Christmastime Trip – 12/9/17-12/17/17 – day 6

Thursday 12/14/17

This was going to be Ben and Kathy’s first time riding Flight of Passage and so we, Lauren and I, wanted them to get two rides in on it so we decided to participate in the Banshee stampede. The buses were in our favor and we got to Animal Kingdom just as bag check opened at about 7:30. We wound up in the AP touchpoint line with only 4 people in front of us. Everything went smoothly and we were on and off FoP by 9:10, just 10 minutes after the park officially opened! Kathy and Ben loved it as much as Lauren and I did! Such an incredible ride! Us three went to ride Everest with virtually no wait while Kathy met Mickey and Minnie in their Christmas outfits. We headed to the 10:00 FotLK where I think one of my favorite leads was. He had such great voice inflections during Be Prepared! We took the Safari with our FP next and there was such great animal activity! I think the animals were really enjoying the cooler weather! The giraffes were right up next to the road and we saw the baby elephants, lots and lots of elephants all active! We saw one of the tiger cubs with mama on the Maharajah Jungle Trek and some very active gorillas and meerkats on the Gorilla Falls Trail. We had just enough time to take the train and spend a little time at Conservation Station before our Rivers of Light lunch package at Tusker House. None of us had had lunch there before and we didn’t realize it was a character meal like breakfast! That was an added bonus! Each couple also enjoyed a Pina caLava as a special treat. It was all so delicious, we all ate ourselves into oblivion! I truly think Ben would have felt better if he had thrown up after, he ate so much! We would definitely go back here for lunch again!
As our break we went to Animal Kingdom Lodge, serving two objectives, Ben had never seen it and their Christmas decorations. This truly is one of the most beautiful and immersive resorts on property. Ben decided walking in and seeing everything and the savannah that he really wants to stay there. And then we showed him the price per night. :O After a nice break and resting ourselves a bit we headed back to AK to use our FoP FP. We all loved it again so much! Lauren and I were getting used to it by now so we could look around more. It is such an amazing feat of engineering! We then used our Dinosaur FP and got a Primeval Whirl FP while still in the queue for 10 minutes from then! Score! So we rode that after Dinosaur very easily.
It was now time for us to go into Rivers of Light. It’s a beautiful show with lots of visual effects and wonderful songs and music and use of fire and water, but we all left feeling it was too short and lacked a climax. It really should be about 10 minutes longer with a build to a finale.
We saw a couple Tree of Life Awakenings on our way out, something we all enjoyed very much. Since this was a bit of an earlier night, it was a perfect opportunity to check out the Scat Cat’s Lounge at POFQ, something Ben had been wanting to do. So the kids got some drinks and we ordered up a round of beignets and we all enjoyed a game of Uno. It was a really fun thing to do that we don’t normally have time for. After that it was off to bed after a wonderful day at Animal Kingdom.

Steps: 26,453
Miles: 11.90