DAY 2 -- JANUARY 20TH
I am a good son and since my mom gets up early every day for work when we go away I always get up and get ready first so she can get a little more sleep. After showering, I placed a mobile order for breakfast from the food court. I got a breakfast sandwich, which was good not great, and my mom got overnight oats. Mobile ordering went smoothly throughout this whole trip.
We had heard from a few of our friends that were in WDW during the holiday season that the CMs were unpleasant and sometimes rude. We found things to be the opposite during our trip. Every morning there were CMs lined up at the doors to the bus stops playing music and dancing and singing and greeting everyone. It was such a great way to start the day.
After a short wait, we were on a bus and arrived here...
This is hands down my mom's favorite park so we always make sure to spend time here. We explored some of the trails and made our way to the safari. The wait was fairly lengthy but with Everest closed and my mom no longer rides FoP, there wasn't much else ridewise that was a must do.
So please enjoy a montage of safari pics.
I don't think I have ever seen the hippos on land before.
One of my coworkers loves giraffes so I told her I would take pictures for her.
Tough to see, but BABY RHINO
!!!
After the safari, we strayed from our usual pattern of doing the gorilla trail in favor of going to the most underrated park of AK, Rafiki's Planet Watch. They typically do the vet procedures earlier in the day so we were hoping that by going sooner rather than later that we could catch a glimpse of a procedure being done. Unfortunately, they were not doing any procedures that day but we still checked out the bugs and reptiles and whatnot and spent some time in the petting zoo before heading back to AK proper.
After our train ride, we explored the Gorilla Falls trail. I am not sure why but I didn't take any pictures for some reason. We meandered over to Asia and walked through the Maharaja Jungle Trek. Again, no pictures which means that the tigers must not have been our or hard to see. I wouldn't pass up an opportunity for tiger pics since they are my favorite.
We checked out the wait time for Dinosaur but it was way too long so we passed on that. We just enjoyed walking around and soaking in the atmosphere for a while until it was time to head out for our lunch reservation at Homecomin'.
This is where things got interesting. Somehow, I missed the memo that there were no buses from the parks to DS. I knew that there weren't buses from DS to the parks because people were abusing the free parking at DS but I thought they were running one way. I knew from other TRs that the boats were running again on the Sassagoula so we decided to take the bus to Saratoga Springs and then we had the option of taking the boat or walking.
Here is where my lack of experience staying on property bit me in the behind. My mom's back was bothering her so she wanted to take the boat. I looked on the map and saw that the boat dock was near the main building. I was expecting one of the internal bus stop to be called lobby or something like that. We passed stop after stop and then the next thing we know, the announcement on the bus says that we are headed to Animal Kingdom...
Of course, Saratoga Springs is about as far away from AK as possible and our ADR time was quickly approaching. As we pulled back into AK, I summoned an Uber to DS with the hopes that we would still make it in time for lunch. We walked past a car that was waiting and jokingly said that it would be great if that was our ride. Turns out it was!
We made it to DS and hoofed it over to Homecomin' only a few minutes late. Phew!
We split an order of Church Lady Deviled Eggs that I forgot to take a picture of since I was still recovering from our not-so-incredible journey. If you are keeping score, this is the second order of deviled eggs in as many days. Within the past few years I have discovered that I really like deviled eggs after avoiding them for so long. There is a place near us back home (Railroad Street Bar and Grill in Linfield for the SE PA folks out there) that often times has a special flavor of deviled eggs like buffalo or Italian with pesto and crispy prosciutto. Eating there really got me hooked on deviled eggs so oftentimes we will try them at various places to find good ones. The deviled eggs at Homecomin' are really good. Instead of the typical halved egg, these ones are more like hollowed out whole eggs filled with the filling and topped with bacon.
For my lunch, I went with the fried chicken sandwich that comes with yummy house made chips with icebox dressing on them.
Another great meal at Homecomin' came to an end and we were full and happy.
Ever since they have opened, I have been on a mission to get cookies from Gideon's but the line has always been crazy when we have been at DS. On a whim, we walked over there after lunch to see how long the virtual queue wait was. But to my amazement, there was no virtual queue and there were only about 10 people in line in front of us so we hopped in the line still thinking that it was too good to be true. I am happy to say that it was not too good to be true and in less than 15 minutes we were inside and finally getting the cookies I have been waiting for. We got a chocolate chip and peanut butter to split over the next couple of days and they were worth it.
With our cookies in tow, we needed to go back to the room to drop them off so I decided to stop in one of my favorite stores in DS, Stance, to pick up some socks. I got a pair of Hulk socks and a pair of Marauder's Map socks. After a brief pit stop, we hopped a bus back to the hotel to drop off our stuff and relax for a bit before heading back out.
We took the almost entirely empty bus over to HS in hopes of RotR having a shorter wait time at night.
Spoiler alert: it did not.
But we did get to ride TSMM, catch a showing of Muppets 3D, a solo flight on Star Tours for me, and we caught the last showing of the Frozen Sing-a-long which was hysterical as usual. I love when the historians go off script and crack themselves up. At this point, we were both exhausted so we decided to call it a night and head back to the room. On the bus ride back, I did mobile order a kids chicken finger meal for myself and an Uncrustable for my mom. I also had a piece of each cookie before turning in for the night.
We may have ridden some other things but those are the only ones that I remember for sure and we didn't get any ride photos to come through to remind me.