Today was our last full day :( . However, it also meant the last day my poor girls had to sleep on those pack & play mattresses... hooray for them! ;)
Our "plan" (used loosely on the last few days of our trip) was to say goodbye to Animal Kingdom, spend some time at the hotel (though not for lunch, since there weren't valid options), then spend some time at the Magic Kingdom before dinner at the Grand Floridian and the Owners Locker meet at Epcot later in the evening. The actual day looked only slightly like that.
We did make it to the Animal Kingdom entrance at about 8:45, after a notably empty bus ride. Thank goodness the crowds had gone home! ;) After the park opened, we walked through the Pangani Forest Exploration trail. We saw lots of great things, but the girls mostly liked the fish. They liked the fish so much, that they didn't so much as notice the giant hippo swimming behind them. Go figure :) Hartley did see some monkeys though, which made her day. And made her do this --
So freaking cute!
We got through the trails at exactly 9:30, just in time to board the train to Rafiki's Planet Watch & the Conservation Station. When we arrived there though (with plans to let the girls nap), we found out that strollers couldn't go in. Freaking annoying, so we sat at a picnic table outside while the girls slept. We did take turns going inside a few minutes (including watching a bird get put to sleep for an exam with the tiniest bag mask ever!), but it certainly wasn't a good use of our time on our last day!
When the girls were both awake, we took them to the Affection Section (petting zoo), unsure of how they would handle the animals up close. They loved it! The especially liked mooing at the cow (repeatedly) and brushing the sheep.
After the girls were finished with the animals, we washed our hands and headed back to Africa. We split a chicken meal from Flame Tree BBQ and an awesome jalapeno-filled pretzel for lunch, then headed back to the hotel in the midst of an ungodly Hartley meltdown. She had recovered by the time we got "home", so the girls played while I finished packing what I could, knowing we'd have to check everything in tomorrow morning. (Might I point out how much I loved knowing about 85% of our vacation laundry was already washed?! That laundry mountain is the biggest kick in the teeth upon coming home, isn't it?)
We tweaked our plans a bit for the rest of the day and decided to skip both parks. Instead, we just spent some time at the Grand Floridian before dinner. My sweet girls entertained the lobby guests by dancing to the piano music, and Zach and I enjoyed seeing some of the refurbishments - especially the gorgeous marble work throughout the resort!
Dinner at 1900 Park Fare was a lot of fun. The girls were extremely well-behaved despite very little sleep during the day. They loved their new princess silverware and loved clapping for each of the members of the royal family as they were introduced :)
Once we got our fill at dinner and said hello to all of the characters, we hopped on a bus for Downtown Disney. We still needed to buy pins, because we had been having a very difficult time. I remember a time when practically anything you could think of that best represented your trip could be found in pin form -- not so anymore. We had several brilliant ideas of what the girls' most enjoyed about the trip, and had no luck finding any of them represented. We finally settled on our four for this trip (and played a bit more in another set of fountains!), and took the boat back to our resort for one last time.
The (very sleepy) girls had a bit of trouble getting to sleep, but ultimately stayed down for the night - for one last night of crappy mattress sleep :)
No comments:
Post a Comment