Animal Kingdom and Downtown Disney Day 4

On Wednesday we headed to Animal Kingdom. I had only been there once and Dan had never been there. As you walk through the start of the park they have an area to walk through with different animals and birds to see. I got a few pictures of some parrots.

We headed back to the Africa section to take a safari ride first, most of the animals will be out in the morning. We had fun seeing some of the different wildlife and even got to see the 7 week old baby Elephant they have.

After our tour we had a lunch reservation at the restaurant in Africa, but we had some time to kill. In one of the shops I tried on one of their hats and a guy working there offered to take our picture. We were wearing our "Happily Ever After" pins they gave us for being on our Honeymoon.

Picture of the Africa Section of the park

 Lunch was amazing...I wish I could give you a couple plates of the food we ate. This was Dan's favorite place to eat. It was set up Buffet style but all the food was amazing! It was a mix between north African and Mediterranean food. Yum Yum Yum!

Restaurant were we ate

 We next journeyed into Indonesia were Dan found a fountain to play in and we got to see Tigers, monkey's, and even some cows :)

Our favorite ride at this park was the Mount Everest ride. It was a roller coaster and the first one I had been on in a couple years. I love roller coasters and found the old familiar thrill running through my blood as we got on. We liked this ride so much that as soon as we got off we looked at each other and said, "Again?" We promptly headed back to the beginning of the line.

 Animal Kingdom doesn't stay open late or have any evening show, I don't think the animals would appreciate it. So we went back to our hotel and got changed to head to Downtown Disney for the night. Downtown Disney is all shops and restaurants but we walked up the path from our French quarter resort to the Riverside resort, also part of Port Orleans. Their restaurant was really good and our waitress was great. She brought us glasses we could keep with an ice cube that changed colors. We then took a boat from dinner down to Downtown Disney. One of my favorite parts is outside the Lego Store. All the following pictures are built out of Lego's!

Where's Kara?

We finished off the evening by listening to some live music and finding a Christmas Ornament for our tree this year. We than took the boat back to our resort. Yes, we did wear our Ears the whole time. It was fun having random people come up to us and congratulate us as well as offer to take our picture for us. 

Epcot and Halloween Day 3

For Tuesday we decided to go to Epcot and during our time they were having a Food and Wine Festival. We had a Disney dinning plan which meant that we could try some of the special food brought in for the event with out paying for it. We decided to do the world portion during an early lunch time (11-1) because we had early dinner planned at the Hibachi grill in Japan :)

Our first stop was the Sea exhibit which I have never been to and neither had Dan. We were delighted by the Finding Nemo theme and the quirky characters who greeted us:

Inside the exhibit you go on a ride in a sea shell and they have an aquarium that you can look through at the end. Is was really well done and I loved seeing the dolphins and rescued manatees. Next we headed over to the Land exhibit where we went on the ride through their gardens. I was excited to hear they grow Jackfruit and Dragon fruit! Two of my favorites from Cambodia!! (pic's below are Drgaon fruit on left and Jackfruit on right)

We next went to the Imagination exhibit were we watched the fountain of water jumping around (on the right side of the pic).

 We then headed into the world section and walked through most of the countries hitting my favorite ride in Mexico and checking out anything else as we took our time wandering. I love the China exhibit as it is a perfect replica of what I saw last October in Beijing. The best part about the picture below is that a Chinese tourist took it for us...which we thought was funny.

 Next came early dinner which was fun and we enjoyed the two couples who sat at our table with us. The food was good but decided we like the Grill in Fort Wayne better. All the servers and workers in each country of Epcot is from that country which is a fun twist.

 We found this cool fountain in Morocco and wanted to get our picture taken :)

 We had to head back to our resort early in the evening to get ready for the Mickey Halloween party and Trick or Treating. It was a separate ticket to purchase but we were glad we did. They even gave us bags for our candy.

 We didn't have time to get shopping for costumes so I used some makeup to turn us into mice :) They had different stations marked on the map were we could go and get candy. They gave us handfuls and we had our bags almost full by the time we left.

 Before the fireworks and parade we even had time to ride Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion...which felt fitting. The theme for the parade was villains and they even had a small villain show before the evening festivities got started.

 The parade was really fun and entertaining. It started off with the Headless horseman charging down the streets with his pumpkin head and than came the floats featuring villains and fall type themes.

 During the parade Jasmin came up to us and congratulated me on getting married and Mickey congratulated Dan. It was fun having them be interactive with us and it helped that we were sitting on the curb so they could see us.

Some of the villains

They also passed out candy from Goofy's Candy Co. One of my favorite parts of the parade was with the Haunted Mansion float, they had guys with shovels who hit them on the ground and sent sparks flying. You can see it at the beginning of the video I up-loaded and the rest of their dance was fun too.

Hogwarts and Hollywood Day 2

Nothing quite starts the day like having waffles at Disney :)

After eating Mickey we jumped in a cab and headed to Universal Studios. It began to rain as we waited to enter the park but we didn't mind. We excitedly rushed through the gates to find the section of the park for Harry Potter. You enter through Hogsmeade...via the Hogwarts Express train that greets you as you enter.

They have different shops as mentioned in the books and some that are from Diagon Ally such as Ollivander's Wand shop. Our first stop was to Zonko's joke shop. They had fun things to buy such as the extendable ears that Fred and George create...and they really work.

Next we found ourselves in Honeydukes sweet shop...were we bought Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans and a giant Chocolate frog, which includes a wizard card. It was fun and weird to get to be in the world of Harry Potter after reading all the books.

Our next stop was to go to Ollivander's Wand shop. They do a presentation where they pick someone from the small group allowed in at one time. We then see which wand chooses this young witch or wizard.

With Ollivander :)

 We were ushered into a shop were we could buy wands and other Harry Potter items. They even were selling these:

Seeing as it was still raining and we were running out of shops we went to the Hogwarts Castle to check out the ride. I was sad we didn't have to wait in line to get on the ride because of everything we wanted to see while in line. We did stop to take a few pictures along the way.

Which house is winning?

Can I go see the Head master?

The pictures really moved like in the movie!

It was a great ride and one of the most all around experiential rides I have ever been on. You feel like you are really flying on a broom...to the point that my legs felt shaky when getting off the ride. Very fun! We were hungry by this point...Mickey only last so long :) And went to the Three Broomsticks for lunch (and poked our heads into the Hogs Head Pub as well)

We ordered a yummy lunch and got to try Butterbeer...which is like cream soda flavored with Butterscotch. I did try some and liked the flavor but the fizz is always the turn off for me (if you don't know I don't like pop at all). I drank some Pear Cider which was delightful and later bought some Pumpkin juice to try too.

Before leaving we had to get a picture of the wanted poster (which also moved in true wizarding fashion). Feeling defeated by the rain (and I was FREEZING) we headed back to the resort to change into dry clothes and while leaving Universal the sun came out. So we jumped on a bus at the resort and went to Hollywood Studios for the afternoon. We arrived just in time for the Pixar Parade.

We rounded out the afternoon with the Beauty and the Beast show followed by the Indiana Jones Show. We even had time for a couple walk through exhibits and saw their evening water and light performance. We got to stay later at the park because we were staying at a Disney resort which gave us time to see The Little Mermaid show, Muppet's in 3D, and do a couple of rides.

From Mary Poppins

Muppet's 3D please :)

We saw almost everything we wanted to see and knew we had time later in the week to come back.