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We spent this past weekend over at Disney as we continue to take full advantage of our annual passes this year. In our continued attempt to check out as many of the resorts as possible, this time we stayed at the Carribean Beach. It was a very nice hotel but due to our short stay and the bad weather we really didn’t get to take advantage of the various amenities (like the pools).

Our original plan for Saturday was to hit one (or both) of the water parks (Typhoon Lagoon and/or Blizzard Beach) but the threat of persistent rain made us reconsider so we went over to Epcot instead. With the rain moving in and out of the area, we stuck to more of the indoor attractions, including ones we had not visited in a long time like Ellen’s Energy Adventure, some of the newer things in Innoventions East and West, hunting more Hidden Mickeys, and, of course, we rode Soarin’. In the afternoon it cleared up a bit so we circled the Seven Seas Lagoon and made a lunch of snacking at the different countries and finished up with our Fast Passes for Test Track.

When dusk arrived, we decided to skip the fireworks at Epcot and instead swung back to our hotel to freshen up and then drove over to Downtown Disney for dinner at Splitsville. We wanted to go bowling but a) it was way too expensive and b) it’s impossible to get a lane reservation unless you do it ahead of time (like, days). But dinner was still good and we spent a little time afterwards playing video games at DisneyQuest instead before heading back to the hotel for the evening.

Sunday morning we headed over to Animal Kingdom where we hadn’t been since Labor Day 2010. The morning was cloudy and cool which I think contributed to our seeing the most animals we’ve ever seen on the safari (but no lions). We walked over to the Asia area (stopping to see the Flights of Wonder show along the way) to ride Everest. The afternoon turned brutally hot so we went to the indoor stuff like “It’s Tough To Be a Bug” and “Festival of the Lion King.” I even got my daughter to ride Dinosaur! again (we were in a car filled with screaming girls from Brazil, hilarious!). We had late lunch plans at a new place for us, the Yak & Yeti restaurant (pretty good Asian cuisine) and after that we decided to start heading home.

Just a mile down I-4, the skies darkened and opened up with some serious rain, thunder, and lightning. My daughter took a pretty cool shot of a bolt of lightning out the window. It was better we were in the car than back at the parks, though. We’re already looking forward to going back for our annual Labor Day visit.