Day 7 - Animal Kingdom and Downtown Disney

On Sunday we made are way over to Animal Kingdom. Historically, this is our least favorite park. It is technically the largest park, but is the poorest designed, in my book. Everything is on little islands that branch off of a central island. It is hard to get around in the park and everything seems so congested. That being said, we did have more fun at this park this time around. It may have been that we had lower expectations and it may have been that we weren't trying to do all of the "big" things. We also opted to leave the stroller at the hotel since this was going to be our "short" day and the park is so hard to get through.

The tree of life

We started out seeing some of the animals and getting Fast Passes for Kilimanjaro Safaris. Fast passes are tickets that you can get for a specific ride to avoid having to wait in the stand-by line. They are assigned for a one hour window. The first tickets are assigned for earlier times and they only give out a certain amount per time slot. Some of the more popular rides (Toy Story at Hollywood Studios) you have to get there early to get a pass at all and the times will often be assigned for close to closing time. Since our time was a half hour away, we stayed close by and ate lunch. There was a group of wonderful African drummers performing right where we were eating. The girls were very entertained.

Jammin' to the jungle beat

Sweet Pea trying it out

After lunch we headed over to Kilimanjaro Safaris. We had a 5 minute wait in the Fast Pass line versus a 45 minute wait in the stand-by line. Definitely worth using the Fast Pass system on the rides that offer it. Kilimanjaro Safaris is an African safari tour in an open Safari truck. Disney has an animal sanctuary there and this ride takes you through a bunch of it. It is a very impressive ride. You get to see all of the animals in their "natural territory". On a previous trip we had to wait for about 20 minutes for some of the animals to clear off the road way. When someone asked why they didn't just honk at them or clear them off, they were insistent that this was the animals home and they didn't want to disturb that. I guess driving thousands of camera happy tourists through their "home" 365 days a year isn't really all that disturbing.

Smile!!!

Sweet Pea was worried about the lions, alligators and hippos, oh my!

Peanut sat up at just the right moment to "pose" with the giraffe

African Elephant

One tough rhino

After that we headed to the other side of the park. On our way we found Lilo and Stitch.

We watched Finding Nemo the Musical which is very entertaining. Sweet Pea loved it, but Peanut got a little antsy. In hind sight I am wondering if she was starting to feel bad.

We then booked it back to the other side of the park for another musical, The Lion King. After we made it to the other side, Sweet Pea decided she didn't want to go. This show is one of a few things that we have never seen on any of our trips (the train at Magic Kingdom being another...it's almost become a joke to us). We have heard that it is WONDERFUL though. We asked around and found out that Pocahontas was in the park and headed all the way back to the back of the park (again) to find her. On the way we stopped for a snack.

MMM, strawberry bar!!!

Sharing some frozen lemonade with my "joey"

After a short train ride to another section of the park we made it to Rafiki's Planet Watch. The train ride showed a little bit of behind the scenes stuff like where all the animals live. There is a lot of conservation information in this section. They also have an animal hospital where you can actually watch procedures being done on the animals. We were told that they usually operate in the mornings, but if there is an emergency they will work on them immediately. We didn't see any, but it would be really neat to see. Also while we were there we found Pocahontas and Jiminy Cricket. They are very rare characters to find so Sweet Pea was thrilled.

We then caught the train back to the mainland to find the parade.

Choo Choo

We found a spot on a bridge along the parade route that was almost empty. The parade was great, very musical and LOTS to see. The girls loved it and were dancing, clapping and waving the whole time. They almost caused one of the floats to wreck because they were distracting the driver who was watching them and waving. Almost every single character stopped to shake their hands and talk to them. Some even came from the other side of the road to see them. It was really fun for them.

There is a drummer inside this giant kangaroo

Hello Pluto!

After the parade, Peanut fell asleep. We had to take a bus to a local resort in order to catch one to Downtown Disney.

Once again, in hindsight, you can tell she doesn't feel well here, just didn't know it at the time

We finally made it to Downtown Disney which is an area of shops, restaurants and shows. We had reservations at Captain Jacks on the lake. We did a little shopping and then headed to dinner.

Sweet Pea posing outside of the Christmas store

At dinner we order and I nursed Peanut. Right after nursing her I put her in her high chair and she "spit up". She hadn't had her reflux medicine all day, but this was quite a bit. Thank heavens she had been drooling alot this week, so we had bought her a bib. Most of the "spit up" I caught in the bib. She didn't seem to interested in eating and for those of you who know this little Peanut, that is ODD. We still thought it might be reflux, but I was thinking it was something more. I didn't really feel like eating by the time the food came, I think partly out of nerves and partly out of not being sure I felt 100% myself. I took Peanut outside while Daddy-O and Sweet Pea ate. It was a little chilly out, but I had horrible chills (yeah, in hindsight...). They finished eating and wanted to souvenir shop.

Disclaimer #1 - Some of this may be more graphic than you would like to read. This is my journal and I do like to record our "history".

Disclaimer #2 -I don't mean for any of this to sound bad on Daddy-O, just to help remind others that Mommy's sometimes know best.

