day 4 - Animal Kingdom

It was a little harder to get going this morning.  LE is usually an early riser, but this late bed time is taking its toll (on all 4 of us).  We decided to mix up our schedule and do Animal Kingdom on Wednesday.  The park closed at 5, so we would have to make it a shorter day or so we thought.  First thing we did was to hit the Everest Roller Coaster.  Great ride.  We did a child swap, so Ben rode first and then stayed with the girls so I could ride with no wait.  We ended up riding it 3x throughout the day.  The safari was good, but it was already mid-morning and all of the cats were already sleeping.  We did see an okapi (pic top right), which is LE's favorite animal.  She had never seen a real one before (read about them), it is a very shy animal, cousin to the giraffe.   We did not see Bell's favorite the zebra.  The girls were chosen to be in the Lion King Musical.  They marched around the theater in the finale and played maracas.   The girls also participated in Rafiki's Planet Watch.  They had tasks they had to complete around the park in order to get stamps.  After they completed 6 tasks, they got a mini science book.

After the park, we went back to our rooms and rested for a little bit, cleaned up and took the buses to the Magic Kingdom.  We left 2 hours early so we could ride the boats around Lake Buena Vista and the monorail around the World.  Our dinner reservation was at 8:45, a tad late, but at the time of the reservations I was thinking it would be 7:45 to our central time zone bodies.  Dinner was fine, we had reservations at Chef Mickeys, the parental units' least favorite dining experience, but LE's fave.  She liked dancing with Pluto.  We felt rushed, it was a so-so buffet (prime rib was good), but not what worth what we paid even in the tip.  Yes, you have to tip at a buffet at DW! 

After dinner, we were supposed to grab a bus back to Disney Downtown that would transfer us back to our resort.  Buses are supposed to run every 20 minutes, let's just say they must have forgotten to tell our bus drivers.  5 rounds of buses came by before (i.e hours, not minutes) before a bus arrived and then it was packed and no one offered 2 young children a seat.  After finally making it to DD, we had to transfer to another bus, and wait again.  This time we got seats, and for the first time since infancy the girls fell asleep in public.  We had to carry them from the resort bus stop back to our room.  Worst experience of the trip.  I wish we had taken our car, but the hotel staff made it sound so easy to make those "quick easy" transfers.   It was after midnight before we even walked into our room.