2 Big Kids in America: Aussie's take on WDW and DL! (Sept / Oct 2016) Update 9/26 Complete

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Hello all and welcome to our first trip report!

Let’s start with some introductions:

I’m Brenton, 28, work in a secondary school doing their timetable, graphic design, social media, assisting with school productions and anything else they care to throw my way! In my free time I’m a big musical theatre fan and not only go and see shows, but also help out with amateur theatre productions around my area doing set and lighting designs, building props, directing, and even starring in a couple!

My DP is Steve, 28, currently studying to be a primary school teacher and working as a baker at the local supermarket. He’s a big musical theatre fan as well, that’s how we met, but he mainly appears in shows instead of helping with the design elements etc.

This was our first trip to any Disney park, and my first trip to America. We live in Australia and although Steve has been to America once before, I’ve only travelled overseas once to Singapore, and that was for work. Seeing as this was going to be our first big holiday together we decided to go all out: Disney World (with free dining!), Disneyland, Universal California, Universal Orlando and New York all in 4 weeks!

Are we crazy?… Yes!
Would we do things differently next time?… Yes!
Did we love every minute of the trip?… Yes, well almost every minute


I have to admit that neither Steve or I enjoy being in a lot of photos, well apart from ride photos or character meets, so a lot of the pics we did take are void of us! Plus we were also just so excited to be at Disney that there were times we forgot to take pics! Yes I know, rookie mistake!! But we plan to change all that when we head back to Disney World later this year!

Our trip was September 17th to October 16th 2016. We had planned it around a 2 week school holiday over here, so that I only had to take 2 weeks of unpaid leave. Unfortunately working in a school, all of your annual leave is predetermined by when the school holidays are, so if you need to take leave outside of those times it’s either unpaid or you take some of your long service leave, of which I don’t have any!

Now I know what you are thinking, your trip ended almost 8 months ago, why are you only just starting a trip report now!?! Well there’s a few reasons, the big one is that life just got in the way unfortunately, with a promotion at work for me and university for Steve that was bound to happen. Just as big a reason was that when we got back we both missed being at Disney so much! It’s only been in the last few months that we have started getting back into watching YouTube trip reports and scouring the forums. Disney withdrawals are real I tell you! REAL!!!!!
The final reason is that we thought we really should get this one written and out of the way before our next trip! In the space of about 48 hours we went from being in a state of mind of not returning to a Disney park for a few years, to having priced 4 different trips to Disney parks around the world (Disneyland Paris, Tokyo Disneyland, Disneyland in Anaheim and Disney World) and then finally settled on where we wanted to go and booked flights and accommodation for a 7 night trip to Disney World in September this year.


So I said to Steve let’s start going through our photos and touring plans and noting everything that we did each day, because another rookie mistake we made was not making notes at the end of each day during the trip! Before we left for the trip I had every intention of keeping a little journal to document our days, and even brought 2 little blank books along with us, but by the end of each day we were just so exhausted I forgot about it. As it turns out, Steve is weird and remembers a whole bunch of little quirky things about our trip which has helped in compiling this, and once I’ve had a trigger like seeing some trip photos, or looking at our touring plans, a lot of the trip started to come flooding back to me.

So this is where I’m going to leave it for the first post, stay tuned for next time where it felt like we were flying for days!

Hopefully you enjoy this report!

 

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Contents

1: Introduction
2: Leaving Australia
3: New York
4: Finally heading to Florida!
5: Check In and Disney Springs
6: Day 1 - Hollywood Studios Part 1
7: Day 1 - Hollywood Studios Part 2
8: Day 2 - Animal Kingdom Part 1
9: Day 2 - Animal Kingdom Part 2
10: Day 3 - Epcot Part 1
11: Day 3 - Epcot Part 2
12: Day 4 - Epcot Part 3
13: Day 4 - Epcot Part 4
14: Day 5 - Magic Kingdom Part 1
15: Day 5 - Magic Kingdom Part 2
16: Day 6 - Magic Kingdom Part 3
17: Day 6 - Magic Kingdom Part 4
18: Day 7 and 8 - Backstage Magic and a Hurricane!
19: Day 9 - Universal Studios
20: Day 9 - Club Villain
21: Day 10 and 11 - Orlando to LA
22: Day 12 - Universal Hollywood
23: Day 13 - Disneyland and Mickey's Halloween Party
24: Day 14 - California Adventure
25: Day 15 - Disneyland Day 2 and Heading Home

 

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Leaving Australia

So now that introductions are out of the way, we can get to the actual start of our trip!

