Animal Kingdom

The silver lining in the Fireballs' tourney elimination meant there was no soccer on Monday, giving us a free day to spend at the parks. So we started off with Early Entry at the Animal Kingdom. At rope drop, J. R. took off to the FastPass for Expedition Everest while the family headed for the stand-by line. After grabbing FPs, J. R. joined the family in line for two quick runs through EE. After a side trip to Countdown to Dinosaur and Dinoland, J. R. went across the park to get FastPasses for the Safari while Janie and the kids took another two rides on EE. Our EE FastPass time was ready so we did another family EE ride, then picked up new FPs for EE and headed to the Safari. Post-safari, we checked out "It's Tough to be a Bug", forgetting about the big spiders that dropped from the ceiling, which scared Rebecca. Then we rode Everest one more time and took in the Lion King show. We stopped for lunch at the Rainforest Cafe, ran into Emily and her family at the tram, and then went to Downtown Disney.

We shopped for awhile at Downtown Disney at the toy store, the kitchen shop, World of Disney and the Lego store before getting in our car to go back to Epcot. Our original plan was to spend very little time at Epcot, but between us and the kids, we spent more time there than expected. The plan was to just visit the World Showcase but when we entered the park, a woman came up to us and asked if we wanted her FastPasses for Test Track. It turned out she had five passes that would be opening up in 10 minutes. So we breezed through Mouse Gear, went to Test Track, then made a stop at Club Cool and then to Imagination with Rebecca. Then we headed to the World Showcase to see the film in Canada and started working our way around the World.

We had made a late reservation at Chefs de France for dinner. We were decidedly underwhelmed by the menu and the food, finding it rather bland and certainly not fine French dining. We finished up with a quick shopping stop at Mouse Gear then headed to the car to go to bed for one last time at the World.