So Tawney and I get up early Wednesday morning and decide to hit the Magic Kingdom. She needs to do the "Triple "Mountain Whammy" before we leave. Since our EMH night at MK was a disaster, I agreed that we should go. Tiff decides that she doesn't feel good, and asks if she can stay at the resort and text her friends from my cell phone. I think someones getting homesick! lol So this is yet another day that Fay decided to hang out over central Florida, and it was really raining out. We grab our ponchos and arrive a little after 9 am to a very slow day at the park. We stop for some Photopass pics...
We took off our ponchos, and you can see the rain drops on the camera lens...
You can see how soggy we are and the wind blowing our hair in this one...lol
But hey.. whatcha gonna do? LOL
This trip is all about firsts for me, and I got to experience some this day. We hopped on the train first! I've never ridden it, and Tawney loves trains. So we head over to Splash mountain first, and we really had a good time .. walked right on, and then it was off to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad where we waited for maybe 10 minutes before riding. I believe this pic is from the line at BTMRR.
After those two mountains we went on Pirates and then we headed over to the Jungle Cruise. We had never ridden it so we waited in the 25 minute line.. and I found it freaking HILARIOUS!! LOL
After Jungle Cruise I decided it was time for another first so we headed over to purchase our first Dole Whips ever!! It was really raining by this time so we headed for shelter just off the hub to enjoy our dole whips with them getting soggy. We found a bench by Liberty Square in an area of the park that was completely deserted and enjoyed our desserts! lol
We were really trying to not let the weather get us down...lol
While we were sitting there, a tour group came through, and we saw Peter Pan and Wendy come out of the building next to us to meet them for a private meeting, and Wendy looked over and smiled and waved at Tawney. It was really cool. Once we were finished there we headed over to Tomorrowland, which was the only crowded sextion of the park. I guess EVERYONE wanted to go on Space Mountain because it was raining so dang hard. We saw that Fastpass return was only an hour away so we grabbed our fastpasses and headed over to the Monsters Inc laugh Floor. I love that show. LOL The "that guy" of the show was a guy in his late 30's or so wearing a bright green poncho and a plastic flower lei. LOL It was hilarious. After the show we decided to do some more "firsts" and went to the Carousel of Progress and we really really loved it!! When we were finished we noticed we had only ten minutes or so before our fastpasses were due so we went on TTA (another first) and it was pretty cool!
Then we hit Space Mountain which had a 120 minute stand-by line (suckers) with our fastpasses and decided it was time to head out. we were really wet...lol So we headed to the hub for a few final pictures before heading back to POP to just relax on our last night, and get packed up for the trek home the next day.
That night I watched the weather channel in hopes of finding out where Fay would be. She was going to be directly over my route home on Thursday morning. I sat down with my maps and found a different way home. There was severe flooding at the coast and near I-95 which was my route. I sat down and decided to go the other way. I cut northwest of Disney, and picked up I-75 North up through Georgia, where I picked up US Rte. 129 in Macon Georgia which led me to I-20. It was pouring down rain and windy all the way through Florida, and then I hit a sun patch when we crossed the state line in Georgia and stopped for a state pic since we missed it due to rain on the way down.
The girls were happily posing with their giant lollipops..lol they loved those things! Tiff was decidedly homesick by this point... and Georgia was the longest state ever to get through. US 129 cuts through some national forest and the topics for conversation included gun shops, pick-up trucks, and the possibility of a masked psychopath appearing out of the forest with a chainsaw to kill us. LOL We hit the outer bands of Fay as we headed east towards South Carolina, and had some scary storms that we drove through. We had left WDW at 8 that morning... i am not sure what time we finally hit South Carolina, but it had to be about 5-6 at night. We had stopped for only some gas and fast food along the way and we were all getting cranky. I wanted to make it to Mooresville North Carolina before stopping for dinner because I knew the drive so well after that point. We stopped in SC for our final rest area state pic...
We didn't hit Mooresville until 9:10 pm.
We stopped at Golden Corral for dinner, luckily they didn't close until 9:30. So we got some food in our stomachs and hit the road again at 9:30. I drove through NC and Virginia in the dark, the kids passed out cold beside me, and the full day of almost non-stop driving started to get to me as I passed into West Virginia. At 1 am I hit Beckley, WV and decided to stop for the night. Almost 17 hours of driving and I finally found us a room at a little hotel.
We didnt even get anything out of the car.. we just went in and slept.. the next morning we knew we still had a good 8-10 hours to go so we got up early, I took a quick shower and we were on our way again. It was the first blue sky sunny gorgeous warm day we had seen in a week! LOL It was beautiful out! We got home at about 5pm.... exhausted... my alternate route added several hours to the trip, and I was just happy to be home!!!! I pulled into my dads house (which is around the corner from my house) and bounded out with Tiff's suitcase and got her in the house... Tawney followed me in.. as I go to leave Tawney's face turns white. "Mom, I locked the car". I said "wwwhhhaaaattt?" The car was running.. locked. So I had to get my spare key from my dad, walk around the block to my house, get my spare car key and walk back to my dads! LOL It was an unreal ending to a really great trip.. I was happy to be home though once I finally got to sit on my couch with my feet up. Then the sadness of Post Disney Depression hit. lol I am going back in 3 days. lol Depression GONE!!
Even with the rain it sounds like you guys had quite the time in Animal Kingdom. Now those Jellyrolls pictures-you and Robin were just too funny! Glad you were able to get another night in and relax. 
Another Disney trip? I do hope you'll report back on that one as well. I'm enjoying your TR so much!