The lead up to us leaving was a tiny bit stressful for us. I had a couple of projects at work that needed to get finished before I left, but then I also had a large project I was working on for a theatre show that I needed to complete. A couple of years ago I built a set of puppets for a production of Avenue Q that I was directing. Well I had another company want to hire the puppets from me for their show, but I had to completely refurbish them before they went out, so for the 4 weeks leading up to us flying out I was working on them every night and managed to drop them off to the company 2 days before we left.

My lounge room was full of puppets silently screaming at me for weeks!

After this mammoth task I then had to think about packing for the trip! Luckily Steve did a lot of the organising for this trip because he knew how busy I was going to be, so he had already compiled all the travel documents, gave me a list of necessary things to pack etc which made my life a lot easier!

This was just my luggage. Steve had another 2 suitcases plus a carry on each.

The first destination on our trip was New York, but it took us 3 flights to get there. Our first flight was Melbourne to Sydney (1.5 hours), Sydney to LAX (14 hours), we then had a 7 hour layover in LAX before our flight from LAX to NY (6 hours).The layover didn’t end up being too bad, we were able to catch up on a few episodes of Survivor we needed to watch and had some food. It was my first real experience of Starbucks, we have some of their shops over here but because Steve and I don’t drink coffee, we rarely go. We do however enjoy frappes, and wow your large cups in the States are massive! But it was just the chocolate hit we needed after being stuck on a plane for so long! Needless to say by the time we actually arrived in NY we were exhausted and just wanted to sleep!

I’m going to condense our time in New York down so that we can get on to the Disney part of the trip quicker!

 

[Tonga Toast]

So looking forward to your trip report! My best friend and her family live in Coogee, and we've met at Disney World with our families twice. I love touring with my Australian friends and can't wait to read your observations!

 

[Lesley Wake]

When are you going in September? We will be there Sept 9-18!

 

[jsgrant5]

following

 

[JaySwash]

Can't miss a TR that starts with a puppet horror show, looking foward to reading more.

 

[rdkeim]

Looking forward to reading about your trip! Wow - what a long trip to get to NYC. I'm sure you were ready for some down time!

 

[harddrive]

So looking forward to your trip report! My best friend and her family live in Coogee, and we've met at Disney World with our families twice. I love touring with my Australian friends and can't wait to read your observations!

Ah very nice! Can't say I've been to Coogee before, been to a couple of the suburbs around there though. It's a very nice part of the state where they live. Close to the beach and everything!

When are you going in September? We will be there Sept 9-18!

We will be there from Sept 27th - Oct 4th, so just miss you!

Looking forward to reading about your trip! Wow - what a long trip to get to NYC. I'm sure you were ready for some down time!

Haha yea, it was a long trip, we were certainly ready for some down time but we didn't really plan much of that into the trip, it was very much go go go all the time.

 

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New York

One of the big reasons for us to go to New York, apart from being able to say that I’ve been there and doing some of the sightseeing stuff, was for Broadway and all of the shows! We spent 9 full days in New York and ended up seeing 12 shows!

Here’s the list of shows that we saw: Aladdin, Cats, Lion King, Wicked, Phantom of the Opera, School of Rock, Something Rotten, Beautiful, Avenue Q, Waitress, On Your Feet and The Producers (this last one was technically in New Jersey at Papermill Playhouse, but it still counts!).

