Happy New Year everyone.
I hope you were all safe and happy last night whatever you were doing and that your new year has started well. We managed to stay up this year! That was a first in a while. It was fun to see the fireworks going off all around, though there seemed less this year.
Our New Year could have had a better start. Expecting a rare day off from Nigel being on duty with his Mom as his brother was down was not to be. I am sure the rest of the family don't realise just what and how much Nigel does all the time and that being the only son nearby brings with it enormous responisibility and means we often have to abandon plans. Such is life.
However, we are grateful we are well, we are fed, we are warm and in the end we did have a productive day.
I have even scrapped and finished my year book. It has all gone off to the printer and I look forward to seeing it finished. These are the last few pages which include the cover.
I am glad it is done and it remains to be seen whether I will venture another one. I bet I will, but we'll see.
Today I am thankful for
- scrapping time
- a completed project
Friday 1st December 2017
Start time breakfast 8.15 park 10.00
Start miles 17182
End time 7.30
End miles 17200
The day dawned bright and beautiful again ...I am loving the weather in Florida in December... Because yes ... It is now officially Christmas season. December is here and we are in the most magical place of all. I was expecting fog again when we got up, but it was clear as a bell, blue skies and warm. We decided to walk to breakfast and explore our new Disney home as we hadn't really seen very much of it. What a glorious walk on a fabulous day. The resort is beautiful and Disney had laid on perfect still water and stunning reflections for us. It was a shorter walk, even with all the photography, than we were used to at the Caribbean Beach and just as beautiful in a different way. It was also altogether more enjoyable without the humidity, with blue skies and with the sunshine.
Breakfast over we headed to French Quarter to double check that we didn't prefer that to our resort. We didn't. In our view it is a moderate resort that thinks it is a deluxe. It is more hotel style and less themed somehow and we have decided POR will be our new Disney home for the foreseeable future.
Photos taken we headed off to the animal kingdom. Despite the advertising when it opened almost 20 years ago that it was NATAZU it really was a zoo today. I have never known such a long wait to get into a park. It was crazy. After an almost empty Magic kingdom yesterday this was quite a change. We decided to go straight to Harambe to see Festival of the Lion King and wait for the rush for Pandora to die down a bit. How stupid were we. It never dies down! However, we got into the show with no wait and really enjoyed it as always. It is so. I have fun, so vibrant and exciting, the music is great and I love love love the tumble monkeys.
Once we exited there it was time to visit the land of Pandora for the first time. We have seen Avatar but didn't remember much about it really. The land was exceptionally crowded. The waits for both Flights of Passage ... 180 minutes ... And Navi River Journey .. 130 minutes ... We're just silly long. And we were fascinated to hear plenty of people in the crowds saying 'so what is this then ... Is it a ride?' People people people ... Don't you realise Disney is no longer a turn up vacation ... It's a vacation that needs membership to forums and planning groups and apps, it needs schedules and spreadsheets and countdowns. It's not a vacation it is a military operation. No we love it. I love the planning ... Nigel loves the spreadsheets. And we are veterans so we are also flexible ... Plans are plans not edicts ... We sometimes change. We took some pictures but I did make the comment that I think it was the emperors new clothes. I didn't feel it was that special ... There were some nice bits and I know it is meant to look better at night but we were not raving over it. We popped into the store and watched a little boy get his avatar. Apparently your DNA was scanned and it cloned your features ... So the man Nigel asked said.
We saw the banshees and were not tempted and so after a bit of drumming we were off to creature comforts and a frap ... And a nice photo pass photographer took a pic of us doing our favourite frap thing. We even had a delicious pumpkin bread.
A little chilling and a little people watching and we were back to Pandora to ride the N'avi river journey. We were prepare to be unimpressed but we loved it ... Very us .. Very gentle and pretty and some amazing new technology that really impressed us both. Not worth almost a three hour wait, but very good.
We left to return to Africa, planning Kilimanjaro Safaris.
We had never done it in the afternoon as the advice is always do it in the cool of the morning. However this was December baby ... So we gave it a try. It was a 40 minute wait but worth it. We have done the safari a gazillion times but I think this was the best ... Clear blue skies, gorgeous light and more animals than usual. The driver even paused several times for us. It was brilliant.
You can travel the world quickly here so we scooted from Africa to Asia and sat and people watched whilst we waited for our thrill ride.
I don't like roller coasters any more. I used to ... Have risen some of the biggest and the best ... But as I have aged ... Matured maybe .. I am more aware of my own fragility and the vulnerability of my back and so I rarely do them now. Everest is an exception. It is so smooth , so slick, so fast and so exhilarating I love it t. And I wasn't disappointed this time.
Sporting Everest hair, we headed for dinner. We know what we like and we like what we know. From the comfort of home we planned more exotic good .. When here we headed for our usual stop of Restaurantasaurus. On the way we caught Santa Goofy and Pluto a treat. The meal was delicious. For a quick serve restaurant it is succulent chicken breast ... Yum.
From there, watching the sunset near Everest, where the mountain moved from Asia to Utah apparently, we headed to take our seats for Rivers of Light, a new show we had never seen. The stadium was huge and we were seated in the back row which was good as I could stand when Mrs I can't keep still kept moving. She was also a larger lady and her back end filled where my knees were meant to be.
The show was excellent. They can't have fireworks obviously because of the animals so they had fireworks of water, the projections, the water, the floats ... Just fabulous, all of it ... We really enjoyed it.
Bit of a crush getting out but considering the show didn't finish until 6.45 we were out of the park at 7. Back to POR and time to have a cookie sandwich ... Fast becoming a favourite ... For dessert and then back to the room to chill ...quite literally as I gave the air on high. Mouse keeping had been fab and left plentiful supplies of toiletries too.
Are the animals in the Safari real? They pose so well for photos, they almost look like statues! And I know Disney is so good at animatronics, everything looks real! :-)
Congratulations on completing your Year in Review book. The pages are wonderful. Do you use a template in which to put your photos for each page? Yes, I can imagine that you and Nigel have such an adventuresome life, you will be completing another book one day. :-)
I am joining "Capture Your 365" this year. I will really try to follow the prompts and get a photo every day. Of course, I tried this several years ago and made it for about a month! LOL! :-D But I'll give it another go this year.
Also this year, I am planning to scrap using Project Life pages. We'll see how that goes.
Happy New Year!! Eagerly awaiting more stories about your Disney Adventure during December, and seeing what you are up to at home.
:-)
Posted by: Barb inAK | January 01, 2018 at 10:45 PM