Trip Report **COMPLETED** Our First Sister Trip & Report! June 11-15th 2016

After a great five days we are home and ready to share everything with you! :) I am absolutely exhausted, as we did as much as possible within the past five days. So, without further ado, here we go!

**side note: we told a cast member it was our first visit without our parents, so they gave us first visit buttons to wear and we had to explain to everyone we saw that we had been there multiple times before :banghead:

DAY 1: SATURDAY JUNE 11
We started in the terminal at the airport with a little breakfast. I got a cheese danish which was pretty yummy.
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We boarded the plane and took off on time which was excellent. My sister gets motion sickness, so she got a bit sick on our way there. It was a little frustrating, as I had only slept about three hours the night before (out of excitement!!!) and was hoping to sleep on the plane.

Once we landed, we noticed it was super easy to find our way to the magical express and to use our magic bands for the first time ever! We've been on the magical express a bunch of times before, so maybe that's what made it seem easier! We were put to the Contemporary, Ft Wilderness, Poly, and Floridian line. We waited for maybe about 15 minutes and then finally we boarded the Magical Express and made our way to the resort!
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The Contemporary was the last stop of the Magic Kingdom resorts. We finally got there and found out our room was upgraded! We were no longer staying with a garden view, we got a Bay Lake view!!
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We were super excited, as you could see the Magic Kingdom when you walked out of our room! The view of Bay Lake from the bedroom was beautiful as well. Excellent upgrade!
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Our first stop was over to the Polynesian to eat lunch at Captain Cook's. That is always my family's first stop for lunch, so we couldn't break tradition! I got a delicious burger and my sister got a pulled pork sandwich. Here's a pic of my burger ^_^
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After lunch we made our way to the Magic Kingdom!!! We had a feeling we were going to miss our first FP+ reservation which was for Thunder Mt. but we were ok with it because we knew it's usually a ten minute wait at night and we'd get to go on later.
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WE WERE SO EXCITED! It was just as beautiful as I remembered! I like the changes made to the hub, and it was just nice to be in such a familiar place.
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Once we got there it was almost 3pm, so we scoped out a great spot on the sidewalk and got ourselves comfy for the parade. It was SUPER hot, but we were in the shade. we felt bad for all of the people sitting across from us directly in the sun.
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One of the balloon guys was nearby -- I almost bought one! They look so cute! I probably would have purchased it if we were staying for a full week.
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jrogue

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Original Poster
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After the safari we were super sweaty (that's basically the theme of this trip) so we went and got some water. THESE ARE SO CUTE wow!!
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We took a walk around and shopped a little. Then we walked over to the FOTLK!!!! YAY!!! It's one of our favorite shows, and a must-do every time. I've seen Lion King on Broadway and this is almost as spectacular as that! Since the show is pretty long I figured I'd use the bathroom before it. Little did I know I WAS ABOUT TO USE WHAT WOULD BECOME THE BATHROOMS WITH MY FAVORITE SIGN EVER. It made me laugh so hard. I love how proud they are of the bathrooms!
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The new theater for the show is great as well! Beats the old foresty queue.
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jrogue

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Original Poster
One year my family and I were waiting for this show to start in the old theater and they had to delay it due to rain. Then, they delayed the delayed show due to technical difficulties. They gave us something to come back later on, and then that show was delayed too :banghead: lol glad that doesn't seem to happen anymore!! Or at least hasn't happened to us since.
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THIS FIRE GUY IS INCREDIBLE. We've always loved the fire guy at Poly's luau show as well.
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jrogue

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Can you say OUCH??? This guy is amazing, seriously!
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One of my favorite songs is Can You Feel the Love Tonight? so I always love this bird sequence.
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Finale time!
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After the show we were headed out to catch our lunch reservation... can anyone guess where?? :hungry::hungry::hungry: if you followed the pre-trip report then you'll probably know, since it's something I was looking forward to that I haven't posted about yet! Along the way we met someone that I don't recall ever meeting before -- TARZAN! He was SO soft spoken and super sweet! He asked us what our favorite animal was that we've seen that day. I told him lion, so he asked us to pose like a lion!
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We made our way out of Africa and couldn't pass up the opportunity to take some more pictures! Hooray for PhotoPass!
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jrogue