Steve and I loved it! Some of the longer running shows did feel a little worn out and could do with a bit of a refresh, but it was great to see how some shows were originally staged, instead of the reduced tour version of the shows that we often get in Australia.

Apart from seeing as many shows as we could, we also did quite a bit of the standard sightseeing that you expect for a first time trip to New York.

We went to the 9/11 Memorial

Statue of Liberty

The Empire State Building

Radio City Music Hall

also the Natural History Museum as well as a great hop on and hop off bus tour.

Unfortunately the last time Steve was in America he got quite sick and was hospitalised for a good part of his trip, so it was great he was able to do things that he missed out on last time. The one thing we didn’t have enough time for was a proper trip to Central Park. We saw it when we went to the National History Museum, but we were hoping to be able to set aside a day to explore the park. Time got the better of us unfortunately.

We also spent 2 days and one night in Washington DC, and really enjoyed all of the Smithsonian museums and bus tour we did there.

After getting back from DC we had one day left in New York and then it was time to head back to the airport and finally head to Florida!!

 

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Finally heading to Florida!

The 12 hours in the lead up to our departure out of New York ended up being quite eventful!

We had gone to see our last show for the trip the evening before our flight. This show was in New Jersey and we knew that after travelling back to Brooklyn (which is where our AirBnB was) we wouldn’t get much sleep before having to get up for our flight. Instead of our anticipated 1hr trip back to Brooklyn it ended up taking us over 3 hours, due to a train detour that resulted in us missing our connecting train!

We finally made it back around 2:30 in the morning, and after a couple of hours sleep we were up at 5:30, finishing our packing before waiting outside for our pre-booked transport to the airport.

We waited, and waited, and it didn’t turn up! So a quick jump on the Uber app, and we finally had a way of getting to the airport. We had been told that traffic in the morning can be very busy, but we managed to get a good run in. I’m so glad we didn’t decide to drive in New York, as I don’t think either of us would have coped!

Finally at the airport we had some breakfast and jumped on the plane to head to Disney!! The flight wasn’t too bad, I tried to sleep but ended up just listening to Disney music. Once we touched down in Florida we both started experiencing things that we had read about in all of your trip reports such as the Fake-O-Rail!

Stepping out of the airport the humidity really hits you, but luckily we were soon in our hire car and on our way. It took a bit of time to get used to driving on the opposite side of the road, and I lost count the number of times I would go to turn the indicator on but put on the window wipers instead (in most Australian cars they are on the opposite side)!

It didn’t take us too long before we saw this!

This was it! We were really at Disneyworld!!!

 

[harddrive]

Check In and Disney Springs


After navigating around for a bit we finally found the way to Pop Century, and our home for the next 7 days! On a side note, Steve got really good at directing us around the roads and the parks. Usually I’m quite good at directions and remembering how to get to places, but for some reason I couldn’t this trip. I’m going to use the excuse that I was on holiday and my brain had switched off!

Check-in went very smoothly, and we were in the 50’s section of the resort. After dropping our bags off in the room and relaxing for a few minutes we made our way to Disney Springs.
Neither Steve or I are big clothes shoppers, but we enjoyed walking around and doing some browsing. We both loved the World of Disney store and could have easily spent all of our money in there. It was so great to just wander around and take in all of the sights and sounds of being at Disney.

Steve loved all of the giant lego sculptures and of course could not pass up the opportunity to have his photo with Winnie the Pooh.

Both of us had smiles like that for pretty much the rest of the trip!

We had a dinner reservation that evening at T-Rex. We arrived a little bit early and managed to get shown to our seat quite quickly.

We loved the restaurant and the vibe inside. The animatronics were of course a bit dated, but they were still fun, and the meteor strike every half hour was cool!

Steve had the Mastadon stuffed chicken, Strawberry Oreo shake and the sorbet while I had the Bronto burger, a Sprite and the sorbet. The meals were good, I love fries so the waffle fries that they served with the burger were a nice treat! The sorbet was very refreshing, but oh so sweet! Our meals took quite a while to come out, but our waiter kept topping up our basket of bread, so we weren’t starving while we waited! Hangry Brenton is not fun to be around...

