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Tuesday, January 9 - Disney/MGM day

We unexpectedly had a much later start to the day than we expected, so we didn't get to the park until about 2:30. Of all days for this to happen, this was the best for it to happen since we didn't see all that much to do there anyway. We got there in time to get seats for the Stars and Cars parade. It was a lot of fun. The one change I noticed from having heard about the parade previously is that R2D2 and C3PO are no longer riding the car. Luke and Leia ride the car, R2 is tooling around on the street (very cool) and 3PO is gone altogether. We ended up sitting next to a small child in a red Power Ranger costume - during the parade, we got the red Power Ranger's attention and pointed out the child. Red Power Ranger came over and gave the kid a big hug. The kid was beaming! A friend of ours was wearing a hat that said "evil". Radcliff noticed it and absconded with it for a while to show a few of the other villains and put the hat on himself before giving it back. Can't remember much about the parade music, but it was a fun parade.

Tower of Terror was a lot of fun. I like DCA's version, but the extra element in this version is awesome. One of the friends with us had never been on the ride before, even DCA's version, so that made it even more fun. My only disappointment was that I couldn't find a cool ToT shirt that said Disney-MGM on it. All the shirts that I liked were generic ToT. I wanted something cool and park specific. The only shirt that named the park was ok but not interesting enough for me to buy.

We went over to Star Tours and saw the new queue area that was Endor. That was cool. I haven't been on the ride even in DL in a really long time, so it was fun. I found a really cool shirt in the gift shop that I had to buy - I'll post pictures when we get home.

We had planned to go on the tram tour, but we ended up getting there after they had already stopped. We ended up doing ToT again before our friends went to see Fantasmic, and we went to see Voyage of the Little Mermaid. OK show, some neat stuff, but I was really disappointed that Ariel didn't do her own singing. Don't feel the need to ever see this show again.

When we met up with our friends again, they were definitely not whelmed by this version of Fantasmic.

We ended up at Spoodles at the Boardwalk Resort for dinner. I had the seafood stew. Yum yum. Pictures when we get home.

Tomorrow, it's Animal Kingdom and conquering Everest!


Wednesday, January 10 - Animal Kingdom day

We had skipped going to Animal Kingdom on our previous visit to WDW, so this would be our first visit to the park. The park opened at 9am, but we got there about an hour or so after opening. We decided to head for Expedition Everest to get Fastpasses and then do something else in the meantime. We got to the Fastpass station at about 10:40, and the CMs were just covering the Fastpass stations, saying that all Fastpasses were already given out for the day. The park closed at 5pm that night. The standby line said that it was a 30 minute wait, so we decided to just join the line. The theming of the attraction is amazing, with a Himalayan village in the area just outside the attraction and the village theme continuing throughout the queue. As you make your way through the queue, there is more of the village to see, as well as the base camp for the expedition. There is also a lot of information about the legend of the yeti and how the locals view the yeti, as well as a museum documenting sightings and other encounters with the yeti. The line moved very quickly, and we ended up waiting only about 15 or 20 minutes.

I loved Everest. There is a backwards section that’s really cool, and the yeti makes a couple of appearances, including one at the end that prompted me to duck out of his grasp. You exit out into a gift shop, and I found some cool merchandise there as well, including one particular item that I love and that I had to add to my collection - pictures when we get home.

We have two friends who moved to Orlando a couple of years ago, and we got a call from them saying they would be able to join us for the day, so we looked forward to that. On our way to get a locker, we ran into another familiar face - Maynard! He was on vacation as well at WDW, so the five of us ended up spending the day together at Animal Kingdom, and we had a great time, and since our friends knew the park very well, it was almost like having a personal guided tour, since they knew a lot of tidbits about the park.

We made our way to the safari, but the wait time was an hour, so we got Fastpasses. We then went on the train and stopped at the conservation center, and we also did a walk along Rafiki’s trail. It was then time for our safari, and we ended up with a guide that was really good. It took me a while to stop expecting Jungle Cruise jokes from her, though she was very humorous in her own way anyway. The ride was extremely bumpy, so that added to the adventure. We saw a number of animals that apparently are sometimes hard to see, so that was great. Among other animals, we saw young giraffes and elephants, and cheetahs and lions as well.

After the safari, we had lunch at Flame Tree BBQ, which had really good ribs. We also enjoyed our lunch with a terrific view of Everest from a spot that our friends knew well. After lunch, it was on to wait for the Jungle Jammin’ parade. It was a nice parade, but it didn’t particularly catch my fancy. After the parade, we headed to the last show of the new Finding Nemo musical. Visually, I thought the show was stunning, with the use of puppets much like how Zazu is done in the Broadway musical of “The Lion King”. The songs didn’t do that much for me though. It was a packed house, and the audience seemed to like the show very much. After the show, the park was technically closed, but it was an extra magic hours evening, and we had gotten our wristbands earlier in the day, so we bid farewell to Maynard and our friends, and we made our way to the evening show of Festival of the Lion King. It was a nice show, but it was nowhere on the level of the Lion King Celebration parade that I adored so much. The singers were good, but some of them took some liberties with some of the songs that I didn’t care for.

After the show, we headed off to ride Dinosaur. It was in fact better than Knott’s now defunct Kingdom of the Dinosaurs, but even though it uses the same technology as the Indy ride, the excitement and adventure were nowhere near that level. It was a decent ride but probably not one I’d do again. I opted out of doing Primeval Whirl, but the husband went on it and didn’t care for it much.

We decided to end our evening with another ride on Everest. At about 7pm, it was pretty much a walk-on. With the height of the ride, and it already being dark, you get a spectacular view of the surrounding area as you ascend to the top, and you can even see the Sorcerer’s hat from MGM and the ball from Epcot. We enjoyed the ride again, did some shopping, and then headed out and back to our resort, where we had dinner at Shutters, the table-service restaurant, which was ok.