Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Disney Day 9 ** Fly home

OUR FINAL DAY
Animal Kingdom Friday January 9

Today I had originally planned to eat at a fun restaurant and spend a few hours in Magic Kingdom before heading to the airport. But we really wanted to go back to Animal Kingdom to see the Lion King Festival and to do the safari one more time. So we got up early and dropped ALL of our luggage off with bell services, before checking out. They would hold our luggage until we returned to pick it up for our flight home. We then headed off to Animal Kingdom. We even got here before it opened! We headed right to the Festival of the Lion King. This show was incredible. I don't think I could have even imagined it. Ben liked the Nemo musical best but I really enjoyed this show. And they had Ben get up in front of the crowd and make an elephant noise. The kids loved that. Also our kids got to be a part of one of the songs so it was just extra special for us.



We then headed for the safari. This ride ended up being even better then the last one! Our driver was GREAT and an ostrich stopped in the road and all vehicles had to stop for a bit. While stopped we were able to see more animals then we had days before while moving. Also more animals were out, since it was earlier in the morning. It was just an all around better safari.
After this we headed to get some lunch. We were then done for the morning here! We did stop in to a store for Ethan to spend the last of his money. He bought a Toy Story Buzz dart gun! He loved that thing!

We headed back to the resort and rested in the Saratoga Springs resorts lounge. We washed up and went potty. We then got some sandwiches to-go and then collected our luggage. I also dropped off the stroller for the next family in the swap. Now it was time to wait for the bus to return us to the airport! I cannot believe the trip is over already! It went so fast. We had a great time and everything went so smoothly.

We had a flight that stopped off in New Mexico and California but that we never got off of. :) And we got home about 11:30. Southwest was great about giving us plenty of snacks and drinks. I was really amazed and the options we had and they let us have as much as we wanted. Ethan fell asleep after leaving our first stop and slept off and on for the next 5 hours! When we got in to Portland he did wake up enough to be able to walk himself! We went to get our luggage and were one of the last families to get downstairs, we had stopped off for a potty break. Well our luggage was sitting on the belt waiting for us. I saw one of our bags in a clear bag so I went to get it and found it SHREDDED! It looked like a dinosaur had its way with it! And at that time we were also missing another bag. Great! Not what you want to do at midnight! AS we took Ben's bag down to look at we saw that Ethan's sword was broken and we only had one small piece of it. Ethan saw it and threw himself on the floor crying. This brought a man over to see what the problem was and he took off with Ben to take care of everything. We soon realized that Ethan's dart gun was also missing. :( Not a good day for him. While we figured this all out Gordon went to get the van and then our missing bag finally appeared. They ended up giving us $100.00 for the bag and things that were ripped or gone. Not quite enough but we just wanted to get home to bed. We finally loaded the van and headed home. We were in bed at about 2 and we woke at about 7 to the kids! O, well back to reality it is.

On Monday I called Disney's gift shops number and was able to rebuy the lost items for Ethan and they should be here in a week or 2 more. I cannot wait for Ethan to get to actually play with his toys. He deserves this. He saved his money for 2 years to spend at Disney and had the new toys for a few days and 1 toy for less then 12 hours. Poor kid.

Our trip is over. I may have some random thoughts of the trip I will post later but it really was a trip to remember. The kids got to spend time alone with their grandparents, they got to swim almost every day, and it was Disney! A great trip for them.

2 comments:

creative fuel said...

thanks for the details on your trip sounds like it was fun glad you shared it with us.

momaof4 said...

Glad your home! What a fun time.

Glad we got to see you. Looking forward to hearing more stories here and there.