Trip Report Moderate Crowds, Good Weather and a Hurricane – a September/24 trip report.

Moderate Crowds, Good Weather and a Hurricane – a September/24 trip report.



Intro

Hello again everyone. We’re back from Disney and I’m finally getting around to starting this trip report. Before I jump in, I’ll just warn you that this will probably be a bit drawn out. I have just started writing now, and have about 9 days to cover and things are really busy right now. I’ll get it done, but it probably won’t be quick (fortunately, Netflix has conditioned us now to waiting extremely long times for things (looking at you Stanger Things and Cobra Kai)). LOL.



Quick recap of the trip

If you didn’t read the constantly-changing pre-trip report, here’s a quick summary

Who – This time we’re a different party of 4 than normal. There’s my wife and I (Tammy and Graham), and our daughter with her husband (Steph and Calvin - @S&CVDZ ). Our son Liam didn’t make this trip with us this time.

When - Sept 19-28

Where – Animal Kingdom Lodge – Kidani village in a 1 bedroom

Tickets - 5 day with park hopper and waterparks (we bought this using the Canadian deal they had). We also did a Not-So-Scary on the 22nd.


OK, let’s jump in



Let’s start with some pre-trip stuff

This was our first “long” trip in about 6 years (Thanks Covid). Tammy and I had been back at WDW twice in the past year for a few days (September 2023 at Wilderness Lodge for two days before our 25th anniversary cruise, and April 2024 for three days (that I tacked on to the end of a work trip to Tampa).
Those trip reports are here if you want to catch up:

Trip Report - Surprise - We went to Disney again

Surprise…we went to Disney for a few days High Level Details Who - Tammy and I When - April 17th-20th Resort – Saratoga Springs - Studio Preamble So like the title says, we did a kind-of last minute trip to Disney in mid-April. I was going to be on a course in Tampa from April...

forums.wdwmagic.com

Trip Report - *COMPLETED* How Much Magic Can We Cram Into 2 Days???....Allllll the Magic (if you know you know)

As the quote goes “Just when I thought I was out they pull me back in”. Welcome to my first trip report in 6 years. I honestly didn’t think I’d ever write a trip report again, but here we are. Maybe I’ll do more of these in the future. If you’re interested in the pre-trip report, here’s the...

forums.wdwmagic.com

The lead-up to the trip had us making a lot of changes to the original plan (here’s the link to the pre-trip if you want to catch up):

Pre-Trip - The warmup is over - a September Pre-trip report

The warmup is over - a September Pre-trip report Some preamble stuff If you’ve read my last two mini trip reports, you know that we’ve been dipping our feet back into all things WDW (links to the past two mini-trip reports are here if you’re interested...

forums.wdwmagic.com

We finally nailed all the plans down a few days before we were schedule to leave.

One thing we did this year was pack a “park survival” case. Ok, confession time…getting older kind of sucks when it comes to Disney Parks. Tammy and I mentioned a few time during this trip that we have no idea how we used to do our trips back when we started in 2008. Back then we’d do 10 day park hoppers and were pretty much doing rope drop to the kiss good night almost every day (never mind the physical toll of that for a second, how crazy is it that 10 days with park hopper and waterparks back then cost less than 5 days now). With this trip we found that we needed more breaks than we used to…. Thus the “park survival” case. Things in this case included:

• Cooling towels (just wet them and they stay cool for hours)
• Neck fans (I was on the fence about these, I got them off Temu but wasn’t sure if we’d use them or not (spoiler – we really didn’t))
• Waterproof phone cases (these were great for the waterparks)
• Ponchos (didn’t want to spend $12/poncho when we can get similar quality ones for $3 at home)
• Spray water bottles (these are kind of cool – it’s a water bottle, but they also have a trigger built into them (like a water gun) that will spray a fine mist)
• I also found a really cool Haunted Mansion sling bag

We also had to bring our Magic Bands along.

I’ll point out how many charge ports you need for your trip now. We had 4 magic bands and 4 phones that needed to be charged every day, as well as tablets and headphones/earbuds (for the flights), so it would be possible to have 10-12 things that needed charged at any one time.



Tammy went and got her nails done the day before we left. When she told them she was going to Disney they added some Disney “flair” to the nails.