I strongly recommended that we go back to the hotel because Peanut didn't feel well, but it fell on deaf ears. We had put off souvenir shopping until this night so I do understand not wanting to miss it. Daddy-O took Peanut and we headed off to World of Disney, the Disney mega-store. We did some shopping and Peanut slept on Daddy's shoulder the whole time. Sweet Pea got several Ariel dolls and toys, Mommy and Daddy got new watches and we got Peanut a baby Minnie Mouse. We then headed back to the hotel on the bus. Because I had a "mommy feeling" I emptied out one of the small souvenir bags just in case. When you board the buses, they pack you in like cattle. Luckily we all got a seat together. We were about 10 minutes from our hotel when Peanut woke up vomiting. I grabbed the bag and managed to control most of it. It was then that Daddy noticed both ends were basically exploding. We had people literally standing on our feet and there was not a thing in the world we could do. I haven't seen that type of panic on Daddy-O's face. EVER. I did feel horribly for him, but also felt like this could have been avoided. In his defense, I do OFTEN overreact to things. We finally (after what seemed like forever) made it to our hotel and exited the bus.

We got back to the hotel room and called for lots of towels. We got Peanut and Daddy cleaned up. She continued vomiting very violently for several hours. She was so pathetic and would just collapse her head in the trash can and fall asleep. She seemed to be getting pretty lethargic really quickly. I called our pediatrician who recommended she get to the hospital. In her experience if an infant can't stop throwing up after four hours, especially when all she had was breast milk, then there was a high chance she wouldn't stop on her own and the chance of dehydration was very high. She also recommended we go sooner than later to prevent dehydration and because hospitals would only get busier as the Super Bowl parties ended. We called the front desk and they gave us the number for an urgent care center. We called and got an answering machine. They were closed. We called the front desk again and they connected us to some dispatch emergency service. I guess Disney has their own fire department, emergency services and until recently, their own hospital.

Within a few minutes (around 10:30) there was someone from the hotel staff at our door asking for information. I was busy trying to get a few things together and the next thing I knew there were paramedics standing in our room. They put Peanut and I on the stretcher, told Daddy-O where they were taking us and we were off. Daddy-O and Sweet Pea stayed at the hotel. There was no point in keeping them out all night. I had to go because of the nursing situation. I must say...during ALL of this Sweet Pea was an ANGEL. She was so sweet to Peanut, very concerned but didn't get upset at all and was such a big girl. I was very impressed with her. I guess the Disney emergency services are included (cost free) in the services they offer which was very helpful. The paramedics were very nice. By this point I was feeling pretty bad too and didn't know who would need "the bag" more. Peanut won. We were triaged and waited about half an hour for a room. We finally got a room and half an hour later, a nurse. About an hour later the doc came in and said it was a nasty virus going around and gave her Zofran. We had to wait to get the medicine, have her take a dose, wait 45 minutes, giver her a few sips of Pedialyte, wait an hour and see if she could keep it down. At this point Peanut had quit throwing up and was sleeping for a few minutes, restlessly, on and off. My stomach felt bad though and every time I wanted to go to the restroom, I would have to ask the nurse to get the charge nurse to watch Peanut (she was on an adult bed and with the way she was thrashing would have been on the floor in seconds). This ordeal took at least 45 minutes, every.single.time. Not good when you are sick to your stomach.

Peanut was able to tolerate the Pedialyte so they discharged us at around 3:45 am. I went back out to the desk and inquired on the best way to get back to the hotel. Since we were on Disney grounds we just used the bus systems and didn't bother renting a car. They called a cab for us and we headed out, prescription in hand. The nurse said there was a 24 hour Walgreens just down the street.

Poor, sweet baby

The cabby showed up and had a fish decal on the door. This could be a good sign or not. I told him we needed to go to Walgreens and to the hotel. We took off and he informed me that the nearest 24 hour pharmacy was on the other side of town. I figured he was just trying to run up our fare, but I didn't really care. I felt like crud. Peanut felt like crud. It was 3:45 in the morning. All I wanted was my uncomfortable hotel room and bed. It was worth the $75 he wanted. We drove about 15 or 20 minutes away. I did have a few panics. First when I thought he could take us anywhere and Daddy-O would have NO clue where to even look for us. I then remembered I felt like crud and didn't really care what happend. The second was when I noticed that he was texting while driving. The third was when I noticed he only had one arm. Not that there is anything wrong with being a one armed cowboy cabby, until you are driving me and my precious, sick baby, who doesn't have a carseat, down a highway, at 75 mph, while texting, at 4:00 in the morning. Yeah, little panic.

At Walgreens we got the perscription filled in record time and picked up some wipes (we were running out QUICKLY) and some saltines. Apparently our insurance didn't work for some reason so we were out another 75 bucks there. Once again, I felt so lousy I DIDN"T CARE. When we came back out he was asleep in the car. Ah, that makes me feel even more comfortable. I spent the 20 minute drive back to the hotel talking his ear off to make sure he stayed WIDE awake. We got home and settled into bed. It has never felt that good to crawl into a hotel bed.