Day 2 - AK, pool break, hop to HS
This might have been the first trip where our first park day was at AK! After having some quick breakfast and coffee in the room, we were ready to rock. Since we had our car, driving seemed like the best option rather than waiting for the bus or ordering a Minnie van. Parking at AK couldn't have been easier! We were only about a 5 minute walk from our parking spot to the gate. The car locator feature in
MDE was very handy!
Our plan was to try and ride standby on Everest and Dinosaur before crowds got crazy. We were walking in by 8:45ish. Not rope drop by any means, but still earlier enough that both rides had really low waits. As we were walking into Asia, I noticed it was very quiet and no activity seemed to be happening on Everest. Checked MDE and sure enough, ride was down. We pivoted and stopped for cold brews and the stuffed pancake sandwich, and then made our way to catch that dino.
By the time we reached Dinosaur, the wait had built to be about 20 minutes. Still not bad at all and we hopped in line. First time for my spouse and kiddos and I am glad they all got to experience it before the retheme! From there, we had a LL for Kilimanjaro Safaris followed by Navi River Journey. We took a quick lunch break at Satu'li Canteen which I wrote about upthread. Highly recommend! After lunch, we hit our ILL for FOP. Our LL for the new Zootopia show was cancelled during this time, and I was super disappointed about missing it. We decided to head out after FOP, and we passed the Zootopia entrance on our way out. The attraction had JUST come back up and the standby wait was only 10 minutes so we jumped in line. Sadly the Clawhauser animatronic was not working and that was the main draw for me. Overall the show was cute but a bit hard to understand the dialogue IMO. We'll have to catch the Clawhauser animatronic on a future visit.
We hit the main pool at WL during our break and while it was busy we were able to grab some chairs without an issue. The kids had a great time splashing around and doing the slide. We stayed at the pool longer than I planned and our park hopping to HS was later than I planned as a result.
We took the bus over there and missed our reservation for Oga's by about 5 minutes. The cast members allowed us to get back on the waitlist, and we were seated in about 15 minutes. The entire experience at Oga's didn't feel as immersive as it had on past visits, so we'll probably not be back any time soon. From there, we had our reservation at Sci-Fi which I also wrote about upthread. Do not recommend at all for reasons already shared. This will be a one and done for us.
I had stacked some LLs for after dinner, and we were able to ride Runaway Railway, Rock n Roller Coaster, and Smuggler's Run. The kids were begging to jump in the standby line for Star Tours, but I was exhausted and told them we'd have to wait until the morning as we were back at HS.
Overall, it was a great first park day and it was fun to try some new-to-us experiences!!
