Day 5

Friday, June 6th

Today started in reverse of Thursday. We had to check out of Animal Kingdom Lodge and head back to Shades of Green to check back in. Crazy? Yes.

We took full advantage of our awesome room and view, slept late and took lots of pictures of the animals strutting around. The best was when one of the giraffes walked over to a tree where a large herd animal was hanging out (I totally can't remember what - a cow like thing maybe?) and the giraffe pulled off a branch and dropped it on the ground for her friend. And then kept on munching.

After waiting eight years for the bellhop to get our luggage and check it for the day, we hopped the bus for Epcot and ran to England for our lunch reservations. I ordered a cider with a shot of currant liquor and yum! I ordered a ploughman's lunch (cheeses, meats and bread) and Jon got a shepherd's pie. How come we don't have more things named for occupations? A dancer's snack (water and a ciggy), a hippie's lunch (all vegan), etc. Anyway, back to lunch. We also ordered cream of mushrooms - literally mushrooms sauteed in garlic and cream. OMG, it was to die for! We were licking the plate. One our way out, we split another pint in a souvenir plastic Rose and Crown pint glass. And we made our way to a few more countries.

In America, there were president action figures. Hilarious! If you pushed a button on them, they would speak their well-known phrases. I really wanted to get the Ronald Regan for my dad. We picked up a Disney cookbook in Canada that has a lot of the great foods from the parks. Definitely excited to try it out!

After a few hours at Epcot, we exhausted everything we wanted to do and made our way back to the Lodge to pick up our luggage and move over to Shades. After a shower, we made out way to the Wilderness Lodge for dinner. Tonight's fare is Pacific Northwest. Buffalo, salmon, berry cobbler, pinots . . . That basically sums up our amazing meal. I also had a cream of mushroom soup. Lots of cream and mushrooms that day! Yum!! And we tried an ice wine from Canada. An ice wine is made by leaving the grapes on the vine through the first frost and them harvesting them. They have lots of sugar in them and don't yield as much juice, so the wine is very expensive and packaged in very thing bottles. It's really thick, very dark yellow and really sweet. Good!

After stuffing ourselves to bursting, we trashed our plans to go to Magic Kingdom for the evening hours and headed back to the hotel for a nap. Ah, food coma! We dragged ourselves out of bed at 9p and headed for the Contemporary hotel, which is next door to the Magic Kingdom. We made our way to the bar on the top floor of the building and snagged a table right next to the window. Fireworks would start in a few! The music that's played in the park was piped into the restaurant so that we could hear and see the show. Pretty awesome! We had a great view of the park and could even see Tinkerbell fly from the castle.

On our way to the Magic Kingdom after the fireworks, we stopped in the Contemporary's gift shop and found - you'll never guess - a Pirates-theme Game of Life. Are you kidding?! How on earth are the Pirates a good example of life and how to get married and buy a house? Hilarious! I sort of wanted to buy it just to see what it was like. Maybe you won life by stealing booty from a bunch of ships and collecting mistresses and pet parrots.

Our evening in the Magic Kingdom was great. We started at the Monster's Inc. Laugh Floor, a new attraction. To collect our laughs to power the city of Monstropolis, Mike opened a comedy club. You file into a big theater with bench seats and little table tops with small lamps in front of you. The "stage" is a screen and the show is all animated. But it's interactive. So to start our the show, Mike, the Monster of Ceremonies, shines a light on a few people and calls them out. An ugly guy, a girl dressed as a princess, a guy (Jon) who will stand up and dance (which he did and was hilarious!). Then monsters come on, do a few jokes and move on. You could also text in your fave joke and Mike's nephew came out and thanked the contributors by name and read them. It was really great! Definitely a highlight of the rides.

We finished up our list of musts and called it a night, all the while searching for some carbs to tide us over till breakfast the next day.