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Original Poster
We took the opportunity to get some last min photos on the way out in front of the Tree since we hadn't yet. The other lines for it were long in the morning and on the bridges. It's amazing how the picture doesn't show how absolutely sweaty and melting we were.
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These birds were SO COOL. I wish I got a picture of them flying by and on top of everyone's heads! One of them accidentally hit my sister, but she didn't get hurt and I guess neither did it!
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jrogue

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Well, we exited the Animal Kingdom and hopped on a bus to ... THE GRAND FLORIDIAN! Yup, it was TEA TIME!! I was so excited! We were also pretty tired, so we both ended up falling asleep on the bus ride back which is why I have absolutely no photos of it, lol. But here we were! At the Floridian! I was still sleepy upon walking in, so my pictures really started when we sat down.

The menu! We each ordered the Bedfordshire Tea, as they require you to place an order per person. You cannot share unless it explicitly says you can. If I recall correctly we both ordered the Osmanthus tea.
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First course was finger sandwiches. Neither of us really liked these, as we are picky eaters. But those grapes! They were super fresh!
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Here's a picture of our tea.
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These were the cute little bags that we were given to put around our tea kettle to keep it hot. And WOW did it keep it hot the entire time! I almost took mine off at one point!
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Next up, the desserts and scones!
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It was a berry tart and a raisin scone with some different spreads. THE SCONES ARE TO DIE FOR. So delicious! I'd come back for the scones alone!
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The chocolate eclair was, to quote my sister, "the best eclair I've ever had!!" I really enjoyed the swan, and the chocolate covered strawberry was also SO FRESH and so delicious. The atmosphere was nice. For an event that said it was "sold out" there really were a lot of tables available and tons of room. It was also pretty quiet. Maybe either a lot of last minute cancellations ... or they never fully book the room? Overall, we felt like our money was pretty well spent and we will probably do this again one day. The tea was great (IT WAS TWININGS. MY FAVORITE :)!!!!) and the food was fresh and yummy. It was definitely enough to fill us both up for lunch. A+! :hungry::hungry:

(@bee @Ciara @LisaBelle @ScarletBegonias I believe you guys mentioned being interested in the tea at the GF! Here it is!)
 

jrogue

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
With full bellies we walked upstairs and hopped on the monorail to head back to the Contemporary. We both wanted to change out of the clothes we were sweating in all day and wanted to maybe do some browsing in the shops. Unfortunately I didn't think to take any pictures during this time, but I bought a cute bag, an alex and ani bracelet, a Chip (from BATB) mug, a 2016 shot glass (I get one every year we go) and a Contemporary magnet for my fridge. After shopping we went upstairs, put our bags away, and got changed. By that point it was a couple of hours after we had tea, and we had dinner reservations in another hour and a half or so. We headed downstairs to the Animal Kingdom bus (which was practically empty) and made our way back!
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Pretty bird!
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A mandatory tree pic:
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We passed Dug and Russell's meet and greet on our way to dinner and had some time to kill so figured we should do some meet and greets! We started here!
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We heard some jammin' music nearby, so we had a little bit of a dance party!
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jrogue

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Next up was Baloo and King Louie!! While in line for them, I took some pictures of the details on the Tree of Life.
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Finally it was time for the characters! For some reason Louie was a little late, so we took some prime Baloo pics!
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Here's the King!!!
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Since we haven't met them yet and the wait was VERY short, we met mine and my sister's favorites -- MICKEY AND MINNIE!!! I love, love, love Mickey Mouse. I've slept with a Mickey Mouse doll since the day I was born. My sister adores Minnie the same way! We were so excited to meet them. We asked Mickey what his favorite pose was and asked if we could do that with him.
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jrogue

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
After all those meet and greets it was time for dinner! We headed over to the Yak and Yeti restaurant! We had only ever had its counter service before, so we were excited to try its table service.

