|
Date: MLK Weekend - January 18 - 20, 2008
Cast: 2 North Carolina families that are good friends. Each family has 2
boys, and the kids are ages 10, 7, 7, and 2. I'm not telling you how old I am!
Let’s just say I’ve enjoyed my 36th birthday several times.
Lodging: Wilderness Lodge - yeah, baby!
Day 4, Animal Kingdom and ‘Ohana
The weather
-Sunny, but cold. Brrrr!
Pixie Dust Moments:
- The Lion King Show---a magical experience. I am a musician, and I was incredibly impressed with the level of talent at that show.
- Hanging around the absolutely empty Dig Site in the early morning with my 2
year old while everyone else in our group rode
- Dinosaur. It doesn’t sound exciting, but it turned out to be one of my favorite memories from the trip.
A Few Sticky Points:
- The Animal Kingdom was jam-packed after lunch. It was hard to walk in Africa because of the crowds.
- There were also huge crowds on the monorail while my toddler and I were trying to meet everyone for our dinner reservation. Carrying him, his stroller, and
all his paraphernalia was a pain. I was tempted to leave him in his stroller,
but I didn’t want to be a jerk and take up more room than we needed.
- Because of the cold, we didn’t see many animals on the Marharaja Jungle Trek. The kids had been looking forward to seeing the bats.
- The prices of the entrées at Victoria and Albert’s and Citricos! Yikes! (We
had gone over the Grand Floridian after our ‘Ohana dinner to check the resort
out.) Ah, well. The food on the menus sounds delicious, though! Definitely
not a chicken nuggets and fries kind of place. It would be nice to go to a
restaurant without having to cut-up everyone's meat, worry about the mess that
the kids are making, and have a dinner discussion about something other than
Power Rangers, Pokemon or Spiderman!
- My 8 year old, who has Asperger’s, was having a great time playing with Wes
Palm at the entrance to Animal Kingdom. For those of you who don’t know, Wes
Palm is a palm tree that is similar to PUSH, the walking, talking trashcan in
Tommorowland. Wes was chasing him around, and my guy said “Get away from me!” Wes pretended to be hurt, and left ‘crying.’ I never did convince my kid that
Wes was playing with him and wasn’t really upset! He still talks about it to
this day. I think that we’re going to write an apology letter so that we can
have closure on this issue.
The Good and the Bad:
- MK EMH was wall-to-wall people on the right side of the park, but nearly empty on the left side. Go figure! I guess everyone felt the need to ride Space Mountain at the same time or something. Pirates of the Caribbean was a walk-on.
- Our photopass pictures turned out terribly, but this is not the fault of the
photographers at all. We are just not a photogenic group, and I am their ugly
photo queen! It was a lot of fun going through our awful photographs with the
photopass people, trying to choose our free 5x7. They tried to be polite, but
they laughed with us when they saw that we could laugh at ourselves.
Really Good Stuff:
- Primeval Whirl was super fun--much better than I expected.
- The safari was entertaining as always, and the photographer of our group got some good shots.
- It’s Tough to Be a Bug---always a favorite.
- The temporary tattoos that we purchased for the kids lasted a long time after
our trip.
- Pictures with Terk and my toddler turned out very cute.
- Flights of Wonder was a very funny and informative show.
Grubbin’ around AK:
- Pizzafari—very nicely themed restaurant. The meatballs on the child’s
spaghetti were delicious! The Italian sandwich was also very good.
- ‘Ohana---great food, lots of fun, good service. We were even seated a little
earlier than our reserved time. The kids had a ball with the coconut races and
the limbo contest. Fabulous: the scalloped potatoes, the grilled shrimp, the
honey lime dressing on the salad, and the bread pudding. We had a great table
location, right in the middle of the restaurant, with a view of the castle.
Oh---and the mixed drinks were great, too! I love the Lapu Lapu, served in a
fresh pineapple.
- Anadapur Tea Company---hot chai tea is just what we needed on a cold day.
Yak & Yeti---no, we didn’t eat there…but the smell that was wafting out of that
place was incredible! It is on our to-do list for next time.
What I’d do differently:
- I have noticed that unexpected high crowd levels = frustration level with our group. MLK weekend is a busy weekend! We will go expecting big crowds next time. Most of Tour Guide Mike’s advice was fantastic, except I think he
underestimated the crowds. Even so, his tour plans mostly worked. I am
guessing that anytime that students are out of school is going to be a high
attendance time.
- Yak & Yeti! If it tastes half as good as it smells…
- Go to the Nemo show.
- If I can work up the courage, try Expedition Everest.
- Hopefully try Kali River Rapids. It is always too cold to ride when we have
been.
Page: 1, 2, 3, 4
|
