Disney! Day 5!!! (Jeff's Birthday!)

Lots of people would DREAM of spending their birthday in Disney... Lots of people would call the trip in itself a gift! But Jeff is NOT lots of people :-). He is his own person, and as I said at the beginning of these posts, he was NOT thrilled to be spending spring break in Disney! So I tried really hard to find ways to make his day one that he would enjoy... starting with breakfast :-)

Typically, on Jeff's birthday, I buy him either Krispie Kreme or Publix (his fav!) doughnuts. But our resort didnt carry either of those as options ;-). So I went with the next best thing. Doughnut HOLES!
And we got him a post card as his card (remember, we had just moved so the things I had gotten in preparation for his day... like a card... went missing in the move). And of course we had to get him a yummy snack for the day. Snickers!

Knowing that he loves animals like he does, I intentionally planned his birthday to be our day at Animal Kingdom! And made a fast pass for the Safari which I was excited for us to get to go on!

Funny thing... I made sure we all got up and got ready early in hopes of catching some kind of opening show this day, as well. I was thinking that all the parks had an opening show, but I guess I was wrong? We got there at 8am (they opened at 9) and literally waited in line to get in. Irony is that there was no reason to wait in line. We had a fast pass for the safari. No reason to rush at all! So, lesson learned. But it did make for a relaxing morning as I didnt feel stressed at all about getting anywhere on time... we were early for everything!

When you first get through the gates the "tree of life" is in the middle of the park... I guess its the main feature of the park (like the castle or globe or magical hat...). I wanted a pic in front of it as a family but i saw ZERO cast members there to take pictures which was a let down! So heres the tree. HA!

Personally, I really liked AK! I loved how shaded it was and how it looked like you were just walking down the streets of Africa for a lot of it. All of it just felt really authentic, to me!

We headed towards the safari first and even took time for a bathroom break... but STILL had time before our fast pass. So we decided to take the walk around and see some of the animals on foot while we waited.

We pretty much stopped the trek on foot at the aquarium area, but not before checking out each of the reptile cages. Mack loved the turtles! And I about freaked over the spiders and snakes. AHHHHH!

We headed back for the safari and I made sure of one thing while in line: to request to sit in the BACK!
I had been told by several people that you get the best pics in the back and its the best place to sit. I could have sworn that Emily was one such person who advised me of that so when we sat down on the back row of the Jeep, I immediately texted her with my exciting news that "we are on the safari on the BACK row!". And her response cracked me up (b/c obviously I was mistaken). She basically said I needed to tell them I get carsick and stop them from starting, get off and sit up front! That the back is super bumpy and that I shouldnt be sitting back there while preggo! Um... scary! But we were already on the move, so I just went with it.

And I'm SO glad I did! YES, it was bumpy. But not bad, really. Mostly because the giraffes kept blocking the road and making us stop/slow wayyyyyy down! But we got to get some nice pics of the animals! And the kids loved sitting back there and getting to look behind us!

My big mistake of the day: I totally forgot my telephoto lens (55-200). So ALL of these were taken with my cheapo lens (18-55) w/ very limited zoom capability. Cool part about that... its obvious as to how close we truly were since I couldnt zoom much!

Hippos everywhere! (look for their backs in the water)

So, these trees are pretty neat because, as the narrator of the ride was telling us, they look like they are upside down... that the roots are in the sky with the bulk of the tree being in the ground! Neat!

The other strange thing is all of the termite mounds you see there. The guy said some get all worn down (like the one above) because of animals scratching their backs on the mounds...) while others are tall!

Isnt that a beautiful sight?!

As soon as we passed the giraffe's they were back out in the road, blocking the next round of jeeps! ha!

The Kids really did love being able to turn around and look out the back and take their time checking out the scenery we had just passed! It really is a beautiful property!

As mack says "El-a-flants!"

LION!

After the safari, we headed a little deeper into "Africa" to ride the train. The train ride takes you to Rafiki's island (an area with monkey's i  presume), however, we really just wanted to let the kids ride the train and didnt get off at the stop ;-)

Rhyan and Mack were being so sweet, playing together and tickling each other. Love those moments!

After our train ride, we headed on out to Dinoland. I was pretty excited about dinoland since Mack is SO into dinosaurs! I knew he would love it! And anytime Rhyan sees dinosaurs she automatically says "Oh! Mack would love that!!!". She's always thinking about things he likes :-)

Rhyan wanted to ride this one roller coaster called "dinosaur". Let me preface by saying that Emily had warned me to NOT let Rhyan ride it. I told Rhyan that I thought it was scary and that she might want to skip it but she insisted and Jeff said they would be fine... So they rode it. And regretted it ;-). Rhyan said it was SCARY!

But while they were in line and riding Dinosaur, Mack and I walked around and visited some dinosaur's of our own!

He LOVED this dinosaur! Sadly, we had a spanking moment in front of this fella ;-). Mack was pitching a FIT, not wanting me to take a pic of the dino. I told him that he didnt need to be in the picture and I just wanted the dino but he was screaming at me like nobody's business. Which earned his bottom a spanking. I HATED spanking him at Disney. But hello, he cant yell at us.

Luckily, we quickly recovered as we rode the dinosaur version of Dumbo and took a potty break. When we came out of the potty, guess who we saw?!!?!? GOOFY! That made this boy pretty happy :-)

There was a very short line so I called Jeff immediately and told him and Rhyan to come right on over so we could get some family pics... we had to let a couple of people jump ahead of us to wait for them, but that wasnt so bad! Mack was so happy to get to see Goofy!

Rhyan, on the other hand wasnt quite as thrilled. She liked them, but she wasnt jumping to hug them ;-)

From the family pics we headed on over to Finding Nemo, the Musical. Honestly, the kids were getting pretty tired at this point. It was hot and we had been there since 8am (it was now around 12:00 I think)

This musical was SO interesting. The "characters" were basically like stuffed animals but were carried around by the actors playing their part...who were also dressed similarly.

The colors were absolutely amazing in this musical! It was memorizing! And it was really a great chance for us to all sit down and relax for a little while... It helped the kids to recharge. And us!

Lunchtime was after the musical and I had been told by several people to try to eat at the bbq place at Animal Kingdom... so we did! I would say that it was definitely good!

We had fast passes for Jeff and Rhyan to ride the expedition everest (yes, Rhyan was tall enough and she LOVES roller coasters!) but JEFF said he was tired and didnt care to ride it and just wanted to head out. I tried to talk him into riding it... because I KNEW he and Rhyan would LOVE it! But in the end I just had to remember that it was JEFF's birthday... so, we left!

More to come about the evening... up next.

Disney!!! Day 4!

Day 4 was, in the plans, supposed to be a pool day and "Day off". But as we all know, the best laid plans have to be changed from time to time. And one thing I had said going into this trip was that I wanted to try to plan it out so we got to see everything we wanted to, but I also wanted plenty of down time and didnt want to be inflexible and all "grrr... we HAVE to go here". Well, Wednesday morning when we got up, it was CHILLY! The rain from the day before had brought in a cool front and the HIGH on Wednesday was slated to be in the upper 70's! Which is AWESOME for walking around a park all day. Not so awesome if its the day you had planned to spend in the pool :-)

So I immediately started texting Emily and our travel agent and we decided to go on over to Epcot since we had tickets there for that day anyways. We had planned to simply eat dinner there and see a couple of key things and head back but weather gave us not a lot of options... so, we ate breakfast and headed out!

When we first got there, we were pretty lost as I had done pretty much the LEAST research on epcot due to the fact that we didnt plan to do much there! But we got a map and pretty much just headed for the globe thing... we adjusted our fast passes to earlier and did that globe ride thing first.

That globe ride was Jeff's FAVORITE ride of ALL the disney parks. Can you believe that?! He loves history, though, so I guess I shouldnt be surprised! The kids and I were like "eh... it was ok" and Jeff said he thought it was the best ride there! Go figure!

After that we hit up the bathrooms for a break. Heres the thing about Mack... he had been potty trained for about 2-3 months before our trip... but he's the kid who will wait and wait and wait and then about cry b/c he's going to have an accident. He cant be bothered to stop what he's doing to go to the restroom, generally speaking. So we just went routinely instead of waiting for him to declare a need ;-). Which, sadly, does not usually go well for Mack. He likes to do thing on HIS schedule, not ours (school should be fun for him, right?). So he did his protesting but stayed dry the whole time :-).

From the bathrooms we headed over to Nemo, the ride. I was fairly confused in the beginning about the layout of the park so we kinda got there in a roundabout way, but once we kind of got our feel for the park we didnt have any trouble navigating.

The nemo ride was pretty cute, for sure. It was pretty much "The Little Mermaid" style ride but Nemo themed. The kids loved it and I always appreciate any chance to sit down. HA!

Next up was Turtle Talk with Crush. This was yet another thing that Jeff said "is this going to be worth it?" to which I answered "idk. Emily said not to miss it". And boy, was she right. This turned out to be my and Jeff's favorite attraction! Crush was HILARIOUS! And it was so funny to hear his interactions!

Coming out of Turtle Talk, there is a tank with manatees in them so we had to stop and see them!

We had also made a fast past for Fast Track for Jeff and Rhyan. I was VERY torn between that and the flying ride (obviously, i am NOT a disney expert b/c i cant remember ride names at all!) but I knew Rhyan liked fast rides but didnt know how she'd do with heights.

While they rode Fast Track, Mack and I explored the cars playground. I didnt realize it when we made the trip reservations, but the week that we were there was some flower festival at Disney! So there were some BEAUTIFUL flowers and arrangements. Mack wanted me to take some pictures but, surprise surprise, didnt want to be in it.

I've gotta admit, I had a TOTAL freak out moment in that little park at one point. I couldnt find Mack. I was looking everywhere for his orange shirt and couldnt find him anywhere. And I didnt want to run around screaming his name... I wanted to remain calm... but I was freaking out for sure. And then I look and there he is, right beside me. In his BLUE shirt. Omg. From that point forward I made sure to KNOW what I dressed them both in that morning. Whew.

It was getting close to lunch so we decided to stay at the park and eat. There was a nice restaurant in the center of the park that had outdoor seating and a view of the fountains so we stopped in there. Again, to save some of our meal credits we shared 2 meals and it was fine! We got a chicken strip basket and a mac and cheese basket and then got fruit cups for desert and it was plenty to go around! 

We decided to take one last potty break and then head on back to the hotel for naps seeing as how we had dinner reservations back at Epcot that night!

I pretty much decided that breaking up the day and doing a morning and afternoon shift at a park is my favorite way to experience Disney. Some parks dont take enough time to do that way, which is fine, but on the days that we did break up the day, I really enjoyed it!

That evening we headed back for dinner at Cape May which is just outside of Epcot. In fact, we walked THROUGH epcot to get there! And as we walked past this hotel I just HAD to take pictures. It was BEAUTIFUL!!! And then I got to looking at our map and realized THAT is where we were having dinner!!! How exciting!

I had planned this meal to be Jeff's birthday dinner. His birthday was the next day but i KNEW he would like an all you can eat buffet with crab legs! So I had told him in advance that we would be celebrating a night early, which he was fine with!

We had a 7pm reservation and boy was I glad we had a reservation... it was packed! Even with our reservation we waited about 15 minutes, which gave me an opportunity to get some pics of this sweet boy who was in a good mood and ASKED to have his picture made! Moody, I tell ya ;-)

The meal was really, really good. But, surprisingly, the crab legs were NOT Jeff's favorite thing. I loved them, no doubt, but Jeff chowed down on the steak. He said it was just cooked perfectly and had a great flavor. Whatever, I was just grateful that he loved the meal! :-)

After leaving dinner we headed to find a spot to watch Illuminations, which I had been told is the BEST fireworks show in all of Disney (by several people). We found our spots and the kids were asking for some glow sticks. Heres the bummer... for MONTHS leading up to our trip, I purchased all kinds of goodies so that I could give the kids a little something special each day, one of which were glow sticks for this particular night. But in the move, I couldnt find the box the goodies were in :-(. However, we had made it 4 days in Disney and not bought a single thing, so we decided this could be a fun splurge. So the kids and I headed over to a kiosk where I used our Disney gift card that we had gotten when we got a disney credit card (and put the cost of our trip on it.. no worries, we paid it off the same month but by doing so we got $200 gift card!). Well, after checking out, I got to looking at our balance and somehow it had gone from about $170 to around $50. Say WHAAAAT?! Turns out, the waiter at Cape May (regardless of the fact that we had been sure to let him know that we were on the dining plan) had charged our entire meal (as opposed to the tip only) to the gift card. I called Mandy, our travel agent, and she said we could definitely get it straightened out but that we may need to walk back down to the restaurant. Which was a BUMMER. Because the fireworks were about 15 min from starting.

Jeff ended up telling us to stay for the fireworks and he would walk back and get it straightened out. Which i HATED! This was HIS night!  I wanted so badly to be doing things HE would like! :-( And instead, he spent the ENTIRE fireworks show walking back to the restaurant and getting this taken care of. Which also left me with two kiddos who couldnt see over the people who had squeezed in front of us for the show (boo!). So, this preggo mama ended up putting Rhyan on my shoulders (because she LOVES fireworks and wanted to be able to see) and HOLDING Mack (because he's SCARED of fireworks and wanted to be held). OMG. I thought I would die. I mean, I'd do it again in a heartbeat, but my back was killing me. I missed my strong hubby! Wahhhhhhhhh!

Right at the end of the show, Jeff walked back up. I was SO sad that he missed it. I mean, honestly, the kids didnt love it and I was in pain so I didnt really love it, but a lot of why we didnt love it is because we were missing Jeff and he just makes everything more fun (and EASIER!). So i was sad. But he didnt seem to care one bit! He's just like that... does what needs to be done and doesnt complain.

We made our way with the crowd to the exit and caught our bus back to the hotel. This was by far our latest night as the kids didnt get in bed till after 10:30 (their normal bedtime is 8pm). I cant say that I think it was worth it to keep them up that late for this... I honestly wish we would have sprung for our late night to have been at Magic Kingdom for the electrical parade and fireworks! But you live and learn.

So my overall feeling on Epcot was this: I like it, but I think i'll like it better either 1. Without kids or 2. When the kids are older and we can all walk and enjoy the countries.

I was super proud of our family, though, and how we all tried to make the best out of a not so great situation. By the way, the waiter was extremely apologetic and felt terrible about the mix up. Jeff still tipped him normally and didnt hold it against him but I still need a little help getting over the fact that his mistake kinda ruined our evening :-(. HA! I promise, i'll move on... eventually ;-)

Jeff's birthday and Animal Kingdom coming up!!!