Feeling very full afterwards, we walked around the Springs for a bit to take in the view of everything lit up before making our way back to the resort.

Before heading back to our room we stopped off at Everything Pop! food court and got our refillable mugs and a couple of snacks in case we got hungry later that night.

Once we got back to the room we decided to head to bed as we were feeling quite tired from the early morning flight, and we wanted to be well rested for Hollywood Studios the next day!

 

[harddrive]

Day 1 - Hollywood Studios Part 1

So after 2 weeks of exploring other parts of America, it was finally our first park day at Disney!!!


Our first park was Hollywood Studios. We had decided to work our way up to Magic Kingdom and leave that for the end of our trip, although we did end up going there earlier than planned (more on that later!). Looking at some park crowd calendars we also tried to order the parks based on their quiet days.

We got out of bed early, got ready and drove to Hollywood Studios and got there before park opening. Bag check really wasn’t that bad here, plus we used one of the ones on the side which was emptier than the rest. We then got to scan our magic bands and fingers for the first time! Woo!!

We were let into the holding area at the front of the park and there was already a bit of crowd waiting, but we both just kinda stood there and stared at everything around us. Looking at all of the shops, the Chinese Theatre up ahead of us and the annoying stop and go street post that was next to us (well it didn’t start off annoying, it just got annoying after a few minutes of it constantly ringing bells).

Finally the welcome music played and we were set free into the park.

We have read over and over again on the forums about the first stampede rush to various parts of the park at rope drop, and it really is something to see! All of these families just scattering and running towards rides. In saying that we were not exactly dawdling along to our first ride which was Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster. We had a fastpass for early in the morning, but as the wait time was barely anything we jumped into the standby line, rode it and then used our fastpass to ride it again! Now as first ride of the day without having had any breakfast at this point, after the second ride we were both feeling a tiny bit queasy!! Ah well, it was such a great ride. Can’t say I’ve ever listened to any of Aerosmith’s music, not really my thing, but it did really suit the ride.

There’s us just casually taking a nap on the ride!

Next up was a trip on The Great Movie Ride. Steve didn’t enjoy this one as much, he found it a bit boring beyond the nostalgia element, but I enjoyed seeing all of the snippets from the movies I grew up watching as a kid!

After this we went over to One Man’s Dream. Looking through the exhibit was fascinating to see how it all started, and then during the movie Steve cried. He can get a bit sappy at times, well we both can, but him more so. I wish we had spent more time walking through the exhibit and studying things in more details. By the way, this is a common thought I had after each day at a park. We were so focused on getting to all the attractions and following the touring plan so that we would get through everything on it that we didn’t stop and look at all of the other elements in the park that often. Good thing is we can now rectify that later this year when we head back!

Our last stop before lunch was on Tower of Terror. There wasn’t too much of a line so we just jumped in it, and enjoyed walking around the line and seeing all of the details inside the lobby. Have to say I wasn’t quite ready for the intensity of the drops!

For lunch we stopped into the Starring Rolls Café and each had a sandwich, some water and cool Star Wars cupcakes.

It was getting quite hot at this point in the day as evidenced by Darth's droopy lightsaber just behind his head!

Now that we were nicely fed it was time to go meet some friends of ours over in the Star Wars Launch Bay.

Yes our friends were Chewie and Kylo Ren! Chewie was great to meet and interact with, Kylo on the other hand, was not the friendliest person. Although he did converse with us, after our picture he was very quick to move us on our way.

We wandered around the rest of the Launch Bay exhibits for a bit looking at all of the prop replicas before making our way over to Star Tours for our fastpass!

It’s a great simulator ride, and Steve even ended up being the Rebel Spy on our first ride!

