Not quite back yet from a quick Labor Day weekend trip. We stayed at Animal Kingdom Kidani.
Let’s get the minuses out of the way.
- Our longest wait was 1 hour at the Budget rental car counter.
- Parking is horrible at Kidani if you are in a villa on the left side of the resort if facing the lobby.
- Not being able to drive to other hotels for counter service stinks.
- There is no counter service place open at the Animal Kingdom Lodge.
Positives
- We did almost every ride we wanted by 3pm each day.
- Waiting in line is so much more enjoyable spread so far apart.
Saturday we went to Hollywood Studios. We arrived by personal car right at 9:15. They were parking cars every other spot and still only filled a dozen or so rows. We walked straight back to Smugglers Run and road it first. We missed out on getting a boarding group at 10am. So we just went ride to ride. At 2:30 we had eaten lunch at Backlot Express and ridden Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway, Star Tours, Muppet Vision, Smugglers Run, Alien Swirling Saucers, Slinky Dog Dash, Toy Story Mania, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy, and the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. At 2pm we snagged boarding group 115, they were boarding 61 at the time.
We were all tired so we left the park and rode the Skyliner while we debated if we thought we should stick around to see if our boarding group made it. Ultimately we all decided to return and hope for the best.
So we rode more rides. Slinky Dog three more times, Toy Story Mania twice more. Rock ‘n’ Roller Twice more. All while watching the boarding groups continue to rise!
Finally just before 6pm our boarding group was called. We rode and left.
Getting dinner was a challenge. We wanted counter service but not what Hollywood Studios offered but could not drive to any of the hotels because they were not letting anyone in who did not have reservations. We tried at Riviera and were turned away. We gave up and ate at Chic Fil A. They had the dining room open unlike ours at home.
Sunday was a Magic Kingdom day. We started the day with Chef Mickeys and a 7:25am reservation. We drove to the Contemporary and left our car in self parking for the day. Breakfast was good, would have liked the buffet but family style worked well enough. Other then the watered down apple juice everything was really tasty, especially the hash browns.
After breakfast we rode the resort monorail to the Magic Kingdom arriving at 8:30. We went left and straight to Pirates. Then on to Big Thunder Mountain. It was now 9:05 so Splash was now open so we rode.
We kept working our way right and rode Haunted Mansion, Small World, Peter Pan, Pooh, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Tea Cups, Tomorrowland Speedway, Space Mountain, Carousel of Progress, and Buzz. After the speedway we stopped for lunch at Cosmic Ray’s. Mobil ordering made it easy to get our food and a table even with a large number of tables unavailable since they appeared to limit orders to match the reduced seating capacity.
We called it quits at 2:30 having done everything we wanted. Rode the monorail back to the car with plans to hang by the pool or try again to visit the Riviera. Soon it started to rain so we hoped the bus to Animal Kingdom and caught a bus to the Riviera. Had to have been the quickest bus trip ever. We waited for 2 minutes at our hotel and not at all at the connection. We ate at the counter service restaurant at the Riviera. Everyone liked what they got. The plan was to ride the SkyLiner but Mother Nature kept up a lightning storm so that didn’t happen.
We ended up catching an Uber back to the hotel because no one wanted to wait at the bus stop in all the lightning.
We are booked to return part of the weekend and week before Thanksgiving. Based on this trip we are excited to come back. We had no problems with the crowd level, ability to social distance, or others mask usage or anti Covid behaviors.
The main downside is our 5:20am boarding for our flight home tomorrow. What was I thinking????? Last time we had a flight that early we stayed at the Magic Kingdom until 3am, went to the hotel to pick up our bags, and drove to the airport. No chance to do that this time.