First Few Visits to the Parks

Here's a photo recap of my first few visits to the parks while on the program!

First time at the Studios:

Completely random run-in with "The Wizard"! This guy's name is Rodney and he goes to the same university Jon and I did. He was friends with Jon and I had never met him before. I was walking around in the Tower of Terror gift shop and saw a wizard hat and cautiously asked, "...Do you go to Auburn?" Or maybe it was, "... Are you from Alabama?" Either way, he was like, "YES!" and then I knew it was really him and not some other guy who dresses like a wizard. So it was really cool getting to meet him and his lady. They were so nice and I got to send Jon a photo to completely blow his mind.

Lines for everything were pretty long, so all I did was ride Star Tours and Great Movie Ride. The only paper Fastpass I was able to get before they were done away with was Star Tours : ( I really, really wanted to collect them all while I was on my program. I'm still pretty upset about it.

 First time at Epcot:

Vegan "beef" lo mein from Sunshine Seasons!

Epcot was DEAD the night we went. It was the greatest experience of my life. The entire park looked like it had closed an hour or more earlier and there were still just a few guests walking around, taking in the sights. During Illuminations, there were gaps all around the lagoon with no one standing by the railing. When there were guests at the railing, they were only one-person thick. I've never experienced anything like it in my life. I was able to hop, skip, jump, and dance all throughout World Showcase to some really amazing new music they're playing now. And I got to see Illuminations from so many different vantage points that I never had before.  Hands down, the best show on property.

We also rode Spaceship Earth and Maelstrom. And we were able to peek in on the new Elsa and Ana meet-n-greet in Norway.

First time at Animal Kingdom:

This was my first time getting to visit Animal Kingdom at night, so it was really exciting! I had never been able to see all of the park's lighting and it was really awesome to see.

We rode Expedition Everest twice - once in the front and once in the back. Riding this at night is AMAZING. Especially in the front during the part where the track goes out. So much scarier when you can't see what's below or how far down everything is.

We had a really cute interaction with Donald. After we took our photos with him. He ducked down behind the dinosaur with his flashlight and acted like he was making signals with it. 

Jon was really hungry, so we decided to eat at Restaurantasaurous. We both got the veggie burger. We had a bit of an issue with mine - the hostess told me it was vegan, as is. It came out with a chipotle mayo sauce on it and I had to talk to someone else, who told me that neither the bun or black bean patty were vegan. So I had to get a completely different burger and bun without any awesome sauce. But the burger ended up being really great. The new vegan buns they have are SO much better than the nasty gluten-free Ener-G rolls they used to use.

 

They also had this really cute shirt in Dinoland U.S.A!