This post is oh about 2-3 months late. The summer is a busy time for me so, um, sorry. All the pictures I took are in this set. I have some smaller sets that I will link to below. There will likely be a revision of this later with Kelly filling in my memory blanks.
The Disney part of our trip started on Friday June 8th, 2007. Kelly went over to our hotel which was the Animal Kingdom Lodge around noon. Her trip was greatly complicated by the incompetent people in the hotel. They had resort "specialists" that couldn't be bothered to help her. She ended up taking a shuttle that got her to the transportation hub and then made it to the hotel. She found out later that there was much easier methods of getting there. Once she got to the hotel the experience was much better, it is a really nice place to stay.
My TechEd day ended just before 5 PM and I took the last shuttle back to one of the Disney resorts. On the way over Kelly and I decided to just meet at the Magic Kingdom. We had some confusion about transportation again but we managed to meet up near the entrance gate. I went through Port Orleans on the way there since that was where the TechEd shuttle went. Kelly had gotten my pass when she checked into the hotel. After having my bag searched we headed over to the lockers. While I was getting a key for the locker (which was $5) I got a Magical Moment and they gave me the key for free which was cool. I left my camera in the bag so there are no pictures of the first night.
Kelly had gotten some books about Disney that serve as route guides and she read or at least looked through them before we went to the parks. She had one in particular that was really good that gave you suggested routes and we used it throughout the trip to best utilize our time. One of the good things about Kelly not liking to ride the coasters is she could use her card for fast passes for me. This allowed us to get easy entry to twice as many rides.
Friday night we walked around and rode a bunch of rides. I honestly can't remember which exact ones. There were a few that were memorable for very different reasons. No matter what someone tells you do not go on Stitch's Great Escape, even though we just walked on it is 5-10 minutes of my life I will never get back. The other was more special for me than anyone else. Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor was really cool, it is mostly an animated crowd interaction. At several points during the show they would show the crowd on the screen and ask questions or put captions up. Before it started they showed Kelly on the screen and said "sitting next to stinky" I think. Then several times throughout the show they would say something like "everyone is great except this guy" and show me on the screen. They did it about a half dozen times throughout the show. The last one I remember is Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin. It is a moving light gun video game. The first time Kelly got a better score and the second time I won. We got a really good picture of us intensely trying to shoot the bad guys.
Friday night was magic hours for people staying at resort hotels, which means it was open until 1 AM instead of 11 PM. We got armbands for it but didn't really take advantage of the ability to stay that late since we wanted to get up early.
On Saturday morning the Animal Kingdom had magic hours which meant it opened for us at 8 AM instead of 9 AM. According to the book it said to get there 30-45 min before opening. As a result we got up about 6 AM and I got coffee as best I could for Kelly. The cafe at the hotel had a cappuccino / espresso machine but didn't really have anyone who knew how to work it. We got the park about 7:30 AM. They started letting people in a few minutes before 8 AM. They had a moving rope carried by Disney people to ensure there wasn't a stampede to get to the rides. We first headed over to the Expedition Everest roller coaster. Since it was early I could just walk on and we could get fast passes for later. We then headed over to some of the kiddy like rides, even those Kelly wouldn't ride. After the kids section we went to DINOSAUR. This was probably the scariest ride Kelly rode and she wasn't too happy about it.
Next we went into the Tree of Life for It's Tough to be a Bug, which was a lot of fun. We then spent a bunch of time walking some of the animal trails and seeing the wide array of animals. We also rode the Kilimanjaro Safaris which is where a large amount of the pictures I took came from. Lastly we went to Conservation Station. There was a train ride to another section to get there. There was a petting area and some other interactive activities. We ran out of steam around 4 PM due to it being quite hot and humid. We managed to see and do everything we wanted to do in that time, but we were really moving. For all the pictures check out this set.
We headed back to the hotel. We took showers and a nap. Later in the evening we headed back over to the Magic Kingdom. We tried to go to the rides we had missed the night before and walked around and saw stuff we had missed. We remembered the camera and actually took some pictures this time. The ones from this part of the trip are in this set. We got trapped by the nightly parade as you can see in some of the pictures.
Sunday was Epcot day pretty much. The pictures of the day are in this set. I think there were Magic Hours at Epcot that morning meaning it opened at 8 AM instead of 9 AM for us. Again we got up early and headed over to get there at opening. We used a pre-determined path for the most part to try and optimize our visit. I rode Test Track and Mission Space pretty quickly, both I would highly recommend. We then headed over to The Land Pavilion. In there I got Kelly to ride Soarin', which she wasn't to sure about but ended up enjoying.
We ended the morning in The Seas with Nemo & Friends Pavilion, which had some more animals to see. I took a few pictures but most didn't really turn out.
My feet had been deteriorating over the first days and it was about this time I really started limping. I had worn the wrong shoes at TechEd and messed my feet up and even after switching to better shoes I was getting worse and worse. I was in pretty bad pain and became grumpy due to it. Kelly finally convinced me to go back to hotel and try and deal with my feet a little after noon. At hotel I got some flip flops to make sure my feet were no longer squished by shoes. Kelly bought some band-aids and other things to repair and protect feet. You can see my feet later in the day after Kelly attempted to patch them here and here.
While we were at the hotel we took some pictures out our window of the animals that were roaming about. We also took some pictures of the massive entry area for the hotel. It was really pretty. It was about the size of a football field and 3 stories high. The pictures we took can be seen in this set.
After fixing up my feet and resting a bit we decided to head back to Epcot about 4 PM. As were riding the bus to Epcot it started to rain (and lightning). The bus driver thought it would just blow over in a few minutes so we got off the bus under a loading area with a roof but no walls to wait it out. Within minutes the wind picked up and then hail started coming down. Soon it was going almost sideways and hitting us even though were under 10-15 feet of roof. The hail was as big as grapes at points and it was really starting to hurt. We got on the next bus that came not caring where it was going. We ended up in Port Orleans (second time for me). Kelly and I were freezing so we went to the gift shop and bought a beach towel as a blanket of sorts. There is a picture of us here as drowned rats.
After the rain finally ended (so much for blowing over in minutes) we got back to Epcot a little before 7 PM. Our goal was to make it around the international lake shore and visit all the pavilions. We stopped and saw a few shows, there aren't really any rides in this section. As you can see from the pictures in this set we also took pictures along the way. We pretty much made it and even managed to exit the park before everyone else after the nightly fireworks. We got back on the bus and were back at the hotel by 10 PM. We promptly passed out at that point after two and a half days of Disney running.
The next morning we got up and flew home. We were able to see almost all of 3 of Disney's parks in the time we had, which is pretty good I think. It could have been a bit better if my feet weren't destroyed and we didn't have the hail hurricane, but it was overall a lot of fun. Next summer we will be going to Disney Land thanks to Kelly going to ALA there. In case you missed it above all the pictures are in this set.
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