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After reviewing the menu, I knew I didn't want dessert so asked which appetizers I could swap for it instead. They said either wonton soup or the salad. I chose the soup! It was really good!
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Then our meals came out. Jess ordered the rack of ribs (Kobe ribs I think? Maybe not. They were spicy, though!) and a side order of fried rice. There are some fries under there, too!
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I ordered the sweet and sour chicken with no veggies. I'm a simple gal :angelic:
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Then Jess got the mango cheesecake or pie or whatever for dessert! She liked it.
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We went to a store earlier in the day and asked them about how long would we have to line up to see the Jungle Book show. They told us management has been telling them to tell guests an hour and a half. After dinner it was about two hours until the show, so we figured we'd go check out the standby queue and see how long it is. It was starting to get dark out and the sunset was pretty. The Jungle Book's lights were coming on, so we found a PhotoPass person and took a quick picture!
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Oh, I guess we found another one! Yay cute picture!
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Maybe those two photos were out of order. Anywho, the standby entrance was near Dinosaur, so we figured if the line was too long we'd just go ride that. Look at this though. So impressive!!
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jrogue

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
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Since the lighting was so nice, we found it to be a great opportunity to take a selfie!
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It was two hours before showtime (7pm) and the standby line for the Jungle Book show was INSANE. We decided to skip it and catch ROL if we can next time instead. We don't really like projection shows that much anyway. We were able to go on Dinosaur with only a ten minute wait! It was awesome! For some reason the website won't let me upload our ride photo from Dinosaur, but it was cute. We hung out in that area for a little because the DJ was playing some great music! Then once it got dark we made over to what we really wanted to experience in the dark: EVEREST.

LET ME TELL YOU, IT WAS WAY SCARIER IN THE DARK. There was a ten minute wait posted outside the queue, but honestly we walked right on. We were warned that the ride may shut down due to lightning close by, but with our luck it didn't! So, on our first time on Everest at night, THERE WAS CRAZY LIGHTNING! That made it super scary! We loved it, though. Once we were on the top of the drop our ride stopped. We were stuck up there for a solid two minutes before we went down. I was confused, so I made sure to make a quizzical face in our ride photo!
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Next up was our FP for the nighttime safari. We were concerned that there would be a long line for this too. Guess what? NO LINE. It was a walk-on as well!!! We were shocked!

The nighttime safari is nice. It's not as easy to see the animals, but the animals you DO see are far more active. I didn't get a good shot of the lions, but here you can see some random animals we did see. The giraffe got close to our jeep and waited for us to pass :joyfull: The fake sunsets were a really nice touch.
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jrogue

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
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Since it was about 9:15ish, we figured we could make it over to the Magic Kingdom and ride some rides before it closed at 11pm. We didn't think we'd have time to, but we sure knew we were going to try!!!

On our way out of the AK we saw the Tree of Light's cool little show.
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I'm glad we got to catch it. We hopped on the bus to the MK, and annoyingly our driver left us at what seemed like one of the furthest spots. :mad: Whatever, we walked it! We were swimming upstream in a sea of fish since a lot of people were leaving. We noticed something weird in the sky too, a helicopter. I knew planes aren't really allowed to fly over the MK, so the fact that one was circling the Lagoon was not a good sign.

