Animal Kingdom

This week Susan and I are celebrating our anniversary, and using up more of Susan’s birthday coupons. Today we spent time at Animal Kingdom. We were surprised that Christmas decorations were still up, and holiday music was playing as we entered. 

After checking out the shops in Discovery Island, we walked through Dinoland. Disney had put up walls around the Dino-Rama area in preparation for its replacement with an Encanto attraction.

We headed into Asia, and had lunch at Yak & Yeti, where Susan used her birthday coupon from Landry’s restaurants. After lunch the wait for the African Safari ride had dropped to only 15 minutes, so we rode that. 

After that we walked through Pandora. The wait for Flight of Passage was only 20 minutes, so we rode that as well. We then headed out, and stopped by Cast Connection, where Susan picked up some kids t-shirts to send to LA fire victims. 

Birthday Week

This week is Susan’s birthday, so she got several coupons for free dinners and snacks. We started Monday night after work with dinner at Ford’s Garage. We’ve gone to this auto-themed restaurant several times since they opened one near us a few years ago.  The food is pretty good.

When we went to the Tampa Bay Lightning match last month, Susan and I ended up talking to someone with group sales. He offered to give us a tour of the arena the next time we came and Tuesday we drove out to Tampa to take him up on it.  

We were hoping he would show us a bit more behind the scenes stuff than he did, but it was still a pretty cool tour. I especially liked getting to go up where the organ is, high above the arena. After the tour we had a late lunch at the Yardhouse next to the arena, and then watched the Lightning defeat the Carolina Hurricanes 3 to 2. 

Last night we went to Benihana on International Drive for dinner. Earlier today Susan and I redeemed several birthday coupons as we ran errands, and used another this evening to eat dinner at Red Robin.