 

[harddrive]

Day 2 - Hollywood Studios Part 2

Next up was something with a bit of a nostalgia value for us, being the Beauty and the Beast live show. It was a cute (and very abridged) telling of the movie, and it was great to see that the human leads were actually singing and that it wasn’t all done to pre-recorded tracks! Having worked in children’s entertainment back home for a while and being part of live shows like this, as well as being ‘friends’ of some characters too, it was great to see how Disney approached their live shows and see the performers doing their thing, and see the immaculate condition the character costumes were in across all the parks.

Up next was a spur of the moment decision to go and meet Olaf (the line was quite small) before we headed into the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular.

Toy Story Mania was our last fastpass booking for the day so we hightailed it over there and jumped in line. The theming along the line and the loading point is so great! So much detail to keep you amused as you are walking through, and it really does feel as though you have been shrunk down to the size of toys.

I don’t remember what our scores were, but I think I won.
Once we got out Steve booked us another fastpass for Fantasmic later that evening.

While we were in Pixar Place we couldn’t turn down the opportunity to meet Woody and Buzz, so we jumped in line. This line was quite cute with all of the photo opportunities along the way, but unfortunately we didn’t get to take any pics in them as there were quite a few kids just running around the whole area and climbing on anything and everything they could.

Although we weren’t feeling overly hungry, dinner was next on the agenda as we had an early booking at the Sci-Fi Drive In.

Side note - I guess this is the downside of being on the dining plan and making your ADR's so far out in advance to try and maximise the plan, that sometimes during the day in the park when it comes to one of your dining bookings you just aren't overly hungry but still have to go and eat anyways. To be honest this was really the only time it happened on our trip, and really was just down to the fact we couldn't secure a later booking for that day. But in saying that, we had Free Dining for our whole trip (upgraded to the regular plan) so it really wasn't too much of an issue.

Another side note - we managed to secure free dining for our trip later this year too! Because we had booked the trip quite late, essentially a few weeks after free dining was released and after what would have been our 180 days for ADR, we didn't think we would have a chance of securing it, but one day Steve was checking the reservation and managed to find the offer available! We have upgraded to the DxDDP for this trip as we have already booked pretty much 2 table service meals a day for the entire stay, so after doing some maths of what we will most likely eat at each restaurant, we will end up saving a bit of money vs paying OOP. Plus we also managed to secure every restaurant that we wanted to eat at and most on the days and times that we wanted, even managed to get an Ohana' dinner reservation after a friend of mine recommended going there.

Anyways, back to our early dinner at the Sci-Fi Drive In! This place was so cool! We ended up hitching a ride with another family and had the back seat of their car. It was such a great atmosphere inside and you really did feel like you had gone to a drive in movie! It’s like the rest of the park didn’t exist.

Our one selfie of the trip!

Steve and I both love our milkshakes, so we both ordered the cookies and cream milkshake, followed by the build your own Angus Burger and finished off the meal with Hot Fudge Sundae’s. This just happened to be the only time during our trip where we both ordered the exact same thing!

The milkshakes were so big and tasted great.

Now that we were very full we made our way over to watch the Star Wars Galaxy Far Far Away show. We had heard it and seen little bits and pieces a few other times during the day, but hadn’t stopped to see it all. Well in hindsight we should have stopped one of those times as it started to pour just as the show was starting. Everyone ran for the closest cover!

Woo, our first rain experience at Disney! And also this was the only time during any of our days in the park that we actually got caught in the rain and got a bit wet. Every other time it rained during the trip we just happened to be on an indoor ride, or an indoor show and so we would walk out and be like “…oh it rained while we were in there...”

Once the rain let up, we decided to head down to Muppet Studios and check it out. I’m a huge Muppets fan, so getting to watch this with all of the animatronic puppets scattered through it was great.

This pretty much took us to the end of our touring plan for the day and we had some time to kill before jumping in line for Fantasmic, so we went to see Mickey and Minnie! I wanted to meet both Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Magician Mickey at some point during our trip so it was great to be able to cross one of these off! I think we were both a little star struck when we met both Mickey and Minnie, I mean come on, who wouldn’t be a bit star struck by these guys! It was great to get to meet them on our first day at the parks.

