Disney World - Part 2

Here's the rest of our trip, I'll get the pictures in when I can:
On Wednesday, we went back to Magic Kingdom. The weather was a lot better this day, it felt like a nice warm fall day back in Utah - not humid really at all. We had a great time riding all the rides we wanted. We also met Alice in Wonderland, she was very nice. That night there was the light parade, which was really neat. And a fireworks show over the castle. A person dressed as Tinkerbell flew out from the top of the castle on a zip line, to somewhere out into the park, she was really high up there.
Thursday we went to Animal Kingdom. It was a little warmer this day, but still okay. My favorite ride at this park was Mt. Everest. It's a rollercoaster that goes backwards and down steep drops. It's awesome. The park closed at 5 p.m., so we went to Rainforest Cafe, which was just outside the park. Boston loved the gorillas. I took him up close to look at one and he would turn his head and grab onto me really tight. After dinner we went to Hollywood Studios for their night show, "Fantasmic". The stadium is huge! It holds like 10,000 people! And the show is awesome! There's fireworks, movies showing on the waterfountains, characters come through on boats, and Malificent turns into a huge fire breathing dragon, which Mickey slays with the Sword in the Stone. We had to go to the show Thursday night, because it wasn't showing on Friday, the day we were going to be at the park.
So, Friday we went to Hollywood Studios. They have a couple of new attractions since we were there last. They have American Idol, we watched three guests sing and then we got to vote for our favorite. Another new ride was the Toy Story ride. It's a 3D ride where you play Midway games and try and get the most points. So of course, Zariph and I were a little competitive on this ride. It was lots of fun! Friday night we had to do all the laundry and pack up because we had to check out of the condo the next morning. There was a little problem with the dryer though, after drying the first load for three hours the clothes were still wet! At this point I was too tired and needed to get to bed and hoped it would dry during the night.
Zariph took out the clothes during the night and let them air dry and put the next load in the dryer to start. Since we had this little problem, Saturday morning, I stayed back and finished up the laundry and packing while Zariph took Misty and her family to the airport and his parents and Teliece to Animal Kingdom. This was our extra day to go to any park and ride whatever we wanted. By the time Zariph got back to pick me up, his parents were done at Animal Kingdom so we picked them up and went to Hollywood Studios. We rode Toy Story again and Rock'n'Rollercoaster, then had lunch. Then we were debating whether to go to Epcot, but we were all pretty tired. I wanted to do some outlet shopping and then head out to Tampa to our hotel there. So, that's what we did. We found a fun little outlet mall, hit my favorite stores, and Zariph sold back our unused days on our tickets and made $30. Then off to our nice hotel in Tampa.
We got a nice 2-bedroom condo that we shared with Zariph's parents. It was right on the water and really nice. We had a kitchen and everything. We stayed there two nights, and Olivia stayed there all day Sunday with Boston while we went to Busch Gardens.
Busch Gardens was awesome. They have about 5 huge rollercoasters. My favorite is called Sheikra. You sit in this huge car - 3 rows of about 8 seats each row. Once you're in, the floor lowers and stays behind as you're off heading up this huge hill. You wrap around and get close to where you drop off, but then it STOPS and you're dangling there for a couple seconds. I'm pretty sure it's only holding on by a little bit on the back seat, so the front row is already facing straight down just waiting to drop. My heart beats a little faster just thinking about it. It was awesome! Then it drops you straight down. Our first time, we rode in the third row, then we had to ride it again in the front row. Then later in the day we rode it two more times.
Monday morning we checked out of our hotel. Zariph dropped us off at the cruise port, and returned the van while we did some window shopping, waiting to get on the cruise ship. Zariph met back up with us and we proceeded to wait in the first of a few lines to get on the ship. Eventually we made it on to the ship, it was so exciting! I love cruising! It was Zariph's parents and Teliece's first cruise, so it was exciting to see how they liked it. We first went up to the buffet for lunch. The choices there are amazing, they had several options of what to eat. Surprisingly, Teliece and Olivia couldn't find anything they wanted to eat. Teliece was just being picky and Olivia was scared to leave the table because she didn't want to get lost (it was a big room and she gets lost easily). Anyway, I loved it. Then we went down to check out our rooms. Our luggage hadn't been delivered yet, so we went to explore the ship. This was Zariph and my fourth Carnival cruise, so we were pretty familiar with how the ship was set up. Then we went back to our room, unpacked, slept a little, participated in the wonderful lifeboat drill, checked out the ship some more, had our late seating dinner (which I love) at 8:15 - we sat at a table for 10, but we always had four empty chairs, we were the only ones on our table. Then Zariph, Boston, and I went to the Welcome Aboard Show that night. Boston didn't make it that long, so Zariph went back to the room with him. I stayed by myself. The dancers did one song, then the comedian was on for about 30 minutes, it was pretty good.
