Are fireworks the best from the Skyliner?! An April 24 Trip Report - last update 6/10!

[kclark9830]

Great idea for the yes day!!! We might have to implement that on our next trip

 

[mi*vida*loca]

I love the idea of a yes day! Seems to have gone well so far. I love AK too.

 

[blabbermouth]

Sounds like a great morning at AK. Can’t beat afternoon pool time with a drink

I love AK and Dinosaur is a favorite ride! You had a great chill morning at AK.
I also love listening to the band across from Flame Tree! I love watching all the littles dancing and having such a wonderful time!

Yeah, instead of going slow every day, we start off fast and wild and then slowly slow down as the week goes on, hah! I think if we went more often it would be more like this pace... maybe!

Wow, your daughter really loved Everest! A morning at Animal Kingdom sounds wonderful - it’s such a great park. An afternoon swim sounds great, too!

She is adventurous! Pool afternoons make it an official vacation!

I love "Yes" days. It seems like such a fun time.

She was sooo looking forward to this day!

A great morning at AK, and a great start to the “yes” day! I too would ride Everest twice if the wait wasn’t too long. It’s a fun coaster!

I love the “ears” on the Primordial Booze, though I admit when I first saw I thought “Mickey doesn’t qualify as primordial!” Still, it looks cute!

Hahaha, that is true! Maybe he went into the ooze...

 

[blabbermouth]

Great idea for the yes day!!! We might have to implement that on our next trip

Yes, it works good for the 5th day, or after you've tackled all of your personal goals for the trip, ha. Probably in a couple years she can plan the whole thing though... but would she get up at 7am for LLs?!

I love the idea of a yes day! Seems to have gone well so far. I love AK too.

Thanks!!

 

[blabbermouth]

Day 5 - Yes Day continues...

DD was agreeable and let me keep my Narcoossee's reservation for this evening. After a quick change and refresh we headed out at 4 to get to GF by 5. We took a bus to MK first.

Pic from the walk between the bus stop and the monorail, taken at 4:30:


DD laid down on the monorail and actually took a nap! It worked out, we had two delays for some reason so it took about 20 minutes. She had been getting progressively more tired each afternoon, but wasn't able to nap in the room.

At 4:59 we took this photo:

We were checked in and waiting on the patio! We did step on it to get through GF over to the restaurant, but I guess we didn't really need to.

This restaurant is beautiful and we got an amazing seat.



There was a lot to look at out the window. Also, DD got lucky, no colouring pages here, but she happened to have her little sticker book scavenger hunt thing we grabbed when we were at the Seas aquarium the day before! This was perfect to entertain her. She also read the menu and chose and ordered on her own, so her nap must have done her good. "Seasonal fish, fruit and Nemo cupcake please". I think she took the server by surprise.



I loved the plates, napkins, glasses here. It is a nice comfortable restaurant, but not really fancy or upscale. Made me feel like it could have been located at home (West Coast Canada).



We had sparkling water, all around. DD had a chocolate milk, I had a glass of rose, I loved the glasses with the symbol on the side... now these are the kind of souvenirs I'd bring home! DH had the Old Fashioned and he made a face when he had a sip, I thought he didn't like it, but he said it was the best one he's ever had!!!!! Which is a high compliment from him.

Very very good sourdough bread with Himalayan pink sea salt butter:


I decided to have two appies since I really wanted the lobster bisque ($19), but knew I couldn't have a whole entree after that!

It was very nice, it could have been one degree warmer, and the lobster "chunk" in mine was more like minced, so that wasn't quite what I was expecting!

Then I ordered the bbq shrimp and grits ($19)

The shrimp were a bit overdone for me, but maybe I prefer mine on the lighter cooked side! These were a bit more grilled and dark on the edges than my preference. The microgreens saved the dish!

DH had the Blackened Red Fish ($49) which is one of their specialties. He is a sucker for anything that lists chorizo as an ingredient and generally likes all fish. He liked this and I think it was the winner of our dishes!



We were very sadly too full for dessert and I didn't want to carry an almond cheesecake through MK for the next 3 hours. But that might be my biggest regret from the trip!

DD did get her Nemo cupcake to go though and was very happy about it! She ate it the next morning for "breakfast"



That reminds me that I didn't mention that for our first breakfast this morning her and I had some Les Halles baguette with butter and DH had his apricot pastry.

Fun fact: Empress 1908 gin (in their Empress Lime Gimlet cocktail and others around the resort) is actually made in our city, Victoria, BC. I can't believe that it's made it all the way to WDW in Florida from our small town!

Next update, very successful night in MK!

