Hot Times in the World: A June 2011 Trip Report!

Day 1: Monday, June 13.

In my introductory post, I mentioned that we had some face palm moments in the months leading up to this trip. The first one occurred one morning a little over 2 months before departure day, when I randomly decided to check our flight reservations to make sure everything was in order…and it wasn’t. Turns out our outgoing flight had been canceled and our new flight didn’t take off until a whopping 7 HOURS after the original flight (why the airline never emailed me to inform me of this, I do not know). Instead of arriving in Orlando at 10AM, we wouldn’t land until almost 5PM. D’oh!

This was pretty disappointing, and I allowed myself to have a mini tantrum for a few minutes before starting to think rationally about our options. We don’t fly very often, so the thought of canceling the flight and re-booking somewhere else seemed overwhelming to me – can that even be done? :shrug: The fact that I don’t even know if that’s possible shows how not savvy we are when it comes to flying. There was another flight leaving at 9:15AM from the same airline that we could switch to, but only first class seats were available – to switch to that flight would have cost us an additional $300! Ultimately we decided to just keep the flight we now had and try to look at the positives of the situation. Most importantly, we were still going to the World…that was all that mattered in the end.

So rather than getting to the airport by 5AM that Monday, we slept in until about 9, which was nice. Then it was time to take the Monster to camp!

“Lemme in, lemme in, lemme in!”



We’ve had him for a little over a year now, and this trip was to be the longest we’d be away from him to date. We knew it was going to be rough, so we were glad to be able to play and cuddle with him for a bit more than we would have otherwise…

…can you tell we don’t have kids yet?

We were already packed and found ourselves with nothing to do for a few hours after returning from doggy camp. We cleaned up the house a bit, double-checked our suitcases, and watched “The Karate Kid” on ABC Family. This was (gasp) my first time seeing the movie…I thought the final tournament was a bit anticlimactic, but it was solid overall.

Around 11:30, we headed to our favorite bagel shop for some sandwiches and were at the airport by noon. Security was quick and easy, and our flight took off on time at 2:35. Next stop, Orlando! :sohappy:

We landed at 5PM, and we were on our Magical Express bus – a Disney Cruise Line bus - by 5:30!



(As a side note, I called to add Magical Express to our reservation about 2 weeks before we left. We had been debating over whether or not to rent a car from the airport and decided not to at the last minute. The ME tags arrived in our mailbox after about a week and a half…just an FYI for anyone that’s adding Magical Express to a reservation.)

The screaming Welcome Video began to play…it must have been the first trip ever for the guy in front of me, because he recorded every single second of it:



After the welcome video, we got some entertainment…a Donald Duck cartoon!



Will was pretty excited for this (“You have to put this in the trip report!”)…they played the same cartoon on our Magical Express bus in February, and it was just as fun as we remembered. Memorable lines from Donald include: “No respect for the human body” and “Am I mortified.” Love it!

On every Magical Express ride, someone has to be the last stop, and today, it was us. No big deal, but something about the way our very nice driver was driving was not agreeing with me. First we stopped at Pop…



…then Caribbean Beach…



…then Coronado Springs…



…and I was seriously about to toss my cookies before seeing this beautiful site:



Our stop! Finally! Helloooooo, AKL! :sohappy:

I practically sprinted off the bus and the nausea quickly vanished as we merrily skipped into Jambo to check in.

Okay, so quiz time – anything wrong with the above scenario? Checking in at Jambo?...

This was hiccup #2 that occurred during my careful, careful trip planning. As I said earlier, we rented DVC points through a 3rd party point rental site. We did this way back in the fall of 2010 and, like I said before, were pretty happy with everything – the rooms we got, the cash we saved, and the responsiveness of the people that we worked with through the site, especially. I had our confirmation numbers immediately after booking and could see the reservations on Disneyworld.com.

