Week #5 - Exploring Animal Kingdom, Epcot Tour, & Valentine's Day Fun!

Sunday, February 9 started another week, beginning with going to church, then a day at work, and once I got back from work I got ready to go to Jellyrolls for another cast member night. This time, I went with my friends Dawn, Emily, and Malari, and we met up with some other friends there. As always, it was a fun time!

Monday was just busy with work, but on Tuesday, I had the day off and surprise - decided to go back to the park I spend every day at work in - Animal Kingdom! I hadn't been there much as a guest and wanted to get a feel for where everything was located in the park and just enjoy exploring it so I could know more and make better recommendations to guests who ask me questions. It was so nice that I was able to meet up with a new friend, Maddy, and we had a really great day!

First off, we got lucky scoring a Flight of Passage Fastpass, which is so difficult to do, especially on the same day. Refreshing the Fastpass list over and over ended up working in our favor! While we waited around for that, though, we got to watch Festival of the Lion King and went to eat lunch at Flame Tree BBQ. I had the baked macaroni and cheese with pulled pork and onion rings topped with barbecue sauce. It was so delicious! We then headed to Pandora to ride Flight of Passage and on the way out stopped by Pongu Pongu, the drink counter where I tried the Mo'ara Margarita. It tasted great, but was definitely interesting with the edible boba pearls!

Flame Tree BBQ lunch

 

Some of our day was also just spent taking pictures, because Animal Kingdom has a lot of pretty backdrops and photo spots. For example, Dinoland U.S.A is my least favorite section, but as you can see below, the carnival games and bright colors make for cute pictures! While there, we rode Dinosaur.

Finally, the last stops of the day were in Africa and Asia. Africa is where I work, so it was fun to be able to visit some of my coworkers and take pictures with some of the themed walls. I like to think I work in one of the most photogenic lands in Animal Kingdom! :)

The main shop that I work in

After finishing up there, we went over to Asia, where we had a Fastpass for Expedition Everest, so we had lots of fun riding that and I tried the Forbidden Mountain ice cream cone! I never used to pay much attention to all the details of Animal Kingdom, but since working there I have a lot more appreciation for all of the amazing theming of this park. 

The next morning, I was on my way to Epcot for a tour I had signed up for through the educational offerings the Disney College Program provides. It was called the UnDiscovered Future World Tour, and we had a really awesome tour guide who took us into a lot of backstage areas and told us little known facts about Future World and more about its renovation which is currently happening. I enjoyed it so much, and look forward to doing more tours during my program!

Festival of the Arts cupcake

Wednesday was also a sad occasion, because it marked the end of our 40% off merchandise cast discount, which now has been lowered down to 20%! I'm not happy about it, but I'm sure my bank account is!! Since that was ending, I went to Disney Springs for the night and bought a few more things from the World of Disney store. I got to see my roommate Courtney working there too, which was fun. On the way out, I grabbed a yummy treat from Goofy's Candy Company!

Valentine's Day was Friday so Courtney, Hannah, Audrey, and I decided to have a fun Galentine's morning and go to the character breakfast at the Boardwalk resort. The restaurant is called Trattoria al Forno, and they have a special Bon Voyage character breakfast where you get to meet Flynn Rider, Rapunzel, Prince Eric, and Ariel. This was a splurge, but totally worth it, especially as a nice Valentine's Day treat to ourselves!

 Then, after breakfast, I was able to meet up with my friend Keltner and a new friend, Esther, at Magic Kingdom. The park was packed and ride wait times were very long, so we decided just to try to meet some characters who were out for the day and take cute pictures. It was a rainy and gloomy morning, but it was a great morning with friends before I had to go to work for the rest of the day. I ended the night going to eat Chick Fil A with friends from work which was a blast!

Saturday was another busy work day, and that ended another fun week here at Disney World. Week 6 just came to a close, so that will be my next post here in hopefully a couple of days! Talk to you again real soon - thanks for reading!