Spring Break Disney-venture: Day 5

We got up extra early on Friday to exit the boat before the main body of passengers. We had one goal: to arrive at Epcot before it opened. We almost made it. We entered from the back, hoping to ride the new Ratatouille ride in France, but we failed a second time; the ride was down (as it was intermittently throughout the day, so we never did ride it).

Thinking of Cat in Italy

The Frozen ride was the first a several that we thought Sydney would enjoy...
and she definitely didn't. (This picture was taken at the beginning, before she freaked out.)

I feel like the Frozen gift shop has a lot of Tangled (Snuggly Duckling) vibes.

We enjoyed the air conditioning in the Three Caballeros ride, then found
the musical birds outside in topiary form (for the annual flower and garden show).

Before we went on "Soarin' Around the World," Jack wanted a recreation of the below picture...

...from 5 years earlier.

The Genie+ system was a great way to be able to ride on a few of the most popular rides,
but since the time slots available were always in the distant future, it made it a little tricky
to time everything just right. Periodically throughout the day, we found ourselves with
awkward chunks of time when we weren't due for another Genie+ ride but we didn't have
enough time to walk to a different area of the park and wait in another line. This was one of
those times. We had lots of time to eat treats, and real food.

We rode the brand-new "Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind" ride and it was super cool -
like Space Mountain combined with Universal's "Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey" ride.

Let's gooooo!

The gift shops have so many fun movie-specific items.

We also rode "The Seas with Nemo and Friends" and had fun at "Turtle Talk with Crush."

Hanging out with Chum

And Bruce

And more people with Bruce

Obligatory picture with the Epcot ball (Spaceship Earth) before heading out.

And one last view of the ball with The Family Madrigal. (There were tons of these
topiary/flower displays all over the park - I told myself not to photograph every single one,
though it was tempting to do just that.)

From Epcot we went to Animal Kingdom!

Why does Jack pose like that?

I guess it's possible he gets it from me.

Our first time riding "Dinosaurs."

The Kilimanjaro Safari ride is always cool. This time we saw the Circle
of Life IRL - but I wasn't quick enough to get photographic evidence.

The longest line we waited in all day (somewhere north of an hour) was also our last ride of
the day - "Avatar Flight of Passage." We tried and tried to talk the kids out of it
but they would not be deterred. By this time, Amy and Sydney had retired for the night.

At least there were cool things to look at toward the end of the queue.
(In the picture Jack is holding one of Luke's souvenirs: a Na'vi spear thing
he picked out of the gift shop in record time because we literally only had a few
minutes before they were going to shut the line down since the park was closing.

We entertained ourselves in line by playing "Movie in a Minute" and other games.
I'd forgotten how cool that ride is, though. We loved it.

We lucked out by finding a shuttle driver who was willing to take us back to our hotel.
We were worn out!

Spring Break Disney-venture: Day 4

Thursday we spent the day at famous Castaway Cay  (pronounced "key," as I learned, and which makes no sense to me since other Caribbean islands are actually called "Keys," but I didn't make the rules). We had a pretty leisurely pace in the morning since we'd booked a glass-bottom boat tour at 9:45. It was fun to stop and take pictures with characters and the ship and stuff.

The glass-bottom boat tour was fun - we saw tons of fish, and got a kick out of feeding them oats.

It only took one day on the island to figure out that we'd done it all wrong. We had an easy morning, went on the boat ride as our first activity, then stopped in the little commercial spot to use the bathroom, look at the souvenir shop, and get overpriced smoothies in ridiculous character cups. By the time we headed to the beach, everything was super crowded. We were lucky to find two deck chairs on which to pile all the stuff we had for 9 people. Then we looked out at the water... and there were tons of people sitting on the shore, and tons of people floating and playing in the water. We had some water time anyway, and a few of us grabbed some snorkel gear. We checked out all the cool underwater Disney items that just happened to have sunk in a small area off right off the beach of Castaway Cay.

We had a yummy barbecue lunch with soft serve for dessert. Then as the rest of the crew hung out on the beach, Ben and I got some bikes and checked out the biking/running trail that led to a few points of interest. It was really nice to explore a bit and get a little exercise. And the cast member at the bike kiosk gave us Castaway Cay 5K medals, even though we were biking and not running.

Liza decided to get a hair wrap at the last minute.
It's lasted about 6 weeks already!

Our restaurant that night was Arendelle, which had paintings taken straight from the movie lining the entryway walls and characters making rounds. Musicians performed songs in the center of the restaurant throughout dinner, but unfortunately our table was positioned so that it was very difficult to see the stage. This was our least favorite dinner, haha. But at least it ended with Mickey Bars for the kids (as all the other meals had).

Since this was our last day of the cruise, I'll share a few bonus pics from inside the ship.

This is what our stateroom looked like during the day, after
housekeeping arranged everything in the morning.

While we were at dinner every night, housekeeping did the
turndown service and set up all of the kids' beds.

In the evenings, housekeeping also left us a
towel sculpture on the bed, and chocolate.

This was our towel sculpture on pirate night.
I think it's Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean.

This is the main hall of the ship, quiet and empty
late at night (unlike the rest of the day).