Part 3

Thursday was my last day with Mel. We started out very early at Animal Kingdom, eager to pack the day as full as we possibly could. We did Kilimanjaro Safaris and saw more animals than I've ever seen on there before, and way closer, too! We even got to see the baby white rhino! Still no lions, though. I'm pretty sure we did Everest at some point, and we definitely went to see Flights of Wonder again. We went over to Camp Minnie-Mickey just as the previous Lion King show was finishing its load in so that we could sit at the very front in the next show. We played games on Mel's iPod and attempted to stay in the shade. We did manage to get those front row seats, though, and it was uber-awesome. Timon paid special attention to us during the show (we were wearing our tiaras again, which felt a little out of place in Animal Kingdom, but whatever), and we were so close to the monkeys and dancers! We spent some more time walking around before it was time to take our places for the parade (it's kinda on the lame side, but Mel wanted to see it, so we went). We managed to snag a bench in one of the narrower parade areas, so we were not sitting on the ground, we were shaded, and we also ended up surrounded by a family of ducks! They were so cute! Now I understand why my sister took so many pictures of baby ducks when she was here. We left Animal Kingdom fairly early so that we could go home and freshen up before Mel's final Disney restaurant, Narcoossee's. I'd already been there, but it was a fantastic place and I definitely did not mind going back. Especially since we were on the dining plan, so I didn't have to order one of the cheaper menu items. We both had the surf and turf dish, which had two small filets and a giant lobster tail, as well as some awesome veggies. It was sooooo amazing! For dessert I had a chocolate mousse, and I think Mel had a creme brulee thing. We headed back to the resort after that, and packed up our stuff to prepare for an early departure. I woke up Friday morning and headed back home to drop my stuff off before heading to work. Of course, getting into my apartment was a fun ordeal because they'd changed my locks while I was gone, so I didn't have a key and had to wake Francesca up to let me in.

After work on Friday was Goofy's Mystery Tour, a special annual cast event that involves teams of four participating in a themed scavenger hunt around Hollywood Studios after the park closes. It also involves fifty multiple choice trivia questions of varying difficulty levels. Oh, and your team is bungee corded together. No biggie. I put together a team of some of my favourite people here: Selina, Taryn, and Adam. By the time we'd exited the theatre (with Taryn in the lead, taking the longest and most awkward way possible) we'd pretty much figured out coordinating our walking movements. Problems only arose when we had to turn or sit down. We came in 179th out of 250 teams, so I'm quite proud of us (and even though other Canadian teams ranked higher than we did, we totally had more points than some of them, so :P ).

After that, it was back to boring work. A couple weeks ago I bought those shape-up shoes, so I've been enjoying wearing those around the parks. They're really comfortable! Last week, Selina, Ben, Adam and I went to the Studios to meet Lotso, the bear that smells like strawberries from Toy Story 3 (which is gonna be super-awesome). The other day Selina, Taryn and I went out for dinner at Boatwright's at Port Orleans Riverside for some awesome Cajun food. Monday was Dan's birthday, so some of us headed over to one of his favourite restaurants, Sanaa, for an awesome lunch.

And that brings me up to date, so quit your whining for a while!