Written In hotel room (9/27/2006 at 11:02 PM or so) (waiting for battery to charge on camera).

Again with the waking up bright and early (like I sleep long anyways) on Wednesday September 27th.

Wanting to use up our quick service meals on our dining plan, we went and ate breakfast at the pepper market. The quality of the food was meh, but they did have choices, which was nice. The one thing that I really didn't like was that when we were checking out. I handed the cashier the tickets, and my card and mentioned that I wanted to use the dining plan.

Apparently she didn't hear me. She charged the food to my room...which eventually will be fine, but being that we are trying to use up the dining plan items, it's not so good now.

I noticed as we were walking away, and I quickly turn around and tell her that that is what I intended. She told me that if I want to use the dining plan, then I need to tell them that I want to use the dining plan. One would think that since it says RIGHT ON THE CARD, that we are using disney dining, that maybe they should ASK to see if I want to use it and go off that answer. In fact, many of the other places that we've been to, ASKED right off the bat, "Will you be using Disney Dining tonight?" But to avoid conflict I said that I thought I had said that, when in all reality I knew that I did. So when the manager came over, and reinforced in a snarky sort of way, that I needed to tell them to use disney dining, I just accepted the snarky little lecture, because I was getting what I wanted. (credit back for the meal and a disney dining plan quick service meal taken off).

We headed back to our rooms, slathered ourselves in the wonderful sunscreen that Shannon had picked out (which isn't very greasy and neither of us got a burn from being out in the sun all day the previous day). And went out to wait for the bus stop. I was still a bit miffed over the disney dining thing, but was calming down rather quickly.

We had originally planned to go to the Animal Kingdom, since they had extended "Magic" hours for resort guests (which makes me curious as to how they keep/get the other guests out), but since we scheduled the behind the scenes tour for Shannon and they didn't have any open slots for Wednesday, but did for Thursday, we rearranged what we were doing.

So the Magic Kingdom it was.

In short order we were off on the short trip to the Magic Kingdom. When people talk about disney world, this is usually what they mean. It has tomorrow land, main street, etc. It has Cinderella's (or sleeping beauty's...one of the princesses) big castle at the center of the park, surrounded by the various other parks.

We headed to Tomorrow land first. On the way there was walking to the music in a fairly silly fashion, and was told by one of the "cast members" that I was officially a kid today. We then stopped by some roses and I took a picture of this beautiful light pink rose (almost white). The lady that had commented on my walk, came up and told us that since we had found youth and beauty in the park we were up for a prize. She gave us four tickets that were basically like super-fast pass tickets. Good for any ride that used fast pass, so we could hop in the fast pass lane, whenever. This was actually kind of cool...except the lines were short enough, except for one where they didn't have fast pass, that we didn't feel the need to ever use them, but it was cool anyways.

(Battery is done charging I can charge the other battery and go to sleep...yay! 11:35 PM).

Written In hotel room (9/28/2006 at 7:02 PM or so)

My feet hurt. That is all.

Written In hotel room (9/29/2006 at 10:56 PM or so)

My feet have been stabbed...I mean they hurt hurt. That is all.

Written In hotel room (9/30/2006 at 2:55 PM or so)

We headed over to Space Mountain first (being that we've been finding that it's best to hit the rides early in the day so that you don't have to wait in the lines. One of the things that I think that Disney has taken into account is that it is hot in Florida, so a lot of their rides the waiting area and/or the ride itself is air conditioned. It is kind of funny to walk through the maze of lines when there are really no other people waiting in line. Space Mountain was fun...I enjoyed it..thought with my tallness the carriage was a bit small, so I was a bit crunched in. It twists and turns and it's in the dark so you can't really see what's gonna happen next (they do this a lot).

Afterwards we did a few silly things (tram around Tomorrow Land, carousel of progress). We also got our picture taken with Stitch and then went on his ride. Obviously some of the things are targeted at a younger audience, but for the most part it is still enjoyable. We headed to another park, and hit the Pooh ride (used to be Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, according to Shannon), IT's a small world after all...which then was stuck in my head the entire day (doh!).

We checked out the Heritage area (hall of presidents), hit the haunted mansion (definitely dated) and then headed back to the Adventure land area, and went on Pirates of the Caribbean (the ride broke on us). Then the Tiki room, which Shannon says has been drastically updated, since they don't much do the Tiki song anymore. We hit Splash Mountain and hit the Train ride (in the mountain, which I'm having trouble coming up with the name). Watched a parade and the fireworks too. We thought we were in a pretty good place for the fireworks, but due to a tree, our place was pretty lousy. We moved on to a bridge and had a better view. Magic Kingdom seemed to really be geared, for the most part, toward a younger audience then we are. It was fun, and it was, I hate to say, a little bit thrilling to get my picture taken with mickey mouse.

We wandered around a few shops on our way out and eventually made it back to the hotel. We also went swimming. We headed all the way over to the big pool, but the water slide was off, so it was kind of pointless. We swam around for a bit and went back to the room.

We took 533 Photos on the third day (I even had to turn the resolution down so we didn't run out of photo space, which we did on the bus trip on the way home).