We walked over to bag check and I overheard a CM say to another CM "Do you think they're going to stop the ferry service?" I asked him what he had meant and if it had to do with the helicopter going around, as my sister and I planned on taking the ferry over to the Poly to get those transportation cards at some point. He just said "Oh, they're cleaning out the Lagoon" and waved me through. I knew he couldn't tell me what was really happening, but that was my first indication that something was up. We overheard a few guests in the park comment on the helicopter, saying they knew something was up but didn't know what. Figuring we would find out later, we made our way through the park and over to the 7 Dwarfs Mine Train.
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We had that super fastpass we got the night before that allows up to 5 people. We decided not to waste it on only ourselves, so we found a nice family to ride with us! They're in our ride photo behind us. The cast member was nice enough to let the dad through too, letting all 6 of us on the ride. It was fun, and they were super nice! They showed us how to rock the train carts!
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After the ride we said goodbye and ran to get one more ride in. Big Thunder Mountain it was!! :)
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We hustled over as quickly as possible and got on the last train out. Everything was closed by the time we got off!
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Since we didn't want to carry any snacks around the next day I bought my usual two M&M caramel apples from the Confectionary on the way out. I always eat one the day we get home!! I don't have a pic of them, but I bought two and packed them away in the luggage. I was excited to eat them later :hungry::hungry: we also picked out two new Mickey ears for ourselves! I believe you'll see Jess wearing her new ones in the pictures from the next day.

We got back to the room (walked from MK, so still no idea of what happened aside from the helicopter) probably around 11:30. I went outside on the balcony to sit and look at some of the pictures I had taken that day, not thinking anything of anything and deleting some blurry ones. I could still hear the helicopter from earlier and started to get the feeling something really wasn't right. I was looking out into Bay Lake when I noticed two separate long barges floating by. I watched them for a while, not knowing what it was, when one of them had a single float light up. It was the Electrical Water Pageant, and the float that lit up was the chomping gator. It only lit up for about a minute, and then disappeared again. I figured they were removing the barges for storage or repair (and it looked like there were two parades? maybe the one in half?) without thinking or remembering that isn't the storage near the MK? and not in Bay Lake? Where is the parade going, and why wasn't it fully lit? I was curious, but I walked back inside to grab my phone, text my mom, and wind down for bed and a long day ahead of us

As I turned on my phone I saw a text from my mom linking to the news article about the child who was attacked. I was mortified! I told my sister, and for the rest of the night (and then the morning) all we could think and talk about was how it must be so awful for the parents, and we were mortified of the idea of the kid being eaten alive and ripped apart. AWFUL. What a way to end the trip. :cry::cry::cry: We headed to bed and were probably too tired to have any nightmares!

Step total for Tuesday: 29,146.
 

jrogue

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
DAY 5: WEDNESDAY JUNE 15:

The next morning I was able to get a beautiful shot of the sunrise over Bay Lake. I really liked our view.
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There was such a peace and calm over the area, despite the horror that happened the night before.

After we got ready, we brought our luggage downstairs to bag check and the concierge so that we could go enjoy our last day in the parks. We went upstairs to have breakfast at the Contempo Cafe and ... well, SECOND TIME'S THE CHARM.
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I got their regular french toast with a side of scrambled eggs. SO GOOD. I learned my lesson with the syrups and only got one this time.

We made our way over to the MK. We wanted to make the Welcome Show but we knew we were too late. Bummer. We'll have to try and catch it next time!!

Good morning, MK. Was weird to be here with the pleasant Main Street music and the constant reminder of the helicopter around us.
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Our first FP of the day was Space Mountain, so we headed straight there! I managed to get a picture of one of the cool My Magic+ effects. Unbearably hot, but we loved it! SOUNDS LIKE OUR TRIP TO DISNEY! Haha.
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Our next FP wasn't for a while, so we decided to do one of our must-do attractions!! the COP!
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jrogue

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Original Poster
We had the Mine Train as our Next FP! Our third time riding! We really enjoyed this ride.
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We made our way out of Fantasyland and decided to get a ride on the HM in!
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The ride was great, as always! I'm really glad they took out the spider scene years ago. I'm arachnophobic, so I could never keep my eyes open during that. We made another FP for Pirates after this, but we had some time to kill so we walked over to Laugh Floor.
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We got in fairly quickly, and it was funny as always! We did unfortunately have a weird kid who kept dabbing every time he was on screen, so that was just ... odd. Overall it was good, though! One day I want to see what they give "that guy" !!