Tammy and Steph also brought our cat Lylla to my brother’s house on the 18th

That's it for the preamble stuff. More to come shortly.

 

[ajrwdwgirl]

Looking forward to seeing more.

 

[Swissmiss]

Personally I like a drawn out TR because then I can savor them more

 

[cgersic]

Woohooo!!! I'm in! Nice to see your smiling faces and I love Tammy's nail art

 

[Tiki Traveler]

Planning is part of the fun! Nodded along w/the Park Survival Case.

 

[Wicked Sisters]

So looking forward to hearing all about your adventures.

 

[gwhb75]

September 19th – Travel Day

September 19th was a “bonus” day for us (refer to the pre-TR for the full details), as we made a last minute change to our flights so we’d be flying into Orlando instead of Tampa (wow was that ever a good change to make – more on that later) but had to fly in a day earlier as our original flight into Tampa was on the 20th.

Tammy, Calvin and Steph were all off work today. I was working until noon (our flights weren’t until 6:45 pm, so we had lots of time). While I was working Tammy and Steph took our two dogs (Cooper and Sasha) to the place they would be staying while we were gone.

All the animals seemed to enjoy where they were staying while we were away.

Around noon I logged off from work, packed up my laptop and soon we were in the car and on the way to Buffalo. Our plan was to head to the airport first to get our bags checked, then we’d go get something to eat and kill some time before our flights). It turns out I was a bit too efficient. The trip across the boarder was very smooth and there really wasn’t any traffic, so we ended up only taking about 50 minutes to get from our house to the Buffalo airport (we got to the airport just before 2pm). The problem with being so early is that Southwest doesn’t let you check bags until 4 hours before the flight, so we had 45 minutes to kill. We decided to just hang around the airport until our window came up. 45 minutes later we were finally able to check in.

All of our bags were underweight (we have a travel scale so the risk of being higher than the 50lb max is minimal). Steph had a minor issue with checking in as she booked her flights under her married name, but her other documents are all under her maiden name. Fortunately she got that resolved fairly quickly (she had her marriage certificate with her), and soon we all had our boarding passes and were good to go.

We ate at Cracker Barrell and then wandered around some of the stores near the airport before heading back for our flight.

Traditional shot on the moving walkway at the airport

Then we just hung around the gate

Our plane

There was a small delay in our departure time (about 15 minutes), but besides that everything went smoothly. About 2.5 hours later we were on Florida soil.

Our bags all came out quickly and soon we were picking up our rental car (I had originally booked an intermediate SUV, buy got upgraded to a full size one (it was a Genesis – we all liked it)), and about 30 minutes later we saw this:

We quickly passed under the sign and made our way over to Animal Kingdom Lodge – Kidani village.

Now you're probably wondering "how long did it take you to get from the main gate (where it is clearly night) to Kidani (where it is clearly day)". LOL - night pics are hard to get when you are driving quickly by the sign.

September 19th to be continued

 

[gwhb75]

September 19th continued

One different thing at Kidani is the parking. Most resorts have large parking lots out in front of the building. Kidani has some indoor parking and a really spread-out but narrow outdoor lot that stretches around the building.

We found an indoor parking spot and took the elevator from the parking lot up to the 2nd floor where our room was (I had done the on-line check-in and already had our room number (it was after 11pm so our rooms better have been ready (although reading about the room issues that @TheMouseFan had, maybe it wasn’t as much of a slam dunk as we thought LOL)). Interestingly, the 2nd floor at Kidani is the first floor with rooms – the “1st” floor at Kidani has Sanna and parking but no rooms. Our room was just outside the elevator which was a nice bonus (If you’ve ever stayed at AKL, you know how long that hike from the lobby to your room can be if you get one of the rooms at either end of the resort).

Our room was just as we remembered 1 bedrooms at AKL to be. Here are some room pics:

Master bedroom

Master bedroom ensuite

I like the tiles in here

Kitchen

Laundry

Second bathroom

We were really happy with it for the most part. One issue we did have was with the roll-out couch. AKL hasn’t been updated yet, so the mattresses look like the ones that were there the first time we stayed here in 2010. Steph said the bed was really uncomfortable so I decided to try it out. My goodness it was terrible. There was a metal support bar right cross where your back was and it almost felt like you were lying on it directly. I made a quick walk down to the lobby (this was actually the morning of the 20th) to ask what they could do. They sent a memory foam mattress topper which made it better, but not great. We asked them for a second topper (yes, our topper had a topper LOL). The second topper made the bed at least passable, but they really need to upgrade those beds ASAP.