To make a long story short (or as short as I can), about a month before we were due to leave for the trip, I got a call that the DVC member we were renting the points from had “gone AWOL” – sold their contract or something – and our reservation at Kidani had been canceled. There was nothing we could do about it, and we now had no room for the first portion of our stay. The site we were renting through apologized profusely, said this had never happened to them before, and offered to pay the difference to upgrade us to a 1-bedroom unit at Saratoga Springs since no other DVC units were available for our dates. I realize they didn’t have to do this for us, and it was a very nice offer, but we weren’t interested. We’d gotten pretty excited about staying at Animal Kingdom Lodge…that was where we ultimately wanted to be. Later that same day I was lucky to be able to book an AP-rate savanna-view room in Jambo House, so we ended up not saving as much money, but at least we were in our preferred resort. It was one stressful afternoon, but everything worked out.

I completely know that this wasn’t the rental site’s fault, and I really appreciated that they tried to make everything right (a few hours later I sent them an email saying something to that effect). Besides offering us the upgrade, they sent us our refund by check a couple of weeks later along with a $50 Disney giftcard, which was a nice gesture. The thought that our reservation can be canceled without warning by someone else at any time makes us both pretty uncomfortable…we knew it was a possibility the entire time, but it seemed so unlikely that we didn’t really give it a second thought. Now that it’s happened to us, I feel like that fear will always be in the back of our minds. Having said that *SPOILER ALERT* our second reservation at the Boardwalk Villas worked out really, really well, and as I said earlier, the people working through the site were really professional and easy to deal with, so we’ll most likely use them again in the future. But I thought I’d post this as a warning to anyone else out there that is considering renting DVC points. I know this is rare and most likely almost a worst-case scenario, but it CAN happen.

The only other thing I didn’t like about the point rental stuff was the process we had to go through to set up Magical Express. Since our Kidani reservation was canceled, we only needed to add Magical Express for our departure day from the Boardwalk Villas. To do so, we had to email the 3rd party organization, which in turn had to email the DVC member so that THEY, the DVC member, could set it up. This took longer than the control freak in me would have liked (a little over a month), but it did get done. The whole thing was definitely a learning experience.

We were in our room by 6:45PM. When one books a room with a view (which we’d never done before), the first stop must be the balcony to rip those curtains open!

Hi buddies!



Time to hydrate...and thanks to the humidity, my lens was a bit fogged



After listening to a message on our phone (Mickey and Minnie singing “Happy Anniversary to You!” ) we checked out the rest of the room…love the “mosquito netting” over the beds.



The themeing in this hotel is just awesome.





For whatever reason, I find the caption for this picture to be hilarious… “The Monkey Leaps Only As Far As It Can Reach.” That’s deep…I guess?



I give this room a thumbs-up!

More room pictures…



The balcony:



Love the chair.



And the view!





I think we’re undecided at this point as to whether we’d pay for a savanna-view room again. It was pretty neat to look out and see the animals, but we probably didn’t take advantage of it as much as we should have. :shrug: Such is life.

All of this picture taking and admiration of our new cattle friends ended pretty quickly, because we had a 7:40 dinner reservation to get to at Sanaa (I felt lucky to be able to push this back from its original time of 5:30 when the flight switch happened). I wouldn’t call us foodies exactly, but we definitely consider great meals to be an important part of our WDW trips. :slurp: At some point, however, we realized we’d been in a bit of a rut with our Disney dining - our ADR list was virtually identical over our 3 previous trips…in particular, we’d dined at Le Cellier and Chefs de France all 3 times! One of the reasons we were so looking forward to this trip was because we had decided to branch out and try lots of new (to us) restaurants. Of the 11 (!) ADRs we made for this trip, 9 meals were first-timers for us, and tonight was our first time at Sanaa.

To get to Kidani from Jambo, you can hop on a bus (I think to Downtown Disney) which will take you right to the front of the hotel, or you can use the walking path that connects the hotels. We chose to walk.

After getting directions from the front desk, we walked straight out of the lobby and followed the signs.



