Excuse me, what's in your bag?

Hey, guess where was I last weekend?  That's right!  One of my favorite places in the entire world.  WDW!!  It had been basically a year and a half since I had been to the World with Jana so we decided to remedy that with a trip.  Even better was the fact we were going for three full days, rather than just for the weekend.

But let's back up, shall we?  All the way back to the airport where I was standing in a ridiculously long security line.  And I was in the elite access line.  But there I was standing in a line that really wasn't moving.  Good thing I had gotten to the airport early!!  While I was in line for over 40 minutes, I chatted with a 3 year old who was wearing a Tinker Bell shirt.  She and her mom were on their way to visit Grandpa.  I told her I was on my way to visit Tinker Bell and Mickey.  She gets to go visit Mickey when she turns 4.  Finally, finally, finally I got up to the x-ray machine.  And guess what?  The belt stalls on my bag.  Figures.  I am escorted off to the side and the agent starts going through my purse.  Out comes my romance novel, my pink wallet, my Mickey wallet, and the culprit.  At the last second I had thrown in a Minnie pin to attempt #31 on my 34 Things list.  Apparently in the x-ray machine it looked like a throwing star.  Oh snap!  What can you do but laugh?  Oh!!  And the agent called me miss, not ma'am.  Star for him!!  And star for me too.  (Pun intended.)

I picked Jana up in Houston and then we were finally in Orlando!!  We had good luggage magic and good bus magic and were at the hotel pretty quick!  It was late by this time so we grabbed some chicken nuggets for dinner and went to bed.

We woke up a little on the late side and headed for Epcot.  I love coming to Epcot during the Flower & Garden festival to see the topiaries and the new designs.  We got to the park and the rain started.  Which I really didn't mind, especially at Epcot where it can get ridiculously hot.  Until I realized what it was doing to my hair.  Yup, I was having a fabulous hair day (read sarcasm).  But I'm at Epcot - who cares if my bangs are curling all funny.  We had lunch at Via Napoli.  Yummy!!  We hit most of our highlights (Mexico, Soarin', Nemo) and looked at the various topiaries.  And then it was decision time - do we hang out at Epcot for Extra Magic?  Or do we head over to Hollywood and catch Fantasmic?  Fantasmic won out and we took the boat from Epcot over to Hollywood.  I had never taken the boat from Epcot to Hollywood.  We arrived at Hollywood and found the fast passes were all gone for both Rockin' Rollercoaster and Toy Story and the lines were 70 minutes long.  Bummer!!  After dinner of chicken nuggets we did a little shopping and then heard that the early Fantasmic show was standing room only.  Boo.  Okay then.  What was the line for Toy Story?  It was 60 minutes - we broke our own line rule and got in line.  It actually moved pretty quickly and then we got put into super fast line (I think because we were two people and easy to plug in when there are bigger groups).  Woohoo!!  When it was all said and done, it took us 40 minutes start to finish.  Good choice to stand in line!  And then it was time to watch Fantasmic!!

The next morning followed a similar pattern - woke up late and headed to Animal Kingdom.  It was a very different day for us at Animal Kingdom - we were a bit late for breakfast so we didn't go to Pizzafari, which is our normal breakfast place at AK.  And then we didn't go to Restaurantasaurus for lunch!  Say what?!  Instead we went to the Yak & Yeti, my first time there and I do have to say it was quite good.  After lunch it was out on safari where we saw lots of elephants!  The rest of the day was spent with the Yeti, Dinosaur(s), and at Rafiki's Planet Watch.  We finished up the day at the Lion King Festival.  We were slightly late for the Festival and so were escorted into the secret entrance and sat in the giraffe section.  I've now sat in all four sections.  

Once again decision time - do we go and use our fast pass for the Yeti (a second time)?  Or do we head over to Epcot for dinner?  Dinner won out.  The line for the Epcot bus was super long to instead we hopped on the bus for the Beach Club hotel and walked over to Epcot.  It might have been a short cut that turned into a long cut but we finally got to Epcot where we had dinner in Japan and visited Spaceship Earth before walking back over to the Beach Club to catch the bus to Downtown Disney to get our shop on and make a stop at Ghiradelli for some ice cream.  Have I mentioned how much I adore ice cream?  

If this were a normal weekend away, we would be leaving Sunday.  But we had managed to squeeze in another day!  Hooray!  Off to the Magic Kingdom we went on Sunday to spend the whole day there!  Wow - they have done some work on the new Fantasyland!!  I can't wait until it is finished!  So remember back to my Minnie Throwing Star?  Well now I couldn't trade that pin!  So I bought another pin and finally, finally made a trade!  Yippee!!  My first trade.  I was so nervous to trade the pin!  Something as simple as that, yet my introverted, shy side exerts itself.  It was hard for me to go up to a cast member and say can I look at your pins?  But I did it!!  And then I re-traded the pin I traded for.  I probably won't get into trading pins, but I will keep collecting them.  At least now I can cross #31 off my list!  Woohoo!!  

Ever since I read somewhere that most people only do 9 attractions in a day, it has become somewhat of an obsession to me to do at least 9 attractions.  And today?  We did 20!!  Boo yah!  We managed to get on Dumbo right when we expected the fireworks to go off, but we were an hour off.  Fireworks were at 10 today, not 9.  Oh well.  We ended up on Big Thunder when the fireworks went off.  While not quite the same as watching the fireworks from Dumbo, it was still fun.  Especially with the fireworks exploding over the top of the ridge as we went careening around the track.  

When we had originally planned this trip we thought for sure we'd get extra magic hours on Sunday.  But it wasn't to be - extra magic was on Monday.  Boo.  We definitely had magic at the end of the night.  Instead it was back to the hotel.  

And there you have it.  A slightly longer weekend visit with the Mouse!  See ya real soon!!

At Epcot

Champagne in France

Me & Pooh

At Hollywood

Fantasmic

On our way to visit the Yeti

Elephants

At Magic Kingdom

Yay!  I traded a pin!