So that’s it for our travel day. Tomorrow is what I would call “prep” day. The plan is to go to the Character Warehouse at the outlets and Sam’s Club to pick up some breakfast foods and snacks for the room, hit the pool/Disney Springs then dinner at Boatwrights in the evening.

End of day 1

 

[gwhb75]

Sept 20th

September 20th – Prep Day (and I made it snow)

I love the feeling of waking up on that first day at Disney. Given we got into our room pretty late (I think it was closer to 12 before we were settled in), we slept in a bit. As the title of the day suggests, today is, for lack of a better term, prep day. We had a few non-park things on today’s agenda:

• Go to the Character Warehouse at the Orlando Premium Outlets
• Go to Sam’s Club to pick up some breakfast and snacks for the room
• Stop at Disney Springs for a few minutes
• Dinner at Boatwrights tonight

I won’t spend a lot of time on 1 and 2, but I’ll give a brief recap. After coffee in the room (using the in-room Joffrey’s coffee) we headed down to the car, but made a last minute change of plans and decided to go see the lobby and pool first.

I absolutely love Animal Kingdom Lodge. It’s such an amazing looking place. One thing I always joke about with Tammy is how she doesn’t know when I stop to take a picture so she usually, inadvertently, ends up in a lot of them. This has now become a running joke with her where she’ll try to pop in to pictures for fun. For example:

There will be a few of these type pictures during this report

We made a quick stop at the store to pick up our travel mugs for the week.

One thing we found out they do in the lobby is have a scavenger hunt every day where they hide a small Timone statue.

Once you find him you just take a picture then go to community hall and show them the picture. The first picture you show gets you a pin, and every subsequent picture you show you get a sticker to go on the pin.

...and Steph insisted on a picture with the inappropriate totem pole

After taking the pic of Timone we made a quick trip to the pool so Calvin could see it.

The gym

We’ll end up back here a few times I’m sure.

To be continued

 

[gwhb75]

Sept 20 continued
After our brief tour of the resort we headed to the car and off to stop 1 – the outlets.

Piece of advice…I’d “rope drop” the character warehouse if you want to get in without a wait. I was surprised how long the line was.

We ended up waiting over 30 minutes. We saw people coming out with luggage which Steph was interested in (her bag kind of took a beating on the flight down and was in rough shape so she was looking for a new bag). Unfortunately, by the time we got in the place had been pretty well picked over and there wasn’t really anything left that interested us. Oh well.

Sam’s Club was up next (with a quick stop and Dunkin’ Donuts for some more caffeine and a browse around the tourist trap souvenir store attached to it). We picked up more Disney gift cards and some breakfast stuff – no pics of any of this, you’ll just need to trust me.

After Sam’s Club we headed to Disney Springs.

Steph and Calvin headed over to Gideon’s while Tammy and I headed over to the World of Disney and the Lego store.

Hey @S&CVDZ - You can let us know what you guys did if you want (and if you have pics that would be great)... The only pic I have of you guys when we split up is you and Calvin with the bag from Gideon's

Tammy has a new found obsession with all things Dumbo

btw - I really like Tammy's crocs (plot twist...she actually got the crocs in Aruba).

We didn’t stay too long at Disney Springs as we wanted to go back to the room and freshen up before dinner.

To be continued

 

[gwhb75]

Sept 20th continued
As mentioned in point 4 – dinner tonight was at Boatwrights. We have never been to Port Orleans, although we’ve always said we wanted to see it. Booking Boatwrights finally forced us to make the trip. All I can say is…. I wish we hadn’t waited this long to go to Port Orleans.

What a great resort.

We made our way over to Boatwrights and were quickly seated (I did the online check in using the MDE app).

We started with the corn bread with honey butter.

We all loved it and asked for a second loaf. Tammy and I started with the pimento cheese fritters.

These were just amazing.

For our main courses Tammy and I both got the shrimp and grits,

Steph decided to go with two starters for her main course so she went with the french onion soup and the pimento fritters,

and Calvin went with the all-you-care-to-enjoy taste of the bayou platter (and it only took him one meal to figure out he can't start eating until I take a picture LOL).

