NO, You're a Poo!! (No genie+ or LL) 10 day trip, split stay!! JULY 10-JULY 20 2024

[BraveLittleToaster2]

Day 1 - Travel Day!

So first off I'll introduce the cast of characters! Myself, my DH and our 3 kids ages 20, 17 and 10! We've been to Disney tons of times but have not been since covid so a lot has changed!!! I had made the executive trip planner decision to NOT use any genie+ or lightning lane this trip at all! We shall see how it goes! This would also be the first time we will have our car so we are planning some side trips in Florida besides disney too!

Anyway, we left the house early in the morning in hopes to be to our destination of Copper Creek at WL by dinner time.

About 2 hours into our trip my DH got a work call so we had to pullover while he fixed it for 20 min on his computer. (Sigh) Then we headed back on the road. We made our first stop at the Georgia Welcome Center and oh how welcoming it was. Very impressive indeed! We got to use the bathroom and then headed back out.


The car ride was pretty quiet as we all had our own devices. My 10 year old with a DS, my older two on their phones and I was listening to a podcast because i get car sick, so i cannot read or even look at my phone in a car! (Which is why I choose to skip certain rides) Around 1pm we were starting to get hungry so we stopped at a McDonald's to grab some lunch quickly. We were so happy when we finally saw this!!!


We were so glad to be in Florida, and yet when I realized we still had a long way to go it was a bit discouraging.

The rest of our car ride down was uneventful but for someone who has ALWAYS flown before it was a nice change, though a flight would have been faster. Finally around 6:15 we arrived which was followed by these two sights!!



We were staying the first half of our trip at WL in a 2 bedroom at Copper Creek. We had stayed at WL before but we had stayed in Boulder Ridge last time so it was nice to have a change.

Upon arriving we headed up to our room to put all our things away and then checked out the lobby on our way down to Roaring Forks for some much needed food. Nothing too fancy but I did get a grilled cheese that exceeded my expectations. It was as good as it looked.


Once back up to our room my DH and oldest ran to the grocery store to stock up on some bottled water and breakfast supplies while me and the two younger ones relaxed in our room. Which we loved..by the way! The only thing I found weird was that the 2nd bedroom had a private bath and the master bedroom had a bath but it had a separate door that opened into the hallway, which didn't give a master bath feel as much.

Just before bed we could hear the music from the firework show at MK from outside, so we stepped out onto our balcony and realized we could see a good portion of the fireworks above the other side of the WL roof. It was a great surprise! Our own partial firework view.

For our very first park day the 2nd day we planned on going to MK!!! Stay tuned..... It was a good one!!!

 

[BraveLittleToaster2]

Day 2... Magic Kingdom

We awoke to rain! Fairly heavy at times, it lasted from about 8am until 10am in some form or another. We didn't let it stop us though! We waited for a bus for about the full 20 min and managed to get to MK for 8:30am on the dot...opening time.

While still under the overhang we took our ponchos out and headed for the gate. As we headed down main street we could see that it was very low crowds.


Since the rain was so heavy and limited rides were open during Extra Hour we headed to ride the peoplemover, mainly to get out of the rain but we also love this ride! It helped because when we got off the rain had lightened. So upon exiting Peoplemover we headed for Buzz (since it was close mainly and it had no wait). Buzz isn't one of my favorite rides but I did get a higher score then I've ever gotten before!



By this time it was just about 9am and we love Jungle Cruise and we knew it would be open so we crossed the park and waited 15 min to board a boat. Our skipper was named Ellie. She was very good and we loved our boat name, Bomokandi Bertha! My favorite joke (which I've heard before) is when she said she'd scare the hippos away the same way as her last boyfriend. Then she screamed I love you! Want to meet my parents? Hahah. Always a good one!


Next up was the nearby Pirates which had a quick 10 min wait. We noticed at this point that our youngest (10) had soaked feet. The rest of us had managed to keep our feet fairly dry during the rain. This will come into play later... Pirates was great as always!! At this point we noticed the park was still practically empty! It was amazing for a day in July to be so slow! A great surprise.


We noticed Liverlips and Big Al on the porch in frontierland with NO line, so we popped over and took some photos and said hello!


