2008 Disney Trip - Day 3

Our second park day was spent at Magic Kingdom. It was much cooler… but with the coolness came a lot of rain. In fact, it never really stopped raining until later in the evening. It was still a nice day. Magic Kingdom has a ton of stuff to do indoors which makes it easier to manage rainy weather.



Magic Kingdom also has the most fast pass attractions of any park… and I took complete advantage of this. The four of us were there for the rope drop and I took off immediately to get fast passes for Space Mountain. Whenever I was able to get another fast pass… I would leave the group and go get one for another attraction. I am not kidding… but by mid afternoon… I had fast pass tickets for seven attractions in my pocket. That night we rode a lot of big rides with pretty much no wait at all. Good stuff.



We had dinner at a place off of Main Street called the Crystal Palace. This is a buffet restaurant… but with Winnie the Pooh characters. As you’ll see by some of the pictures… both Emily and Aaron loved this aspect of the meal! Also, Uncle Kevin… who is known for his quick wit… also joined in on the fun. He had something different to say to all four characters:

To Piglet: ‘I am a big fan of your work.’ (Piglet was his favorite Pooh character as a kid) To Pooh: ‘You need to lay off the honey, you’ve been packing on the pounds recently.’ To Eyeore: ‘I see the Prozac is working for you.’ To Tigger: ‘You need to remember to take your Ritalin.’ Funny stuff.



I also experienced a first in Magic Kingdom. A couple of years ago, they redid the ‘Alien Encounter’ ride and re-themed it as a Stitch attraction. I gotta tell you, it was pretty lame. It could’ve been much, much better than it was. I actually liked the old attraction better than this one. I would grade it a solid D. They need to just completely rethink this space for a better attraction.

We stayed for ‘Wishes.’ Disney does a tremendous job with their fireworks. It was the first time we had stayed for Wishes since 2005. Magic Kingdom is just so huge and it’s opened the longest of any other park on a normal day. It makes for a long day… it still remains my favorite theme park.

I’m a huge fan of Adventureland. We had a terrific Jungle Cruise guide this time around. She had some great lines that I hadn’t heard before… like when we sailed through a dark and creepy Asian temple… she started eerily singing ‘It’s a small world after all…’ That cracked me up. She also said something like ‘If you think this ride is boring then go check out the Hall of Presidents and come back… then we’ll talk.’ She finished up by saying: ‘Enjoy your stay in the Magic Kingdom… where your dreams come true. Then the park closes… and MY dreams come true.’ I continue to enjoy other Adventureland attractions like the Enchanted Tiki Room and one of my favorite attractions on Disney property: Pirates of the Caribbean. Magic Kingdom continues to amaze me in its’ scope and creativity. As an aside… it was probably Emily’s favorite all around park as well.

Disney 2008 - Day Two

Our first full day at WDW was spent at Animal Kingdom. It was a brutally hot day. Sunny, 90’s, a ka-jillion percent humidity. Melissa’s sister, Priscilla, and her husband and daughter were on the tale end of their trip to Orlando… so it was nice to all meet at Animal Kingdom and experience some of the attractions together.

As always, I immediately ran and got fast passes for Everest. Melissa and the kids ran and got a few character autographs. I was proud of Emily on this trip for a couple of reasons: 1) This was the first non-stroller trip for her… we made her walk the entire trip and she didn’t complain at all. She held up really well and had a pretty good attitude through most of the trip. 2) She challenged herself on a few attractions… she rode an attraction called Primeval Whirl… which is a tame mouse type coaster… but I thought might be a little bit too much for her. Not only did she ride this thing… but she loved it as well. She would tell you that this was one of her favorite attractions of the whole trip! She rode it three separate times!

Later in the day, she also rode Kali River Rapids with Kevin and me. She had a good time… even though she is exactly like her mother… she wore a poncho for a water ride. Getting wet is part of the fun of it for me… but not for my girls. Some of the other big hits of the day included Expedition Everest; Kilimanjaro Safaris; The Lion King Show (best on WDW property) and the Finding Nemo Show.