It was a pretty pleasant walk. The weather was starting to cool down a bit, the signage was helpful, and the path was well-lit (great for spotting those cute little lizards), though close to the parking lot traffic at times. All in all, it took us about 10 minutes to make it to Kidani on foot.



We immediately headed to the back of the lobby and checked in at the podium...apologies for the blurriness.



I was so excited for this dinner and, from looking at the menu, I especially thought Will would love it. We were seated at 7:30, about a minute after we checked in, and sadly not at one of those awesome savanna-view tables. I stupidly didn’t get any pictures of the dining room as a whole, but we loved it immediately – the ambiance was relaxing and intimate. Just perfect. It seemed a bit small to me…maybe that’s the norm for a resort table service restaurant? It’s definitely not a bad thing, just something that struck me.

Not-so-Hidden Mickey in the table!





Our awesome server Randall wished us a happy anniversary and took our drink order…a glass of Riesling for me, and the Safari Amber for Will (made by Budweiser I guess). Yum!



After putting in our entrée orders, we were serenaded by the cast members that had checked us in. They were sort of parading around the restaurant with a drum and singing to anyone that had something to celebrate! No picture, unfortunately, but it was fun.

And then, dinner was served! We both ordered from the “Slow Cooked in Gravy, Simple and Well Seasoned portion of the menu. For Will, the Coconut-Curry Lamb, Basmati Rice, and Spicy Durban Chicken (which Randall described as a 7 on the scale of 1 to really, really spicy)…he’d actually ordered the Chicken with Red Curry Sauce (3 or 4 on the spicy scale), but they brought the Durban instead, which he ended up liking anyway.

For me, the Chicken with Red curry Sauce (a 7 of spiciness is too spicy for me), the Five-grain pilaf, and the Beef Short Ribs.



The CM that brought our meals out was dressed in a chef’s coat and informed us that the “best” way to eat the meals was to dump all of the food out of the small bowls and into the long, rectangular plate so that the sauces would mix in with the rice. We took her advice.

This meal was delicious, unlike anything either of us have ever had. My chicken was good, but the beef was better…very tender and could easily be pulled apart with my fork. The flavors really went well together, and combining the sauce with the rice was great advice from the CM. One thing that Will and I discussed was the portion size – at first Will didn’t think it would be enough food, but it turned out to be the perfect amount. We were satisfied, but not uncomfortably full. We agreed that anyone with a bigger appetite might not be satisfied with the amount of food on the plate, but we certainly were.

After clearing our plates, Randall asked if we were “fans of chocolate”, though I misheard it as “friends of chocolate.” Either way, yes Randall, yes we are. And we unexpectedly got our first (but not last) complimentary dessert of the week! We were each served a chocolate cake with raspberry sorbet…heavenly.



Again, great portion size and completely delicious. We’ll definitely be returning to Sanaa in the future.

After our excellent dinner, we walked back to Jambo where I began my hunt for an Animal Kingdom Lodge coffee mug. There were none in the gift shop, but there were many shot glasses with the resort logo…seriously, shot glasses but no coffee mugs? :shrug: Arrg! Then, when we got in our room around 9:40, we discovered that the magic of Magical Express had yet to be bestowed on us – no luggage. A quick call to the front desk confirmed that our luggage had arrived, but was sent to the wrong room. It was returned to us by 9:50 as we were watching a replay of the 1992 Wimbledon Finals – Andre Agassi def Goran Ivanisevic. Andre’s hair…seriously, how did no one know that was a weave??

Anyhoo, we were in bed around midnight, which was stupid…we had an early wake-up call the next morning!

Reading along...!

Great start!

NewfieFan said:

Reading along...!

Great start!

Click to expand...

Awesome! Thanks! :wave:

Day 2: Tuesday, June 14.

I had a horrible night of sleep the first night, I think due to sleeping in late on Monday morning…so I wasn’t all too happy when Stich called to wake me up at 5:30. Will had an entirely different reaction…in his half asleep state he took the ringing of the phone to mean that we were under attack! Maybe it was underlying anxiety about venturing off of Disney property that morning? Who knows.

