Facebook Hiatus and Walt Disney World Trip: Part One

I decided to give Facebook up for Lent. I know, seems odd that Mrs. B's giving things up for Lent. I cannot remember the last time I've done this; in fact, I probably never have done it successfully as I've not been religious since I was seventeen and back then, I didn't have near the discipline that I have now. In other words, even had I stated that I was giving up something for Lent (chocolate, soda, boys (ha ha)), I'm sure I failed somewhere during the forty days.

Anyway. I just thought I'd try. If anything, I'll have a lot of extra time each day to do other things, some of which will hopefully be purposeful things.

So, here I am on Day 5 (I started a day early). So far, so good; of course, I've been rather busy since my fifteen year old niece and nephew are in town and, along with my mom and dad, we've been running all over the place doing this and that; including a two day stint at Walt Disney World. As always, it was a ton of fun, if, albeit, a bit different from my experiences there with Mr. B (who, by they way, stayed home slaving away since it's now officially tax season). It was darn crowded, especially The Magic Kingdom. Wall to wall children and strollers, eek.

Here is a brief recap of the trip:

We left here around 7:30 with yours truly doing the driving. We stopped for b'fast at Mickey D's just after getting onto Interstate 4.

After b'fast, we traveled on towards Lake Buena Vista (Walt Disney World), arriving at our hotel around 10:00. We stayed at the same hotel that Mr. B and I stayed at in November; The Best Western Lake Buena Vista in downtown Disney. Although the hotel itself isn't anything to write home about, the rates are reasonable plus they have a complimentary shuttle to the parks. This in and of itself makes it well worth staying at. In fact, we didn't even check in when we arrived. I parked the car and we hopped right onto the bus that took us to Animal Kingdom (our first park of the trip).

Mom, dad and Natalie on the bus to Animal Kingdom!

After dad forked out the moolah for the admission (thankfully, I have my FL annual pass so that saved him some money), we took off exploring this park. I'd only been there once before so it was relatively new to me, too. Neither mom or dad, due to health conditions, were up for any crazy rides so we planned accordingly.

Natalie in front of The Tree of Life at Animal Kingdom

First off was the safari ride, which actually has real animals (not the fake Disney things (with the exception of one baby elephant at the end of the ride)). After, we wandered around the preserve and saw a lot of birds

Zack and dad in the Preserve

and gorillas, including a baby (two years old) and its mom. BTW, gorillas are not full grown until 15-17 years of age. The males stay on one side of the preserve with the moms and kids on the other side.

"Daddy" gorilla

Baby girl gorilla

Aunt Amy (me), Zack and Natalie ran around going on the "thrill" rides, including one in Dinosaur Land that was really cool (I'd been on it before but totally forget all about it). Later, dad joined us on a real fun spinning roller coaster type ride. Towards the end of our stay at Animal Kingdom, we got stuck behind a parade so everyone sat down to take a load off.

Resting

For those who care, by the way, Animal Kingdom has beer, wine and other adult beverages. I'll admit, I was somewhat surprised by this, but the cold draft beer I had at lunch went down nicely enough.

We left Animal Kingdom around 3:00 and our adventure with the Disney transport system began. To get to the Magic Kingdom, you have to take a Disney bus to the transportation center where you take the Monorail over to either Epcot or The Magic Kingdom. It's very convenient but it does take some time to maneuver it all.

Since everyone now had the Park Hopper tickets, it was a snap getting into The Magic Kingdom, where we spent the next several hours going on a grand total of two rides, this because there were so many people there and wait times were very long (i.e., almost two hours for Splash Mountain) with the Fast Pass Return times being a lot longer than we wanted to stay at the park (8:00 - 9:00).

Natalie and Zack on Main Street in The Magic Kingdom

So, we ended up going on The Haunted Mansion (which had a wait time of 45 minutes, almost unheard of!) and Pirates of the Caribbean (only about 1/2 hour). It was fun, but, we were all drooping a bit so we decided we'd return B&E the next am to hit some of the major rides.

Mrs. B