DAY TWO 12/7
Back at home my entire family rises between 5 6 AM, but hey were on vacation and we had some semi-stressful news the night before and so today we didnt get up until 7 AM.
Breakfast was (and this became a theme for us) at the Inn Keepers Club. Cereal and fruit and little pastries and even eggs and bacon and oatmeal, along with juices and milk and coffee
ah, I love club level. After finishing our breakfast and getting some coffee to go (another theme for us), we went to the bus stop and caught one to Animal Kingdom.
We arrived at Animal Kingdom at 9:00 AM, and my dad and I posed in front of the tree out front. I sure do like going to Disney during the holiday time.
My parents both really enjoy Kilimanjaro Safari (and so do I to a slightly less crazed extent), so thats the first ride we went on - now, I am revealing to all you readers that the early part of December is a great time to go because we hardly ever had to wait for anything the entire trip, but this doesnt mean that now yall get to tell all your friends who go and tell their friends and suddenly early December is packed.
Anyways, case in point we walked right onto the ride and were off. It is true that going in the morning (especially on a milder day) renders lots of animals, and I think I got some good pictures.
After the safari my dad was getting hungry, so even though it was only 11 AM we decided to give Yak and Yeti a try. It was actually early enough that they werent open yet so we go on a list (first ones actually!) to be seated once they opened. Its funny cause I remember that when we first got there, we were the only ones, but then we went off in a shady spot and when we came back there was this huge crowd of hungry people ALSO waiting in line to get in. I guess were not the only ones with grumbly tummies at 11:30 AM. While we were in our shady spot we took some pictures:
We were seated in the upstairs room next to a window. The view was nice, and I have always appreciated how Disney puts little details into everything. I seem to recall our server wasnt that great, but the food was good. My dad had the Kobe beef burger, my mom had the prawns, and I had the chicken. It was all yummy
but for some reason I seem to be thinking that we thought at the time it was a little high priced. Hmm. But it looks like we had a good time nonetheless:
After lunch we decided do to the jungle trek, because wet blanket parents couldnt handle Expedition Everest just yet. In fact, according to my notes we skipped Everest this day. Hmm
there might have been a line. A should rephrase my earlier statement its not that there is no one at Disney in early December, its that my family has a rule that if theres a line for a ride we pass it up and try again later, and for some reason that almost always works for us. I know I did EE later in the vacation a couple of times with no wait. So anyway, we walked through the jungle, and got some fun pictures:
After our jungle trek we headed over to DinoLand and walked right on to Dinosaur and I mean literally walked right in through the queue area and into the pre-show with hardly anyone else in there. It was great. After Dinosaur I convinced my mom to ride Primeval Whirl with me (my dad doesnt like to spin so he sat this one out). My mom and I, on the other hand, love to spin and this ride and the teacups always make us laugh like little girls. Ironically, however, I can not STAND mission space red and my mom just loves it. Go figure.
It was about 3 PM at this point so we went back to the Boardwalk for a little mid-day break during which I cat napped and my dad took a shower and we got a message from our farm-sitter that the barn pipes were still frozen (it was only 30 degrees at home, which I know for some folks is nothing but for Oregon thats kind of unusual). At about 5:15 PM we went to Kouzzina (Im pretty sure I made an ADR for this because my mom loves Cat Cora), and we had the sampler appetizer (yummy), and my folks each had a lamb shank (the reviews were good, nothing special, and beans are yummy) and I had the lamb burger (which I reviewed as being spicier then I expected but good). Heres a picture of the boardwalk from that day:
Unfortunately I have no more pictures from this day, but I do have notes. We caught a bus around 6:30 PM to Magic Kingdom for extra magic hour. We arrived shortly before Wishes and caught an area near the middle hub with a pretty good view of the castle. I do have in my notes that there were large crowds for these fireworks, and also that it was foggy. That coupled with wind blowing in our direction made the fireworks hard to see and the whole experience less than it can be, but we had some pretty cool Wishes experiences later in the trip so no big deal.
I was mostly psyched about the empty rides I knew I could pretty much count on being empty once the families with small children started filing out. And as expected, after the fireworks quiet a few bodies head towards main street so we swam upstream into Tomorrowland. We decided first to do the Laugh Floor, which I remember being cute and funny, and then after that got some fast passes for Space Mountain and caught the people mover for a few minutes of relaxation. Going through SM while riding the TTA I noticed that there were no longer any flying cookies on the ceiling and commented to my mom that that must have been part of the ride upgrades (some of you may recall that SM was closed for several months and reopened just prior to our visit).
After TTA my dad insisted that we ride Carousel of Progress (yawn), so we along with maybe 4 other people piled into the seats and sat down to enjoy the ride. About half way into it the ride broke down during one of the spins to the next scene, so one half of the stage was the 20s and the other half was the 50s. The ride operator even had to come over the speakers to tell everyone to stay in their seats (Im curious as to if someone getting out of their seat while the ride was moving is what caused the breakdown). Well this sort of spazzed the rest of the ride because it seemed all confused and turned correctly the rest of the time, but always with the partition in the middle, so the left half of the stage was the previous scene and the right half was the new scene. Finally for the last scene, it ran twice and during the second time the seats moved REALLY SLOWLY so that once the scene ended, the entire stage was only on the one scene. It was sort of an odd experience, but at least it added a little spice to one of the more boring (for me) rides.
After that is was time for our space mountain FPs. Very cool updates. After that we decided to head towards fantasyland to get some ice cream and then sat down on a bench near the horse carousel and watched and Chip & Dale and Goofy all played/interacted with some kids. This was obviously where all the characters were and there werent a lot of people around so it was fun to see what the characters would do. Then we got to see, like clockwork, the currently characters go back into the backstage area and then a few minutes later emerge again looking just ever so slightly different.
It was getting on to be 11 PM and I could tell we were all tired, so we chose to walk through the castle and browse through main street shops as we drifted towards the exit. We caught a bus back to the Boardwalk and was back in the room by 11:45 PM during which I rode my trip notes for the day. After that, it was bedtime.
Next up: EPCOT, MK and EPCOT.
-----------------------------------
OregonGirl (29)
Mom (57)
Dad (58)
Oregon Family of 3 - Nov 1-11, 2007 Boardwalk Inn (Mouseplanet TR)
OregonGirl - Our August 2008 Disneyland visit - Marriot Residence Inn Maingate (Mouseplanet TR)
OregonGirl, family of 3 January 24-31, 2009 Boardwalk Inn concierge (Mouseplanet TR)
OregonGirl, family of 3, December 6-12th 2009, Boardwalk Inn concierge ºoº (Mouseplanet TR with pre-trip info)
NEXT DISNEY TRIP - DECEMBER 2nd - 11th 2010 - Boardwalk Inn club level
Dad (58) 
