Monday, December 26

 Happy (cold) Disney Day!!

We started off bright and early this morning because Animal Kingdom opened at 8:00am. We were prepared with our winter coats, hats and gloves! We got through parking with ease and were able to get into the park around 7:45. We had to wait a bit to go in further because it was early access for Disney resort guests from 7:30-8:00.  When we were able to enter at 8 we noticed a TON of people heading toward Avatar Pandora area. This makes sense as Avatar Flight of Passage is in HUGE demand right now. I tried to purchase tickets, but the first available were at 6:00 tonight and we knew we would be at Epcot.  Instead of heading toward Avatar we headed toward Africa and made our way to the Safari.

Unfortunately not many animals were out because it was cold. One animal that enjoyed the change in weather were the hippos.  They liked to sunbathe on the land. The lions were also moving around.

After the safari we headed back to Pandora because we had Lightning Lane passes for Na'vi River. It was neat, but wasn't overly impressive. The area of Pandora was cool though because the structures were incredible to display the floating mountains. 

We then made our way to Expedition Everest for Teddy's first experience on this roller coaster. It wasn't a super long wait; Mom and Rocky got popcorn while they waited. We got some Tree of Life photos along the way and saw a boat parade with some characters. Teddy liked the Everest ride and didn't seem to bothered by going backwards. When we got off the ride he said he wanted to go again!

Our next lightning lane was to meet Mickey and Minnie, so we headed that direction and made a stop at It's a Bug's Life. Rocky didn't like wearing the 3D glasses and was mad that the bug "sprayed acid" at us. He did like seeing the butterfly come out and tried to touch it. After the show we made our way to Mickey and Minnie; we even saw Kevin on the way. 

The kids were excited to meet Mickey and Minnie and we got some cute pictures. We then decided to head to Dinoland USA. There were some musicians along the way that we stopped to listen to. In Dinoland we found a net/slide play area. The boys had a BLAST running around. We had a pass for the Dinosaur ride, but it wasn't our favorite. I had never done it before and found it a bit too jerky for me. 

By this point we were hungry and ate at Restaurantosaurus. The meals were good and gave us energy to keep going! While we ate I found where Donald Duck was going to be because when I asked Rocky this morning what he wanted to do he said he wanted to meet Donald. We waited in line for about 30 minutes and Rocky was so excited to see him. They even acted like dinosaurs together. It really was a nice interaction.

We then made our way to the Festival of the Lion King for the show. It was a beautiful show with great music and fun acrobatics! 

Following the show we made our way back to the parking lot to head to Epcot.  Once in Epcot we saw that the Nemo ride had a short wait so we joined, but it wasn't moving quick enough and we were afraid we were going to miss our Italy dinner so we headed toward Italy because we had a 4:15 dinner reservation.  Along the way Rocky fell asleep in the stroller and ended up sleeping the entire way through dinner.

The meal was wonderful. We had calamari for an appetizer and I got chicken parmesan. Others got spaghetti and lasagna while Teddy got pepperoni pizza.  All meals were delicious but I won with a HUGE piece of chicken. I also enjoyed a delicious Italian red wine flight and Dad had a white wine flight. 

After the meal we made our way through some of the countries. We had passes for some rides in the evening so those were a huge priority.

The first was Guardians of the Galaxy. It was an AMAZING rollercoaster. However, I wouldn't recommend it for little ones like Rocky; it was pretty intense. It will be the Space Mountain of our generation. It was in the dark and the ride was so smooth! 

Then we headed to Mission Space to be astronauts. Both boys (and Thom) enjoyed this ride. The boys are absolutely convinced that we really do fly around the earth. They both were asking Mom if she saw us in the sky while she was waiting for us. 

Then we raced our way over to Soarin' which has to be one of my favorite rides. 

After getting a pretzel for Rocky's dinner we headed to Figment. Rocky was eating his pretzel but wanted to go on the ride so what better place to put his pretzel with cheese than his pocket. Goofy kid.  

After Figment we headed to France for our traditional creme brulee dessert then found some open spots for the firework show. I was shocked at how not busy it was. It was chilly, but it wasn't freezing- 40s.  

The firework show was neat with the lights, water and fireworks. We had never seen this show before; I miss the Illuminations show, but this one was pretty cool. I got a mimosa for Dad and I before the firework show. I was amazed to see how quickly things closed down while the fireworks went on. 

We took the extra long route around the countries before heading out of the park. Both boys fell asleep on the way home. It was an incredibly full day filled with lots of walking (about 15 miles), but it was filled with so much fun! The boys were troopers!