At this point we headed to IASM which had no wait and it was fairly uneventful but nostalgic nonetheless. After that we went to Pooh which had a 30 min wait but it only took about 20 min to get through the line. While we were waiting we saw pooh and Tigger arrive with umbrellas which was cute! I never noticed the Eyeore sad Spot in the queue before but when I saw it I knew I needed to climb into it and take a photo with a sad face!! It came out great btlut since I don't show my face I took a Pic of the spot without me in it.




After getting off pooh we headed to Ariel to journey under the sea (yet another walk on ride at this time). After little mermaid we went to have my 10 year old try out barnstormer to see if coasters would be something he likes. It went well, he enjoyed it. We are not coaster people. My DH is the only one who really does coasters so that's why you won't see many in our trip report.

After barnstormer we stopped by the nearby BigTop to just browse some souvenirs. We left with nothing but enjoyed looking around. Our 10 year olds feet were still soaked and we knew we needed to get him out of the wet socks/shoes and actually had a great plan that turned out great. We found some socks for sale at the Memento Mori shop and bought them. We tucked them in our bag. At this point we headed towards our 1220 lunch reservation at Liberty Tree Tavern. As many times as we've been to Disney we've never gone to Liberty Tree but are so glad we did.

When we sat down we took my 10 year olds socks and shoes off, put his new dry haunted Mansion themed socks on and asked our waitress for paper towels and stuffed his shoes full of them and left them on the floor while we ate. Lucky for us the shoes were mostly dry by the time we finished eating so he slid his newly dry feet in. So happy we didn't need to leave the park!!

Anyway, loved the food at Liberty. The salad and rolls were delicious, mashed potatoes, stuffing. I mean OMG. And that dessert was to die for! One of our kids doesn't like ice cream and they even brought him his own toffee cake without any ice cream just for him. It was really nice!




After lunch we didn't have tons of time before we wanted to get a spot for the 3pm parade, so we went over to do the Carousel of Progress which is just so great. We love singing along everytime the theatre moves. By the time the Carousel of Progress was over it was 230pm so we went over to Frontierland to stake out our spot. The crowds had been so light that there was plenty of space to grab a spot! We loved the parade, it never gets old seeing it again and again.

Posting part 2 of the second day next......

 

[BraveLittleToaster2]

Second part of day 2....

After the parade ended we went to Haunted Mansion, the first longer line of the day because it was down most of the morning. Posted wait was 20 min but I would say we waited closer to 30.

Next up was The Laugh Floor, they picked a young boy in our show to interact with and when he was asked if he knew a joke he came up with a great one!! He said knock knock...whose there? Europe. Europe who? NO YOUR a POO!! Omg The crowd loved it. It was such a funny moment, I love that that show is never the same twice.



After the Laugh Floor we hit peoplemover again!! I know, I know but we love riding it and it was close! Even though we don't ride Tron (my DH is hoping to later this trip) we wanted the cool photos. So both my boys got a picture in front of the tron sign holding the prop of a memory disk, they both came out so cool looking, we were glad we did that one!



Our feet at this point were hurting badly so we decided to leave the park for the day and took the boat ride back to WL. It was about 5pm. We took some showers and went to refill our refillable mugs at Roaring Forks. My daughter and I also went down to the hotel gift shop and bought some ears for this trip. She got black leather ears with a black leather bow and I got the ones from the movie UP with a detachable bow tie! Love them!!



We retired to our room for the night at that point, watched some Wreck it Ralph and went to bed. It was a great first park day!

I will post Day 3 later, my hands are tired of typing!

 

[DLo]

Following along. Looking forward to reading more

 

[Mouse Tracker]

How did you manage the ponchos while doing rides?

 

[BraveLittleToaster2]

How did you manage the ponchos while doing rides?

We kept them on, as did most other people. So I was glad we had them because most rides were wet anyway.

 

[BraveLittleToaster2]

Day 3...EPCOT

Beautiful weather this day which was a nice change from the day before! We have not been in WDW since the ratatouille ride came out and so this was our most important thing to do. We rope dropped it. I knew it would still be a long wait because the people entering at the back entrance near the boardwalk would Reach the ride well before we would coming in the front. By the time we got to ratatouille it took about 50 min for us to get through the line. I will say it was worth the wait, such a cool unique ride. We all loved it!


After exiting ratatouille we had to stop at the crepe place. We smelled the the whole outdoor queue so we knew we had to try some on the way out. My DD got a berry crepe (very good, as I had a bite) my youngest had a hazelnut and chocolate one and my DH tried the butter and sugar one.