After meeting these guys we stopped by Star Tours again as there was a low wait time before heading to Fantasmic. Now after riding it this time we both were feeling a little sick afterwards, and this seemed to be the start of a pattern occurring for me with most 3D simulator rides for the rest of the trip

We made our way to Fantasmic and got a pretty good seat.

Wow the open theatre it’s in can hold so many people!!! We saw some of the Star Wars fireworks above the trees before the show started and then people started doing Mexican waves across the whole audience. It was great the first few times, but after a few minutes it started to get a bit old!

Fantasmic was amazing!! The music, the characters, the projections were just great. It was so good to pick all of the different movies and characters they included in the show.

Once this was over we joined the masses to leave the auditorium but decided to check the wait times for some of the rides. When we saw that Midway Mania only had a 10 minute wait we pretty much ran across the park to jump in line as it was getting close to closing time. A small detail that I didn’t see the first time we rode the ride was that all of the cast members have Andy written on one of their shoes. I pointed this out to Steve and the cast member thought I was pointing to something wrong with his costume haha!

Once we got off the ride we still had a few minutes left before official closing time, so we ran back across the park to jump in line for Rock ’n’ Roller coaster. We just made it before they closed it off for the night. Just saying, it is just as good or even better the more times you ride it.

We then went back to our car and to the resort, quickly filling up our mugs before collapsing into bed! I don’t think we were quite prepared for how much it takes out of you being in the park all day, and this was only day 1!

 

[harddrive]

Day 2 - Animal Kingdom Part 1

So it seems time manages to get past me too often, can't believe its been 2 weeks since my last update!!

We left off our trip at the end of our first park day which was great but so tiring, and that certainly wasn't going to change for day 2.

Our second park for the trip was Animal Kingdom. Now I have to say that this was probably the park that I had the most mixed feelings about before going into it. I’m not a big nature lover and for me, once you have seen one lion or giraffe at a zoo then you have seen them all, but I was pleasantly surprised with the day.

After arriving at the park a few minutes later than we had planned, we made our way straight to Expedition Everest. Now both Steve and I have to agree that this is our favourite ride in all of Disneyworld! We had expected to have to wait a while to get on, even that early in the morning, but we ended up riding it 3 times through the standby line and then a 4th time using our fastpass!! Did I mention that we loved the ride?

So we may have done a few sleeping pics throughout our trip. It was great to see other guests notice them when we got off the ride and have a chuckle at them!

Once we had got our thrills for the morning, and narrowly avoided being yeti food, we decided it was time for us to eat. Stopping by one of the food carts Steve got a cinnamon scroll and frappe whilst I had a giant pink donut. It was just the sugar kick we both needed in the morning.

After scoffing down our snacks because they were so tasty, we made our way over to Dinoland to check it out. We already knew that Dinosaur was closed for refurbishments while we were there (it didn’t bother us too much as we knew we would be riding Indiana Jones over at Disneyland in just over a week's time), but we still wanted to check out the rest of the land. Have to say that the whole Dinoland seemed a bit out of place among the rest of the park, but oh well.

Side note: Since our trip I bought a copy of 'The Walt Disney World That Never Was' which tells stories of a whole bunch of attractions, lands and resorts that were never built. One of these was Beastly Kingdom which was supposed to be a land in Animal Kingdom based on mythical creatures. The original plan for Animal Kingdom was supposed to have lands representing existing animals, extinct animals and animals that never existed. Knowing this info, Dinoland now makes sense.

Back to our time in Dinoland, it was pretty much dead in there (and no I’m not just talking about the fossils ). The cast members were all looking over our way as we walked in like they were a bunch of velociraptors and we were fresh prey … ok that might be a bit of a stretch there, but they seemed very happy to have people coming past that they could say hi to!

We jumped on the Triceratops Spin and then onto Primeval Whirl. After Everest, the Spin was very tame, which we knew it would be, but then Primeval Whirl felt like we had been thrown into a washing machine that was spinning around uncontrollably. I think I would have been ok with the spinning if the track itself has not been so rough and bumpy, but the two combined were a bit too much.

