It’s good to be back! Not so good to be dealing with messed up time zones but I’ll take it in exchange for an overdose of baby kisses. This time, the kids didn’t try to stop my advances; I think they missed us too.

I thought I’d wrap up the trip with a bunch of lessons I learnt from my 10 days away. Lessons may be a bit loosely worded, they’re mostly random thoughts scribbled down from various points of my trip so they may or may not make sense to you.

1. 10 days without my kids is 10 days too long. Every time we saw/did something fun, we’d stop and talk about how much the kids would love it, then go “awwww I miss my babies…”

2. We really do have the best food in the world. After a week, I could not bring myself to look at another fried chicken/fish/shrimp/potato combo.

3. It’s hard to dress suitably in Florida weather. It was either wearing a tank & shorts combo and freezing at night or going with something warmer and getting heatstroke in the day. There was the third choice of lugging extra layers around the parks all day.

4. If you stay at a Disney Resort, get the refillable mugs. It was good for all the fountain drinks and coffee all day for the entire stay.

5. Fastpasses, get them and use them.

6. Outlet shopping is a dream. We bought an entire year’s supply of clothes for the kids, and then some.

7. Floridians are so relaxed. There were a handful of irate, cranky parents towards the evenings but most of them were so friendly and they would give way all the time.

8. I love Target. The Munchkin kids stuff are going for less than half the price here and I got a large 16oz tub of Desitin for $12.

9. Speaking of shopping, pack light and bring extra luggages. We left with 2 and came back with 4.

10. This was what I call a total parent guilt trip. We came back with an entire luggage filled with toys for the kids, and they were all removed from the boxes for efficient packing. At first, we were thinking of rationing them but once we got back, it was all “KIDS, SEE ALL YOUR TOYS!!!”

11. Saw a guy playing a real harp and it sounded nothing like what I expected. David (from the Bible) must have been a pretty cool guy serenading the ladies with his harp. Wasn’t sure if this guy was also called David, would have been so badass if he was.

12. Getting to the parks early (15 mins before opening) cuts your waiting time by about 90%. Most parents with kids only start filtering in at about 11, so you can get a lot done by then.

13. Every kid needs to go to Disneyworld at least once in their lives. Adults too.

14. While watching the Wishes Nighttime Spectacular fireworks show in Magic Kingdom on our final night in Orlando, it was one of those epiphanic moments in life where I felt like anything is possible and dreams do come true. Writing it sounds terribly cheesy but being there watching it happen definitely made it to the top 5 most awesome moments in my life.

As for my autograph book mission, I got almost everything I wanted except for Donald, Daisy and Woody. I had a word with their topiaries though. Here are some of my favorites.

When you put a theme park in a safari, you get Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Or is it the other way around – putting a safari in a theme park?

While most Animal Kingdom fans are loath to label the park a zoo, that is perhaps the best description for it, especially for us Singaporean folks. A large portion of the park is made up of animal enclosures that look exactly like our zoo/night safari, which we decided to bypass almost entirely. We’re very efficient that way.

What I really liked was walking through the streets of Africa (a replica of course) feeling like I just stepped into the set of Blood Diamond. Now I’ve never been to Africa and everything I know about the place is derived from movies and pictures. But still, it looks pretty close to the photos I’ve seen. I even found a real African dude who could converse in mouth-clicking sounds. Ok, it could have been me who was making the clicking noises while he threw weird looks my way.

There are two super headliners at Animal Kingdom, the first one being the Kilimanjaro Safaris. We got on a safari open-air 4wd thing that took us around the African savannah. It’s kind of like the Night Safari tram ride, except better because it’s in the day and you get real close to the animals in a savannah setting.

For the roller coaster buffs, there’s a ride called Expedition Everest, which is supposed to be right up there next to Rock ‘N’ Roller Coaster in terms of the scare factor. I say supposed to be because I never got on the ride. The husband went on and he was all “it’s not scary at all, you should try it” and but I was paying more attention to the screams of terror from all those unfortunate souls stuck on the ride.

I only have one rule in selecting my rides – I don’t do drops. Speed, upside-side down turns and twists, I can handle but drops are a no go. I still have not recovered from that one time I took the Maliboomer at Anaheim Disney’s California Adventure. I did however pose for a picture in front of Everest, which was good enough for me.