It's been 10 years! A No Kids With Us Anniversary Pre-Trip Report/ August 2018- Completed 8/10

tbholc81

Mouseketeer
Joined
Oct 27, 2016
Welcome!

Although I am cutting this pre-trip report close I was determined to finish my last trip report before starting this (if you're interested you can read it HERE).

As you can probably tell from the title this trip is for our 10th anniversary! We are cheating a little bit because our actual anniversary is in October, but I work in public school so a vacation is not quite as possible then. We didn't debate much about what we wanted to do for this anniversary. We talked about maybe Ireland, but it wasn't a long conversation and we settled on another trip to Disney. Under 1 condition...... no kids with us this one time! With our inability to go in the fall we decided on August, as late into the month as we could get, the draw back will be THE HEAT, but oh well we think we can manage without a double stroller, and tons of supplies for the kids this time around. We are really excited about doing taking "adult" adventures in WDW which I'll outline in my itinerary!

So here we are...

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What's our Story? We are annual pass holders from Northern VT, and we have been going to Disney pretty regularly (especially since the kids were born).

Tim: I'm a BCBA
Favorite Character- Goofy
Favorite Park- EPCOT
Favorite Ride- BTMRR (Might be FOP, but I've only been on it once).

Deb: Chemist and part time TA
Favorite Character- WALL-E
Favorite Park- EPCOT
Favorite Ride- RRC

This will be our third trip within a year (mostly because we got the annual passes). We took a large family trip in December with our two kids and my parents. We stayed one night at CSR and then 6 nights at the Beach Club. Our last trip was in April at POR in a Royal Room with just us and the kids. Deb is also runner and has run the Princess Half Marathon, The Marathon, and the Dark Side Half Marathon. She has us signed up for Wine and Dine this year. She'll be running the 10k and Half, I'm running the 10k.

Details for this trip:

August 11-16 and we are staying at...

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Animal Kingdom Lodge Savanna View for one night (our first night), then moving to...

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The Wilderness Lodge, and we are staying Club Level! Which we are both really excited about. Deb was able to book this as a bounce back offer when she was in WDW for Marathon weekend in January. With us having annual passes the cost worked out for Club Level. The reason for the split stay is that we originally only booked the Wilderness Lodge portion of our trip, but then we added the night at AKL later. Because we are staying club level we kept the ADRs to a minimum thinking that we would try and make good use of the food offered for staying club level. We also wanted to make sure we had some nice dining planned as part of our anniversary trip so our ADRs are:

- Saana
- California Grill- Brunch at the Top
- Yak and Yeti

We plan on going to all of the parks and hitting up a water park. We'll see if I can talk Deb into doing "The Void" at Disney Springs.

Up next our itinerary!

Day 1: August 11
Day 2: August 12
Day 3: August 13
Day 4: August 14
Day 5: August 15

 
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Sounds like you have a great trip planned. DH's favorite character is Wall-e, too! I like Eve (of course) but my favorite character is Minnie.
 
Following along!! :wave:

I just binge-read your last TR! It was so much fun, I really enjoyed reading it!

It looks like you guys have a wonderful trip planned!
 
Sounds awesome (an adults only Disney trip is my dream!). Can't wait to read more.
 


Sounds awesome (an adults only Disney trip is my dream!). Can't wait to read more.

It's ours too, dream come true I guess!

Following along!! :wave:

I just binge-read your last TR! It was so much fun, I really enjoyed reading it!

It looks like you guys have a wonderful trip planned!

Thanks, it was a fun trip. This one will be amazingly different I hope.
 
Day 1: August 11
This day will be off to an early start. Our flight out of BTV leaves before 6 and we connect in Atlanta. We arrive at MCO before noon and will grab our DME to AKL. This hopefully will be a more relaxing day (once we get there anyway).

Our ADR for our first meal is at 5:10 at

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Sanaa! Deb has been looking forward to eating here for a long time. We could never talk ourselves into bringing the kids here, but this seems like the perfect opportunity. I think we already know we are going to have the bread service, but no decisions are made after that. Originally we made this ADR for much later, but with the rest of our planned evening we needed it to be earlier. Luckily Deb was able to move.

From there we are off to the Magic Kingdom for...

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This was one of the reasons we decided to add the extra day! Our plan is to head there after dinner. Not worry about HEA this time. We have Fastpasses for:

- Space Mountain from 7:40-8:40
- Seven Dwarfs Mine Train from 9:15-10:00

So our plan is to stay away from the hub around fireworks time and then enjoy the park until 1:00am. From all the reviews I've read we are hopefully expecting to see a lot of this..

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Some ice cream bars may also be in our plans. The timing of this works out well, it's another thing that we couldn't bring the kids to yet, but that they just aren't ready to do yet. It's also lucky they scheduled it for a date we could be there for. So we couldn't pass it up, and with the AP discount the cost should be worth it.

The event ends at 1am and this is our 1 night at AKL. I'm sure we won't struggle to sleep when we get back.

Up net day 2!


 


Day 2: August 12
After the early start to day 1 and the late night we will be sure to sleep in on day 2. With no early morning plans we have a 11:15am ADR at..

