Part 3: Wednesday, Destination Animal Kingdom

Today was probably my least favorite day, but yet the most
relaxing. We arrived at Animal Kingdom
and I was so so excited to do the Kilimanjaro Safari Ride. That was THE ride I wanted to do. Well, when we got to it the wait was an hour
long, and none of us wanted to wait that long. MyRy was not feeling well after
the previous evenings dinner (jerk chicken… way spicy for his sensitive
stomach) and wasn’t planning on doing the safari anyway. So, Jess, Ryan, Alyssa, Porter and I got the Fast Pass to
come back around lunchtime (the Fast Pass you can come back
during the given time and hop right on). We got the Fast Pass,  went through the Pangani Forest Exploration
Trails, and then started toward DinoLand USA. 

It was 11:30 by this time and we were trying
to decide on when to eat, when to go on the safari (our time period was
11;50-12:50 to use our FastPass) and Ryan, Jess and Alyssa needed to be back to
the condo by 2. We decided to split up
and they bailed on the safari, so R, P and I headed to DinoLand to let Porter run for a bit.

Ryan still
wasn’t feeling well and I didn’t really want to ride a 30 minute safari alone,
so we made the decision to just head out and go back to the condo to nap and
swim for the afternoon. I was really
kind of bummed that we didn’t get to do the safari… that was the one thing I
really looked forward to from Animal Kingdom. I suppose we’ll just have to make it high priority on our next
trip. The crowds were crazy at Animal
Kingdom and it was super humid there- it seemed like even the shops didn’t have
that great of air conditioning… maybe they were trying to seriously stick with
the jungle theme??

(The $10 tiger head we bought for Porter…)

 

Porter passed out in the car and once we were back at the
condo, we all three took a nice long nap. We woke and headed down to the pool to relax and swim. Porter had worked up quite a bit of
confidence in the kiddy pool. He was
walking around a lot more and even sitting down on his knees/butt and trying to
blow bubbles. He even dunked his head a
few times (though I highly doubt on purpose). 

We wanted to go up to some of the “beachy” touristy stores,
but changed our minds when Jess called and said the outlets weren’t that
busy. We spent the last part of the
early evening at the outlets (Ry and Porter made out like bandits, and oddly I
bought nothing for myself!), and then brought Porter back to go to bed. Ryan had thought that he and Ryan P were
going back to the parks this evening to ride some of the adult rides, but
again, that didn’t work out. He was
pretty disappointed that he waited around thinking he had someone to go on the
rides with him, and by the time it was apparent that he was going to have to go
solo, it was too late to even make the trip to the parks. 

(Probably the highlight of Porter’s trip… seeing Elmo "lala" at the outlet mall)

So, here we are lounging at the condo. Ry is watching ESPN and I’m fake-blogging (I
don’t have internet access so I’m typing all this up on Word and will blog it
later). Tomorrow’s destination: Sea
World!