Wednesday 10th December 2008

Animal Time

Today we had a split in destinations as later in the day we had a character breakfast booked at the Magic Kingdom. But first we travelled over to Animal Kingdom.

Just before we arrived there, though, I peeled of the main route to look for Fort Wilderness. We're due there tomorrow for an early morning Segway ride so I though it prudent to have a look for it and add it to the GPS. As it turned out, the place was easier to find that Wilderness Lodge was last year.

The weather today was a lot more humid, the cloud was a lot thicker, but a sun was a lot more elusive. However, the temperature is still high so we went straight onto the rapids ride - three times in fact. Linda hid under her poncho - but even this didn't help her fully as her back ended up fairly wet. I, on the other hand, did the manly thing and walked around in soaked clothes for six hours!

We moved on to Everest so I could ride that. However, even the single rider queue took over 20 minutes, so I only did that once.

We stopped for a bite to eat then jumped on the safari tour. This was actually a good safari - normally nothing appears, or you catch sight of a indistinct shape behind a bush. However, this time we has animals roaming the roads, an ostrich measuring up in front of the bus before getting board, elephants, antelope, hippos showing off, quite a lot really!

As we left the ride, it was time for the parade, so we stayed to wait for that.

Finally, we stopped over at Lion King before heading out of the park.

Back to the Kingdom

So we were back in the Magic Kingdom by 6pm. It was emptying out slowly but the parade route was still busy as there was the Spectro Magic parade at 7pm, followed by fireworks at 8pm. We were over in Adventureland, riding the Pirates once more. Linda then stopped off to watch the parade whilst I went to queue at Splash Mountain (20 minute wait).

Stalker Time

Finally, 8pm arrived and the park had it's fireworks and started to close. We, on the other hand, were sitting in the Crystal Palace restaurant waiting for the Pooh Bear characters to do their sweep.

The evening meal was actually very nice - much better than the breakfast menu we had back in 2005. We were visited by all the characters - indeed Eeyore has been twice before Tigger finally arrived.

Finally, it was time to go. By this time the park was almost deserted. This gave us a chance to take some photos of the decorations without all the crowds!