Next we headed over to Figment, no wait. Upon exiting we found out that Figment was available for photos in 10 minutes so we started the line and got some pics! In all our time at WDW we have never encountered Figment so we were very excited!

Next up....my favorite ride in all of WDW...living with the land. I know, I know what you're thinking..lame. but I love how relaxing it is and I'm really interested in all the cool veggies and plants they grow there.


We had a lunch reservation coming up so we wanted to get to the other side of the showcase and took the boat over to morrocco. We had some time to kill so we walked through some of the shops, Morocco which is so beautiful and wonderfully themed, Norway where we took our yearly giant troll photo with the kids and some other.

We finally reached Italy as we had lunch at Via Napoli. We have only been there once before about a year after it opened and had a pretty bad experience, very slow service and one meal came out 30 min behind the others. However, we had heard only good things lately so decided to try it again and I'm so glad we did. It was delicious! Our waitress was attentive and fun, food was delicious and the ambience was great! I had the four cheese pizza, my dh had tortellini, my youngest had a Ceasar salad, and my other two had pizzas as well. We sat in the back room near all the horse photos which was great because I adore horses.




We then browsed shops at all the other countries while heading in the direction of Mexico. We didn't make any purchases yet..we tend to wait until closer to the end of the trip so we've seen everything.

We got in line for the three caballeros ride after arriving in Mexico, which had no wait. It was adorable as always. We got in line just outside the building for Donaldo and waited 10 min for him to show up and got some great pics. My kids didn't want me to embarrass them by doing my Donald impression for him, but I did it, I can't say everything in my Donald voice but I can say hello how are you and just angrily quack. Donald loved it and formed a heart with his hands! I was so glad he liked it.

Next we went over to Nemo which we walked on. This time when it dumped us in the aquarium we didn't stay long. The aquarium was the only place that seemed crowded all day and we live near a large aquarium so figured we'd be okay to skip it.

At this point Soarin went down to a 25 minute wait so we headed over there, but by the time we arrived it was back up to 40. We waited anyway and it was wonderful as always. My favorite parts are the elephants and the Taj Mahal. I get motion sickness so I have to close my eyes during part of the show but overall I love it.

After soarin we went over to the pixar short films and were happy to see they havnt changed out the shorts because I adore the last two. Piper and the one with the dog. My youngest used to love the fountains outside that had the water that seemed to jump from place to place but it wasn't running, I hope it's not broken, Does anyone know??

We hopped on Spaceship Earth on our way out of the park, I had to ride alone since the vehicles are only 2 max but I didn't mind much.



We then decided to try a new food court for dinner, one of our old haunts Contempo Cafe, so we took the monorail over to the contemporary. I got the BBQ chicken pizza ( yes, second pizza in a day but I love pizza, what can I say?).


We the took the boat outside over to our hotel WL back to our room. It was about 630pm at this point. My DD and I refilled our mugs with some Fanta and got some treats to eat before bed. We all came back, showered and watch some TV. We tend to rope drop so we rarely are out late at night. It makes for too long of a day.


Tomorrow is Hollywood Studios. My main concern is ROR as I've never been on it and don't know if the fall will scare me too much. Any opinions? I'm a scary cat when it come to rides.
Stay tuned...

 

[lillasmom]

Wow, following along to live vicariously though you.

 

[jo-jo]

I think the fall in Rise is no scarier than the drop in pirates.

How was the heat? Are you counting steps? You seem to do a lot of buzz, then jungle, then mermaid, then haunted. Not exactly, but lots of zipping back and forth.

The trip sounds wonderful.

 

[BraveLittleToaster2]

I think the fall in Rise is no scarier than the drop in pirates.

How was the heat? Are you counting steps? You seem to do a lot of buzz, then jungle, then mermaid, then haunted. Not exactly, but lots of zipping back and forth.

The trip sounds wonderful.

The first day when it rained it was actually cool. I wish I had a sweatshirt. Yesterday was hot, but we are from the south so we are used to it. It was manageable for us. Crowds were low both days which helped, and that disney sure knows how to blast their AC so there is always somewhere to escape and cool off.

I am counting steps. Typically we've gotten between 11,000 and 16,000 so far.

Thanks for the input on rise.