We were then off to It’s Tough to be a Bug. Getting to walk through the line and see the Tree of Life up close was so good, and then all of the musical posters in the waiting area were a really nice touch. Steve and I really enjoyed them, being the big musical fans we are!

I think the Beauty and the Bee’s was my favourite poster!

The show itself was good. I really enjoyed seeing the Hopper animatronic in real life, he is quite large! However Steve was not too impressed with some of the other elements in the show, in particular the spiders. I knew that they were coming and may have ‘forgot’ to mention this to him! I do get quite a bit of enjoyment out of seeing Steve jump as he can be scared so easily...

Once we had made our way out of the theatre after our bug guests departed, another little touch that scared Steve, we decided to walk the trails around the park before it got too hot. I will say that it was nice to walk around and just be surrounded by nature, but Steve definitely enjoyed these more than I did.

After the trails and on our way to our next fast pass, Kali River Rapids, we stopped off to meet Baloo and King Louie. Just as we got to the front of the line both Baloo and King Louie had to take a quick snack break, and boy they must have really enjoyed their snacks, because when they came back they had so much more energy!

We were second guessing if we needed to put our bag and phones etc into a locker for Kali River Rapids, but we are so glad that we did! We got soaked, but had a great time. Now Steve and I aren’t really the types of people that would just start to talk to other guests while waiting in lines etc, but rides like this we always find fun because you get to share the experience and have a bit of a chat during the ride itself with the people who are on it with you.

 

[harddrive]

Day 2 - Animal Kingdom Part 2

To give us a bit of time to dry off after Kali we went to our third fastpass for the day which was the Kilimanjaro Safari. I have to say it was quite cool to be able to get that close to all of the animals instead of just walking past them in a zoo setting, and who knew that there are so many really weird animals out there in the wild?!

After this it was time for lunch at the Flame Tree Barbecue. Steve had the Ribs, Chicken and Pulled Pork sampler while I had the Smoked Pulled Pork sandwich. Unfortunately for Steve the meats were quite tough and a bit cold, but the pulled pork for both our meals was ok. Also, who likes baked beans as a side?!? Maybe it’s just because we are from Australia and it’s not a big thing over here, but really? While we were eating we also booked another fastpass for the Finding Nemo musical.

By this point in the day the heat, and especially the humidity, were starting to get to us. Now being from Australia we are quite used to 30-40 degree Celsius (85-105 Fahrenheit) days as that can make up most of our summer, but we were really not prepared at all for the humidity! So with this in mind it was time to head over to Festival of the Lion King. After reading all of the great reviews people give it, we probably went in with our expectations set a bit high as we thought it was a good show, but not the best show Disney has. In saying that, we both did enjoy it, and enjoyed how varied the acts were. My favourite part of it was probably the tumble monkeys section as the acrobatic tricks were cool, and the monkeys were quite cute.

Every time I come to post the next part of the trip report I keep saying to myself that I must take better pictures whilst at Disney next!!

Once this was done we ran over to catch Flights of Wonder, another brief escape from the heat before then going to see Finding Nemo.

Now I have to admit that this was the show that I could not wait to see when we first started booking our Disney trip. I have lost count the number of times I’ve watched it on online. For me it’s the whole combination of musical and puppets that make it so great, and seeing it in person and being able to watch the skill of the performers puppeteering was a delight.

After this we decided to try and get back onto Kali River Rapids, but it was closed at that point in time. We were way too early for our dinner reservation, so we jumped in the standby line for Everest. This wait was only about an hour, but it was so good to ride it again, and after riding it we thought that 5 times in one day was enough.

We headed over to Yak and Yeti for our dinner reservation which was at 4:45pm. We ended up arriving there around 4:20pm and were seated within about 5 mins. The food here was so good. Steve had the Kalib Steak and Coconut Shrimp and I had the Chicken Tikka Masala for entrèes and then we both had the Fried Wantons for dessert. Mmmm!

