Furlough-cation

Since the government shut down a week ago, I (Anna) have been on furlough and since I’m on this forced vacation I’m trying to make the most of it and do some vacation-y stuff. What better way to spend the day than at Disney? That’s exactly what my mom (also furloughed) and I did last Wednesday. We went to all four Disney World parks in one day!

We started our day at Animal Kingdom, but before we even got in the park my mom dropped her annual pass somewhere between the bag check and the ticket entrance. Fortunately for her, someone had picked it up and brought it to the lost and found where we were able to get it back pretty quickly. When we finally got into the park, we headed to the Tree of Life to do the A Bug’s Life show, It’s Tough to be a Bug. It was cute as usual. After that, I convinced my mom to go on Expedition Everest – Legend of the Forbidden Mountain. Although I enjoyed myself, she did not. She’s not a fan of roller coasters and she confirmed that once again after riding this one. After our adventure with the Yeti in the Himalayan Mountains, we went to hang out with Dug and Russell from the movie Up. The characters spent a lot of time with each person that stood in line and it was very special.

After finishing up at Animal Kingdom, we hopped on a bus to Epcot. Upon arriving to the park, we were a little bit hungry. The International Food and Wine Festival is still going on and will continue until about mid-November; because of this we were able to visit a few stands to get our lunch. Our first stop was Brazil. We ordered the Seared Scallop with Ragout of Tomatoes, Peppers & Hearts of Palm and the Frozen Caipirinha featuring LeBlon Cachaca. Both the scallop and drink were very good and I look forward to having them again. After Brazil, we headed to Mexico and tried the Shrimp Taco with Purple Cabbage. It was probably my favorite food there so far this year.

Once our tummies were full, we got on another bus heading to Hollywood Studios. Upon arriving at the park, a couple who was leaving gave us their fast passes to ride Toy Story Midway Mania!. We had a little bit of time before we could use them so we first headed to Star Tours – The Adventures Continue. It’s a ride I’ve been on a lot and it was good as usual. Since we were there on a week day in the fall, there weren’t a lot of people in the park so we had time for another ride. We chose The Great Movie Ride and practically just walked on. By about the time the ride was over it was almost time to get in line for the Toy Story ride. Neither of us had ever been on it, so we were very excited and it did not disappoint! The ride has been blogged on here before, but I thought I needed to reiterate its awesomeness.

We decided we wanted to end our “magical” day at Magic Kingdom, so we took yet another bus to that park. We spent the majority of our time there eating, walking around, and shopping. The main event at Magic Kingdom was getting good seats for the light show on the castle. We set our eyes on the tables outside The Plaza Restaurant near Main Street. Other people had the same idea, much to the dismay of the people who actually wanted some place to eat. One man got so perturbed that he was cussing loud enough for people to hear and came over to my table while my mom was getting us ice cream, yelled at me, and left his and his wife’s hotdogs on the table. The wife later came back and got the food and apologized. Even though getting the view of the castle was quite eventful, it was well worth it.