On Saturday September 30th, we took it easy, and woke up relatively late, compared to the rest of the week. We decided to cover the things that we had missed (cause of lines or time) and go back to the parks to do this.
First up, was the Animal Kingdom. We wandered around the Tree of Life, which had many shapes of animals blended into it, which was pretty cool looking. We went into the Bug's life 3D show, which was actually pretty neat. They also had smell, touch and water effects.
We headed to the Asia area to see if we could ride expedition everest again, but the line was just way to long, and we weren't planning to stay in the park, so we didn't get a fast pass.
We then headed to Dinoland...or whatever it was called, and we saw Pooh and Eyeore. We both love Pooh, so we had to stop to get our pictures taken with them. We got Eyeore first, and while we were doing that Pooh apparently was a bit of a randy bear and kept hitting on the group of young ladies and trying to sneak off with them. It was quite funny. After the disney photographer lured him back with the promise of honey, we were able to get our picture taken.
In Dinoland they had a silly ride or two about going back in the past and seeing dinosaurs, one indoors, one more like a carnival ride.
We headed to the Mickey and Minnie camp, which is apparently a great place to get your picture taken with disney characters. We got pictures with Goofy and Donald and then headed out of the park.
We then headed to Epcot to have some lunch. Epcot, due to the food and wine fest, I suppose, was quite busy. So we walked through a few places without stopping and one that we did, it took so long for them to even talk to us (which they actually never did, by the time we left), that we took off. We ended up in a sort of hidden restaurant called Marrakesh in the Morocco area of Epcot.
The building was done in a middle eastern style with many columns and arches and designs in the walls. It actually had the coolest bathroom door I have ever seen (I even took a picture). But we were favored a good meal (there is, as it has been proven to me, good food at Disney world, but there is also really crappy food too).
So we started off with a puff pastry with a chicken meat mixture on the inside. It was an interesting combination of powdered sugar, chicken and spices and pastry. Certainly worth having again. I seriously thought about getting the cookbook they had there. It crumbled in your mouth. I had lamb as my main course and Shannon had a chicken dish. Mine was fairly evenly spiced, but fairly lightly, but the lamb remained very good. Shannon's chicken was a bit thicker in the spice with a delightful mixture. But the highlight of the meal for me had to be the iced green tea with mint. It was fantastic. If it was sweetened, it was just barely. So the combination of bitter and mint was just wonderful. I'm gonna have to make that.
While we were eating, two people came out to play music, which was lively. In their second or third song, a belly dancer came out to entertain the crowd. It was actually pretty good.
After a bit more wandering, we headed out of Epcot, and headed over to the Magic Kingdom. Shannon wanted to see the lighted parade, and we figured, since our local restaurant had a 45 minute wait, we thought we might have better luck at the Magic Kingdom. We went to the three sit down restaurants in the magic kingdom, and well, all of them said they had no space, they were only serving by reservations. This kinda pissed me off, considering the second restaurant that we came to was half empty. Yes yes, I know they say to make reservations, but I personally think you should always reserve a small portion for walk up clients, even if they have to wait for quite a while...but that's just me.
So we went to one of the quick service places, which smelled awful (it was a fried fish and chicken place), so we headed a bit further down the road to go to a burger and fries type of place. This is a prime example of their overpriced nasty food. If we would've paid for the meal it would've been probably some where between 30 or 40 dollars (we used our food plan). It was worse then food that I could get at a Wendy's or Burger King or the like. Apparently you can screw up burgers and fries.
After "dinner" we headed down to camp out for the parade. We hadn't done this yet, and previous nights had kinda gotten screwed on picture taking because of where we are. So we checked the parade route and sat and watched people for around an hour or so. We were joined on both sides by other people, and when it looked like people would take our places at the parade barrier, we got up and guarded our spots.
We had a couple of families on the left of us that seem pretty good natured (which is how most people are at the parks). They took a picture of us, and we took a picture of them, it was nice. There were actually lots of people willing to do that (and not actually run off with your camera).
Written at home (10/02/2006 at 9:26 PM or so).
So the lighted parade was actually pretty cool, I got some good pictures. And they way they setup for it is actually pretty neat too. They have places to setup poles to hold ropes, and devices to extend rope, so it takes 3-4 people to rope off a side of a street. They can do it pretty quickly too.
After the parade, we headed back to the hotel to call it a night (even though it was relatively early.
We took 259 photos on the 6th day.