 

[blabbermouth]

Day 5 - evening

After our very nice dinner, we hopped back on the monorail to MK. We considered taking the boat because it looked like such a nice transportation option, but we thought it would take too long and we had rides to ride!!

We were all full and it was still pretty hot and it was 6:30, so we opted to hop onto the railroad to get over to Frontierland for BMTRR. It was a full train!



The first 3 rides were LLs I booked earlier in the day, BTMRR at 6:40 is where we went first!

Then we hit up Peter Pan's Flight at 7:12 after a bit of a mom's-lost-detour, but it's ok because it's golden hour and we're already "land hopping" anyway:




I was also spending this time googling where to watch fireworks if we didn't want to watch on main street (because it is SO packed with people and we didn't want to have to stand around waiting instead of riding rides).

From Fantasyland we headed to our next quick turnaround LL at Space Mountain via the castle:



After Space we took some time in the gift shop, DH custom made a Spiderman phone case, and then we went to the people mover (finally! we wanted to ride it the last time we were in MK, but it was oddly busy).




DD got pixie dusted in the people mover line and was given a Cinderella keychain for her backpack by a nice grandma. We all enjoyed this one!

We kept our mission going to ride as many rides as possible before the fireworks! DD had been dying to drive the cars at the Tomorrowland Speedway, so we headed that way. DH went to pick up his phone case.



This was my first time on this ride and it is so dumb, I can't believe it still exists, it's way too hard for a 6 year old to drive and then even hard for me to drive from the passenger seat! But we can say we did it! At this point it was 8:30 and we started thinking about where to watch the fireworks. We all needed a bathroom break, so we did that, and we knew we wanted to ride BTMRR and/or Pirates afterwards, so we decided to watch from the bridge in Frontierland. We stopped for a few minutes at the shooting gallery, DD loved this, haha.



We were hitting all the old school rides and activities this night, one good (Peter Pan), one great (People Mover), one terrible (Speedway) and one fine (Shooting Gallery). These are the official rankings, you may challenge me though if you have a good argument!!!

I staked out a spot and DD and DH went for Mickey ice cream sandwiches, I was still full from dinner. Most people talk about getting ready for Disney by walking more, I need to get ready for Disney by eating more!





We liked the fireworks from this viewpoint, you had to turn your head a bit because some were right from the castle and some were over towards the left.

Obviously it's best from in front of the castle, but this worked great for us, we got off our last ride at 8:45. And from here it was easy to hit BTMRR as a walk on and then Pirates walk on afterwards. We also took the opportunity on the way out to ride Aladdin's carpets as that had been on DD's mental list too. We (or maybe just unlucky me) got surpringly wet on Pirates AND Aladdin, damn camel.

We were all doneee at this point, one pic on the way out at 9:50 and back to the hotel by 10:30! Ok, fine, I won't post that pic because I'm at the limit of 10.

Next up - our last full day! AK and Disney Springs. Then a very nice last morning at Animal Kingdom Lodge, and a hot tip for MCO airport.

 

[blabbermouth]

Day 6 - part 1

Ok, this day was our most relaxed by far. DD was starting to feel the effects of the go go go we've been doing and so we let her sleep in even more this morning. We wanted to go to AK to finish her WE book and ride Flights of Passage again. Then we thought we'd finish out the day at DS since we had pretty much, more or less, done everything we'd wanted to do!

I bought an ILL for FOP for 9:45 and we headed to the park around 9.

First we stopped to check out the flamingos for DD to get another WE sticker:



Did you know flamingos turn white as they age just like humans get white hair? This is an old dude:


DD searched for the flamingo numbers on their leg tags:


Then we headed to Pandora to ride FOP as per DD's request. She was definitely tired today, so tired she created her new alter-ego, Noodles the goat where she started communicating only in "baa"s. But she was happy to keep going around the park at least.



We liked FOP, DH was in a better position so he didn't feel sick and also got the feel the water spray this time.

DD spent some time in the gift shop, making a necklace we definitely weren't going to buy ($$$$$$$x100) or maybe it would have been $50! So she was a bit mad about that. I told her I'd take a pic though.


From here we were going to head to the Gorilla Trail that we hadn't been on yet and grab some breakfast on the way.

Sadly, we couldn't spot any otters

But we did manage a dance break in Africa before our snack of pastries and iced coffee. I had still been drinking a not good, but inoffensive in every way coffee from the room each morning and DD had her Nemo cupcake from Narcoossee's and we finished up the baguette as well.



No breakfast pics, but the guava cream cheese pastries were pretty tasty!

