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

 

[MotherofaPrincessLover]

Love the report. Do you think AKL villas would be a good place to stay with 2 young kids (which means a stroller) or too much of a hassle with always having to take the bus (collapsing the stroller)?

 

[gwhb75]

Love the report. Do you think AKL villas would be a good place to stay with 2 young kids (which means a stroller) or too much of a hassle with always having to take the bus (collapsing the stroller)?

I think it's a great resort for that age, but you have to figure out what's important to you. If not taking a bus is your big thing then AKL isn't for you. However, the pool areas are great (especially Kidani), and there's lots to do at the resort. And there are animals....'nuff said. Thanks for following along.

 

[MotherofaPrincessLover]

I think it's a great resort for that age, but you have to figure out what's important to you. If not taking a bus is your big thing then AKL isn't for you. However, the pool areas are great (especially Kidani), and there's lots to do at the resort. And there are animals....'nuff said. Thanks for following along.

I asked my daughter about it and she was all about having animals outside of the hotel. Guess we should probably invest in a lightweight stroller for the baby for next time.

 

[gwhb75]

I asked my daughter about it and she was all about having animals outside of the hotel. Guess we should probably invest in a lightweight stroller for the baby for next time.

Animals outside > longer bus rides...

 

[MotherofaPrincessLover]

Animals outside > longer bus rides...

That was exactly her thinking!

 

[gwhb75]

That was exactly her thinking!

I think that would be most kid's thinking.

 

[lostpro9het]

 

[gwhb75]

I know, I know. I have it typed up, just need to organize the pictures. Aiming for tomorrow to finally be done.

 

[gwhb75]

Sorry about the long delay…Here goes the last full day at WDW

August 28

So the last day is upon us. The last day always starts with this horrible thing…

The plan today was to start at MK, back in the afternoon for a while, and then AK at night. The first part of the plan went off without a hitch. Everyone was up and out the door at a good time and we made it to the MK just after 9.
The first thing I wanted to do (and yes, it was really just me who wanted to do this), was get a picture with Mickey. Now I’m not a huge Mickey fan myself, but I had heard about the talking Mickey they had, and really wanted to see it.

Of course I had to really build it up to get the kids to buy in, so I spent the 20 minutes in line telling them how cool it would be to see it, how technologically advanced it was, how the magic bands help make it work. By the time we got there they were really looking forward to it too…. Soon it was our turn and we walked in.

There he was….waving….and gesturing….ummmm…..someone want to tell me when they replaced the talking Mickey with the standard non-talking Mickey? You can only imagine the mocking that ensued (“yeah Dad, really advanced”). I give up…

After our picture with mute/miming Mickey, we hopped on the train and rode over to Fronteriland.

We got off the train and made our way over to Liberty Square for our HM FP.

Sadly, when we got there the HM was down. We were told by the CM that we’d get an email telling us what our options were. We decided we’d head over to 7DMT with the hope that it would be one of the one’s on the list. I still hadn’t received the email when we got to the FP line, so we decided we’d just give it a shot. Nope. Blue head. However, the stanby was only 40 minutes, so we decided we may as well do it (Tammy really likes this one).

It was a fun ride (although we can tell we’re pretty much ready to go home. The kids are starting to get snippy with each other).
After that we headed over to Tomorrowland for our SM FP. The line was insanely long (almost at the Peoplemover), but it moved quickly.

We had fun.

more to come

 

[gwhb75]

Last park day continued

We had a Splash Mountain FP to use after Space, so headed back to Fronteirland. Tammy and Steph decided that they didn’t want to ride since they didn’t want to get wet, so they headed to Pecos Bill’s to order lunch while Liam and I rode. Liam and I had fun, but I think that we may have offended the picture police, as our picture never turned up (It would have been a picture of me pretending to choke Liam (it was his idea)). My apologies to the other people who were on the ride with us.

So Liam and I finish riding and make our way over to Peco’s Bills, when I get a text from Tammy…”Lunch was free”. No doubt there’s a story to this, so we head over and meet up with Tammy and Steph where the fill us in. They had just placed their order and went to pay with their MB. They tapped the MB to the reader, and the system froze. The CM did a quick reset on the reader and Tammy tapped it again. This time the entire register shut off. A manager came over and tried to help but nothing was working. Tammy was expecting to be taken over to another register to pay, but instead the manager asked what she had ordered. She gave him the order and he said he’d get it himself and it was on the house. That was a nice surprise. Lunch was really good. We got two burritos, one nachos, and one burger.

We really enjoyed them.
After lunch we decided to call it a day (and a trip) for the MK. We made our way back to the front of the park. Liam stopped in at the Confectionary and picked up some chocolate fudge. We noticed the new bug spray station set up just outside.

It’s a good strategy for Disney to do this I guess.

After that we headed out and took the bus back to AKL.
Bye MK

When we arrived at AKL we went to the store. We had seen a nice Mickey chip and dip bowl at HS last night and wanted to know if they had any there. They didn’t but said we could look at the Shop Disney app. I explained that us Canadian’s can’t get the app since it’s only available to US residents. The CM was really excited that we were from Canada as that’s where she was from. It turns out she was from Stratford, Ontario (which is about 30 minutes from our home), and was down at WDW with the College program. She was very helpful. She looked on the app for us and found the chip bowls at AK, which is where we were headed later tonight. We thanked her and headed out. I should note that it started pouring while all this was going on.

