Trip Report *COMPLETED* Allll the fun...and other musings - an August trip report

Some preamble
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Burnett Family Trip Report – Summer Edition. Before you commit to reading this, be warned that it may take a bit of time to complete this as I have 10 days to cover with something like 900 pictures to pick from and a busy next few weeks.

Some trip info
I could direct you to our epic pre-trip report found here: http://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/...the-fun-august-20-29-ptr.915198/#post-7298480
but I’ll save you the trouble and recap the important stuff here.

Who's travelling

From left to right there is my wife Tammy, Myself (Graham), our daughter Steph (Stephanie) and our son Liam.

When
August 20th – August 29th

Where
Animal Kingdom Lodge – Kidani Village in a studio

Anything else
The only other kind of interesting/problematic thing is that Steph has been having some foot problems for the past few months. She’s been off karate and has been going to physio, acupuncture and chiro, but at the end of two months her foot is still sore. This may come into play during our trip…

So……Let’s get started

August 18th-19th – some pre-trip stuff

We had some pre-trip stuff to take care of before we could get our vacation started.

Step 1: Take the feline members of our family to my Mom and Dad’s. We have two cats that we rescued from the SPCA when they were kittens.

We have Zoey who is 7

and we have Pyper (the torty) who is 5. They typically like being at my parents place as it is quiet and they don’t have to worry about….

Step 2: So it is early July and we’re out driving on a Saturday. “Let’s go to the SPCA just for fun” Tammy says…. Long story short “Let’s go to the SPCA just for fun” became this:

This is Cooper. He’s about 6 months old. We really don’t know what he is (We think a Daschund/Lab mix. Don’t aske me how that happens). The cats aren’t overly thrilled with him yet (Pyper hides. Zoey is the boss and smacks Cooper around when he gets out of line).

We found a great place for Cooper to stay while we were away which we were happy about. The place came and picked Cooper up on Friday morning (the 19th) and with that we were almost ready.
I went to work on the 19th, but had booked a ½ day off to do some last minute running around/packing. Tammy runs an in-home daycare, so she was working the whole day. Around 5 the final kid was picked up, and we were ready to go.

We jumped in the car and took off across the border to the Sleep Inn in Buffalo, where we’d be staying for the night, before our flight the next morning. We made a quick stop at Sam’s Club to pick up some breakfast items, and then called it a night. We were in bed by 10, and ready to get this trip officially started.

More to come

 

[Tuvalu]

Does Carol fund allll your Disney trips?

Adorable puppy! Of course I love the kitties too!

 

[gwhb75]

August 20 – Decisions, Decisions…and free ice cream

5AM…For the most part 5AM is not a great time to wake up….unless there is a plane taking you to Disney waiting. At 5AM the alarm on my tablet went off, and the phone in the room started ringing for our wake-up call. Tammy and I got up first and started getting ready. The kids were up shortly after that, and we were out of the room and down in the hotel lobby waiting for our shuttle. We grabbed some breakfast and waited.

There was a bit of a weird thing that happened (not to us). We’re having breakfast and there is a couple sitting at a table behind us taking their time eating their breakfast. The shuttle driver approaches them and asks if they booked the 6:30 shuttle, which they had. He points out that it’s now 6:35. They decide they should go make some toast first? I’m a very punctual person, so I don’t get when people are late when they could have been on time.

Anyways…we finish breakfast and go wait out front for out shuttle to come.

A short wait and before we know it we’re on the way to the airport. We get to the airport and check our bags (and we must be experts at this as our heaviest bag was 50 lbs on the dot). Next up was TSA screening. We head over to security and head through the pre-screen line (we have Nexus card). We get to the guard and present our cards and our boarding passes. He takes a look at the passes and the cards and tells us we have to go through the normal line? I take a look at the passes, and for some reason only Stephanie’s boarding pass shows that she’s been pre-screened. Not sure how that happened. Regardless, the normal line was pretty empty so we went through that with no problem.

We grab some more caffeine on the way to the gate, and then begin the “long” walk to our gate (in reality, Buffalo airport is pretty small).

We get to the gate, find four seats together, sit and start waiting.

Then an announcement was made…”Hi everyone. We have overbooked our flight today and we have a family who needs to get to Orlando as soon as possible. We are looking for 5 people who would be willing to take a later flight.” Normally we would just ignore this, but the offer was too good to not at least consider. Southwest was offering $400/person + your current flight reimbursed + the flight down to Orlando later in the day. For us that would work out to over $2,000. We went over to the desk and said we’d be willing to do it, but they couldn’t find us flights together later in the day (our current flight was at 8:20am, and the best they could get us was one flight for two at 5:30pm with a stop in Baltimore, and another direct flight for two at 6:30pm). Tammy hates flying as it is, so I knew this would be a no-go. We tried finding a way for it to work, but in the end there wasn’t anything we could work out. It would have been nice, but we were happy either way.

We started boarding around 7:45am and were in the air on time.

The flight down was really good.

The kids are older now, and they know that Tammy hates flying, so they brought some games to play with her to keep her distracted. One thing about Southwest airplanes (or most airplanes for that matter)….They aren’t made for people as tall as me. I’m 6’4” so planes tend to be a bit of a tight squeeze for me…and don’t get me started on the bathrooms. Speaking of the bathrooms, what exactly is this button for?

I wonder what made them think that someone may want a cold refreshing beverage while using the facilities. I was tempted to push it, but decided I didn’t want to use my “you need to grow up” activity so early in the trip.

