Last Sunday I had the day off (it appears that Sundays and Wednesdays are my days off as of right now), so Stephanie and Ashley (two of my roommates) and I went to Animal Kingdom for the afternoon; we met up with Stephanie's friend from home who is also doing the program, and Claire (my friend from home) a little bit later. First attraction we hit up was "It's Tough to be a Bug"; I had done that one with my family back in '08, but I did not get any of the "effects" (I don't want to give anything away, but it's a 4-D show) then......this time I definitely did! It's located inside the Tree of Life, which is pretty cool since as you wait in line to get in, you can see the faces carved into the Tree of Life (not actually a real tree).
Entrance
Tree of Life
Peak of Expedition Everest in the distance
After that, we of course headed for Expedition Everest. Our plan was to grab fast passes then wait in the standby line so we'd get to ride it twice; however, there is a single rider line that has little to no wait so we chose to do that and got to ride Everest 5 times! We didn't get to ride with each other the first 3 times, but I think that made it funnier when you looked at the pictures they take on the ride. The 4th time, Stephanie and I got put in the same car and that was a blast. Later in the afternoon we came back with our fast passes and got to ride all four (Steph, Ashley, Jenn, and I) in one car; we figured out when the picture is taken on the ride so we staged our photo:
It's supposed to be YMCA...sort of worked out!
While at Animal Kingdom we also rode Dinosaur (again did not remember that ride very well and as a result was quite surprised!) and Primeval Whril (a very jerky kids ride, but that just made for a hysterical video of us on it!), and enjoyed lunch at Restaurantosaurus. These are my kind of days off!
My other day off was Wednesday; Stephanie, Ashley, and Kaitlyn also had the day off, so we decided it would be a good day to go to the beach. Cocoa Beach is about an hour away and I found a park with beach access called Lori Wilson Park; not only is it a park and beach, it also has a dog park with pools!! That may or may not have influenced my decision to select that park :) The beach was gorgeous....the sand was so soft and there were very few people there (probably because it was a Wednesday in February).
We were having a great time until Kaitlyn (against the warnings of the rest of us) threw a piece of crust to a seagull, assuring us it would be just fine. Wrong. As soon as she tossed it, a huge flock flew at the gull and chased it. A few minutes after that ruckus died down, Steph went for her sandwich; she was almost done with the first half when a seagull swooped down from behind and snatched it right out of her hands!! Kaitlyn wasn't allowed to sit with us after that haha actually she didn't even notice what happened....she just thought we were fooling around in telling her to leave (we were of course joking....sort of!) Unfortunately, that wasn't the only wildlife encounter at the beach. As we were leaving we saw a raccoon under the boardwalk stairs; didn't really think much of it other than it was odd to see one in the middle of the day. We reached the other end by the parking lot and saw the raccoon to our right; okay a little bit frightening. Looked to our left and there were two more....started toward the car and 4 more came out from the woods and were on the pathway! Cue the screaming. Luckily the screams scared them off and we made it to the car, laughing. It wasn't until we were pulling away that we saw 3 baby raccoons with their mother crossing the pathway....they were actually pretty cute!
We came back to Orlando and went to Bahama Breeze (great restaurant!) for dinner to finish our day off.
Kaitlyn and I on the pathway to the beach
The seagull.
Came out kind of dark, but the sun was shining through a hole in the clouds
The beach!
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