Tammy and I headed back to the room to finish packing while the kids went to Community Hall. On the way to the room I noticed the very rare giraffe tree. You can see two of them are almost ripe and ready to fall off.

Maybe they’ll be done before the end of the day.

Yup, they ripened

isn't nature wonderful...

more to come

 

[gwhb75]

Last park day continued

After packing we headed out to AK for the night. We walked up to the bag check area where I told Tammy that I’ll go ahead and get my “random selection” out of the way and, sure enough, I was randomly selected to go through the metal detector.

After that we headed into to the park (which was actually pretty empty because of the rain earlier in the day).
First stop was for pictures in front of the tree of life.

We then stopped in at the store that the CM at AKL told us had the chip bowl and there it was.

We happily made our purchase and headed out to the rest of the park.

The first stop was Dinoland for our last trip on Primeval Whirl for this trip.

It was fun. They also have a bug spray station set up there.

Next was Everest, which had no wait at all.

I love Everest.

After riding through the mountains we made our way over to the Yak and Yeti for dinner.

more to come

 

[gwhb75]

Last park day continued

We were seated quickly in the upstairs area with a good view of Asia.

For dinner Tammy got the Honey Chicken,

Steph for the Lo Mein with Shrimp,

Liam got the Korean Ribs

and I got the Lo Mein with Chicken and Shrimp. Dinner was really good.

With our last dinner out of the way, we headed back to Everest for our last FP. I love Everest at night.

There still was no line, so the kids and I rode a second time. Steph was sitting next to an older woman who was part of the college program. She was very nice.

The last thing we wanted to do before calling it a night was seeing the Tree of Life Awakenings. It was really neat to see.

After that we made our way out of the park.

We’ve had a great time at the parks this year.
We got back to the room and finished packing. I headed down to the front desk and paid off the balance on the room (we bought a bunch of cards at Sam’s Club before the trip. After paying off everything we had $20 left – not bad), and then headed back to the room. We watched TV for a while and then fell asleep.

That's it for today. A small report for tomorrow to come

 

[gwhb75]

Last day

Well, it’s time to say goodbye to Disney. We woke up and took our checked bags down to the resort airline check in. We had a bit of an issue when we got there. It turns out they can’t accept Nexus cards as ID for checking in. I don’t really get why since they are more “secure” than passports, but they couldn’t accept them. Fortunately, I had brought our passports with us, so I went back to the room and got them.

After checking in we stopped by the store to pick up some breakfast things (they have some grab and go hot breakfast items at Kidani now (to make up for not having a QS)).

We also ran into the CM from Canada again. She asked if we got the chip bowl at AK. It was nice that she remembered us.
After that we headed out of AK for the last time. We found some seats at the ME stop

and before long the bus arrived to take us back to the Orlando airport.

pouty faces

We got to the airport in about 40 minutes and headed through security to our gate.

Tammy was a bit concerned as the weather was calling for a storm, and the Southwest staff told us that if lightening is in the area then they have to close the gate.

Fortunately we got on and in the air before that happened. The flight home was a bit bumpy (we were at the very back of the plane and the flight attendant told us that you feel a lot more at the back of the plane than in the middle).

Regardless, we got home safely.

Well, if you made it this far, thanks for following along.

So when is the next trip you may ask? As of right now, our next family trip is scheduled for next August

HOWEVER...I'm going to be in Orlando for the Association of Financial Professional's conference on October 22nd-26th, so I have a feeling I'll be at the parks at some point during that time. It will be weird being alone though.

I'll have some closing thoughts shortly.

 

[DimpledDevil18]

I was in MK that day too and we did 7DMT (but we had a FP) and we also had FP's for Splash and Space, but opposite yours AND we ate lunch in Pecos Bills. (And it was our last day too). So we either passed each other or were one step ahead of each other lol. We totally missed out on the register freezing so no free lunch for us at Pecos Bills. We had one more QS dining credit to burn anyway.

 

[dclfan]

Thanks for writing another great Trip Report @gwhb75 . I always enjoy reading about your family adventures. They remind me a lot of the way me and my family vacationed when me and my sister were younger.

 

[Matt and Kelly]

Thanks for sharing in your families adventures with us! Always exciting when you have an idea as to when you will be back.

 

[Tuvalu]

I have been waiting a long time to say this....

Well done, Graham!!

(Hope you get a solo WDW fix next week!)

 

[Ciara]

Another great TR, thanks for sharing!

 

[gwhb75]

I was in MK that day too and we did 7DMT (but we had a FP) and we also had FP's for Splash and Space, but opposite yours AND we ate lunch in Pecos Bills. (And it was our last day too). So we either passed each other or were one step ahead of each other lol. We totally missed out on the register freezing so no free lunch for us at Pecos Bills. We had one more QS dining credit to burn anyway.

Too funny. We probably crossed paths at some point that day and didn't know it. Hope you had a great trip.

 

[gwhb75]

Thanks for writing another great Trip Report @gwhb75 . I always enjoy reading about your family adventures. They remind me a lot of the way me and my family vacationed when me and my sister were younger.

Thanks for following along. I'm hoping our kids have great memories of the trips when they're older too.