We made our way across and over to Adventureland to get ready for our Pirates FP. We were hungry by then and wanted a little snack, so we grabbed some churros and water.
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We were in the front row for pirates this time so we got a bit wet!! Luckily it was boiling outside so we dried off quickly. I wanted this shirt I saw, but didn't end up getting it.
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After that, it was just about time to head out if we wanted to make it to the Polynesian to do any shopping before we leave. Sigh. We walked through the castle for dramatic effect, lol.
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jrogue

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Parting is such sweet sorrow :cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry:
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Since we didn't take many Photopass pics that day, we stopped at one on our way out. :(
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My favorite bathrooms by city hall were closed. Bummer. Maybe next time! lol
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As we headed towards the resort monorail, we noticed the helicopter had stopped. It was flying over us continuously all day, and the air silence was a bit strange to hear again.
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There was no action that we could see from the monorail happening at the beach. To my later horror, the view I had of the Floridian (and these photos) were taken while the boy's body was still in the water :eek::eek: right near the beach where he was attacked. We boarded the monorail around 1:30, when our monorail (and the express) suddenly came to a halt. After about ten minutes, a few families (including us) got off and started walking to the Poly. Someone was on their way to the monorail, and a dad let him know that the monorails were shut down temporarily. The guy asked why, and the dad responded with "Well, they probably found what they were looking for!" We found out later that day that the dad was right, and around 1:30 is when the body was located. I'm sure they halted monorail service so that no one on it would have to see anything. :cry::cry::cry: We were thankful to find out the child hadn't been eaten like we all thought, but also saddened to hear that he had most likely drowned.

At the Poly we stopped in the gift shop and by Captain Cook to get some last snacks on our way out. Then we hopped right back on the monorail, made it to the Contemporary, grabbed some "spa water" and waited for the (what I've heard called -- I like this name) TRAGICAL Express to come get us.
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I love those mats. I wish I could get one to bring home!

Our bus ride over to the airport was rather uneventful, and also kind of sad. We tried to sleep for a bit of it since we were so, so tired. Over the trip we only averaged about 4 hours of sleep per night, so we definitely needed the rest!

We got to the airport, went through bag check, and then went to Burger King for me to grab lunch since I didn't know when I'd eat again. Our plane was delayed about 20 minutes and I was afraid of it being delayed more. I got a burger, fries, and a drink!

Our flight home was ok. Actually only took about two hours which was nice! Jessica thankfully didn't get sick on the plane this time, although the flight attendant we first asked for a sick bag was super rude. He told me there were none on the plane and she'd have to go use the bathroom. Oh, please. She would never make it there and would end up getting sick in the aisle! I didn't get a chance to tell him that though because I didn't realize what he said until he left. Luckily there was no one sitting in between me and Jess, so she put her feet up and slept the whole ride home.

Vinny (my boyfriend!) and my dad were there waiting to pick us up once we got home!! We went to my parents' house to divide the luggage, and then watched the videos we took during the trip. I was super exhausted and fell asleep halfway through, so we never actually got to finish the videos. One day in the future we will, probably!

Step count for Wednesday: 20,768.
 
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MinnieM123

Premium Member
Excellent photos of everything!!! I was impressed that you got a few really good ones of the big cats in AK--they usually hide in the shadows, but you managed to capture a few decent shots.

And the Afternoon Tea at the GF--oh my, that looked like such a lovely experience. I've always wanted to do that.
 

jrogue

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Excellent photos of everything!!! I was impressed that you got a few really good ones of the big cats in AK--they usually hide in the shadows, but you managed to capture a few decent shots.

And the Afternoon Tea at the GF--oh my, that looked like such a lovely experience. I've always wanted to do that.
Thank you so much! ! :) i tried as hard as I could to get the best shots for you guys.

The tea is great! We decided it's not something to do every trip, but if you have the time then yes! Super delicious!
 

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