My quick review….go to Boatwrights. All our food was delicious and our server was 10/10 (we left a cast member compliment through the MDE app).

To be continued

 

[gwhb75]

Sept 20 continued
After dinner we wanted to tour the grounds of Port Orleans a bit. We also had an ulterior motive for this as we wanted to go to French Quarter to try the beignets. I thought a quick river cruise would be fun, so we hopped on a boat and a few minutes later we were in New Orleans…

Again, love this resort

Here's another one of the "I stopped to take a pic and didn't tell Tammy"

To be continued

 

[gwhb75]

Sept 20 continued
We made our way over from the boat launch to the lobby and found our way into Scat Cats Club Café.

Tammy and I ordered 6 of the regular beignets, while Steph opted for the Hallowe’en themed beignets.

We placed our order, found a place to sit (which is hard in the Scat Cats club), and soon our beignets were ready.
Steph's:

...and the regular ones

Then something funny happened…They really cover those beignets in a lot of powdered sugar…I made the mistake of picking one up while talking and inadvertently inhaled some of that powdered sugar….which made me cough….which sent copious amounts of powdered sugar all over the table and myself

…You really can’t take me anywhere.

Despite the small snowstorm I caused we did enjoy the beignets.

After finishing up our baked goods we headed out and decided to walk back to the Riverside side of the resort.

Again, I love this resort.

Once we got back to AKL we decided a nighttime visit to the pool was in order.

It was a good evening.

Tomorrow we are heading to EPCOT for the first time in 6 years.

End of day 2

 

[TheMouseFan]

Glad you didn't have any issues getting into your room! I loved our stay at Kidani a few years ago and would love to go back! Brian has learned to stay relatively behind me so he knows when I'm stopping for pictures because otherwise I stand there and let him get out of the frame before taking it, and then he's waiting "forever" for me because I have to catch back up to him! Can't wait to hear more!

 

[Tiggertoo56]

Sept 20th continued
As mentioned in point 4 – dinner tonight was at Boatwrights. We have never been to Port Orleans, although we’ve always said we wanted to see it. Booking Boatwrights finally forced us to make the trip. All I can say is…. I wish we hadn’t waited this long to go to Port Orleans.

View attachment 821287
View attachment 821277
What a great resort.

We made our way over to Boatwrights and were quickly seated (I did the online check in using the MDE app).
View attachment 821278
View attachment 821279
We started with the corn bread with honey butter.
View attachment 821280
We all loved it and asked for a second loaf. Tammy and I started with the pimento cheese fritters.
View attachment 821282View attachment 821283
These were just amazing.

For our main courses Tammy and I both got the shrimp and grits,

View attachment 821285
Steph decided to go with two starters for her main course so she went with the french onion soup and the pimento fritters,
View attachment 821284
and Calvin went with the all-you-care-to-enjoy taste of the bayou platter (and it only took him one meal to figure out he can't start eating until I take a picture LOL).
View attachment 821286
My quick review….go to Boatwrights. All our food was delicious and our server was 10/10 (we left a cast member compliment through the MDE app).

To be continued

I ate at Boatwrights for the first time last week (having stayed at PO Riverside and French Quarter 5 times!) and would agree - the food was delicious We had Prime Rib followed by Pecan Pie and Bread Pudding. Server was brilliant and also hsd a cast compliment. I don't know we haven't eaten there previously.

 

[gwhb75]

Glad you didn't have any issues getting into your room! I loved our stay at Kidani a few years ago and would love to go back! Brian has learned to stay relatively behind me so he knows when I'm stopping for pictures because otherwise I stand there and let him get out of the frame before taking it, and then he's waiting "forever" for me because I have to catch back up to him! Can't wait to hear more!

Lol. Tammy feels the same when I take pictures.

 

[gwhb75]

I ate at Boatwrights for the first time last week (having stayed at PO Riverside and French Quarter 5 times!) and would agree - the food was delicious We had Prime Rib followed by Pecan Pie and Bread Pudding. Server was brilliant and also hsd a cast compliment. I don't know we haven't eaten there previously.
View attachment 821314
View attachment 821315
View attachment 821316

Boatwright's is now on our list of restaurants we will have to do each trip.

