side. It was the perfect place to sit and watch Illuminations. I called April and had her family join us. It was literally one of my most favorite memories of the whole trip, sitting there with such great seats, eating melt in your mouth ravioli.
It made up for the whole flipflops, wet clothes, trek 10 miles anger earlier in the day. Almost.
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