Off to the gorilla trail, we watched the meerkats for ages and DD enjoyed taking some pics and videos. They are a very fun animal to watch.


The gorillas were a bit harder to find, but we did spot some towards the end of their area


And took a very serious drum break


It was 11:15 at this point and we had just a few more things to tick off her list! DD wanted to ride Dinosaur and go the play area again so we headed there next.

... continued in next post

 

[blabbermouth]

Day 6 part 2

Off to Dinoland, one last hurrah before the change it entirely, we will miss it!

Hi Mr. Alligator


We didn't have Genie+ this day so we had to wait a pic, good time for some photos though!




I do love the character costumes in Dinoland, but the meet lines were all very long


DD had another play in the Dinosaur dig playground, she made a friend this time so it was fun for her to show him around since it was his first time there! I had a bathroom break and grabbed a beer. DH and I shared a lot of drinks in the parks. It worked out well, they would get warm too fast and also we didn't take that much time to rest between rides so we had to get through them quickly.

It was only 12:45 but we decided to head out and get a longer dip at the hotel.

DD had to stop by the WE Headquarters to get her final badge:



Again we got pretty lucky with the buses! I really can't complain too much about transportation this trip.

We grabbed some lunch at Pop food court, it was just OK, we both had the sesame chicken with rice and green beans, we had to wait for them to make fresh chicken, so that was nice, but other than that, nothing to write home about. DD had some sort of kids snack pack.

We finally decided to hit the main Petals Pool, and DD and DH got out ahead of me because I stopped after lunch at the bar for a drink before heading to the room to change. By the time I got back to the room, changed myself and out the door they texted to stay at the computer pool because there had been a "code brown" at the Petals pool! Go figure! Anyway, we had a good hang at the pool this afternoon again.

 

[blabbermouth]

Day 6 part 3 - Disney Springs including T-Rex Cafe

After a good break we headed to the bus to get to Disney Springs. This was probably one of our longer bus waits, and I was pissy because my water bottle was empty, haha.

We got to DS at about 5:45 and headed to World of Disney. We had only a few to-dos here: Lego store, World of Disney, dinner, mayyybe Gideons.



World of Disney is SUCH a fun store and one could spend hours in there! None of us bought anything this time, DD had a bit of a tummy ache, so that cut our time short. and I told her I'd buy her a small lego to play with at dinner so she held off on asking for anything here.

She was feeling pretty blah and just wanted to sit for a bit. We were right next to the Joffrey's cart though so we asked if she wanted a smoothie and this was the thing to help her turn the corner!



We were trying to think of where to go for dinner, and thought we'd pick something fun for DD since she was feeling a bit blah. Rainforest wasn't taking walk ups, but her sister T-Rex was, so we put our name on the walk up list there. We took some pics outside the Lego store while we waited.



The ogopogo is such a classic, I think people will really revolt if he ever goes away! I can barely recognize Disney Springs from the old Downtown Disney now, it has changed so much.


We got called for our table, but had to wait in a bit of a line still


We were seated next to this dude which I thought was a pretty good location!


DD enjoyed her colouring menu again. She chose a corn dog and corn. I convinced DH to split the nachos with me because I wasn't that hungry, they were pretty good! It's hard to mess up nachos.



DH just had a coke and I had a couple beers. Needed to relax after worrying about DD not feeling good for 5 minutes, lol. We also chatted with a couple at the table behind us who lived just an hour from our city at home, so that was nice!

After dinner we headed to the Lego store and to do a bit more browsing.



DD wanted one of the lego Disney storybooks, but they only had one that i think was Peter Pan that she wasn't really interested in, so we went outside and I ordered her one from Amazon that would arrive the day we got home, modern times!

We did some more browsing and we bought DD an Ariel shirt at Uniqlo. Wish we had this store at home, it looked like my style.

We finished the night at the rooftop Coke bar, DH and DD had a coke float (one of the few food/drinks I find gross!) But it was a nice view! I had just finished my second beer from dinner that I got to go anyway, so wasn't in need of anything else.



We headed to the bus after this and DD finished the night falling asleep and being carried back to the room (thanks DH!)



It was 8:50 at this point. She woke up when we got back to the room to get ready for bed and we watched a bit of TV before we all crashed. This was a good final day, we were all tired by this point and could have got by with a 5 day park hopper I think. Probably we should have taken the past days a bit slower, but that is hard for me! It was hard getting up and heading out early each day (especially with the 3 hour time difference) and DD was never able to take a nap during our afternoon rests. I think next time we'll take one full break day mid-week as well to just hang at our hotel, visit another hotel and go to DS.

