WDW March 07

Wow... it's been a long time since I've put anything down on here. Been a busy winter. So the fam and I just got back from The Happiest Place on Earth (tm, i'm sure) and I wanted to write down some of my impressions before I forgot them!
Because forget, I do...
Day 1, Sunday- Animal Kingdom: This was kind of an impulse trip. We actually ran into our friends who were leaving Orlando at the airport and they told us that Finding Nemo: The Musical was worth it. (Back story- we have the greatest zoo in the country in St Louis, AK is the park we skip if we need another day of Beers around the World at Epcot to make our life complete. ) So AK is PACKED! We were starving and went directly to the Tusker House (due to previous so-so meals at the Flame Tree and at Rainforest,) where we had another mediocre meal. Food was not so horrible (with the exception of the cole slaw type substance on top of the chicken sandwhich) but it was, again, PACKED and the only tables available were outside in Bugville, USA. Little black bugs which freaked Eezers out the the extreme. So we ate as fast as possible and headed to the real star of Animal Kingdom... Dinosaur! I love that ride! And the frozen bananas... those are always good. J and E did the water ride (can remember the name, but it's similar to Thunder River at Six Flags) and loved it. Nemo? Good. We liked it... made Wink and I tear up at the end, but put E to sleep in the middle. Of course, she was running on 5 hours of sleep, so that might be the reason. We kept it pretty short, checked into our hotel (first night was the Hilton at Downtown Disney- nice) and chilled for a while. Then we headed to the Animal Kingdom Lodge for dinner at Jiko. Sooooo glad we did this. I had heard great things about it, but it was all that and a bag of chips. Yum. Even E's peanut butter sandwich was above and beyond. The steak was tender and delicious, Wink had a pork tenderloin that was the winner of the evening, J had a shrimp thing that he liked alot. Wine was delicious- too many to choose from. Too full for dessert, but the choices looked yummy. Only thing I would have done differently... we had 7:30 reservations and it was too dark to really see the animals outside. I think when we do it again, I'll try to get a 6:30 time. It was alot to live up to for the rest of the trip.
Monday- MGM (kinda): So we started this day at our first character meal of the trip (we did 3 this time, probably overkill) at Chef Mickey's at the Contemporary Hotel. This was our first trip here and it was pretty good. The food was plentiful, service was good, characters gave you plenty of time for autographs and pictures. The napkin waving "show" seemed a little weird to us, but it was ok. The food was not entirely your typical buffet fare- several types of eggs, yummy potatoes, a kid buffet area that had pbj pizza that my kids loved. Good, I'd go back.

So, we got started a little late, but we went to MGM and it was busy, too. (Definately like Jan/Feb lines better!) We have a few things we always like to do here: Star Wars, Sci Fi, Muppets. But Wink had done the Stunt show when she went in December with the band, so we headed straight for that. Well, after a short stop at the face painting station. Stunt Show was really cool! Then we had to stick around for the High School Musical Pep Rally. Glad we knew about this from our cool waitress from breakfast because E loved it and it wasn't advertised really well. We did Star Wars, including a great encounter with Darth Vader and headed to check into our 'real' hotel for the rest of the week. (Sheraton Vistana Villages) The original plan was to head back for dinner at SciFi, but after a trip to our favorite Publix, we had an easy dinner at the room and crashed!
More later...

E convinced me that this would be a good look for me- not so sure... =)

Our favorite shot at MGM... it looks better on video.