We quickly brewed some coffee in the room (we love coffee…NesCafé, not so much) and headed down to the Mara around 6:15 to grab a quick breakfast. The place was pretty empty…we gobbled down our muffins quickly, took bananas for the road, and headed out to the front entrance of the resort to wait for our shuttle pick-up.

In the planning stages of this trip, we went back and forth many times over what would be the best way to get to Universal – taxi, rental car, or shuttle? The taxi option was quickly shelved – we thought it would be way too much money – and we debated for weeks over our remaining choices. In the end we decided that we were such traveling noobs that we didn’t want to deal with renting a car (admittedly I over-thought it and freaked myself out after reading too many shady car rental stories, and I was afraid we’d be waiting forever at the airport to pick the car up) and went with the Mears shuttle option: $19 round-trip for both of us. We were given a few options for pick-up times (I believe 6:50, 7:50, 8:50…something along those lines) and we chose the 6:50 since I’d heard that a shuttle could possibly make multiple stops on its way to the park. I figured the possibility of stops was less likely on such an early shuttle. The earliest the shuttle would pick us up to return to WDW was 3:15, so that’s what we went with. The obvious downside was relinquishing control of when we could come and go, and we were both a bit nervous about that, especially with the heat.

We caught our shuttle a bit early, around 6:40. It was a larger van, and our driver (who was very nice, but very chatty…and my coffee hadn’t kicked in yet :dazzle informed us that we had 2 more pick-ups to make, at All Star Movies and All Star Music. We picked up our other charges – a mom with 2 daughters and a couple from California who we became friendly with – and headed to Islands of Adventure. We were dropped off at about 7:30 in the bus pick-up area, just outside of CityWalk, and were instructed to return to that same spot about 20 minutes ahead of our pick-up time.

People movin’:



Quickly arriving at CityWalk:





We were the second group of non-Universal resort guests lined up at the entrance gates around 7:40 (just behind our new friends from California). The Universal resort guests were let into the park at 7:50…and I’m pretty sure we saw the mom with 2 daughters from AS Music successfully sneaking in around that time as well.



I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure this was my theme park admission ticket.



Okay, so this report is title “Hot Times…” and I mean HOT. Highs in the mid-high 90s every day. Two pale Ohioans (one, i.e. me, much more pale than the other) are not used to such weather. Yowza. Anyway, while waiting in line, I saw a girl, maybe 13 or 14, dressed in full-on Gryffindor rodes. Props for the dedication, but it’s 97 degrees out!

Anyway, we got a nice surprise…we were let into the park at 8:30, even though it was scheduled to open at 9! :sohappy:

I mentioned earlier that we’d become friendly with the couple from California. They had been to Islands of Adventure earlier in the week and were full of helpful hints and suggestions, so when we were let into the park, we just followed them. We (and, let’s face it, everyone else there) sort of veered to the right, bypassed Seuss Landing and the Lost Continent, and made our way into Hogsmeade.

Before I talk about where we were headed – the Forbidden Journey – I will say that you need to store all loose items in a locker before riding. EVERYTHING that we brought with us – hats, glasses, wallets – went into a locker, except for my little point-and-shoot camera, which I was able to tie to a belt loop. There is a set of lockers right at the entrance to Hogsmeade, which is where we stored our stuff, and another set right when you enter Hogwarts Castle (and the queue for the Forbidden Journey), which was mobbed. I’d suggest using the first set of lockers. I will also say that if you want to ride the Forbidden Journey, get to the park before opening and make Forbidden Journey your first stop of the morning, unless you want to ride Single Rider or have tons of time to look at the queue. By the time we got in line, the wait was already 45 minutes…at 8:35AM! It was 2 hours the rest of the day, where the Single Rider line was about a 10 minute wait.

