Florida 2012 Recap

At Disney World, we pretty much visited the crap out of the four parks.  We went to Animal Kingdom the least, only twice, but spent quite a few hours there and rode at least twice on everything we wanted.  We went on the Safari twice and saw more animals than we ever had, a huge success.  At one point a rhino was about three feet from Rachel on her side of the vehicle.  Ben and Carol went on Expedition Everest to Ben's constantly expressed regret afterwards.  We all thought it was brave of him.

The park where we had the least success was Hollywood Studios.  Despite several visits, we never got to go on Toy Story's Midway Mania, the Indiana Jones Stunt Show, Beauty and the Beast, or the car stunt show. For the first it was because of the huge wait times.  The rest are all shows and our timing never worked out.  We did see the best "park closing" show in any of the parks, Phantasmic.

We also rode the newly updated Star Tours four times and saw all the new scenes except Hoth.  Some of the scenes in the ride involve prequel spaceships and others involve original trilogy ships so the chronology of what was happening was a bit confusing.  But the new video is high def and decently 3-D so well worth it.

We did everything we wanted at the Magic Kingdom and EPCOT.  As I mentioned, I went on Space Mountain three times, which was enough.  I also went on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad three times and Pirates of the Caribbean and my favorite, The Haunted Mansion, at least four times each.  The most difficult ride to get on at any of the parks is EPCOT's Soarin', which almost always had a two hour wait.  We were able to ride it only once (with Fast Pass), but it's the most accessible, most amazing ride they have and well deserving its status.

As far as the good restaurants, we went to Boma–Flavors of Africa, Akershus Royal Banquet Hall, Restaurant Marrakesh, Tokyo Dining, Tutto Italia, and Grand Floridian Cafe.  Being on the Disney Dining Plan made this possible, as it would have been way too expensive otherwise.

We arrived back home on Thursday afternoon after a semi-non-eventful flight.  We boarded the plane in Orlando and were waiting to take off when they announced trouble with one of the two air-conditioning units.  To make sure we were comfortable, they were taking the plane out of service.  So we de-planed.  Ten minutes later, they apparently fixed the broken unit so we re-planed and took off.  Not a huge deal, but a little annoying.

And that's it for our Florida 2012 trip, our last family vacation while Rachel is living here.  I'll post a few pictures once we're settled.