I was up just after 7 and pottered about sorting washing and tidying up before making my coffee. Kieran was up as usual.
I'm sitting out at the pool in my nightie with my coffee at 8:30 when Hannah appears, fully dressed holding a bowl of cereal. 'Should you not be getting ready?' She asks, in a none too happy tone.
Em nope, the fastpasses are all for the afternoon.
I thought her eyes were going to shoot lasers at me. I was getting her best teenage scowl. 'But I checked your schedule on WhatsApp and they're in the morning'.
Em no. I changed them all the other day, I told you when we were in the car, and I updated the copy on the fridge.
She went back inside and I thought 'well that's a great start. She will be fizzing all day now'
She came back out, now changed back into her PJs and finished her cereal. She was actually a bit subdued, then explained she had just heard from friends about a 15 year old girl back home being killed in a hit and run. Not a close friend but she knew her through other friends. Sure enough - there it was now on the news pages. So terrible. Her poor parents. I just can't imagine.
Hannah went off back to bed by 9.
Very quiet out back this morning with only one wee rabbit around. iPhone photos through mesh just don't work though!
A turtle came up on the bank at one point too, but by the time kevin got the SLR out he was back in the lake.
Kevin and I went down to Way Out West as they had said they were getting a delivery of skinny and straight legged jeans in which would be in by now. Bought (yet) another pair. Straight leg this time so no sewing required. I really must stop now.
Then we went to Aldi and picked up some more supplies of water and fruit n veg. Came home and Kevin made burgers while I made up salad and fruit salad for lunch.
Caitlin was feeling a bit better having slept well with the aircon off. She definitely has a cold but the aircon must be aggravating it so it will be left off now. Kevin and Kieran will just need to melt for a few days. And Hannah is also fine having went to sleep at a decent time thinking she had to be up, then getting back to bed for another couple of bonus hours. We left the villa at 1:40pm and reached Animal Kingdom at 2pm. Our resident weather girl (Caitlin) has said it was 40% chance of rain and it was already raining just a wee bit, so I took the extra bag with the ponchos in it. I don't trust Animal Kingdom. It's like it's got its own rain cloud sometimes.
I've been checking and checking every 15 minutes for the last few days but still no FoP fastpass popping up, so we had Everest, kali river rapids and Kilimanjaro safari planned. I'm gutted though as I really really love that ride.
Parked up in butterfly 17. And onto the tram all ponchod up because the rain had got heavier.
When in the park we decided to do Tough To Be A Bug first then head to our Everest FP. We had just sat down in TTBAB when I got the dreaded text to say Everest was closed for weather
Nowhere near as many screaming kids in Bug this time. Maybe lots of wee ones had been taken home because of the rain. When we came out the plan was to walk towards Everest in the hope it would be like BTM the other day and reopen.
By this time Kevin's brother Stan had messaged to say he and his son were outside Everest. We met them on the way there but they were leaving the park having been there since 8am. They'd done Everest 3 times, the rapids, navi river and a couple of others.
it became apparent very quickly that this was not going to pass quickly. It was absolutely torrential! Had we been there a while we probably would have abandoned ship but we had only just arrived so seemed a waste
On the way there in the car we had been talking about how long we would be willing to queue for FoP. I had said 2 hours. Caitlin said the same. So when we were standing in the rain Caitlin asked were we not as well just queueing for that. We had never done the standby queue but we knew it was mostly inside. The queue time on the app showed 130mins so just over what I had said I would do, but to be honest we were as well in there as anywhere else at this point, so off we went
we reached there at 3:06pm and the stand by time at the ride showed 145mins now. But we were here now so up we went. Queueing for it meant we would miss our 2nd FP for Kali River Rapids. Devastated. Not!
The first 15mins we were outside, the rain was so heavy you could hardly see in front of you. I had a brolly up but had to keep emptying it to the side as it was pooling like a dodgy tarpaulin at a village fete. There was so much surface water coming down the hill it was like wading up a river!
The thunder and lightning were now crashing right above our heads. That full on, feel it in your chest, Florida thunder. It's funny, but everyone in the queue was laughing and in good spirits because it was just completely mental, so it was strangely ok.
Once inside it was much better. They'd had the sense to turn the aircon off and it was nice and cosy. We stripped the ponchos off, used the towel I had put in my bag to dry off a bit and I put my cardi on. Kevin was the wettest as he won't wear a poncho but he had a dry-fit vest on which started drying quite quickly.
Then I got the message from Disney to say our Kali River Rapids FP was also cancelled. So I now had 2 flexi passes to use later if it eased off. As if we had been going to use that anyway!
The inside theming of the queue was very pretty, kind of like the inside of navi river, all lit up and huge big plants, so that was nice to see. We reached the laboratory part of the queue at 1hr in.
We got on at 16:36 so exactly 90minutes. Not bad at all! I practically skipped in I was so chuffed to be going on it again!
It was FAB! I just love that feeling of flying and all the beautiful sights and smells. At least when you queue for this you then get rewarded with a full 4 and a half minutes of wonder! Unlike when we queued 90 mins for Seven Dwarves a few years back. That's a one minute wonder!
At one point I felt Kierans arm across my chest. When I turned round he was doing a full on Rose pose from the front of the titanic and grinning away. Thank god there was nobody on the other side of him.
We all agreed it was worth every single minute of the queue. Very happy.
When we came out the skies had lightened and the rain was light and warm. And park was - quiet!
The app showed Everest was open with a 10 minute wait so we hot footed it there. It was 20 mins by the time we got there. We used both our flex fastpasses for 2 back to back rides as we knew we weren't going to stay too long so no point saving them. As it was still raining a bit, the girls are just 2 pink heaps in the ride photos (which I will add at the end tomorrow when they appear in my MDE)
We then went round to our 3rd fastpass for Kilimanjaro safari. This was really good as we saw lots of the animals who seemed to be more out n about because it was cooler.
We came off at 6:20pm, warm, damp, but happy with what we had got done.
Flight of passage was now a 75min wait on the app. Tempting. But we were satisfied. What had started out looking like a complete washout actually turned out pretty good. As we left the skies were much brighter and the rain was off. We squelched all the way back to the car!
We just wanted a takeaway for dinner. It was batted back n forth between Chinese or Chilli's but Chinese won when Hannah decided she felt a bit rotten again and didn't want any dinner.
Set waze to Bamboo Walk at Berry Town Centre.
We got satay chicken
Chicken curry
Kung po chicken
Chicken in cashew nuts
Which came to $40.60
While Kevin waited for the Chinese I went into publix with Caitlin and we bought Eggos, syrup and Nutella for Hannah as I know she will eat those.
And some ready to eat cookie dough for Caitlin.
We had our dinner, played some pool in the games room then Kevin and I headed out to the lovely hot spa while Kieran played in the pool, and the girls watched tv.
Let's hope the weather is better tomorrow as we were kind of hoping water park.