****SPOILER ALERT (for real): If you don’t want to know anything about Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, or the queue for the Forbidden Journey, I suggest you skip the next two posts!****

After shoving our possessions in a locker, I tied my little point-and-shoot to a belt loop and we, along with our California pals (I never got their names! What a dope! :hammer, took off for Hogwarts. The wait time was posted at 45 minutes (10 minutes for single riders), which was fine by me…I wanted to take in the whole queue and completely geek out.

Apologies for the pictures of the queue, which are just awful. I have not mastered my little point-and-shoot in the dark, and the line was actually moving pretty quickly! I am pretty sure the guys behind us in line were annoyed that I was stopping for pictures. Tough cookies, fellas.

“I show not your face, but your heart’s desire.”



After a quick gaze into the Mirror of Erised, and an explanation to Will as to what it was, we were routed outside to the green house.



The fans kept it quite cool out there, and I was surprised, and pleased, to find drinking fountains scattered throughout, instead of pop/water machines, which is Cedar Point’s M.O.

Another shot further along in the greenhouse, when they’d just opened up other parts of the queue (you can see it start to fill in the back of the photo):



Peeking up at the Castle from inside the greenhouse:



An immobile, silent Mandrake Plant…I couldn’t believe it wasn’t screaming at us! Oh well, at least we didn't need to wear earmuffs in the 90+ heat.

****SPOILER ALERT (for real): If you don’t want to know anything about Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, or the queue for the Forbidden Journey, I suggest you skip this post!****

About to re-enter the castle:



Gryffindor in the lead! (Of course.)



Lots of warnings, but I love how they did the signage:



This is where the pictures get truly horrible. The portrait hall:



Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom:



We also passed the holograms of Dumbledore and Harry, Hermione and Ron at one point, but the line was moving so fast that we didn’t have time to hear what they were saying…so we missed the set-up for the ride.

The queue, I thought, was excellent. Just really well done and detailed. It was one of those rare times where I wanted the line to move slower so that I could take everything in.

And the ride?

****LAST WARNING: If you don’t want to hear about Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, skip the rest of this post!!

We hopped on our “enchanted bench” and within about 5 seconds of the ride starting I knew we were in trouble. I deliberately did not read much about the ride, because I wanted to be surprised, but I did know going in that it was a motion simulator. Will and I don’t do particularly well with these type of rides - Soarin’ and Dinosaur are our limit – so this was a pretty miserable experience for us. The technology was cool, as was the use of the screens, but I thought they looked grainy (or maybe that was me having some sort of panic attack?) and I wasn’t too impressed with the animatronics. Also, the ride broke down near the dragon scene, and we were stopped for a good 10-20 seconds, which, if I’d been enjoying myself, would have completely ruined the ride. In this instance, I actually welcomed the short break. I liked the Whomping Willow part, but I was surprised that there was 1. No Severus Snape (seriously?? He’s one of my favorite characters, and so important to the story…I cannot believe they left him out) and 2. No showdown with You-Know-Who. I kept waiting for Voldemort to show up at some point, and when the end of the ride came and all the students were clapping for us I thought it was some sort of trick, and that we’d get the final battle scene. Thankfully it was truly over. Needless to say, we’re never riding the Forbidden Journey again. ****

For anyone who skipped my description of the Forbidden Journey, a brief, spoiler-free recap: The ride made us both feel really, really sick and really, really terrible.

After getting off the ride, which we’d been on with our California friends who’d ridden it now 4 times, they turned to us gleefully – what did we think?? I was afraid to open my mouth for fear that I’d vomit all over the store (sorry!), so I just mumbled that it was great, thanked them for their help, and hightailed it out of that store (yep, just like Disney, we exited the ride into a gift shop). We quickly found our locker and retrieved our stuff (it was 9:30 and we were well over the free 30-minute mark, so a Universal worker opened the locker for us to get a wallet to pay the $3 fee) and got out of Hogsmeade as quickly as possible. The place was PACKED: Ollivander’s line was about 100 people long outside the store, and the Forbidden Journey line extended out into the Jurassic Park area. Look, I love the Hogsmeade area, and I think they did a perfect job as far as replicating the movie set, but I’ll echo what practically everyone else has said: that place is not built for theme park crowds. It’s SMALL. And the heat, combined with how truly awful we felt and all of the people was a recipe for disaster. We had to get out.

