Disney 2010: Day 3

This post should be subtitled “Characters, Characters Everywhere!”.  It rained. All. Day. Long.  It wasn’t cold, but it was definitely wet.  Animal Kingdom has never been our favorite park; there are a couple things we like to do, but it’s not an all day thing for us.

You’re probably wondering how we managed to get to our second-least favorite park before even setting foot in Magic Kingdom.  Three words:  Donald’s Safari Breakfast.  We booked the Donald character breakfast again this year, so that put us in Animal Kingdom first thing this morning.We have to — Donald is John’s favorite character, and it’s John’s half-birthday, so……

It wasn’t raining when we left the resort this morning.  The temp was pretty nice (60’s, at least), and it seemed like it was going to turn out to be a pretty nice cloudy day.  We headed toward Festival of the Lion King, determined to make the first showing, and bumped into Pocahontas.  I’ve never even seen her before muchless had a photo done, so we stopped.  We ended up being the second couple in line for the show, btw.  While we were waiting for the doors to open it started raining pretty hard.  People decided to mutiny and went over the rope line up to the doors.  It was an interesting moment.

The FOTLK show was most excellent.  John came out of it wondering if he’s in the wrong line of work.  The various greeting trails at Camp Mickey Minnie are at the exit for the Lion King show, so we hit each of those.  By the time we got to the second, people were starting to clear out of the area.  After the last character greeting we wandered through The Oasis, where we pretty much had the whole Tree of Life to ourselves.  We spent a lot of time picking out the various animals.  And we didn’t get wet — because we thought ahead and brought umbrellas.

So while people were scurrying about seeking shelter and walking around in ponchos with unhappy looks on their faces, we were enjoying the prospects of liquid sunshine.  From the Oasis, we headed to the character spot for Pooh and Friends, then took a whirl through Dino Land and came up on a previously unknown character greeting.  After that we decided that it would be a good idea to get some lunch and head back to the room for fresh socks and a nap before heading to Magic Kingdom for a couple of rides and *hopefully* Spectromagic.

On the way to lunch?  A character greeting.  On the way out of the park?  You guessed, one more character greeting.  All told, we got photos with the following today:

• Donald (Safari)
• Mickey (Safari)
• Daisy (Safari)
• Goofy (Safari)
• Pocahantas
• Mickey and Minnie (Pioneer)
• Thumper, Miss Bunny, and Pocahantas (all together, and she even recognized us from the first photo)
• Donald and Goofy (Pioneer)
• Chip and Dale
• Pooh
• Eyeore
• Tigger
• Goofy and Pluto (Explorer)
• Lilo and Stitch
• Brer Rabbit and Brer Bear
• Pluto
• Meeko, the raccoon from Pocahantas
• Rafiki and Timon

About half are on my camera (and posted in the gallery) and about half are on Photopass (so you can’t see them yet).  BTW, I’m totally not kidding — we got every one of these with zero planning.  The only thing I can think of is that we were blessed by the rain because there was almost zero line for every greeting (maybe everyone went home) and there were characters *everywhere*.  And after all of that, we finally made it back to the resort around 1:30 – 2pm.  (John is napping as I start drafting this with the patio door open and listening to the rain.)

We finished the evening by watching SpectroMagic and Wishes in the rain, then headed to Victoria Falls (at Jambo House) for drinks.

Tomorrow we’re off to Magic Kingdom.  Happy Birthday (and 8th Anniversary) to me!!

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