Magical One-Day Birthday Trip About This Page:

[tkd lisa]

Hi everyone! I know, I know. I haven't finished my last two trip reports, and here I am starting another one. But this trip wasn't even going to have a trip report until it happened. However, it was so filled with pixie dust, I had to share with people who would appreciate it. So I'm going to try to get it all done in mostly one setting, which means I won't leave you hanging halfway. Okay??? Here goes.

When: Saturday, 27 September
Who: Me, just turned 44 years old, since moving to Tampa I'm losing track of how many visits to the Mouse I've made.
DD, 16, loves Disney and is always up for a quick trip
DM, 70, comes along for the ride, but is becoming quite the Disney lover too.
Why: Food & Wine Festival and for my birthday

We have a two night trip booked for mid-October to enjoy the Food & Wine Festival, and I usually get a birthday button on that trip, but I was checking some websites and saw that the F&W festival started on the 26th. Now DS had a car wash scheduled for that Saturday to do fundraising for his ROTC troop, but I hadn't committed to helping out. I had to go out of town for work actually on my birthday, so my mom was going to be in town to stay with the kids. "Plans" went something like this.

Monday, 22 September I called Mom on my way home and said "Hey Mom, do you want to stay over Saturday and go over to Disney to check out F&W festival? It's kind of for my birthday too." She said "sure", and that was the planning. We had really enjoyed the new Toy Story Mania ride on our Labor Day trip, so I thought we'd start over there, then walk to EPCOT once WS opened. When I was travelling, I checked the park hours and saw that the Studios had EMH that morning, so I figured it wouldn't be a good time to go to Studios since the lines for TSM would probably be pretty long by 9am.

Friday evening, I drove back from central Georgia just in time to get to the high school for another ROTC fundraising activity. We've started offering face painting during the games, and we do fairly well (typically about $50-$60 an evening). We work pretty cheap, charging $1 for a cougar paw or a players number. I've learned that a paw is just an oval with 3 or 4 blobs on top of it, and I'm pretty quick at it! DS works the flag detail and security during the games, plus they clean up the stands afterwards, so we finally headed for home around 11:00 Friday.

Saturday I set my alarm to get everyone up. The 3 ladies were pretty well ready to go when I woke up DS who was going to be picked up at 7:30 to work the car wash. We were on our way out the door by 7:25, and as we headed toward I-4, I asked DD where she wanted to start the morning, after explaining that the Studios had EMH. She said "Let's go to Animal Kingdom." Sounded okay by Mom and me, so that was our choice. We pulled in the lot about 8:15, and I made a quick trip to Guest Services to get a birthday button. We waited about 15 minutes for them to open the turnstiles, then headed up to the area near the Tree of Life to wait for the opening ceremony. We had a nice chat (and did a little pin trading) with a nice family who was finishing up their vacation. Their son really liked all my pins, and I enjoyed talking about why some of them weren't traders. As we waited for the opening, I saw that the first Lion King show was going to be at 9:30. Since we had missed that on our Labor Day trip, I suggested that I go get FPs for the Safari while Mom and DD headed over to Camp Minnie & Mickey. We were up pretty close to the front, so I got a good shot of the opening.



Once the rope dropped, I quickly walked over to Africa. I chatted a bit with some CMs along the way, catching this picture of the really tall drummer.



I got FPs that were good for 9:35, then started heading back to Camp Minnie & Mickey. About this time, my phone rang. DD said "Hey Mom!!! Can we stay at this park all day?" Since DD really LOVES the F&W festival, I knew something was up. It turned out that she and my mom had been picked to be in the AK Parade! So of course I said "Yes", and headed to meet them. It turned out that the two of them were the first ones in that area of the park, so they were offered a chance for a group photo with all the characters, as well as the parade opportunity. They took the group picture before I made it over, but I saw it later when I looked at our photopass.

I chatted with Maria who explained that we needed to be near the Safari entrance by 3:30, and she took down all our information. DD had originally thought she was offering us the castle. I guess the conversation went something like "Are you folks going to be around this evening?" to which DD answered "Well, if you're going to give us the castle, I'm pretty sure we can stay over!" Once they worked out the details, that's when DD called me.

Once that was done, Mom & I walked over to get our picture with Donald, who had no one in line. There was a couple getting autographs, and a stroller with a 4 year old sitting in it, so we just kind of hung back there not knowing if the kid was with the picture people? Anyway, another family came up and jumped in front of us, but we waited to be sure that the picture people were the kids parents. Turned out that they were, but DD actually had asked the boy where his parents were before they said anything. Meanwhile, Donald had to take a break. We decided to go ahead and wait since the show wasn't starting for 10 minutes, and we were right there. We had a nice chat with the handlers, while DD took a bunch of pictures of the flowers in the area. Once Donald was done, we got this picture.



DD had said that Donald had kind of pushed Mickey away from Minnie while they were doing their group shot, so I teased him a bit over that. Once we were done, we walked into the Lion King theater, just as they were demonstrating the animal sounds. Mom picked the lion section and we sat just behind the wheelchairs. There wasn't hardly anyone in the theater (maybe 4 rows in each section were full), so we got some good pictures.




I really LOVE watching the fire twirler!

Once we finished, we headed over to use our Safari FPs. Even the standby line was only 10 minutes, so the park wasn't busy at all. DD took the camera, and she must have had it on a very strange setting, because most of the pictures were just smears of stuff. The only one I could salvage was this one of the rhino rolling in the mud pit.



The animals were REALLY active! As we came around near the elephants, there were two giraffe on either side of the road. The giraffe's butt was right up next to the window where DD was sitting. And his butt was up almost to the roof! You don't realize how BIG they are until they're that close. We had a really wild driver and were bounced around a LOT. He was fun though, but I wouldn't have wanted to have a bad back and been on that truck.

Once we finished, we decided to catch a bus over to the Beach Club to get lunch at F&W festival. We've had bad luck catching EPCOT buses from AK, and we weren't going to Future World at all, so this seemed the best option.

As we left the park, I stopped and pin traded at the gate. The CM asked if it was my birthday, and I told him it had been Wednesday. He told me to close my eyes and open my hand, and he gave me one of the Tink pins! Pretty neat!

We made it to the bus stop where we ended up still waiting abut 20 minutes. There was a family waiting when we walked up, and they must have said something to the bus manager, because he eneded up getting a special bus which just took us to our locations then returned.

Coming up... Another dream!!!!