One more post to come - our last day visit to AKL!

 

[awrites]

Seems like a great time at Narcoossee’s! DD’s cupcake looks yummy! Glad it made a good breakfast.

Looks like lots of fun at AK! Your DD’s experience with Wilderness Explorers makes me think our own DD would really enjoy it, so I think the next time we make it to AL we’d have to make that a priority.

Also lots of fun at DS! Sorry DD was feeling a little sick, but glad the smoothie helped her feel better.

The full break days are nice, IMO! Even though we never had any late nights, it was still lovely not to feel like we “had to” get up early to RD or whatever.

Looking forward to your final AKL visit!

 

[Dulcee]

Loved following along.

We have 3 littles and the mid week break is a must for them and my husband! I highly suggest giving it a try.

 

[Stacybaeasm]

Breakfast of champions - cupcake and baguette. What drink did you get at Petals? My go to is the Pina Colava. Can't pass it up. This drink is one of the reasons I stay at Pop!

 

[SimplyGoofy]

It’s fantastic how much time you were able to spend at Animal Kingdom. It’s such a wonderful park.

I think nachos were a good choice for T-Rex. I never hear great things about the food at T-Rex, and I agree that it’s hard to screw up nachos.

And hooray, a visit to AKL?! I love that resort.

 

[blabbermouth]

Breakfast of champions - cupcake and baguette. What drink did you get at Petals? My go to is the Pina Colava. Can't pass it up. This drink is one of the reasons I stay at Pop!

Pina Colava at least once!! Then usually just beer. I'm a wine girl at home, but it's too hot there for wine, haha.

It’s fantastic how much time you were able to spend at Animal Kingdom. It’s such a wonderful park.

I think nachos were a good choice for T-Rex. I never hear great things about the food at T-Rex, and I agree that it’s hard to screw up nachos.

And hooray, a visit to AKL?! I love that resort.

Ok, my AKL update is finally coming right up!

 

[blabbermouth]

Day 7 - final day, at AKL

Great idea, me, spending the last half day at Animal Kingdom Lodge!

We slept in today, obviously. We had done a bit of packing the night before, but gave ourselves time to finish up this morning and take our bags to bell services.

DD and DH used up the last of their arcade points (I might have forgotten to mention we did that one afternoon!) and I got us a couple coffees and breakfast rice krispy treats. Then we waited for a bus to AK park, to transfer to AKL. At AK we asked the Jambo House bus driver which building Sanaa was at, but he didn't know! So we figured we had time we'd just go to Jambo because he was here, and then we could explore both (by this time I figured out Sanaa was at Kidani Village).

We got to AKL Jambo House at 10am. Our Sanaa reservation was at 11:35 for lunch, so we had a good amount of time to explore.


Such a nice lobby! I wanted to try the bridge above, but we didn't. I took a photo of the map so we wouldn't get lost.



The first thing we did was head right through the lobby and outside. In the map, #1 Arusha Rock, savanna outlook. We were trying to look for some animals but instead stumbled upon this amazing activity! We had to walk around a small area and identify scat and footprints of animals, and then we earned a bead on a necklace. I guess there are about 8 or 10 beads you could earn if you were staying there or had a lot of time to visit, but we were happy with our giraffe. One of those cool Disney things that makes you think they've still got "it".



Also, this is where DD got super confident and when the guide asked 'why might people want to track the animals?' she put her hand up right away and said "hunting!" haha. I am pretty sure they were talking about animals that are facing extinction, but I was kind of zoning out and I'm not 100% sure. But that wasn't the answer she was looking for, haha.

From there we headed back inside and DD learned how to play the game Mancala with a CM. We looked through their gift shop for a bit as well. Then we headed out to check out the pool and a few more animal areas, like the flamingos:

And this was right by their playground so DD took some time to play with Stitch. It was in the shade so that was ideal, although it wasn't scorching this day.


We spotted some giraffes here way off in the distance, we had heard it was their lunch time when we were looking for them at the main lookout. It was 11 now, so we headed over to Kidani Village. We opted to wait for the little shuttle bus which was ok, but a fairly long wait. Approx a 10 minute walk though.

We did a bit of exploring here while we waited for our reservation and DD watched some Bluey on the lobby tv. I ran into their small shop and bought another pack of suckers because DD wanted to bring some home for a few friends.

We went outside for a quick peek, saw a comfy relaxed zebra and took in a few more minutes of sun.




We were seated promptly at a decent, but not the best table. Our Narcoossee's luck ran out! But we were in a quiet area near a window to the right when you walk in. We could get up and look out the windows while we waited!

