Our outbound flight wasn't until after 3:30pm, so we decided to head to Animal Kingdom for an Extra Magic Hour morning. This being a Monday after all the April vacation weeks were done, the park was practically empty. We head immediately after rope drop through Dinoland towards Expedition Everest and get Fastpasses - but the Fastpass isn't good until 9am. We immediately ride standby and walk right up to the loading area and ride. After we leave, the standby line is still non-existent, so we ride again - and it isn't even 8:30am yet. We decide to take a break, and instead had back to Dinoland. DD#2 isn't tall enough for Primeval Whirl, so DW takes her to ride Dinosaur again while I take DD#1 on Primeval Whirl. The wait time was a little longer than advertised, and I still don't care for the ride. It doesn't seem quite as jerky as when I rode it in 2006 (I have heard that they've slowed it down somehow), but it just isn't that interesting. DD#1 likes it though.
We meet back up and go back to Everest to use our Fastpass, and the standby line is STILL short, so we go and ride it again, with only a very short wait - it still took longer to walk through the queue. So we ended up riding it 4 times in less than 90 minutes, and that included a 30 minute break at other attractions. We could have continued riding it if we wanted, but we wanted to at least hit a couple other things before we needed to leave.
We walked past the Flights Of Wonder stage, where there was a show about to begin and a cast member was displaying a (I believe) Great Horned Owl. We've never seen the actual show, so we stayed and got some good seats. It is actually a pretty good show, with a bit of humor to it. Guests help take part as well, tossing grapes for a bird to catch in flight...although sometimes the tosses are pretty poor. DW got hit by one.
After the show, we started to head towards the front of the park, and stopped in to see It's Tough To Be A Bug, and then had lunch at Pizzafari before leaving the park.
Our drive back was uneventful, dropping off at Payless and managing to hop right on the courtesy van to the airport. As usual, MCO check in/bag drop is completely crazy. Despite trying to make sure it wasn't a problem, our largest bag was over the 50 pound limit. The JetBlue person suggested that we could redistribute stuff in our bags - uhhhh, where exactly? You can barely walk around as it is. We pay the fee, and then we still have to bring our bags ourselves to the security drop off through the crowd of confused people. Please JetBlue/MCO, FIX THIS!
We get some drinks/snacks and wait outside security for a while, and then we enter through security, which is so much more relaxed than at Logan. There is a family line, and they will also shift you around to open checkpoints as well. They don't seem to get too backed up at any point.
Our flight back is a connecting flight through JFK, so we will get to see the new terminal that JetBlue just had built. Our first flight is on "As Blue As It Gets", and pretty much runs on time. The new terminal at JFK is nice, with a food court and shopping area that seemed more like a high-end mall than an airport. Our plan for the short hop back to Boston was "Bravo Lima Uniform Echo" (i.e. NATO phoentic alphabet for "blue"), and was a nice short ride home.
Alas, we have no plans as a family to return until late 2010...but DD#1 and I will be making a short trip for Star Wars Weekends.