The flight down was great, and we arrived around 10:25.

We made our way to the ME desk and were on the bus in no time.

almost there

A quick ride, and we were at AKL by 11:30.

to be continued

 

[fractal]

great start, following along!

PS - what do you mean? Airplane bathroom water is the best.

 

[Courtney6682]

Following along....love your TR's!

 

[joshsprincess921]

I'm in! I love your reports! Great start!

 

[gwhb75]

August 20 continued

Check in went smoothly and, bonus, our room was ready.

We had a studio on the 5th floor really close to the lobby. We were really happy about this. A few room shots (we had a standard view studio, so no cool views from the balcony this time). We run up to the room and drop off our carry-ons, and head out.

a shot from the outside (we were in the top room with the green balcony)

The plan today was to go to AK (since it was so close). We got on our first Disney bus ride (ME doesn’t count). Ever wondered what’s inside that little black box by the rear doors.

You’re welcome

We get to AK in about 5 minutes and scan our bands and head in….except for Tammy. For some reason the little Mickey head kept turning blue for her. Unfortunately she wasn’t carrying any ID with her, so she had to go over to Guest Services and answer some verification questions to prove she was who she said she was. That didn’t take too long, and soon we were in the park.

more to come

 

[CtDisneyGuy33]

Great trip report so far! You guys always have a great report - clearly I should vacation with you guys

Following!

 

[sheriffwoody]

Great start! I've also always wondered what that button in the airplane bathroom does... If you find out, do share.

 

[Tiggerish]

I wonder what made them think that someone may want a cold refreshing beverage while using the facilities. I was tempted to push it, but decided I didn’t want to use my “you need to grow up” activity so early in the trip.

That button is to call a flight attendant in case you get incapacitated in the loo and need help. Seriously.
(wouldn't it be embarrassing to have to use it?)

 

[gwhb75]

That button is to call a flight attendant in case you get incapacitated in the loo and need help. Seriously.
(wouldn't it be embarrassing to have to use it?)

Would he or she be carrying a drink when they came to assist me? I would expect, based on the button, that would the case

 

[gwhb75]

Great start! I've also always wondered what that button in the airplane bathroom does... If you find out, do share.

Maybe on the next flight...

 

[gwhb75]

Great trip report so far! You guys always have a great report - clearly I should vacation with you guys

Following!

Feel free to tag along some time. My only concern would be that we aren't as much fun in person as we are in trip reports.

 

[gwhb75]

I'm in! I love your reports! Great start!

Thanks for following along

 

[gwhb75]

great start, following along!

PS - what do you mean? Airplane bathroom water is the best.

Would that be called the mile high drink club?

 

[gwhb75]

Following along....love your TR's!

Awesome. Thanks for following

 

[prfctlyximprct]

Great start! Would just about die to stay at AKL! Love the resort pics

 

[gwhb75]

August 20th continued

So Tammy and I head into the parks (we had told the kids to go ahead without us and we'd meet them later).

One thing I should mention is that we're using a really cool new app this year. The app is called ResQWalk, and I
encourage everyone to download it and use it. All it does is tracks how far you walk every day (when you turn it on), and then the company that runs it donates money to the animal rescue of your choice based on how far you walk vs how far everyone else who has the app walks in a given time period. We racked up quite a few miles during our trip using it.

If you’ve read my previous trip reports, you already know where the kids wanted us to go first. Everest.

I knew this, so had booked a FP for 12:30. The ride was great.

After our ride we headed to Yak & Yeti (QS) for lunch.

We got 3 honey chicken and rice (Tammy and I split one).

It was really good.

After lunch we headed back to the hotel to swim and check out the Community Hall (it was around 2:30pm). We stopped by the small store and picked up some milk and refillable mugs. Tammy and I decided to go back to the room while the kids went to Community Hall (where they discovered the DVC photobooth).

We were surprised when we opened the door to our room and saw that our bags had arrived already. Tammy and I were tired so we had a nap (the early morning combined with the heat kind of knocked us out a bit).

still more to come

 

[gwhb75]

Great start! Would just about die to stay at AKL! Love the resort pics

It is probably our favourite resort to stay at. There's some more resort pics coming.

 

[gwhb75]

August 20th continued

We slept until around 4, and headed down to the pool. We stopped by Community Hall on the way down where we too discovered the DVC photobooth.

Now we were warned by @lostpro9het about how addicting the photobooth thing is. He wasn't kidding. We took so many picures with it over the 10 days. However, this was our first attempt and we had no idea what we were doing (the booth takes 3 pictures in a row.) I thought the camera seemed really off. Follow the progression along:

We both had to crouch down low for the first one,

then we stood further for the second but still had to crouch.

By the third you can tell I figured we were doing something wrong

…Oh….You mean the camera is adjustable???? Too funny.

That's better

And one more from the kids

The pool was the next order of business, and it was great.

Love it here. One more picture of the grounds for @prfctlyximprct

Around 5:30 Tammy and I headed back to the room and unpacked what we could. At 6 the kids came back. We all showered and then headed back to AK.

I took this picture for two reasons
1) Steph is now taller than Tammy which she is very happy about
2) You can’t tell from this picture, but Steph is holding Tammy’s hand. We are a really close family and do pretty much everything together. We are fortunate that Steph (who is almost 16) and Liam (who turned 13 in April), still enjoy being with us. It is pretty normal to be walking somewhere and have her grab one of our arms or hands and walk beside us (Liam is past doing that now).

more to come