No Kid Zone

When the kids are away, the parents will play.

We've been missing our kiddo's this week, but we thought we might as well make the best of our final kid free days! John's been OOT most of the week for his major work review & I was FORCED to craft, read and spend time with my girlfriends all week. It has been just wonderful.  With John's review finished with success and since we had to go down to Orlando this weekend to pick up the kiddo's any way we decide to take a quick day trip to Disney's Animal Kingdom in Orlando. 

It was kind of a last minute decision. By that I mean, we didn't leave for Orlando until after I got off work on Friday putting our arrival time to Orlando about 4 am. I would have been totally fine with catching up on some much needed sleep and kick'n it by the hotel pool....but John being the freak of nature that he is woke up about 10 am (after pretty much sleeping 3-5 hrs a night all week AND driving the whole way down) wanting to get out and do something. Crazy Man.

We narrowed headed down to the hotel lobby's handy tourist center and loaded up on brochures. I selected my favorites, The Titanic museum, Murder Mystery Dinner Show, Animal Kingdom, Epcot, or an Air Boat tour. John selected...Universal Island of Adventures & quickly tossed out all my suggestions except Animal Kingdom with something about "lameness". As we're already planning a trip to Island of Adventures in Sept when we come BACK to Orlando for our CRUISE...Animal Kingdom won by default.

So off we set. The Disney worker at the ticket booth was so friendly and hooked us some awesome Disney buttons to wear for the day. As I was a first timer to Animal Kingdom, mine said "FIRST VISIT" and John figured a weekend without kids was enough to grant him the "I'M CELEBRATING" button.

I think Animal Kingdom is my new favorite Disney Park. Which, I guess is kind of an unfair statement as the only other Disney Park I've been to is Magic Kingdom....which I do not particularly enjoy (yah, yah, yah I know UnAmerican blah, blah blah). Just the same, I really did love AK. For it still being "tourist season" we had surprisingly short lines & wait times. I think the longest we waited was maybe 20 minutes. With the exception of the "Affection Section" which you had to ride a train to, we were able to do everything in the park & we were able to see "The Lion King" musical as well.  We were also able to do the main roller coaster, "Everest" twice.  My favorite was probably the Safari . It was a pretty long ride, and we got SO close to the animals! There was a baby rino, which was SO stinking cute....I tried to get a picture, but he wouldn't sit still long enough...the Giraffe's on the other hand...were more than happy to just stand around posing...

Just Chill'n

Hanging out in some pretend foreign country...India maybe? Who knows...

It also was a *reasonably* pleasant day. And by that I mean, I didn't feel like fainting that often...even though I was sporting my extensions/weave....which is always a poor idea in the heat (beauty is pain...and sometimes a heat stroke).  We realized the reason for the mild day when we were hit with a fairly serious chance of rain...and lightning. Lots of lightning. After abandoning all hopes of looking cool, we purchased some severely over priced ponchos and waited the storm out indoors watching "Lion King"  

 To finish our day of complete touristy bliss, we had a fantastic dinner...at Rainforest Cafe.  I love how the whole restaurant comes alive and the fake animals that are everywhere come alive. It was awesome. Well, at least the first 50 times.

In other News...I'd Really like a Meerkat. I think he'd get along really well with the kids. And I just know Bayleigh would love one.