Vacation of a Lifetime, Day Two

Despite having gone to sleep at two a.m., I was wide awake at six waiting for my family to wake up and start this "vacation of a lifetime' . I took a bath, tried to be quiet since I know they needed their sleep to make it as long as possible at the park we are going to that day.

One of the reasons I picked the cheap hotel we were staying at was because it had a continental breakfast. We stay at the same hotel line when we used to go visit my in-laws in the U.P. They had a fantastic continental breakfast...better than my house. They had cereal, milk, juice, donuts, bagels, muffins, jellies, fruit and usually a waffle maker with a syrup canister not to mention a half a dozen other misc. items that I do not recoginize because I am a picky eater.

So, since I am the only person awake and I am hungry as always, I head down to the lobby for the continental breakfast. As I am about to leave, my daughter wakes up and wants to go along. I am happy to oblige and off we go with my daughter still in her jammies wearing flip-flops.

We walk into the lobby and I see about four tables, all empty except for some newspapers on one someone had left. I look for something that looks like a counter and see a cart. On the cart is a canister of orange juice, and a small bread basket which had about six packages of donuts...the kind you might find in a vending machine or at a checkout counter at a convienience(sp?) store.

I ask my daughter, "Is this it? Am I missing something?"

"Yep" she says, "This is it."

So much for my bright idea about saving money by not having to shell out the bucks for breakfast. We look at the donuts and each grab a package and she gets some juice and we head back. We share our 'continental breakfast' with the boys and get ready to go.

Our first park is "Animal Kingdom" We decided we are going to go to the Safari Ride and get a fast pass, a pass which tells you what time to come back so you do not have to wait in line. We all march the 20 minutes to the back of the park where the ride is located. As it stands now, the line is at least an hour long. We take the pass which is for one o'clock so we head to the bone yard where the boy wants to dig for dinosaur bones and that is all he wants to do all day. We hike the 20 minutes there and both kids dig for about 20 minutes without finding any more bones besides the two large ones that are part of what basically is a giant sand box. Then they go on the jungle gym and I say, "We are leaving this area and going to meet Mickey". The six year old does not want to go (a recurring theme throughout this vacation of a lifetime) but I tell him we will come back to the sand box,I mean bone yard, before we leave for the day. He agrees and off we go and march another 20 minutes to wait in line to meet Goofy, (a little handsy I might add) and then another 20 minutes to meet Mickey.

Now it is time for the safari ride so we drag ourselves 20 minutes and still have to walk through a maze before getting on the ride. I enjoy the ride even though we did not get to sit with the boys...they got on a different car which left without us. (Poor Peanut is my guide for most of the day). We saw elephants, giraffes, hippos, lions and leopards.

Afterwards we were right next to the train ride so we got on that one forgetting it was a train that takes you to another area of the park so we got off and got back on. Now we are hungry so we have lunch. The six year old spends the whole time feeding the birds his french fries. THe boys head back to the boneyard while Bree and I shop. We each find something we like immediately which is unusual for us and meet up with the guys to leave about six p.m.

We are all a little tired, but is was a good day. I realized if we would have waited the hour in line at the safari ride, we would'nt have to to walk all over the park to get back to it which took an hour anyway.

Back at the hotel, we decide to go down to the pool which is pretty full with unsupervised kids. We stay for about two hours and head back up and go to bed...exhausted and wondering how we are going to go the parks for the next three days. We had planned a couple extra days where we could take a day and rest, but the way it was working out with the weather and schedule of events, we would have to do all the parks first and have the last two days be resting days. It is ok, though, because it is the 'vacation of a lifetime".