Shortly after our Easter/Spring Break family vacation to Disney, I had the chance to accompany John on a business trip back to Orlando. We stayed at the beautiful Waldorf Astoria hotel, spent a date night eating and drinking in Disney Springs, had dinner at Animal Kingdom Lodge's Jiko restaurant with his colleagues, and spent a leisurely day touring Animal Kingdom park. Oh, and via an elaborate setup between his laptop, our home DVR and the hotel TV, we were able to watch Game of Thrones. Whew, successful weekend! At the end of it, I flew home to relieve my mom and John had to stay for three more days of meetings.
The morning we left was Muffins with Mom at school. Instead we had Donuts with Everyone at home!
From our balcony, we could see parts of Disney World: Tower of Terror at Hollywood Studios and Spaceship Earth at Epcot. This would end up being a fireworks trifecta for me on our last evening as I saw Studios, Magic Kingdom AND Epcot fireworks simultaneously. Amazing!!!
At Downtown Disney, we started at Jock Lindsey's Hangar Bar, the Indiana Jones themed bar/lounge. We had seats at the outside bar where we could hear the music of one of the Disney Springs performers and watched the gathered crowd dance. Best was the moves of Eddy Maserati, a local celebrity. We also met a couple from North Carolina that was very friendly and funny. Their sons were a few years older than William so we enjoyed their stories.
Sunday morning we got up bright and early to be at rope drop at Animal Kingdom. Since we didn't plan the trip 60+ days in advance, we couldn't get a fast pass to Flight of Passage. But we figured with just the two of us we could get through the crowd easily and even if we had to wait, we didn't have anything else we needed to be doing. We were in line about an hour before the park was scheduled to open at 9 a.m., which was about 30 minutes before it actually did open. Since we got in early and they actually open that ride early, were are already off the ride at 9:03. The rest of our morning touring wasn't particularly efficient but we enjoyed looking around in all the nooks and crannies of the park we usually walk right past. And we did get to ride Everest twice - both times waiting to get front row! And when the rain deluge began, we raced for Nomad Lounge and waited out the rain while we enjoyed a late lunch.
We stopped by Hollywood Studios after our rain/lunch break to see whether we could get on a few rides and to do some shopping. We rode Rock 'n Rollercoaster and again made sure we waited for the front row! This was the first time we had ever ridden together since one of us is usually sitting with William and the other alone. And we decided to meet BB-8 since there was no line, and we were in the building buying William his birthday present (a custom Boba Fett Magic Band).
Back at the Waldorf we had dinner, watched the fireworks and watched Game of Thrones. I also had a piece of the famous Waldorf Astoria Red Velvet Cake. It was tasty, but my mom does a better version on Valentine's Day! The pictures do no justice to how happy the fireworks made me!
While we were at Animal Kingdom we bought William the Okapi stuffed animal that he was eyeing on our earlier trip when he decided to spend his souvenir money on Goofy. He was so happy to get "Oko" and have him join his safari. His favorite stuffed animal friends are all safari animals: Chester the Leopard (we thought he was a cheetah at first....); Paws the African Painted Dog; and Oko the Okapi.