We escaped to the empty land of the dinosaurs…anyone not interested in Harry Potter was probably able to ride every other ride in the park multiple times that morning:





Just getting out of Hogsmeade seemed to have a rejuvenating effect on Will. He can get slightly claustrophobic at times, so being somewhere with a bit of breathing room worked wonders for him. After eating a granola bar and convincing me that eating would make me feel better, I did…and it did! We were on the mend.

We walked around the rest of Universal, going in and out of stores every 5 minutes or so for a blast of air conditioning.



And we found…Duff! Which they sell as an energy drink. We are huge Simpsons fans, so Will bought two cans, took them to the bathroom and promptly dumped the Red Bull-like liquid down the sink. In this picture he’s covering up the “energy drink” notice on the can.

Duff beer for me, Duff beer for you! I’ll have a Duff, you have one too!



Blech!



We found ourselves in the Marvel area next, where we were surprised that we were unable to identify about 90% of the characters in the land…curses!



We’d planned on going on about 4-5 more rides, but Forbidden Journey wrecked us. We were done for the day. So we passed this one up…



…but met the man instead!





Side note about the Universal pictures…no one would take one of the 2 of us with my camera, and when I went to take a picture of a professional photo on the screen, the woman behind the counter quickly shut the screen off, explaining that I could only buy the photo, not take a picture of it. Alrighty.

Next up was Seuss Landing:



My brother and I were pretty into Dr. Seuss growing up…I thought this place was cute:



We then found a store, not just for the AC this time though. Just like our last 2 trips, Will had forgotten his sunglasses (they are still missing!), so he begrudgingly picked up a new pair…boo!





By then we felt okay enough to think about eating an actual meal, so we headed back to the Jurassic Park area to find some grub. During the initial recovery phase after Forbidden Journey we’d managed to stumble into a combination gift shop/quick service-type building that was filled with AC and empty of people – perfect for us to recover in – so we headed back there. I believe the area with the food was called Burger Digs or something like that, and we both got chicken fingers with fries. It hit the spot.

Sweet a live trip report for my lunch break. I'm already hooked

After lunch, we…er, I…decided it was time to venture back into Hogsmeade. Will wanted no part of all those people in such a tiny, cramped area, but he obliged.

Them’s the rules!



ZOMG! The Hogwarts Express!





Earlier in the morning, I’d successfully entered Honeydukes for a quick AC blast, but not this time…people were packed in like sardines.



The castle!



They did a great job on the castle…it was incredibly detailed.

I convinced Will to look in one store (the Owl Post, I think), and what a mistake that was. I understand JK Rowling wanted to stay true to her vision, but those stores are TINY. We got inside and couldn’t move – just stood there – and I wondered aloud if the place was handicap-accessible (I mean, it's gotta be, right? If it is, it's just barely), and the woman in front of me remarked that it was probably a fire hazard to have everyone packed in like this. The design of these stores was a huge mistake. We got out quickly.

Going in to this day trip to Universal, I was pretty sure it was the only time we’d every visit the park, so I wanted to come away with SOME sort of souvenir. I found my answer:



Delicious butterbeer. A non-souvenir plastic cup was ridiculously priced at $8.75, and the souvenir mug was even more ridiculous at $11.50 or something like that. Let’s face it, they could charge probably $15 for a cup and everyone will buy it – the HP-faithful all want to try the stuff. So I decided $11.50 for what would probably be my only Harry Potter souvenir wasn’t too bad and bit the bullet. You can get the butterbeer the normal way (just like cream soda, but sweeter), or frozen, like a frozen coke. I opted for the normal stuff…so tasty! Whatever they add on at the end to make the head is super good. I was nice and split it with Will…mostly due to the price and the fact that I would have been in a diabetic coma drinking it myself.