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for the "Brunch at the Top." I don't know if I have looked more forward to and ADR since we started realizing that we had to make them. The reviews for this look amazing, as do the bottomless Mimosas. We aren't big Bloody Mary fans so we probably won't get one of those, but we'll be sure to sample as much food as we can.

From there we have the remainder of the day planned at

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EPCOT!

We have Fast Passes which start well into the afternoon for:

- Spaceship Earth from 3:00pm-4:00pm
- Living with the Land from 4:15-5:15
- Test track from 5:45-6:45

Without the kids it was nice to not worry about Frozen. We'll do Soarin' if the wait is short, but I no longer want to waste a FP on it. Since they added the third theater and changed the show I enjoy it way less. We are also moving to Wilderness Lodge today, but I don't this that we will be able to take advantage of the Club Level food for dinner. Not sure what we will pick but we do enjoy some of the QS places in the World Showcase. Plus after our gigantic breakfast one other meal ought to suffice for the day. We are looking forward to enjoying the World Showcase a little more this time and really taking our time in some of the countries.

We love Illuminations and since the rumors continue to increase about the show changing we are going to make sure we see it. So the plan is to pick a place towards the front if we can and watch those for maybe the last time. After that it's onto the Wilderness Lodge and maybe a night cap at..

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Might not make it back in time though, I believe it closes at 10pm so we will be cutting it close.

That's all that's planned for day 2. Stay tuned for Day 3!

 
Day 3: August 13
A quick update for right now as this trip is getting SUPER close and I need to finish up this report. Our 3rd day is pretty simple no ADRs and no FPs. Why? we are spending the day at:

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Typhoon Lagoon! We have left the water parks off every trip we have taken ever. Most of the time we have gone when it's cooler, or we have had little kids and couldn't see the point in taking them to a water park. This is our opportunity to see if we like it or not. I went to Typhoon Lagoon when I was 11 so it's been a while. Deb has never been to any of the water parks. So this will be a new experience we are looking forward to.

The plan for the day will be to have breakfast up at the Old Faithful Club and get to Typhoon Lagoon right at park opening which is 10am. I'm anticipating an afternoon Thunderstorm so hopefully we get most things in, or it skips us that day. We'll spend the day there and then head to DS. Deb really wants to get


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one of these Bubble Waffle guys. Dinner plans will be up in the air, we'll either get something at DS or back at WL. We haven't planned any Fireworks shows or anything for the evening but you never know with our APs we might head somewhere, guess we'll see how we feel.

 
Day 4: August 14

Time to knock the rest of this report out. This time tomorrow we'll be sitting at AKL watching some animals. After a fairly simple day on Day 3 we have an early wake up on day 4.

The plan will probably to be up and out of the room around 7 with a quick breakfast at The old Faithful Club and then we are off to an 8am reservation for:

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We are really looking forward to this. Another fun adult thing we get to do this trip. So between our DAH event and this tour all of our MK time will be done. We figure we will have been able to do everything we need between the two trips to MK. We eat on the tour, so lunch is taken care of.

Once the tour is finished we may relax for an hour or so and then we head to Hollywood Studios for the afternoon/ evening. For the rest of the day we have Fast Passes for:

- Toy Story Mania from 3:35-4:35
- Rockin Roller Coaster from 4:45-5:45
- Star Tours from 6:25-7:25

No ADRs for the evening, so we'll be grabbing food on the go. We plan on checking out Toy Story land for a good portion of the day, maybe in the evening when the sun starts to go down. Realizing also that we are going to have to wait in line for Slinky Dog. Maybe we'll stick around for the Star Wars Fireworks and then head back to WL at the end of the night.

One day to go!
 
Day 5: August 15

The sad last full day of our fairly short trip. Today's plan is a full day at Animal Kingdom. Again I think the morning plan will be to take our time, eat at The Old Faithful Club and hea over mid morning to Animal Kingdom. We are usually rope drop people but I think we are hoping to sleep in a little more without cray kids waking us up super early. Plus all of our FP are in the afternoon. The morning may even be a great time for some pool.

Once we are at the park our ADR is 1:00pm at

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We've never eaten here before and are looking forward to it. Most of the reviews I have looked at are good and we like the quick service. After our lunch our Fastpasses start we have:

- Avatar Flight of Passage from 3:25-4:25
- Kali River Rapids from 4:40-5:40
- Kilimanjaro Safaris from 7:30-8:30

All of these we are super excited for! During our last trip in April the Pandora rides were closed, for several days. So we didn't get a chance to use our FOP fastpasses then. We have been on in December, but it's such a great ride I can't wait to get on it again. The river rapids should be refreshing on a hot afternoon, and we are trying to time our safari for dusk to see if it's any different. Other than the fastpasses we'll get on as many rides as we can and see the gorillas etc.... As of right now we are not planning on seeing ROL, it just hasn't interested us since it opened. After that it's back to WL for some more sleep.

When we get up on Day 6 we are planning on just relaxing, maybe we will go to DS. Our DME will leave early afternoon to get us to MCO.

Can't wait to leave tomorrow.


 

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