Part 10- December 10, 2001
Woke up at 8:20 today- I seem to have developed the talent of actually waking up a few minutes before my alarm. That would never happen at home! I took my laundry down to the machines, and spent $5 getting my clothes clean. The washer takes about 40 minutes, so I went and got breakfast at Roaring forks, and ate in my room while I waited. I checked my account balance at the ATM, and still had a grand total of $17 in my account. Oops! I checked the balance on my credit card, and found out that my limit had been raised- yay!
I bought two cute Christmas pens and some postcard stamps in the gift shop, and then switched my clothes over to the dryer. This takes forever! I cleaned up my room, and got ready for the park while my clothes dried. I actually considered going on the trail ride over at Fort Wilderness- I was missing my horse, and it would be fun to do some riding! I had so much left to do and so little time, though, so I gave up that idea. Maybe someday!
My laundry was finally finished, so I dropped it off in the room, and took the Crockett bus to the TTC, and then a bus from there to the Animal Kingdom. For some reason, this was way faster than waiting for a direct bus to AK from WL.
I got to Animal Kingdom around 12:30, and went straight to Tarzan, ending up being 2nd in line for the show, which got me a front row seat! The singers were different from the last time I was there, but some of the dancers were the same. Next I went to Kilimanjaro Safari, where the guide sounded exactly like the "Dude, you're getting a dell!" guy. Then I caught the 2pm Festival of the Lion king show, where I was glad to see that most of the cast was still the same. During the finale, the fire/knife guy lost a knife while he was juggling them, and it flew out towards the audience! Luckily it stopped a few feet short of the bleachers. I wonder if those knives are real? I saw the Happy Campers group in Camp Minnie Mickey afterwards, who did Christmas songs a capella. I decided to sit in Harambe until the parade started, but this being Florida, the rain started right when the parade did! I ducked under the roof of the Tusker House, and the rain ended a few minutes later.
It seemed appropriate that Brer Rabbit from Splash Mountain was there, since we were all soaking wet!
I followed the parade out of the park, and went back to the WL to hang out for a while. I decided to go hang out in the hot tub, but one was overflowing and closed, and the other was overflowing with water running down the stairs. I had to ask the lifeguard if the 2nd one was open, and it was, so I got to be the only person there for a while. Nice! Soon a few other people came in, and then a mom started letting her kids in the hot tub, so I walked down to the beach, which is so beautiful! I laid on a beach chair under the stars, and it was incredibly peaceful and magical!
I went back to my room to get dressed, and then went over to the Villas to check out the building to kill time. I was supposed to be meeting Nate at the Contemporary, so I took the boat over, and was the only one on it! I met Nate on the 4th floor, and we went up to the 15th floor, where we just pretended like we knew where we were going, and went out to the observation deck to check out the view. Awesome!
We took the bus out to PI, where we were meeting the Passporter authors and a few other people at the Adventurer's Club. Nate and I were both tired, but the AC is a must do! One of the AC cast made fun of Jennifer's alien doll from Alien Encounter, saying "What a nice baby! I don't think it's done yet.", and then holding it up to Jennifer, examining the similarities. We watched the Balderdash Cup, Samantha's show, the New Member Induction, and then went over to 8-Trax so Nate could get his groove on. We stopped in the new Motion club to check it out, but it was mostly just people standing around. Boring!
We finally took the bus to the TTC, and back to the WL, where Nate was staying with me so he could take me to a Birthday Breakfast first thing in the morning. Hooray for birthdays! We were so sleepy that I managed to knock my water bottle off the nightstand when turning out the light, sending water flying everywhere. Smooth!