Day 11: Animal Kingdom and more…
Another cold morning on our vacation Airbnb. Sander needs to figure out how the thermostat is working because waking up with 63 degrees Fahrenheit (17 Celsius) isn’t comfortable…
Just 10 minutes a reprogrammed the thermostat and the place is warming up already, target 70F (21C)!
Another 20 minutes later Sander showered, got Emily dressed and did her hair by the best of his abilities. Next stop Target for something for breakfast and to stock up on Toilet-paper! With a non-fat flat white in their hands they got back home.
Emily her hair got redone and we were all on our way to Animal Kingdom. First stop was a meet & great with Mickey & Minne Mouse at the Adventure Outpost. They were so excited, and Emily loved it.
Shortly after it was time for our lunch at the Tuskerhouse, a character dining experience. We met Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Goody and Mickey Mouse while eating African inspired food from the buffet. Was it worth it? For the food no, for the experience with the characters I think yes as they visit while you are having your lunch.
Since it was really cold we decided to only do one more ride as we had a Fastpass for it, the Na’vi River Journey in Pandora – The World of Avatar.
Around 2:30pm we got back to a 77F (25F) hot Airbnb, so we overshoot the target by just 7 degrees F and Sander needed to study the Thermostat a bit more.
Only minutes later the apartment was cooling down and Emily was in her bed sleeping holding Forky tightly making sure he didn’t jump into a trash can.
After she woke up we left to the Mall at Millenia where we visit the Lily Pulitzer store. Here Emily got her own fitting room, pretty amazing experience for a 4-year old. She changed herself, asked for another size and decided she wanted that new PJs.
After Milkshakes from Johnny Rockets for the ladies and a Firehouse Sub for Sander we decided to go back to our Airbnb at a perfect 70F, good job Sander!
But then there was traffic, our GPS routed us differently and we literally passed the Premium Outlets. In this outlets there is a Disney Outlet, called Character Warehouse. So that was a no-brainer, park get out as quickly as possible and find that store!
Score: A Giggle McDimples (4,99$ was 19,99$) a Disney Cruise Line best (14,99$ was 39,99$) and a T-Shirt (12,99$ was 29,99$) for Emily and a new iPhone cover for Danielle (7,99$ was 24,99$).
From there we drove back and by 9:15pm Emily was in bed with Forky, Giggle McDimples and Duffy!
After finishing of the blog we call it a day too!
Day 12: Animal Kingdom…
Today we had a really slow start, we decided to wake Emily up at 9:30am as we wanted to be in Animal Kingdom around 11am. Mission completed at 10:40, first stop the Starbucks and a picture with Timon from the Lion King.
Time for our first FastPass+, the Kilimanjaro Safari! Here you ride with a very large “Jeep“ through different ecosystems between the animals. Emily was mainly focussed on birds and animals which looked like horses.
We also got in a traffic jam caused by Giraffes crossing the paths we were driving over multiple times. Very amazing to see this, we’ve done this safari multiple times but eve never seem so many animals.
After the ride Emily wanted to take a walk and thus we followed the Gorilla trail, she had mainly interest for the leafs!
Next stop was lunch, we decided to have lunch in the Satu’li Canteen in Pandora. Here I used the Disney World app to place a mobile order. Extremely convenient and it saved a lot of time too.
Throughout the day I had been checking FastPass availability for the Flight of Passage, and I was lucky to get one. Unfortunately I needed to cancel my meet & greet with Mickey and Minnie but FoP is such an amazing ride and I wanted to see it again after the preview in May.
Danielle and Emily went to get there pictures taken with Mickey and Minnie and after we were both done Danielle went on the rider switch ticket while Emily and I explored the boneyard in Dinoland U.S.A.
First we dug out some old bones, then Emily went 118 times from the exact same slide. When mama came back we asked Emily what she wanted to do and she pulled us towards an actual attraction the „TriceraTops Spin“. That’s my girl…
After a spin with loud giggles and a smile from ear to ear we took a picture and went back to the car.
On our way out we got to meet Beer Fox and Brer Rabbit.
We hoped that Emily would sleep a bit in the car and we drove to the Florida Mall as this was a 40 minute drive but unfortunately she slept in only 5 minutes before we parked our car. Danielle went shopping and I waited till our little Aurora woke up. Besides shopping at Lush, The Disney Store and Macy’s we had spice cream from Coldstone before we went back to the Townhouse.
When Emily entered the house she took off her Crocs and ran to the back, she wanted to swim. While mama was doing some laundry we both took a plunge. What a lot of fun. But she got tired quick and thus it was time for bed.
After the standard ritual with a story, brushing her teeth and going to the toilet, she fell a sleep before we even closed her bedroom door.
I went to Target for some groceries and now it’s time for bed as we want to arrive in the Magic Kingdom of Mickey Town early.