Trip Report A Short Trip To WDW

Hello Friends,

We are less than 24 hrs away from another trip to WDW. This is the first trip there for us since our Cruise/WDW trip October last year. It will be a short, 5-day trip, but it promises to be jam packed.

Of course, we will get to see the tail end of the F&G Festival. But the one we are looking forward to is doing the Wild Africa Trek at Animal Kingdom. We have always wanted to do this, but never found the time or opportunity till now. So we are definitely excited about ticking this off our list.

And certainly, we want to see the new nighttime show at Animal Kingdom. We have a fast-pass reservation for it, so hopefully, we have a good viewing area. We also plan to see Wishes, probably for the very last time before it ends this summer. It will be an emotional goodbye, because it was during Wishes many, many years ago that I realized how much I love WDW, and that even in the pouring rain, there was no other place that I'd rather be at that time.

I'm almost all packed, even though unlike our normal SOP, we will be leaving rather later than usual. So I have almost half a day tomorrow to figure out what I'm forgetting.

As usual, I'll try to post live while I'm on the trip, followed by a more comprehensive report either when I'm back in my room or when I'm back home.

Zz.

 

[ZapperZ]

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We then headed to the pavilion right in the middle of the African savanna. This was where we had our bathroom break and also where we got our light lunch.

As they prepared our lunch, we enjoyed the stunning view of the savanna and also the animals and the safari vehicles.

Soon, we were served with our lunch. The lunches came in nice tiffin boxes.

When you open the lid, this is what you see in the top level. There are cured meats, potato salad, and fruits, with a garnish of an edible flower.

Removing the top level, you get more food. You get tandoori shrimp, turkey roll with jicama slaw, humus, and mini Naans.

The food was DELICIOUS! I wish there were more, it was that good. Here's what it looked like at the end.

We asked and got to keep the bamboo spoon that we used to eat the food.

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[PacNWTigger]

You are totally selling me on doing the safari the next time I visit WDW!! Thank you for sharing all of the pics and giving a great description of your adventure.

 

[ZapperZ]

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After lunch, we continued with our private safari. We saw more animals and very detailed description of each one of them. The vehicle stopped every time we encountered something interesting.

We concluded our Africa Wild Trek by casting where we would like our donation to go. When you take this excursion, you also donated to the Disney Conservation fund. For this trek, we get to tell them where we would like our donations to go to. They gave us each a stone pebble, and on our way out, we can drop the pebble into one of the many different types of animals that we want to support, or if you don't have any particular type of animals, you can just drop your pebble into the general fund.

I dropped mine for the big cats. I love cheetahs in general, and they are part of the "big cats" that are in danger.

Finally, these were our cast members tour guides. They were terrific, and you'd be lucky to get them if you go on one of these things.

I had a wonderful time doing the Wild Africa Trek. It was well worth the money, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat!

Zz.

 

[LadyBelle]

That was awesome. That bridge freaked me out, and I was sitting at my desk.

 

[blreinsel]

I definitely want to do the Wild Africa Trek someday... I've heard so many great things about it and your posts just make it even clearer that I need to experience it for myself!

 

[MinnieM123]

Enjoyed your photos of the Wild Africa Trek -- I (almost) felt like I was there! I've heard good reviews about it from others as well.

The food looked delicious and was so nicely presented.

 

[ZapperZ]

That was awesome. That bridge freaked me out, and I was sitting at my desk.

Did you get a bit of a vertigo there?

Strangely enough, once I was on the bridge, I didn't have any sense of apprehension or nervousness. I knew that I was safely harnessed, and while the bridge looked rickety, it was sturdier than it looked. Certainly Disney does not want one of their guests to be an unplanned crocs meal for the day. That would be a worse publicity than being dragged bloodied and unconscious from an airplane seat.

Zz.

 

[ZapperZ]

I definitely want to do the Wild Africa Trek someday... I've heard so many great things about it and your posts just make it even clearer that I need to experience it for myself!

We had always wanted to do this since they first announced it years ago. But no one else in the group that we often travel with wanted to do it. So when we found out that we will be traveling "alone" this time around, we decided to go for it.

Now we can't wait to do it again some time soon.

Zz.

 

[ZapperZ]

Enjoyed your photos of the Wild Africa Trek -- I (almost) felt like I was there! I've heard good reviews about it from others as well.

The food looked delicious and was so nicely presented.

It was. I think everyone in the excursion took lots of photos of the food. The shrimp dish was just scrumptious, and I wish there were more.

We were told that the food was prepared at Tusker House. What we were served were not on the menu there, since this was a meal specially prepared for Wild Africa Trek. Also, we were served lunch because our excursion went through the lunch hour. At other times, you will be served snacks, which I'm sure are also themed and served in a similar way.

Zz.

 

[ZapperZ]

We attended our first viewing of Rivers of Light at DAK. We had fastpasses to it, so we got good seating. In fact, if you sit in the viewing pavilion, I don't think there is a bad seat in there. They may have to add more seating if this becomes popular.

Before the start of the show, there were interesting sounds and light show on the trees on the opposite side of the lagoon. While I thought it was interesting, they were a bit too far away for me to see clearly. My guess is that this may evolve a bit more to provide a more definitive display. But it was definitely imaginative and something I'd like to see more.

Now the show itself. Here are a few pictures that I took.

So, visually, the show is amazing, and it is definitely unique for WDW. There are definitely elements to fit in with the theme of DAK. My biggest complain here are the two boats carrying the people dressed in some unknown characters. They were extremely annoying and DISTRACTING. I do not see how they fit into whatever story or message that the show was trying to convey. Even worse, one could blatantly see a cast member dressed in black, sitting in the boats, that was not part of the show. There was no attempt to hide this person.