Yum!



I approve!

350ceo said:

Sweet a live trip report for my lunch break. I'm already hooked

Click to expand...

Awesome! Thanks!

Bad Owl Post! Bad! Too many people!



And of course, we couldn’t even get near this place:



After we got home, I realized I took a bunch of pictures of the signs, but no pictures of the actual buildings/street itself. D’oh! So, yeah...here’s another sign picture:



By then it was about 12:30, and we decided we had had our fill of Universal, so we headed for the front of the park. For anyone that wants some HP merch without fighting the Hogsmeade crowds, I suggest checking out the big gift shop near the entrance (Trading Point or Post or something like that) – all of the HP merch is there, but you don’t border on the edge of insanity because the store is big and empty. Lovely.

We checked out the limited Simpsons merchandise (no BORT license plates?!? Seriously???) before taking a more relaxed look at the HP stuff.

Chocolate Frogs:



And broomsticks!

They say the wand chooses the wizard…



Probably a big seller:



The other HP souvenir I was interested in was a house scarf, but those were a no-go. They were thin and priced at about $40…I could knit one myself for that kind of cash, and it would be warmer, too. I’ll pass. And let me say, I felt really funny about contemplating buying a scarf in the 90-degree weather.



I found it really weird that they were selling Tri-Wizard cups…



One of my faves!



Doing his best Voldy impression:



Done with the shop, we left Islands of Adventure with 2 more hours to kill before our shuttle pick-up time. Things went downhill when I had what I can only describe as a slight, mini panic attack. The heat had really gotten to me, I guess, and I just wanted to go back to the hotel and swim, shower, whatever, and I was panicking at the thought of not being able to do that until after 3. I practically begged Will to consider taking a taxi, and though hesitant at first, he agreed. There were taxis waiting in the same area where we’d been dropped off that morning, and we got one quickly. After canceling our return shuttle, Will told me that taking the taxi was the best idea I’d had all day, and that if I hadn’t had a meltdown over the heat, he probably would have eventually. The ride cost us $42 after tip (worth every penny), and we were back in our room by 1:30.

So that was our mini-trip to Universal. We liked it, but we don’t think we’ll be back. It was just missing…I don’t know, something. It’s hard to describe, and we were trying to figure it out the rest of the week. Overall, I just don’t think it immersed us in another place the way Disney does, except for the Harry Potter area, which looks great. Congratulations Disney, we’re still hooked on you!

Despite the extra cash we plunked down for the cab, we were thrilled to be back at the hotel. After admiring the view a bit more…



…it was time for the pool!



We found a couple of chairs in the shade. The pool was, I thought, surprisingly empty.



Looking up from the lounger:



I was on the swim team through high school and college, so I’ve had my fill of chlorine to last a lifetime – normally I don’t enjoy swimming for fun very much, but that day, and for the rest of the trip, the water felt AMAZING. My heat-induced panic was gone.

Ahhh…



Hardly an original idea, but I thought it was fun.



Much happier than we were a few hours earlier.



When we’d had our fill of the pool, it was time for a snack from the Mara. Turkey sandwich for Will, and for me…zebra domes! Yum.

By the time we returned to our room for some post-swim showers, it was 3PM. We would have just been getting on the shuttle to come back to the hotel…so glad we took that taxi!

We took naps (which would become a daily necessity! ) and got cleaned up quickly…time for a reservation at our favorite restaurant EVER…Jiko! :sohappy:







We checked in a bit before our 5:30 reservation and waited in the bar area. We were pleased and surprised to be taken to a water-view table! Awesome!







Our server, Hassan, brought us another surprise…as a thank you from the chef for staying at the lodge, we were given a complimentary amuse bouche! I don’t remember exactly what was in it…it reminded me of couscous with orange and mint flavors, topped with Greek yogurt. Yum!