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

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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.
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We have Zoey who is 7
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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:
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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).
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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
 
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gwhb75

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
August 20th continued

We get to AK around 6:15 and the kids take off to Asia (want to guess where they went?).
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Tammy and I were a bit hungry so we went to Flame Tree BBQ. Tammy got the chicken and apple salad, and I got the pulled pork sandwich.
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Both were great.

After we finished eating we met the kids at Everest. We had a FP booked for the Jungle Book show so Tammy got in line for it (we had FP’s but you still need to line up way before the show starts). I rode Everest one more time with the kids, and then we all went to meet Tammy. While waiting in line Liam leaves to go to the bathroom (and Steph goes with him to make sure he doesn’t get lost). They come back with ice cream?
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Turns out they had been walking by the ice cream truck next to the bathroom in Asia, and the CM called them over. She had made an extra cone and was going to throw it out so she asked if they wanted it. They were happy.
At around 8:15 they started letting us in for the show. The theatre looks great and was packed.
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I was sceptical given what I had read about the show. Here is my sceptical look
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At 9:00 the show started. I’ll be honest…I enjoyed it somewhat.
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The only complaint I had was that you could tell the projections weren’t optimized for the water screens as they were all blurry. Besides that the show was good (I enjoyed it way more than Fantasmic).

After Jungle Book we headed over to Africa for our night safari.
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I was surprised when we got there and saw that the standby line, at 9:45pm, was 90 minutes. I’m glad we had a FP. The ride was OK. They’ve done a good job with the lighting, but the animals were hard to see (as @Tuvalu mentioned). The one cool thing was when we passed the lions. One female lion was walking around roaring quite loudly. It was neat to see and hear

After our safari we called it a night. We walked through Harambe market and got our pictures taken:
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We made a quick stop at Starbucks on the way out where Steph picked up a chocolate chip cookie and Liam got a chocolate croissant.
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I’m not sure why CMs have such a hard time with Liam’s name. This time they called him “Leo” (which is a million times better than the time we went to Italy at Epcot a few years ago. The CM was telling the kids what their name’s were in Italian. He told Steph her name in Italian was “Stephania”. He told Liam his name in Italian is “Linda”. Oh, you can believe we didn’t let that go quickly (and to this day we still occasionally call him Linda just for fun).

We headed to the busses after that. Now normally I don’t take pictures of other people who dress or act differently. However, we’re only one day in and my feet are already a bit sore, and then I see this in line for the busses.

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Sorry for the blurry picture, but I couldn’t really ask them if I could take a picture of their feet. I don’t know how they could walk around in the park wearing shoes like that.

We get back to AKL around 11 and go straight to bed. MK is the plan tomorrow.

That's it for August 20th.
 
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myhappyplace

Crazy Cat Lady
Premium Member
Along for the report, yours are always so enjoyable!!

So sweet that your kids aren't too cool to have the old folks along :)
 

FlaggNL

Well-Known Member
Wow, nice TR! Love the pics and what a great resort! Off course following along! Thanks for sharing! Can't wait for more :)
 

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