 

[BraveLittleToaster2]

Day 4....Hollywood Studios

This park has always been a half day park for us because we are not thrill seekers at all. For some reason it also always feels like the hottest park. Today I was sweating on every surface of my body. I could feel it dripping and I am by no means a sweater. So keep all this in mind when you see how little we got done today, though still a good day and we have 6 days left.

We got to Hollywood Studios at 8am in time for an 830am extra magic 1/2 hour haha. We went right to ROR because my DH and both boys wanted to ride it. My and my DD decided to not ride (I was a tad apprehensive and neither of us are big star wars fans). So we decided to do some things on our own. Anyway....when we got to ROR they were shooing people away, telling them they couldn't sit on nearby benches etc because it wasn't open as part of the extra hour. Sigh. It felt kind of rude. We took a few spins around star wars land, as we had never seen it before, and got some great photos of it all empty! Then around 845 we decided to sit on a bench just out of the cast members eyesighf but still very close to the entrance of ROR. The boys apparently got let into the line at 9am and got on within about 25 min....so not a bad strategy.





While the guys were on ROR, my daughter and I got some cute pics all around HS without anyone really around. Then we decided to do some Character pics. We were first in line to get our girl pics with Minnie in her pink dress and then Mickey. We also got pictures with Daisy and Donald.

Then we circled back and met up with the guys who LOVED ROR. We headed towards Toy Story which had a 15 minute wait. This ride is always our favorite in the park, so fun. Just as it ended it broke down, so we were evacuated from the ride and given a free lightning lane. Unfortunately we never used it because it couldn't be used for anything we wanted. Mickys runaway Railroad was excluded as was Rise. We could have hit toy story again but decided not to.


After TSM we were hungry so we grabbed some mickey Pretzels. My DH and I walked further to get the cream cheese filled ones. MMMM!

It was getting so hot and we craved AC so we decided to meet some Characters. We first went to the launch bay and met Darth Vader who loved my 10 year old Vader shirt! Then we went next door and met with chewbacca who did not like my sons shirt. He disliked it so much that when it came time to take photos he walked my 10 year old over into the corner and faced him into it. Hahah it was so funny! I think by the time we left Chewie forgave him when he said he would go buy a chewbacca shirt.

After this we still felt overheated so we went to watch the 3d Muppet show. It was nice and relaxing as always. Anyone else think Sweetums should meet and greet? He's such a cool character and they have him come our every show but to my knowledge they have never allowed pictures. Such a wasted opportunity.



After the Muppet show was over it was about 12:00, we had wanted to see the Indiana jones show but knowing it was outside we decided not to. We have a Stunt Show on the list for our universal day so figured they would suffice. My youngest wanted a lightsaber, he's never been able to buy a good one because we've always flown down, but now that we had our car it was the perfect opportunity. He chose a red one. Which would create a real cool interaction as soon as we left the store with it.
Who came around the corner but Kylo Ren and some stormtroopers. My son had his red light saber and his Vader shirt on so while walking by Kylo stopped and spoke with him...asked if he was practicing with it and my son nodded. Then continued on about how he was proud he had chosen the dark side. It was really neat.

At this point we really were ready to call it a day, lame I know. But it was our third day of full park days rope dropping and I think it was catching up to us. So we made one more stop to take photos with Edna Mode and then headed for the bus stop! Luckily a bus was already sitting there so we hopped on.

Once back in the room we cooled off and had some snacks while my DH ran out to get a bathing suit since he realized he forgot to pack his.

Once he got back to the room, we all got ready to take the boat to contemporary and then monorail to polynesian for our dinner at Ohana. We have had breakfast at ohana a bunch but never dinner. It was delicious!! The noodles and potstickers were my favorite part! We will be back on another trip for sure.





After that it started raining so we headed back to our room to shower and start packing up our things.
We were checking out of Copper Creek and switching to Kidani for the remainder of the trip in the morning. Can't wait for what else is to come. Since tomorrow is our switching resorts day we have planned some off property fun with our car and some great on property meals!

Stay tuned....

 

[jo-jo]

So cool with the Kylo Ren, great memories for your son.

We saw kylo with a meet and greet, and we had no idea who he was. He was all mean and stern, we were laughing cause we felt so stupid not knowing him.

Aside from the heat, sounds like a good trip.

