wrapping up disney

12:26 PM

wednesday began with a little bit of a halloween hangover! we didn't have a ton on the agenda so we took our time getting over to epcot to ride some more rides and meet some more friends.

the day before we had a fast pass for toy story mania...but wouldn't you know it one of the tracks broke down right at our time so we couldn't use it. however, we knew this was ride was a must. so we went back and waited...and we waited...and we waited...a solid hour but man was it worth it. we all had so much fun on this ride!

thursday started with a bang...and ended with a hurricane!

we started the day with breakfast at the hotel with a few of our friends.

even though the forecast wasn't great...we still had to get our day in at animal kingdom. hurricane matthew was starting to make some big waves in the news so we got as much in as we could before they closed down the parks.

that's right, they actually closed the parks. the fourth time in the history of disney world! i believe the only other times they closed the parks were for the assassination of jfk, earthquake of '94 and 9-11. so even though we lost our last park day...it was pretty neat to be apart of disney history.

on our last day at animal kingdom we ran into an old friend right at the entrance! we knew they would be down in disney but it was so great to actually catch up with them.

after a quick visit it was off to the races. we had a lot to cover before they kicked us out.

first up was the kilimanjaro safari.

this was so amazing!

we saw so many incredible animals...

after the safari we took in the festival of the lion king show.

aaaamazing!

ryan was by far the biggest daredevil of our trip she hit up every single roller coaster...most of them more than once. expedition everest was her absolute favorite. she couldn't wait to ride this one all week.

she was so excited she somehow convinced dottie to ride it with her!

this was easily our favorite picture of the entire trip.

the rides continued for the daredevil...

once the rain really started to come down we headed back to the hotel for our "hurricane party." we finally switched on the news and realized how bad this storm could be. i swear we were in a blissful fog all week. "matthew? matthew who?" once the hotel slipped a note under our door telling us we would basically have to hunker down for a full 24 hours we figured, maybe this is a big deal!

thankfully matthew didn't do nearly th damage they predicted to the orlando area so it kind of worked out to our advantage. we ordered room service, played games in our room, and slept in on friday.

they set up an entire kids play area in one of the conference rooms so the girls (and dan) played in there all day.

we enjoyed some gelato

and woke up saturday to completely blue skies! our flight was canceled so we got a bonus pool day...which is exactly what we needed to end this amazing week.