Well, we’ve reached the end of our first part of the trip report. Before moving on to the October trip though, I wanted to post a few last reflections of our “Days of Discovery”.
Weather and Crowds:
Considering it was August, I’m pretty happy with the weather we had. It did rain for a few hours every afternoon, but it really wasn’t too bad. The rain didn’t really get in the way, and the only thing it prevented us from doing was taking the
River Cruise from Riverside to Downtown Disney. Still, it did let up in time for us to take the boat back so it wasn’t too big of a loss. When it wasn’t raining, I was so happy that we had some of the loveliest blue-sky weather than I’ve seen at Disney in a while. Of course, it was also pretty hot when it wasn’t raining, but with plenty of water to stay hydrated and enough time in the air conditioning to cool us down, it was fine.
For being early August, I was a bit surprised at the crowds. The parks were by no means empty, but I was expecting much worse considering that most schools, especially in Florida, were still out on summer vacation. Wait times for some of the bigger attractions did exceed an hour later in the day, but for us, the longest wait of the trip ended up being 20 -25 minutes for
Soarin’ at rope drop. Getting there early and Fastpass certainly helped.
Port Orleans Riverside:
It was so nice to stay at Riverside again. After three trips in a row of staying at Pop Century, a moderate resort, especially one of our family’s favorites, was a great change of pace. The rooms were good sized and comfortable with some nice convenient perks you don’t usually get at the Values (two sinks in the bathroom, refrigerator, etc.).
Acadian House was a good location. It wasn’t the closest to the main pool or dining locations, but the walk wasn’t too bad. It was also next to another smaller pool as well which we didn’t really use this time.
This was also our first time doing
Online Check-In, and I thought it went really smoothly. Very quick and easy, and I was a little surprised that our room was ready for us even though we were there before 3pm. All in all, a great addition to the resort experience.
New and Rediscovered Attractions:
I’m always amazed at the number of new things we seem to try and discover and rediscover every year- even when it doesn’t seem like that many new things have been added. Of course, I think the biggest new hit for this trip was the
Kim Possible World Showcase Adventure. I expected that everyone would enjoy it, but I think we all got into it even more than I thought we would. It was so much fun to go around the countries and see all little details and new special effects. I’m sure we’ll end up doing this again, especially since all four of us were talking about what missions we want to try next time before we even left EPCOT that day!
Bordering on being a new attraction and a rediscovered one, the re-imagineered
O Canada movie turned out to be pretty cute. Martin Short was fun as the host, and if you haven’t seen it since the change (or haven’t seen it at all), I’d recommend checking it out. Also new to us this year were the
Tam Tam Congo show in the Animal Kingdom’s Harambe,
Scuba Diving Demonstration inside The Seas with Nemo and Friends, the new
Moroccan Style exhibit in the gallery at EPCOT’s Morocco, and the
EPCOT Opening Ceremonies before rope drop. The first three are interesting little diversions worthy of a look if you get the chance. The EPCOT opening ceremonies didn’t impress me very much. It just wasn’t as fun of a production as Magic Kingdom’s or Disney’s Hollywood Studios’. Still didn’t get a chance to check out Animal Kingdom’s ceremonies so hopefully we’ll see them next time.
As far as rediscovered attractions (aka things we haven’t seen in 5 or more years),
Festival of the Lion King was my favorite of the trip. It’s really a fun show and I can’t believe it’s been five years since we’ve seen it last! It seems like they’ve made some nice improvements since last time (especially Timon who looks great now) , and I’d say that the show seems even better now than before. It had also been five years since we really checked out the
Aquariums in The Seas instead of just doing the ride and Turtle Talk.