I ordered a moscow mule of some sort to drink, it was good, refreshing, but not outstanding. And I ate the Tandoori Chicken on Naan $21. It was also good and just the right amount for lunch, but not quite as elevated as I hoped, a bit too much like something I could have made at home.


I talked DH into ordering the burger ($20) since I had read good things about it, and it did not disappoint! I think it was one of the best things he ate all week.

I forget what main and side DD chose, but she thought the Timon Grubs for dessert was super fun.



That ends the food pics, I will post the animal pics from Sanaa in the next post!

Again DH and I skipped dessert, but it was getting a bit tight on time, so we wanted to head back to Pop for our hotel shuttle.

 

[blabbermouth]

Day 7 - part 2

All of these pics were from the window by our table at Sanaa:


This was cute (I hope), this giraffe and these deer things having a bit of a stand off.




Giraffe made it past them to the tree he was eyeing up.


Little red puffing lizard thing on the post here... not sure if imported or not, haha.


Bye giraffe! This was honestly such a great way to end our trip, very special seeing the animals and doing the activity and yet relaxing too.

We headed back towards Pop at 12:30, our shuttle was supposed to be there at 1:45 (said for us to arrive 15 mins early), so there was enough time as long as things didn't go drastically wrong! It felt like it took a long time, we were going to go back the way we came (transfer at AK), but there was a bus for DHS and even though it was farther by bus, then DH reminded me we could take the Skyliner one more time! So we hopped on that bus, didn't have a wait for the Skyliner of course, and were back at Pop by 1:15.

We popped in, filled our water, grabbed our bags. The person working at bell services was so nice, asked DD how many kids were in her class and gave her a big stack of stickers for them, plus an activity book - that she finished before we even got to the airport! I think she was missing school a tiny bit by this point. And then we waited a while... I think it finally arrived at 2. I took a couple goodbye pics.




Nothing sadder than sitting here waiting to leave while watching people arrive to start their vacay!

We were at the airport, dropped our bag and through security very quickly using MCO reserve. We walked right up, I was so nervous hearing so many horror stories. But we were there 3 hours in advance so I wasn't worried. In fact, we had the opposite problem, through security and 2 1/2 hours to kill! We got some Starbucks and went to have a snack and drink at the Caribbean place in Terminal B. DD got to live her best life, drinking pop and watching the tablet.

I had a couple glasses of mediocre wine, DH had a couple beer and we split the coconut shrimp and Jamaican patties. It actually ended up nice, not rushing, chatting about what our next vacation should be and having a bit of real food since we'd be leaving at 6pm. We grabbed DD some pretzel bites on the way to our gate and we were off.

Bye MCO carpet... by the way the airport is hilarious on Facebook if you don't follow them already...

Well, we were delayed a bit, but ended up making up a ton of time in the air. And made our connection just fine (at that time of night it actually felt too long) and were home by midnight (3am Orlando time).

All in all it was a pretty great trip, not many complaints at all! SO many steps, DD did great, even when she turned in to her goat alter-ego. Most days things went according to my plans, in general waits with and or strategically-without Genie+ were reasonable. We didn't have many issues with rides being down either. Some really good food and drinks. A bit of relaxing and going with the flow and pool time and a few extra unexpected things we enjoyed!

Thanks everyone for reading along!!

 

[awrites]

I’m laughing at DD’s “hunting” answer. I suppose 100-150 years ago she’d be right!

A great end to your trip overall! I much prefer being early to the airport and have time to relax before the flight vs worrying about making it through security in time. Chatting about plans for the next vacation seems like a good way to ease the sadness of the current one ending!

Thanks so much for sharing! I enjoyed reading along.

 

[kclark9830]

A great TR! I enjoyed it . I have always wanted to try the Shooting arcade at MK. We'll have to stop in on our next visit!

 

[blabbermouth]

I’m laughing at DD’s “hunting” answer. I suppose 100-150 years ago she’d be right!

A great end to your trip overall! I much prefer being early to the airport and have time to relax before the flight vs worrying about making it through security in time. Chatting about plans for the next vacation seems like a good way to ease the sadness of the current one ending!

Thanks so much for sharing! I enjoyed reading along.

Thanks for reading!!

A great TR! I enjoyed it . I have always wanted to try the Shooting arcade at MK. We'll have to stop in on our next visit!

Thanks for reading! It was a good way to kill a few minutes for sure!

 

[jrmint427]

I enjoyed your TR, thank you for sharing! It sounds like it was a great trip. Where did you all decide to go for your next trip?? That is always the question!