Day 3

Wednesday, June 4th

We tried again to roll out early, but it didn't work. We had decided to head over to Animal Kingdom to start out the day. We had dinner reservations at the Animal Kingdom Lodge early that evening and we debated back and forth all day about whether or not to go back to our hotel, get showered up, and head back toward Animal Kingdom. I was in favor of showering; Jon was not.

The first thing we had to take care of were new sunglasses. Mine had completely disappeared the day before. Not a clue where they went. I replaced the cheap Banana pair with a cheap Mickey pair. I had only a few things on my list for the day: The new Expedition Everest, a roller coaster through a broken mine shaft while the yeti chases you, Dinosaur, the thrill ride through prehistoric times that's dark and loud and lots of scary beasts jump out at you, the Safari, and maybe the Nemo and Lion King musical shows. Of all the parks, Animal Kingdom is my least favorite. I don't think Jon understood that I was totally not excited about going there.

So we fought the kids to get to the Kilimanjaro Safari upon our arrival. The line was insanely long, so we grabbed a Fast Pass. I was already drenched with sweat and annoyed by the constant stroller dodging. I quickly got grumpy. Jon suggested a train ride as a "fun" alternative. I wasn't too excited with the idea, but it was something to do while sitting down. So we rode the 5 minute train to one stop and immediately hopped back on and rode it back to the main station. Since we had a bit of a wait before the safari, I suggested getting something to drink. Jon found a bar on the map and we headed that way. We grabbed stools and ordered up some Safari Amber, a beer brewed specially for Animal Kingdom by Budweiser. A nice brewski with a fan blowing on us and I was all smiles again for our safari. After checking out all of the animals (it's really a pretty cool ride - we even saw real ostrich eggs!) we headed back to the bar for a second beer. Ah, what a nice trip! Disney sans kids . . .

We overheard some girls next to us complaining about Expedition Everest being shut down. We decided to walk past it and check things out on our way to Dinosaur. Up and running, but a looooong line. So we grabbed a Fast Pass and kept walking. We made it to Dinosaur for a 20 minute wait. Not bad! And since it's mostly indoors, A/C! Then we walked back to Everest and decided to chance the 30 minute wait. Just after hopping on line, the time changed. I saw a 5 on the end and assumed they'd upped it to 45 minutes. But as we got closer to the sign, it really read 15 minutes! Nice. Awesome line, incidentally. Interesting imitation pagodas and gear shops. Pretty cool ride, too. You head up and up into the mountain and the yeti (in animated form) jumps out. The track literally flips over and thereby changes directions. And then you head backward, in the complete dark. A few more times of that, with an animatronic yeti, and it's a lot of fun.

So we had hit up the stuff we wanted to and didn't quite have time to get back to our hotel to shower up. So we headed over to Animal Kingdom to hang out before our reservations. Pretty cool hotel. It is literally surrounded by savannas where animals wander free. The mostly harmless kind - gazelles, giraffes, birds, etc. We finally got our table, lately all sweaty and looking pretty hit up, and had a truly amazing dinner. Jiko, the restaurant, has the largest collection of South African wines in the US. And I love a good pinotage! We had a tomato, onion and cucumber salad with a watermelon vinaigrette. Jon had amazing ribs that were cooked in a coffee-brown sugar marinade. My chicken was delicious and the lemon curd dessert was unbelievable. Two hours later, we wandered back to our hotel. After a shower and short TV break, we were out again.

This time we hit up the newly renamed Hollywood Studios. MGM, as I will insist on calling it, was open until 1a. We planned to hit up the big stuff: The Great Movie Ride, Hollywood Tower of Terror, Aerosmith's Rockin' Roller Coaster and The Muppet 4D Spectacular. So we pretty much walked right on to The Great Movie Ride. Awesome. We had grabbed Fast Passes for Tower of Terror. We still had some time to kill, so we wandered over to the Muppets. On the way, Jon found the Star Tours gift shop that included a special "make your own light saber" section. Jon eyed it and eyed it and finally passed on making one. But he didn't forget it . . .

Then we headed over to Tower of Terror, hopped in the short line and were about 5 minutes from boarding when I suddenly got really dizzy. And then nauseated. I had hit the exhausted wall. I felt badly, but I asked if we could leave. We got to the front, were assigned seats in the broken elevator, and asked for a pass. So we were escorted through the creepy basement to a separate elevator, that was run by a super creepy tall, skinny guy in an old hotel porter's uniform. He let us out on the ground floor, where we stopped for some shopping. We bought the Mickey version of Clue - only available at the Disney parks. Yes! We can't wait to play. And then we made our way home and collapsed, agreeing that a late morning was fine.