Animal Kingdom was Faaaabulous Dahling!
We left Susan (tinknutt's house) before the crack-o-dawn, totally missed any traffic into Orlando and made it to the airport to pick up Britt's friend Stefanie an hour ahead of schedule. We arrived at AKL around 11:30 and our room was ready for us

We were upgraded to pool view too!
The girls and I were very tired from traveling and getting up early so I headed for the jacuzzi and took some pictures while they napped. Mom said she was going to downtown and wound up taking herself to Epcot. By the time the girls got up and I got dressed Mom was done epcot and told us she was headed to dtd.
I only went to DTD to get the girls to disney quest and buy our nye tickets at the house of blues...turns out the only tickets left had to be purchased online

so I headed back over to AKL and hooked up with some friends who were already there.
Of course I picked up a hoodie for Britt on my way out, that she saw at planet hollywood, for a Christmas gift.
Aisling (from NY) and her two boys (13 & 20), Nan (from San Jose CA) her hubby, two kids (5 & 8) and sister were all there and ready for a mini meet. Nan was staying on concierge so we all headed up to her room. This was the first time we'd ever met face to face so there was a lotta hugging and hellos. Wilson (Nan's 5yo boy) and Paul (Nan's hubby) had their hair done in the Magic Kingdom and saved their new do-s for us to see! They both had pixie dist and spikes with hidden mickey's on the back.
Nan let me on her laptop to buy my nye tickets so that worked out very well for us. $145 later we all headed up to the concierge lounge for some shots-o-Baileys and cookies. The server there was great with the kids. An engineer by trade, can build rockets, but would rather wait on folks at disney and enjoy his life instead. They had airplane and rocket building competitions while the adults did the drinking and toasting.
The girls and I grabbed a bite at Mara, $27 for chicken nuggets, a salad and a burger and drinks. They had a great time at DQ, no crowd at all.
The next morning we did Boma for breakfast, very very nice, we met with the rest of our cruising group-John and Dede from Phoenix-had a great breakfast and we all went our seperate ways to prepare to head to the port. My group drove to Port Canaveral in Mom's car and the 9 of them took the
DCL bus.