There was a large family seated across the room from us who just happened to have ordered one of each of the desserts from the menu for various members of their family and our waiter was pointing out each of their dishes to us when he was describing the desserts to us, and the family chimed in with their reviews of them. Let me say again how much we enjoyed the food here, to the point where we have already booked in dinner here again for our trip later this year!

Once we were finished with dinner we tried Kali again but it was still down. By this point in the day the humidity had really taken its toll on us, so we made the decision to head back to the resort early and try to rest a bit. At this point we were on day 15 of our whole trip and we hadn’t really stopped since landing in America over 2 weeks ago. It was a bit disappointing to not be able to see the Tree of Life lighting magic and experience the park at night, but we knew that we needed the rest.

So we headed back to the resort and discovered the Food Network channel on the TV. Let’s just say that we are now a bit obsessed with Halloween Wars and Baking Championships and all other TV shows like this!

So that pretty much wraps up our second day in the parks, and only day at Animal Kingdom. As I mentioned at the start of the day, it wasn’t the park that I was most looking forward to, but it was still a very enjoyable day, and when we return later this year we cannot wait to explore the parts of the park we didn’t get to like Rafiki’s Planet Watch, DINOSAUR, and the new Pandora land.

 

[Kiwibella88]

Your Trip Report is wonderful so far!


I'm a self confessed musical nerd also from Melbourne and will be travelling to WDW for Christmas this year.
**side note- nothing to do with Disney but feel you may appreciate this. I was in New York with a friend in August last year and managed to nab tickets for Hamilton. It was breathtaking- highly recommend!!

Back to Disney!! I've never been to WDW before and my boyfriend and I (who has been once before when he was little) are heading there.
I really wasn't planning on making time for Animal Kingdom but the more I read reports and advice forums, the more excited I am about animal kingdom.

How long did you end up waiting in line for Baloo and King Louis?

Thank-you!

Erin

 

[heaven2dc]

I am having so much fun reading all about your trip! Would love to visit New York City one day - my son moved to Long Island a couple of years ago when he got married but we never got a chance to visit New York being caught up in the wedding activities.

I love your touring plan - you really got in a lot of attractions just on your first day! I lost count lol

We haven't seen Finding Nemo the Musical yet and hope to on our upcoming trip in October. I love Festival of the Lion King but was surprised that it seemed smaller than I expected (not sure why I thought the area would be bigger). Can't wait to read more!

 

[cinderaimee]

Following along! Love your report so far

 

[harddrive]

How long did you end up waiting in line for Baloo and King Louis?

Hey Erin! nice to meet a fellow Melbournian!
You are going to love it at WDW. I did have my reservations about Animal Kingdom before actually going there, but now that I've been, its definitely something not to miss, even more so with Pandora now being open. Both Steve and I watch quite a few vloggers from WDW and I have been avoiding all of their content on Pandora (and the new Happily Ever After fireworks) so I can go and experience it first hand rather than through the lens of a camera first.

From memory we waited about 20mins for Baloo and King Louis, which wasn't too long at all, and it was mostly in the shade too which was a bonus!

Congrats on the getting tickets to Hamilton! I know how hard they were to come by. Have to say I'm not the biggest fan of the show, but I'm glad you really loved it.

I love your touring plan - you really got in a lot of attractions just on your first day! I lost count lol

Across our whole trip we managed to ride pretty much everything that we wanted to thanks to the touring plan. We got the touring plan from touringplans.com and essentially just crossed off all of the attractions that were closed for refurbishment or that we had no interest in (which wasn't that many) and then just followed the rest of the plan closely for the days. They even suggest when to take lunch breaks and when to meet certain characters and what fast passes to try and book. It was a great way to get through everything at each park, but in hindsight we probably could have spent a bit more time just wandering around exploring things, but hey that's what return trips are for, isn't it?

Following along! Love your report so far

Great to have you along for the ride I should have our next park day up later today!