Have you been to kidani before? First time we stayed in a one bedroom, the bathroom was amazing. Forget the animals.

 

[BraveLittleToaster2]

So cool with the Kylo Ren, great memories for your son.

We saw kylo with a meet and greet, and we had no idea who he was. He was all mean and stern, we were laughing cause we felt so stupid not knowing him.

Aside from the heat, sounds like a good trip.

Have you been to kidani before? First time we stayed in a one bedroom, the bathroom was amazing. Forget the animals.

Yes, we have stayed at Kidani and Jambo many times. AK is definitely our favorite resort but when the kids were younger we frequented BLT or Boardwalk to be walking distance for naps etc. It's nice to finally be able to stay there again.

I know what you mean, the bathrooms there are pretty amazing. I heard they are due for a refurb next year, I'm excited about that.

We stay in 2 bedroom suites and we LOVE that at kidani they actually have 3 full bathrooms which is so nice when you have 5 people who all need to shower everyday.

 

[BraveLittleToaster2]

Day 5 - Split stay day

Today is the day we woke up a little later to pack up and drive over to Kidani for our new resort. We were staying in a 2 bedroom there. First we dropped all our luggage off at Kidani since we couldn't check in this early, then headed to our 9:40 reservation at Boma! We have gone there before and always enjoy it. I loved the yogurt parfaits and the scrambled eggs! My kids mostly chose carbs like cinnamon buns. It was such a filling meal and we really felt full when finishing. I also love the juice there...so good!




After we wrapped up our breakfast we went back to our car and drove over to the Titanic museum in Orlando. We had so much fun...it doesn't look like much when you pull up to it but it was so informative and really well done. My kids loved it! When you enter you are assigned a real passenger from the actual titanic and at the end you find out if your person lived or not. 4 of us had people that lived, though that could have been because most of the people we got were first class or women/children. They had an iceburg there that was the exact temperature the water was that night. It was so cold to the touch, they even had a live actress playing the part of another ship guest. She was wonderful!






We emptied out into a gift shop. We ended up buying a book of passenger accounts for my father and a poster of the schematics of the titanic for a nephew of ours who loves titanic.

We still had time to kill so our next stop was The Chocolate Museum and Cafe in Orlando. The tour was very well done and informative. Great for kids my ages, probably wouldn't be good for kids under 7 or so. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable about the history of chocolate and the samples and chocolate sculptures were amazing. We ended up buying some chocolates! My favorite was the lemon blueberry cheesecake truffle. So good!






Then we went over to a store we've been wanting to visit and did a little shopping, bought a star wars shirt and a stuffed animal of a Pandora creature that was super cute. At this point, it was about 230 so we headed back over to Kidani and hung out in the recreation room. We played some pool and Foosball to kill extra time. By 4pm our room still wasn't ready which was frustrating since we'd been waiting awhile. We finally got assigned a room around 440pm.

We got to our room which definitely is due for a refurb but was very clean and so much bigger then our copper creek room was. It was nice to have the extra space. We had booked a savannah view and saw an Okapi eating when we arrived.

After unpacking and getting settled in our new space the sky opened up and it started pouring. We were driving our car to have dinner at Rainforest Cafe outside AK park. Our ressie was at 615. When we parked it was still raining but not horribly so we started walking towards the front of the park and it starting torrential raining with lightning etc. We were soaked and cold, and my mood changed to grumpy. Once we dried off I was glad we booked a meal there because my 10 year old did love it (that's why I booked it). He didn't remember ever being so I figured it would be neat for him. I had a chicken quesadilla and it was actually pretty good for a chain.



After dinner we came back to our room and took showers and prepared for the early morning ahead. We were rope dropping AK in the morning for a 730 park open.

Stay tuned....

 

[BraveLittleToaster2]

Day 6 - Animal Kingdom Day

We went to AK today to rope drop at 730am. It was pretty empty tbh. We don't do any of the big rides there so we rope dropped Navi River Journey. I actually disliked the movie Avatar, but I don't find the immersion world at AK really well done and beautiful. After we finished that up and walked to Africa it was about 8am and the Safari opened. So we got in line for that. How long ago did they get rid of the part where you used to help find a poacher etc? I liked that part but seems it's gone now. It was a good ride, only thing we didn't see where the elephants, they were nowhere to be found at anywhere in AK today weirdly. Anyone know something I don't?




