Day 4: Faith and I were alone in the big world for day 4! We spent the morning sleeping in again (we need our beauty rest!) Then we headed to the concierge building at our hotel to find some breakfast. Breakfast burritos and french toast do the body good! We took a little detour to the arcade building to race Nascar before heading back to our hotel room to grab our metallic mickey ears and hop back on the bus to Animal Kingdom.

Day 2 main goals at the park were 1.) take some more rides on Expedition Everest 2.) Rafiki’s Planet Watch 3.) watch the parade. All of which ended up being successes! We saw some pretty cool things at Rafiki’s planet watch including some pretty awesome frogs, aw I still have a soft spot for froggy friends. We checked out some of the things Disney is doing to be sustainable and save animals and a little behind the scenes of how they take care of the animals. 

Another cool part about the day was the parade! Personally, I love parades and dancing Chip and Dale is enough to make your day on its own, trust me! There were some people that were a little restless by the time the parade rolled around though. Apparently, some kids are unaware that Disney is the happiest place on the Earth and the one and only rule is no crying! By the time the parade rolled around there were plenty of children that needed to leave the park. Lucky for us, we had extra magic hours for the night! When you stay at Disney resorts you get to stay at the parks after closing on certain days, which is awesome! To kick off extra magic hours Faith and I headed right to Everest. Less people, less wait= Everest perfection. Since the wait was below 10 minutes we decided it was necessary to keep going on the ride until Kathy and Pete made it there to meet us. And that is what we did. By the time they met up with us I think we were on ride 6 or 7 and we made an executive decision that we had to make it to 10. I mean riding it 8 times is cool.. but 10?! Well, it’s that much cooler! So that is what we did. It seemed like a brilliant idea and it was. That was until we got off. About half an hour after not being on the ride the side effects of death started upon us. 

We were a sad looking duo on our way from Animal Kingdom to Downtown Disney but we did survive the night. Ibuprofen with dinner definitely helped too! Besides, you have to snap out of it when there is so much shopping to be done down there! Faith had a gift card for the trip so she was a girl on a mission the whole trip. Downtown Disney was definitely a shopping destination too. Their Disney store was massive! After dinner and a little shopping we were officially toast for the night and headed back to the hotel.

Day 3: Day 3 was day 1 of 2 for Animal Kingdom! Animal Kingdom is just that, full of animals! I really enjoyed this park because not only are there some awesome rides, aka Expedition Everest, but there are also awesome animals! The best of both worlds right?! Once in the park, Faith and I ran to Expedition Everest to grab fast passes for all of us before meeting Kathy and Pete back at Kilimanjaro Safari before the crowds built up in the park. Once Faith and I made it to Expedition Everest we were faced with a tough decision. The wait timer was set at 5 minutes. So, we acciedently got in line and rode the ride before meeting back up with Pete and Kathy. It was just too good of an opportunity we couldn’t say no! There was a bit of a surprise though that Faith informed me while in line. I tried grilling her for answers before getting on, but she wouldn’t give up the information. Instead, she said she’d tell me before it happened. So, we were riding the ride to the highest point when we reach a dead-end on the track where Faith turned to me and said in a sly little voice, “surprise!” before the roller coaster started going back down the track backwards. Something that I had informed everyone the day before that I was afraid of rides that went backwards. It ended up being a lot of fun, but I was definitely surprised!

Once off the ride we tried to hurry back to the Safari before Kathy and Pete suspected we were up to no good. We aren’t very good rebels though and confessed of our accident before boarding the next ride. The safari at Disney was SO cool! You get to go on an actual little safari and take photos of the animals! We lucked out on our trip and got to see giraffes, lions, hippos, and rhinos just to name a few.

After getting some grub we were onto some of the other attractions at Animal Kingdom including the Lion King Show, It’s Tough to be a Bug, and Finding Nemo. When I said Disney doesn’t miss a beat. Their shows are no exception. Lion King was definitely my favorite at the park. It was crazy! The cast couldn’t have been better. There were monkey acrobats that did some insane tricks. The costumes were phenomenal as well as the singing. All around awesome show that you need to make sure to check out if you visit!

Animal Kingdom closes earlier than most parks because of the animals, but it ended up working out well because Kathy had arranged for us to have a really nice dinner at the Grand Floridian Hotel. The hotel has an classic southern-belle kind of feel to it that was beautiful. The restaurant overlooked the fireworks at Magic Kingdom too so not only did we have a delicious meal, but we got to watch the fireworks from our table! For dinner I ordered their steak! I think the last time I had steak might have been my first visit to New York with Kathy in ‘08 so I was definitely excited! It did not fail to impress either! I might go on a mission this summer to try and perfect making my own steaks because I really do enjoy a good one! Bust out my pre-school dream of being a cook when I grew up? I just might! Couldn’t have asked for a better evening! 

On our way home since Magic Kingdom had closed for the night we took a little detour on the monorail to Epcot to catch a bus back to our hotel. Epcot was closed as well, but I did get a little peak into the park before we would adventure there on Friday!

Once we made it back to the hotel we headed to bed and Faith and I prepared for a morning of sleeping in while Kathy and Pete went to something for her work!