The primer of this adventure can be found over here.
So where to begin, well it seems like every Disney trip we take the “Vacation Creep” occurs. Vacation creep is the pull to add more minutes/hours/days to your trip as you get closer to your trip, we’re terribly bad with this, see POP add on in the PTR . So about a week before we were scheduled to leave bright and early on Thursday morning we rationalized the idea to leave the night before and stay over in Tifton, about half way, so as to be better rested for the evening time when we were to attend the DVC Beach Bash. Makes sense right? With this being just a long weekend trip I was less concerned about taking extensive notes and a ton of pictures like my last live TR and tried to go with the flow more, still many pics and stories to share but a little lite compared to TRs of past. So let’s get to this…
Wednesday:
We were all packed the day before so I loaded us up after work and we made for Tifton about 7:30. We had an uneventful trek to the Comfort Inn and Suites in Tifton. Nothing much else to report about this and no pictures either because, let’s be honest, it’s Tifton…
Thursday part one:
I promised the ladies if they could be up and ready to leave by 07:00 we could hit up Cracker Barrel for breakfast, the DW is nuts about this place, rather than the free Comfort Inn breakfast. So we almost had Cracker Barrel to ourselves and were in and out by 7:45 headed to Orlando! Armed with our trusty SunPass we cruise through the tolls pointing and laughing at the rubes stopping to pay, granted we were those rubes a little over a month ago but we can move past that. We did experience a little confusion as we approached the last toll booth and all the SunPass signage disappeared and we started seeing “EZ Pay” signage. Not wanting to get a ticket we donned our best rube looks and approached to toll booth when the attendant said we were all good and waved us through. So it seems EZ Pay = SunPass for those wondering. Finally we approached Western Way and navigated to POP. This place was BUSY! Lots of hustle and bustle going on. I move to the counter to see our room was ready since it was so early
YES! Room 9427 is ours and good to go! So we make our way to the room and unpack our overnight bags. Not 10 minutes after we check in I get a weird call.
After that strangeness we decide to play “Park Bus Roulette”, first bus to arrive wins us! Animal Kingdom FTW! A short bus ride to AK and we’re there.
We decided not to overdo it so we took our time and looked around and did some people watching before heading to Rafiki’s Planet Watch. Here is a little then and now for ya:
DD Then (2008)
DD Now
I’m pretty sure she hated posing for this…
A little emo alpaca for ya
We started feeling the pull for lunch and I suggested we walk up to Rainforest café and see if they have any availability. While they looked busy the wait was only 20 minutes so we looked around the shop for a bit.
Just under 20 miunutes and they were calling our name:
The DD went with a turkey wrap while the DW and I split a salad the Caribbean meat plate. Neither entrée was anything worth writing about so I’ll leave it at that. We won’t be back to RC and have already canceled our ADR for Christmas week. This place, outside of the theming, is nothing special. The DW and DD also said the bathrooms were pretty bad. We weren’t put off by this experience in the least, however, and decided to make our way back to POP to rest up before our DVC Beach Bash.
Up next: some things cannot be unseen on Castaway Creek…
So where to begin, well it seems like every Disney trip we take the “Vacation Creep” occurs. Vacation creep is the pull to add more minutes/hours/days to your trip as you get closer to your trip, we’re terribly bad with this, see POP add on in the PTR . So about a week before we were scheduled to leave bright and early on Thursday morning we rationalized the idea to leave the night before and stay over in Tifton, about half way, so as to be better rested for the evening time when we were to attend the DVC Beach Bash. Makes sense right? With this being just a long weekend trip I was less concerned about taking extensive notes and a ton of pictures like my last live TR and tried to go with the flow more, still many pics and stories to share but a little lite compared to TRs of past. So let’s get to this…
Wednesday:
We were all packed the day before so I loaded us up after work and we made for Tifton about 7:30. We had an uneventful trek to the Comfort Inn and Suites in Tifton. Nothing much else to report about this and no pictures either because, let’s be honest, it’s Tifton…
Thursday part one:
I promised the ladies if they could be up and ready to leave by 07:00 we could hit up Cracker Barrel for breakfast, the DW is nuts about this place, rather than the free Comfort Inn breakfast. So we almost had Cracker Barrel to ourselves and were in and out by 7:45 headed to Orlando! Armed with our trusty SunPass we cruise through the tolls pointing and laughing at the rubes stopping to pay, granted we were those rubes a little over a month ago but we can move past that. We did experience a little confusion as we approached the last toll booth and all the SunPass signage disappeared and we started seeing “EZ Pay” signage. Not wanting to get a ticket we donned our best rube looks and approached to toll booth when the attendant said we were all good and waved us through. So it seems EZ Pay = SunPass for those wondering. Finally we approached Western Way and navigated to POP. This place was BUSY! Lots of hustle and bustle going on. I move to the counter to see our room was ready since it was so early
YES! Room 9427 is ours and good to go! So we make our way to the room and unpack our overnight bags. Not 10 minutes after we check in I get a weird call.
After that strangeness we decide to play “Park Bus Roulette”, first bus to arrive wins us! Animal Kingdom FTW! A short bus ride to AK and we’re there.
We decided not to overdo it so we took our time and looked around and did some people watching before heading to Rafiki’s Planet Watch. Here is a little then and now for ya:
DD Then (2008)
DD Now
I’m pretty sure she hated posing for this…
A little emo alpaca for ya
We started feeling the pull for lunch and I suggested we walk up to Rainforest café and see if they have any availability. While they looked busy the wait was only 20 minutes so we looked around the shop for a bit.
Just under 20 miunutes and they were calling our name:
The DD went with a turkey wrap while the DW and I split a salad the Caribbean meat plate. Neither entrée was anything worth writing about so I’ll leave it at that. We won’t be back to RC and have already canceled our ADR for Christmas week. This place, outside of the theming, is nothing special. The DW and DD also said the bathrooms were pretty bad. We weren’t put off by this experience in the least, however, and decided to make our way back to POP to rest up before our DVC Beach Bash.
Up next: some things cannot be unseen on Castaway Creek…
Last edited: