Day 12: Wednesday December 12. Animal Kingdom. Predicted CL: 1. Actual CL: 6
Today was my DD6’s birthday, so now she’s DD7! I don’t remember exactly what time we got up this day, but maybe somewhere around 7:00? I had bought a coffee cake and a cantaloupe for breakfast this day. Usually I make birthday pancakes in the shape of their new age, but I didn’t care to make pancakes and try to get out the door for a day in the parks. We ate breakfast and DD7 opened a couple of gifts that we had brought with us. And then we got ready to head out the door. My FIL and MIL took my BIL to the airport and were going to meet us at AK when they could get there.
We headed out the door around 8:45, definitely later than I had hoped but about as early as we could manage with birthday celebrations and waiting on my in-laws to leave. I think we got into AK gates around 9:30 and stopped off at the Wilderness Explorers thing to pick up books since we hadn’t done this last week. The girls were really excited about this and we ended up doing quite a bit of WE stops today instead of rides. I didn’t have a plan today other than our FPP and catch the Nemo show and play in the Boneyard. I wanted DD7 to be able to do what she wanted today.
After picking up the WE books the girls stopped by the flamingos and got another sticker for their books and then we headed towards Pandora, where they also stopped and learned about…something, ha. I wanted to ride NRJ but by the time we got there around 9:45 I decided I didn’t want to risk missing our KS FPP, so we walked through Pandora up to Africa. The line for FOP was almost to FOTLK. It was insane. In hindsight the line for NRJ was probably not long, but I still wanted to do the Safari and not risk missing it. We got to the KS right near the end of our FPP window. My in-laws still weren’t in the park yet so we rode without them. The morning safari was much better than our nighttime one last week. We saw tons of animals and it was longer, too. So, if you have to pick one or the other, I’m going to say go for the morning/daytime instead of sunset/nighttime.
We met my in-laws near Gorilla Falls and headed to do that trail. It was fun and we saw some gorillas acting up and the girls got some more stickers for their books. Then we headed to EE and everyone except my MIL rode it. We picked my MIL back up, DH stood in line at Y&Y for fried rice (no mobile order there, so sad!) while the rest of us headed to the Boneyard. We grabbed a picnic table, I mobile ordered Flame Tree (again…we would have eaten at Y&Y but no way were we all waiting in that line to order), and FIL and I headed there to pick up our food while the kids played and MIL held the table. We brought the food back, DH was there with fried rice for the girls (for a side, since they don’t like beans or coleslaw), found the girls, and we all ate and then let DD4 and DD7 off to play again.
My FIL took DD8 to ride FOP and the rest of us hung out in the Boneyard while the other two played. There has been some discussion on Chat recently about people not feeling comfortable letting their kids run off by themselves to play in there. I think if my kids were younger I wouldn’t, either, but there’s only one entrance/exit and I made DD4 stay with one of her sisters the whole time, so I was comfortable letting them burn off some steam without us hovering.
When DD8 and my FIL got back we walked over to do the Maharajah Jungle Trek. This was quite fun and the girls loved seeing the tigers. We were trying to make it back for the 3:00 Nemo show but of course someone had to go to the bathroom and we weren’t going to make it. So, we headed for DINOSAUR instead. DD7 really wanted to ride this. We had to wait in standby and it was 40 minutes or more, I was timing it but forgot to hit “stop.” Sigh. Anyways, totally not worth the wait, ha. Nobody hated it (except DD4) but they didn’t love it, either. Afterwards we stopped at the bathrooms again (argh) and booked it to Nemo. Nemo was good but I didn’t like it as much as FOTLK. DD4 was confused, too, about if the fish were real, ha. So funny. I think having real people and then the puppets confused her.
After Nemo got out we headed to the parking lot to head to DS for our 5:30 T-REX reservation. We parked in the Lime garage, which I highly recommend for anyone heading to that side of DS. We weren’t sure if you had to pay for parking or not (we had done surface parking near Cirque de Solei before), but turns out you don’t, and Lime parking is much closer than surface parking. Win.
We got to T-REX and DD7 was in heaven. Man, that place is loud. It is not a “grown-up” kind of place to eat. But the girls loved it and it’s so loud in there that nobody notices if your kids are making noise, ha. We got some quesadillas and mozzarella sticks for appetizers, a random assortment for dinner, and one chocolate extinction for dessert for the table, which was plenty for the seven of us. Everything was good. I’m not sure why T-REX gets a bad rap? Yes, it’s loud. But the food was fine. DD7 was over the moon about her birthday dinner.
We let the girls play in their mini Boneyard for awhile and then headed to Goofy’s Candy shop to buy a few treats, and then back to the resort. It was a long day but not having much of a plan in AK and letting the kids run wild in the Boneyard made for a nice, relaxing kind of a day.