There are about four exhibits and attractions at Animal Kingdom that I have never found the time to do… and that didn’t change. I had every intention of hitting some of the animal trails… but we just ran out of time. I’ve always wondered why Animal Kingdom closes so early (5PM on this day) compared to the other parks. Some say it’s because of the Animals… but honestly… you don’t see very many animals when you are there. Because it’s always a shortened day… I never see everything that I want to see.

We closed the park by eating at another new restaurant called Yak and Yeti. Don’t ask me why you would put the word Yak in any American restaurant name… but it was an Asian flare type restaurant. I was a little worried about this one going in… but I thought the experience was tremendous. The restaurant was beautifully decorated. Our server was very nice. I thought the food was tremendous. I got a steak and shrimp combo entrée and it was very good. The shrimp was breaded and it came with this dipping sauce that was excellent. For dessert, I ordered fried Won Tons with cream cheese and vanilla ice cream. The whole dinner was fantastic. When we left the restaurant, the Animal Kingdom had already closed down… so it was kind of eerie to walk to the front of the park and only see a couple of people around. Very rare at a Disney park! All in all, I really enjoyed Animal Kingdom… it is slowly developing into a nice theme park.

We spent the rest of the night relaxing and hanging out at the hippy pool. I usually don’t take the time to swim on trips like this… but I went ahead and went down to hang out with the kids. Both Emily and Aaron had a blast. Aaron even wanted to get into the big pool! We took turns holding him above the water.

Disney Trip 2008 - Day 1

So we left for our annual Disney trip on Thursday morning very early. Even though the wake up time was brutal that morning… I actually prefer to get into Orlando as early as possible. It opens up a wider range of possible activities. We flew Southwest out of Midway and arrived in Orlando at around 11AM.

We utilized Disney’s Magical Express… which shuttles WDW resort guests from the airport to their Disney hotel. This is a free service that I wrote about last year. It’s a money saver and if you don’t care about renting a car… it’s one of the nice perks about staying on Disney property.

The resort we decided to stay at this year is called Pop Century. It’s Disney’s newest ‘cheap’ resort. The theme of the hotel is basically an homage to American pop culture from 1950 through 1990. The 50’s pool was shaped like a bowling pin. The 90’s pool was shaped like a laptop computer. The 70’s land had a large game of Twister available in the courtyard. The 80’s had huge Rubik’s cubes. We stayed in the 60’s… and our pool was shaped like a flower and it was called the Hippy Dippy Pool. There was a four story tall Balue Bear that Emily really enjoyed.



All in all, I was impressed with the resort. We had good service. The food court was decent. Our rooms were small, but nice. Bus service was as good as you can expect when you have to service that many people. The pools were great. There were two ‘splash park’ type spots that Aaron got a huge kick out of. I would recommend this resort to anyone wanting a cheap way to stay on Disney property.



Even though we checked in early, both of our rooms were ready. (We also had Melissa’s parents and brother along with us.) After having lunch and a brief rest… we took our first adventure and went to a miniature golf course called Winter Summerland. There are two rounds of 18 holes at this place… one is a beach summer theme… the other is a snowy winter theme. Melissa and I had already played the snowy theme. I left the choice up to Emily… and she picked the beach summer theme. Melissa’s Dad won out of the five of us that kept score. We stopped keeping track of Emily’s after round three. (She’s a huge cheater.) The highlight for me was ‘the bridge.’ There was a bridge that you had to walk across and when you walked through an infrared beam… things started squirting water at you.

We ended our day by eating at a new restaurant called ‘The Wave.’ We took advantage of the free dining again… so each of us got a free entrée, drink and dessert. Our waiter was very nice. The décor in the restaurant was very classy and modern. The only bad points: It took forever to get our food; and we were next to a table of eight drunk people. The food was delicious. I had the lamb… I had never tried lamb before and wanted to give it a shot. It was good, but I wouldn’t choose it over steak again. They brought us some multigrain bread which was delicious. Desserts were served in three bite sized portions and it was pretty good. Final bill would have been around 225 dollars… but it was all free because of the free dining plan!