After getting off the Safari we went on the Gorilla Falls exploration trail to see the gorillas, which never disappoint. It was still fairly early at this point and humidity was rising fast. So we figured we would go do the Maharanjah jungle trek before it got too hot. We only saw one tiger, which was a bummer but we were happy to at least see one.



We walked over to Kali River Rapids to the bridge where you can watch people on it
My 10 year old found the button you could press to have the elephant squirter water at the rafts and thought it was hysterical, so we say there and did that for at least 20 minutes.

By this time it was HOT! It seemed all the food wasn't opened yet as we walked around a while to find something. Then we noticed trilobites was opening at 1030, only 10 minutes and they had dole whip! I ordered an orange dole whip as well as my daughter. My oldest ordered a chocolate soft serve. It really helped cool us down.



We finished up our snacks and headed for the 11:00 showing of Nemo! My favorite show, it's a must see for me everytime we go. They had changed it up a little bit, got rid of the part with the stork who carried him to the dentist office, also got rid of the jellyfish part and the angler fish was not referenced at all either. The background was now digital and new which looked nice. Luckily, the story line was pretty much the same and they kept all the great songs that really make that show what it is.



Upon exiting the show we got lu KY enough to see Kevin from UP walking around and snapped a few photos. We had a lunch reservation at Yak and Yeti and we're taken promptly despite how packed the waiting area was. 4 of us ordered chicken lo mein , my dh ordered a teriyaki chicken with mango or pineapple...can't remember which. It was delicious as always.




We decided to leave Animal Kingdom after lunch today to try out the pool. My youngest loves to swim! So we all got our suits on and headed down the the kidani pool. It was packed!!!! My son loved the water slide and went down many times. I wish kidanis pool was bigger or they offered a quiet pool like some other deluxe resorts had.

We swam for almost 2 hours. Came home and showered and watch a little TV. I watched part of Jaws and the kids watched Frozen. Not all of us were hungry but some were, so 3 of us got flatbread from thee Mara. It'd been so long since I stayed at Kidani that I forgot they don't have their own counter service, quite the bummer. So my dh offered to pick up our food from the Mara in the rain.

Tomorrow we can finally sleep later. We are going back to MK and have a long awaited breakfast reservation.

Stay tuned.

 

[BraveLittleToaster2]

Day 7 - Magic Kingdom

Today we slept in which felt really nice since we'd been doing rope drops every day so far. We headed over to Magic Kingdom this morning for 9:20am and looked around at some of the shops for some new mickey ears for me. I found cute polynesian looking ones and put them on as they help to hold back all my split ends from the humidity.

Then it was finally ready to check in to our 9:50 Crystal Palace breakfast!! This is one of our favorite restaurants on property, we always have a good experience. The food was delicious, waitress was good and the characters were soo interactive and fun!
It took about an hour to eat and get through all the characters. The churro waffles were amazing!





Upon exiting the restaurant we saw a photopass photographer in the garden near the castle and got some cute family shots. Humidity was high today! I think I sweat more today then I have so far this trip! It was rough. We decided to go watch Laugh Floor and it was funny as always, I love how it's different every time so you can keep watching it. Afterwards we hopped over to the Peoplemover, waited about 10 min. The ride stopped for probably about 5-10 min but we didn't get taken off, it finally started back up.

Heat was still building So we headed over to philarmagic (since we hadn't seen this show yet this trip). I think it's the best 3d show they have in disney. Better then the bugs life and Muppet ones.



After exiting the show we headed over to the new Tiana ride to check out the gift shop as none of us really do flumes. It was a super cute shop called Critter Co-op. We didn't purchase anything but they had some really nice stuff.


We then took some more photos this time in front of thunder mountain. Afterwards we headed to pirates which had a 40 min wait but it moved much quicker and I love that the queue is so nice and cool inside. The gift shop at the end Is one of my favorite, I found a sweatshirt I really wanted but they didn't have my size and don't sell it online so, oh well. I also found a hat that would be perfect for my DH.



By this time it was about 2pm and we headed to do haunted Mansion which had a 35 minute wait. It was a long hot wait but there was the cutest little baby boy in front of us who kept our mind of the heat. I kept playing peekaboo with him and he had the cutest smile.


