WDW: September 29, 2012

Once again, we were well rested and out bright and early to start our day! We began at the Animal Kingdom, where we started on Kilimanjaro Safaris. The girls got to be honorary safari guides, and were pretty proud of themselves.

 

 

Ryder was pretty unaware of his surroundings.

 

 

Next we met Dug and Russell from Up!, and played in the Boneyard before walking right into the 11:00 Finding Nemo musical.

 

After watching the show (phenomenal, as always!), we had a delicious lunch at Flame Tree BBQ and headed for the Studios.

It was oppressively hot once again, but the girls were excited to meet Phineas & Ferb, so we waited in a very long, very hot line. They were a lot of fun though, and to watch Emmersyn and Hartley giddy as they danced with them for several minutes was worth it.

 

We got smoothies next, and grabbed a spot for the parade to try and cool off. Emmersyn and I even got to be part of a flash mob filming!  Hartley was a little too shy :)

 

When the parade was over, Zach rode Star Tours while the girls and I cooled off and colored inside the Art of Animation and Ryder got to stretch his legs a bit. What we were waiting for, though, was our new favorite secret - Characterpalooza!

We saw lots of characters, including some rare ones. That particular afternoon we found the Green Army man, Stitch, Minnie, Mary Poppins & Mr. Penguin, Pluto, Frozone, Genie, Chip & Dale. The girls were in autograph heaven, for the most part.

 

That is, except when they had a run-in with the Queen of Hearts. She was utterly terrifying to them, but they bravely followed her orders long enough to get her autograph. And they are still ridiculously afraid of her, even in parade settings. Or animated movies. It's quite hilarious, actually.

Dinner was at the Sci-Fi Dine-in Theater, and the girls were really kind of crazy. They were afraid of the movies, whiny about the food... but eh, it had been a great trip thus far. We cut our losses there and headed back to the hotel for a change of scenery instead of our nighttime plans.

 

The girls and Zach got to swim for a little bit while I did laundry, and they were thrilled. We let them stay up a bit later since they had chilled out some, and I'm pretty sure they were asleep 90 seconds after we turned out the lights!

Next: September 30, 2012