 

[gwhb75]

September 21 – EPCOT with some park hopping thrown in

It was nice having a few non-park days to relax and recharge a bit, because I know that once we start hitting the parks we’re going to be going hard.

Today was our EPCOT day. We haven’t been in EPCOT since 2018, and quite a few things have changed/were added since then. Guardians of the Galaxy was just a big blue building behind construction walls, Remy hadn’t started yet, and the plaza behind Spaceship Earth was just starting it’s transformation.

I was up early (6:30ish) for two reasons

• Coffee (we picked up a bag of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee so we could make it in the room); and
• To try and get a boarding group for Guardians of the Galaxy at 7am

The coffee part was easy – just put the grounds in the machine, pour the water and voila…coffee

The virtual que thing is a bit dicey. The last time I had to use it was at the MNSSHP for Tron back in September 2023 when Tammy and I were there for a few days. That time the app glitched right at the 6pm booking time. I ended up getting a spot, but really late in the day at that time.

I opened the app at about 6:55 and just kept refreshing until 7am hit and the “Join Virtual Que button” appeared. I hit it and waited…..

Not bad. 225 minutes puts us around noonish, assuming the ride doesn’t go down during the day. I was happy with that.

The next order of business was to get everyone out the door so we could rope drop. I’m happy to report that everyone complied and we were all out the door just before 8 (after coffee and some breakfast of course).

We got to EPCOT at about 8:15, parked the car in the HeiHei lot, and made our way to the park entrance.

The park doesn’t officially open until 9am, but resort guests can enter at 8:30 (which I’ve figured out just means you can get in line first as nothing seems to be running at 8:30). Our plan was to do Ratatouille first since we’ve heard the lines get really long during the day. A quick walk through future world (with a few pics along the way) and soon we were at World Showcase and heading towards France.

Apparently our plan to go there first was quite a popular once, because it seems like everyone else had the same idea. When we finally got to France, the line was already well past Chef de France, and was almost into Morocco.

We joined the line and it slowly started moving. Before long we were past the fountains and making the left hand turn down towards Remy. It turns out all that “progress” was just people either filling in space or getting out of line…. Because Remy was down. I would say we waited about 45 minutes with no movement, while CM’s kept announcing that the ride is experiencing technical difficulties and they don’t know when they will be open. We also found out that the ride hadn’t opened at all the previous day due to these same technical issues. Hmmmm….what to do…. I’m all for waiting to try something new, but it was seeming very unlikely this was going to open any time soon. We decided there is a lot to do in the parks besides Remy, so we bailed (the ride didn’t open for about another 2 hours, and by that time the line was over 2 hours long, so we never ended up riding Remy). I did take a few pics of the area just to say we tried.

To be continued

 

[gwhb75]

Sept 21 continued
After leaving Remy, we headed to Norway to see if Frozen Ever After was up and running yet (it was now around 9:15 so the park was open to all visitors now). Thankfully, it was, and the wait was under an hour so we got in line. The wait time posted was pretty accurate (I would say 50 minutes). We had a good ride.

And a pic from the gift shop

After Norway we headed to Mexico to ride the Gran Fiesta Tour.

That ride was empty as usual, and we had a fun ride.

We spent a few minutes exploring the pavilion. One thing Tammy and I were thinking about doing was eating at the San Angel Inn on “date night” (see the PTR). Interesting side note…I was in Mexico for work back in November 2023, and ate at the acutal San Angel Inn in Mexico City. We weren’t able to get reservations for it though…

to be continued

 

[gwhb75]

Sept 21 continued

After Mexico we headed back into Future world the Land Pavilion.

Calvin had never been on Soarin’ before and we thought he would love it.

Tammy really hates heights, so she agreed to go on as long as we were on the lowest level of the ride. Not a bad compromise. The standby line was only 35 minutes which I find interesting.
Back in 2018 this was one of the “go to” rides that always had times over an hour. It was fun.

After Soarin’ we headed to Sunshine Seasons for a snack. I had the Peanut Butter Whoopie pie on my snack checklist (check the PTR), so I got one of those, along with a birthday cake cookie (we were splitting these).

Both were OK. I wouldn’t recommend making a special trip for them.

To be continued