HM stopped about 3 times while we were on it, but started back up fairly quickly. At this point we were getting ready to call it a day since we had already done a full day at MK earlier in the week. My DD suggested we do little mermaid ride though since it was a posted 15 min wait. It was NOT 15 minutes...yikes! We probably stood in line at least 35/40 min. It seemed to take forever to get to the air conditioned part. Then when in line it would stop moving for long periods of time which seemed strange, we later found out why. We loaded onto the ride and less then 1 min later it stopped for about 8 minutes, then started again and then stopped 3 more times. We noticed while sitting on one room of the ride that they stopped loading seashells about 6 after ours so we knew there was a problem. We finally got off the ride but it moved much slower then normal. Upon exiting the sky was dark and wind was whipping...so hard my mickey ears fell off! Storms were coming so we headed for the exit, it was about 4pm.

Here is the sky above our resort.


We headed to our room, went and filled our refillable mugs in our lobby and showered. My DH had a virtual queue for Tron so after grabbing dinner at the Mara at jambo house he headed out on his own back to the park to try Tron for the first time! He's real excited about it. He's the only one that does coasters, sometimes my DD will go on them with him but not always.

Anywhooo...tomorrow is something new!!
We have ONE day to do both universal parks with no express pass. Our main goal is to hit harry potter areas for our kids who are willing to try the rides there because they love HP so much. Anything else will be a bonus. It will be another hot one and none of us have ever been to universal so I'm not sure how it will go.
Anyone have any tips???

Stay tuned...

 

[jo-jo]

At one time, kidani did have some quick service in the morning. But that was several years ago. Did your DH hop on the shuttle to run back and forth for meals?

I wonder with the titanic, if everyone got someone who lives. I'd be really sad finding out all this information and then my person died. That would be a bad note to leave you with as you leave.

Aside from the heat, sounds like a good trip.

 

[BraveLittleToaster2]

At one time, kidani did have some quick service in the morning. But that was several years ago. Did your DH hop on the shuttle to run back and forth for meals?

I wonder with the titanic, if everyone got someone who lives. I'd be really sad finding out all this information and then my person died. That would be a bad note to leave you with as you leave.

Aside from the heat, sounds like a good trip.

Actually my youngest got a person who died, but he had a middle aged man. So some definitely get people who die, but it's still interesting to see where they were from and why they were on the titanic etc..

 

[BraveLittleToaster2]

Day 8 - Universal and Island of Adventure

We started our day at 9am park opening at Universal Studios. We went to Diagon Alley and it was amazing! We are huge harry potter fans and I couldn't possibly love it more. Crowds were so low the first hour, I got tons of pictures with it empty!

My family went on Escape from Gringotts, while I held their bags and looked around on my own. It was only a 15 min wait so I knew it wouldn't be long. I loved looking around at all the details. Once they got off the ride I showed them all the spots I had found.

I showed them Knockturn Alley which was so cool, we went in to look around at Bourgin and Burkes.





We went out to see the Knight bus and got a family picture with the driver and the talking shrunken head. I loved that the head talked to us and was quite funny, I hadn't expected that!

Once finishing up Diagon Alley we headed on the Hogwarts Express over to Hogsmeade. (We wanted to make sure to hit all of harry potter first and then we'd go back and do some other things, but that was our priority). I loved the express train. It was so fun how they created a storyline to it and made it feel like you were in the train from the books and movies. It was a quick min wait this early in the morning.

We arrived in hogsmead and wanted to walk through the Forbidden Journey without riding. My DH ended up staying to ride but none of my kids wanted to. Gringotts was about the most thrilling they could do. I love that they let you walk through the queue without riding.

Next we walked up and got some frozen butter beer, it was even better then I thought it would be. Like a butterscotch slurpee. My DH and youngest decided to go on flight of the hippogriff which was a 15 min wait. They both loved it. Nice family coaster.



We used the bathrooms so we could hear moaning myrtle which was cool and then we looked through honeydukes which was so neat.

We wrapped up the Harry Potter sections of the park with that and headed towards seussland. We went on the Seuss high in the sky ride, which had a 15 minute wait, but we waited easily at least 30 min. It was so slow loading. It was a cute ride that had some great views but definitely not worth the wait. I will say we noticed that Universal has tons of queues with NO AC, whereas Disney has more. It was almost like Universal had very few places to cool off which was unfortunate.

The next ride we went for was Kong Skull Island. It was a 50 minute wait but definitely went by quick and was always moving along well...also another non AC, hot line. The ride was fun and well done. It didn't make me motion sick, but I did have to close my eyes for a few parts.



At this point it was lunchtime and our two boys wanted to eat so we stopped at the Jurassic Park counter service, it was about 1:20 or so. We mobile ordered their food and went looking for an indoor table to finally cool off. Nope...none! We finally found a corner downstairs near a dinosaur with a rock we could sit on and eat. People were eating on the floor all over the place. I think this speaks to them not having enough places to cool off, people were so desperate to not eat out in the heat they were just eating on the floor everywhere. We didn't mind too much but just another difference we noticed from disney.

We were done with Island of Adventure at this point and got in line for the hogwarts train to go back to Universal and finish that park. It was a 45 minute posted wait..
Because we entered the line right after 3...yes 3 Brazilian tour groups of teenagers. Sigh. It ended up taking over an hour to get on th le train...again the train station was hot. The tour groups were loud and rowdy with tons of PDA which even my 20 year old felt uncomfortable about...but what can you do?

When we got on the train we were soo happy to be sitting and cool for a few minutes. Upon entering Universal we headed to get on ET, which had a 15 min wait. It was a quick wait, a nice cool line and so wonderfully themed. We enjoyed the ET ride so much, we'll done!



At this point it was about 4:20 and the next Bourne Stuntacular was at 445 and it was recommended as a must do for me. So we got in line, pre-show was a little long since our legs were aching from all the standing but let me tell you...the show was amazing!!! All of us loved it. The actors were great, the screen they use is such a crisp beautiful picture. It was a highlight for sure. It did not effect my motion sickness at all!

When we got out it was around 520 or so and the new parade was starting at 6pm so I wanted to make sure we saw it. Another highlight for sure, the parade was wonderful we really enjoyed it. It was nice to have all the floats interesting to my age group and teens instead of the parade at disney which is more geared to the preschool subset.




After the parade we headed over to Villain-con blast. It was such a unique and fun ride. It was walk on and I loved that it was just standing on a conveyor belt. It was easy to do twice in a row if you wanted to. I even got the highest score woohoo!!




At that point it was almost 7pm so we decided to head home. We stopped at chikfila on our way back to Kidani. Then we ate our treats we had bought yesterday in MK.



Tomorrow we are going to Kennedy Space Center so stay tuned....

 

[BraveLittleToaster2]

Day 9 - Kennedy Space Center

This morning we left our room around 8am and arrived at the space center around 9:20am or so. Parking was easy and quick and it wasn't too busy. I had not done tons of research into visiting here so I didn't have a concrete plan, we just kind of winged it.

Overall here are the things I liked most. I enjoyed the 2nd video at the Apollo Center (the part you can only reach by bus) that recreated one of the shuttle launches while overlooking the control room. When the rocket blasted off, the room we were in had the windows bang and move as if it was really blasting off outside which was neat.



My family enjoyed the video before entering the hall of heroes, but I could not do it because of my motion sickness. They said it was the best video of the day. It was while standing and almost had a sort of IMAX screen to it.




We skipped all the other IMAX type experiences and the actual simulator of a shuttle launch.

The exhibits are all pretty interesting for someone like me who isn't really interested in space at all. The sheer size of all the rockets and shuttles were pretty impressive. We spent from 930 until 2pm there and that was plenty but like I said we skipped quite a bit. My only suggestion for them is to have benches etc inside where the exhibits are. They didn't really offer any and sometimes we just wanted to sit for a small break indoors.

There was one camp group there with a bunch of kids who looked to be around 6 or 7, they didn't seem to get much out of it as the group leaders kept telling them to stop and learn things. I'd suggest the best ages for this are kids maybe 9 and up unless they have a huge fascination for space. We ate some hot Pretzels ($5 for one) while there and had to buy bottled water which was $4.50 per bottle. Definitely on the pricey side but it was expected.

When we got back to Kidani we went down to the arcade for a little while woth our youngest while the older kids relaxed in the room. Then we headed to Boma for a dinner buffet. I enjoyed trying all sorts of different foods. I loved all the pasta salads and the peanut rice was delicious. The desserts were all very good too. My favorite was a passion fruit one.







After dinner we went back to our room and got ready for bed. Tomorrow is our last full day of fun!!