Tuesday was a relaxing Day at Sea. Teliece did a lot of activities with Circle C (the 12-14 year old group). She made some friends that she hung out with most of the time. The rest of us relaxed and did some of the activities. Olivia and I went to a scrapbooking activity. We went to the ice carving demonstration, a game of Win, Lose, or Draw where I drew for the winning point on our team! And of course, we had lunch and dinner. Dinner that night was our formal night with lobster tail - yum! The show that night was probably my favorite of all week. The dancers put on a show to music from the 50s through the 80s. I love all the costume changes, it was a fun show. Boston even sat through all of it! We were in the front row, at the end they had sparklers come out from the front of the stage.
Wednesday was our day in Grand Cayman. Here we booked an exursion to go snorkeling and swim with stingrays. I was a little nervous to be with the stingrays, but was able to relax and have fun once I warmed up to it. When they swam against me, they felt really smooth, like freshly shaven legs, so it wasn't as scary. Then we also stopped in two other places to snorkel. I liked the snorkeling and I liked being on the catamaran. It was a fun day. I burned my back though on the ride back to the cruise ship. I was sitting in the sun for about 30 minutes, I should have reapplied more sunblock or put my dress back on. It was red, but actually didn't hurt enough to ruin the next day. That night was the comedian. We sat again on the front row - Boston does a lot better if he sits that close. I laughed so hard at some parts. The comedian was bald and he was making jokes about it, then he could see that Dexter was bald also. And he said something like, "It's bad enough you're bald, but then you add that pimp mustache, too. Yeah, let's see how much ugly we can get onto one head." Dexter was just laughing. Also, Boston was getting a little squirmy and we were trying to hold him still. And the comedian said something like I get that reaction a lot from parents trying to hold their kids a safe distance from me. Joking about his looks - he was bald and a pretty big size guy. It was funny.
Thursday was our day in Cozumel. We booked an excursion that was pretty much our whole time. We got on a ferry over to the mainland of Mexico, Playa del Carmen (I think). Then we rode a bus for about an hour to the Mayan ruins. These were awesome! Aside from the heat returning at full blast and humidity unbearable again, I loved the view! There was a rock wall all around these ruins and our tour guide was explaining that there were lots of buildings and they were mostly used as temples. When I stepped through the little walkway in the wall, the view that opened up was totally amazing! I could tell it was a sacred place. It was beautiful. There were ruins everywhere, everything was so green, palm trees were all around, and the ocean was just right behind all of this. It made me think of what it would be like to be a Lamanite and live back then. It was really neat. There were also some little shops where we could bargain for some souveniers. We didn't get done with the tour until about 6:30 and the cruise ship was leaving at 7, so there wasn't much time, but Zariph wanted to do some quick shopping at the port, and he met us back on the ship later. We had dinner and the show that night was a talent show, which was actually really good. There were about 8 or so guests that sung.
Friday was our last Day at Sea. We had breakfast at the dining room, but I was starting to feel sick - congested. I bought a decongestant and slept the rest of the day away. Zariph took Boston up to the water park and let him play, he also went and had lunch, then we all took a nap and packed up. We had to have our luggage ready to go by dinner. There was an early show that the dancers put on, it was all Latin music, and then we had our normal dinner time. The waiters sang goodbye to us. I really liked our waiters, they were very good with Boston. On the formal night, they played a song for all the couples to get up and slow dance and the waiter sat with Boston, so we could dance. He entertained him with a little light that he had.
Saturday morning, we woke up early had breakfast and were part of the first group off the ship with checked luggage, Zariph's parents were flying out at noon. We caught a shuttle to the airport and then sat and waited for our flight that wasn't until 2 something. We sat at the kids play area for a couple hours, and the airport had free WiFi, so I could catch up reading my blogs and facebook. The flight home was normal, we had a layover in Dallas again and Lindsay picked us up from the airport in Salt Lake around 8. Then we came home and started the joy of unpacking and laundry.