Dining:
All in all, this was a truly fantastic trip for dining. The three table service restaurants that we went ate at-
Bongo’s Cuban Café at Downtown Disney,
Yak & Yeti at Animal Kingdom, and
Chefs de France at EPCOT- were all great. If I had to pick a favorite for this trip though, I think I’d go with Yak & Yeti. It’s a little hard for me to say that because Chefs de France is one of my long-time favorites at Disney, but Yak & Yeti is certainly on the same level as Chefs in terms of quality and atmosphere. All of us really enjoyed our meals there and Dad even said that our server (whose name I wish I could remember so I could credit him) was one of the best he’s had anywhere in a long time- high praise indeed since Dad was a server himself years ago and has somewhat high standards. The only major negative at Yeti was that somehow our ADRs didn’t make it from Disney’s databases to the restaurant. It didn’t look like we were the only people having that trouble and, again, the host made it sounds like this happens a lot, so I’d recommend checking at the restaurant the day of your meal to make sure you’re on the list just to be safe. Chefs de France was also very good, especially the food and atmosphere. Chef Remy was a fun addition to the restaurant. Bongos was not too far behind the other two. It had some great food to start off the trip with!
As far as counter service, dinner at
Tangierine Café at EPCOT, the muffulettas at
Riverside Mill, and our breakfast and beignets at
Sassagoula Floatworks at French Quarter were definite highlights. The only mediocre meal of the trip for me this time was that bagel at Riverside which was mostly my fault for not being clear when ordering and not saying anything when the CM at the bakery counter misunderstood me. Lesson learned.
Characters:
Even though I still didn’t get to meet any new characters, I was very happy with the ones I did get to meet on this trip. I end up getting autographs from three characters I had previously only gotten photos of (Lilo, Terk and Marie), visited four Character photo locations I’d never been to before- all of which were fantastic (
Africa Character Greeting Trails at AK,
Discovery Island Character Leanding at AK,
Character Spot at EPCOT, and
Snow White’s new Wishing Well at EPCOT), and got to meet Remy for the first time in his new tiny form as opposed to when he was full-sized at the Animation building at Hollywood Studios when the film first came out.
I was pretty happy with the assortment of character out in the parks on this trip. It seemed like a nice mixture of the really well-known characters like Mickey, Pooh and Princesses and others that I don’t normally see in the parks very often like Marie, Kenai, Koda and Terk. Sadly, I’ve heard since the trip Kenai and Koda have been retired from character appearances, which is kind of a shame.
Brother Bear really wasn't that great of a Disney movie, but they were fun in the parks. At the end of the trip, I had taken photos of 22 characters (not bad for just two days in the parks!) and even the rest of the family had met a few as well, which doesn’t always happen. I do have to give a special shout-out to Stitch at the Animal Kingdom, Baloo, King Louie, Kenai and Goofy for being some of the most animated and funniest characters of the trip.
Summer Events:
Disney doesn’t seem to go too all-out with seasonal events in the summer as they do with other times of the year (Food and Wine, Flower and Garden, Halloween, Christmas, etc.), but there are a few things here and there. The
Sounds Like Summer Concert Series at EPCOT turned out to be pretty fun. It’s not the biggest thing in the world, but the band we saw was good, and if the other bands of the series are of similar quality I would recommend giving it a try if the group looks interesting to you.
The other seasonal offering we experienced was the
Good Times Gathering Spot at Camp Minnie-Mickey in AK. It was actually pretty cute and seemed like a nice diversion for young kids away from the crowds. Just watch out grown-ups: you may be volunteered to be the Team Captain and have a bunch of kids and characters put clothes pins all over you. Oh yes, you have been warned.
It was a really fun trip, and I hope you enjoyed the report. If anyone has any questions that I might be able to answer, I’d be happy to try. Otherwise, thanks for reading and a special thanks to all those who have responded. You all are awesome. I’ll be starting up the October “Happy Birthday” segment of the report very soon, so keep an eye out for it if you like.
I’m extremely excited about getting that report started since it was a great trip too. Anyway, thanks again for reading and I hope that you’ll all stick around for the “Happy Birthday” report.
Maybe!
You certainly get some interesting comments and questions with twins. 
Disney is worth it though. 