The music was disappointing. The first half of the music was fun, and I found myself toetapping to the lively tune. "We should buy the CD if they have this music." I said to myself. Then, the singing started and it went downhill from there. The music from that point onward was unmemorable. What was fun and catchy became rather boring. They would have done better if they eliminated the 2nd half of the music and stuck with what they had in the beginning. Because of that, I didn't bother looking to see if the music was available on CD.

Overall, I'd definitely see this again, but there was a bit of a letdown with the quality of the show, maybe because I was expecting a lot more. I remember my reaction when I saw Illuminations and Wishes for the first time, and I didn't get that feeling when I saw Rivers of Light.

Now, regarding the crowd control after the show ended. As we exited the viewing pavilion, we see signs directing us to the right to exit, meaning they were directing us towards Dinoland. I thought this was odd because I would have preferred going out through Asia. Of course, since we sat on the side of EE, as we make our way out, we bump into the crowds that sat on the Dinoland side, making for a very congested area right next to the theater. That was the first head-scratcher.

But the second one was why they wanted us to go out this way since all of us had to pass through the bottle neck right under the dinosaur that is the entrance to Dinoland. Again, that made no sense. It took us quite a long time just to get back to Discovery island. This was not how I wanted my day at DAK to end. If I get to see this show again, I may investigate if they'll stop us from going left and walking through Asia to exit, or maybe I'll just sit around for a while longer and let the crowd dissipate before walking out.

Zz.

 

[fractal]

Thanks for the report!

Wild Africa Trek looks amazing.

I appreciate the review of Rivers of Light. Haven't decided yet if that's something I want to spend time at.

 

[ZapperZ]

I appreciate the review of Rivers of Light. Haven't decided yet if that's something I want to spend time at.

I still think you should view it at least once, in its current incarnation. I have no doubt that the show will evolve as Disney gets more feedback. Which, btw, I've given since almost a couple of days after we saw it, we received an e-mail from Disney asking us to participate in a survey about Rivers of Light.

And yes, I've taken the survey and gave them the same feedback that I've written here.

Zz.

 

[ZapperZ]

We of course caught the tail end of the F&G festival at Epcot. Here are a few of the photos that I snapped of the festival.

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[ZapperZ]

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We spent a lot of time in the butterflies house. It was a lot of fun since there were quite a few butterflies in there, and a few that had escaped.

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[ZapperZ]

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And here's the last batch of photos of F&G festival.

I think we did quite a lot of seeing the festival in such a short amount of time that we were there. We normally spent at least a couple of days, if not more, doing the F&G festival. But with this short trip, we only had a day. It was still better than not seeing it in person, I suppose, but I wish we had more time.

Zz.

 

[ZapperZ]

I'm going to call these next series of photos as "Where Is Everybody?".

We have been to WDW when it wasn't that busy, but on this trip, there had been several times when I noticed the parks and DS were uncommonly and unusually less crowded. I posted earlier showing the standby wait time for Toys Story Mania at 30 minutes in the middle of the day, which is unheard of on most days at Studios.

So this set of photos should show you just how uncrowded it got at times.

As a guest, I'm not complaining. It was nice to not have to battle large crowds all the time. A 20-minute wait to get on Frozen? Done!

Zz.

 

[ZapperZ]

I haven't had the time to do much video editing since we got back, but here's the first one. This is the rope bridge crossings that we did during the Wild Africa Trek. One of us was wearing a GoPro on a hat. So you'll basically see what we saw.

And if you freaked out watching the still pictures, you might freak out with the video as well!



I'm going to edit all the videos that we took while on the entire Wild Africa Trek excursion and hopefully get it uploaded soon.

Zz.

 

[ZapperZ]

After viewing the live streaming of the debut of "Happily Ever After" tonight, I am so, SO glad that I got to see Wishes for the final time on this trip, because this new nighttime show did not have the same emotional impact on me as Wishes did. Sure, it looked spectacular and rather dazzling with all the technical superiority when compared to Wishes, but it left me underwhelmed.

This is like Episode I, II, and III of the Star Wars saga. The special effects were easily more spectacular than Episode IV, V, and VI, but there was just not a lot of heart to make you care.

Maybe I'll change my mind when I see it in person, hopefully in December, but till then, I'm a bit disappointed.

I miss "Wishes" already.

Zz.

 

[ajrwdwgirl]

I agree that the new show didn't have the same emotional impact as Wishes and that the new show looks spectacular with some great effects. I really enjoyed the music and enjoyed watching it from my recliner tonight. I am looking forward to seeing it in person and cement my final judgement then.

 

[ZapperZ]

Of course, Disney theme park fanatics will always go looking for Hidden Mickeys whenever we are at the parks. Since it was such a short, jam-packed trip, I didn't have the luxury to spend time doing Hidden Mickey hunting. Still, we looked for the familiar ones that we remembered, and found one that we hadn't seen before.

This one, which I posted already during my "live" report, is in the Harambe Marketplace, towards the back. The Hidden Mickey is on the triangular-shaped shield lying on its side. So you'll see two black disks at the ears and the while disks as the head.

The second one is in the Morocco pavilion. Across from the Marrakesh restaurant is a room that is usually closed, since it is used for a character meet-and-greet. Inside that room is a mural painting on the wall. The Hidden Mickey can be found is one of the tower or minaret in the mural.

This one is on the 3 Caballeros ride in Mexico. The Hidden Mickey is formed by the 3 drums.

I actually spotted 2 more hidden Mickeys at MK, but I didn't snap a photo of them since we were in a hurry to get to somewhere at that time.

Zz.